Meanness Quotes - Page 3

• Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

  Rumi

  Inspirational, Friendship, Thank You

  Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi, “The Guest House”

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• Who is open without levity; generous without waste; secret without craft; humble without meanness; bold without insolence; cautious without anxiety; regular, yet not formal; mild, yet not timid; firm, yet not tyrannical - is made to pass the ordeal of honour, friendship, virtue.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Humble, Anxiety, Secret

  "Aphorisms on man. Translated from the original manuscript of the Rev. John Caspar Lavater, citizen of Zuric. ; [One line from Juvenal]" by Johann Kaspar Lavater, 1790.

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• Giving honest and well-intended feedback is often confused with being mean. It's not mean; it's nice.

  Robert Kiyosaki

  Confused, Nice, Mean

  Twitter post from Mar 26, 2017

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• So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.

  Charles Dickens

  People, Expectations, Words Of Wisdom

  Charles Dickens (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Charles Dickens (Illustrated)”, p.7278, Delphi Classics

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• Both poverty and wealth, therefore, have a bad effect on the quality of the work and the workman himself. Wealth and poverty, I answered. One produces luxury and idleness and a passion for novelty, the other meanness and bad workmanship and revolution into the bargain.

  Plato

  Passion, Luxury, Political

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• We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bone.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Blood, Flesh, Bones

  1854 Walden, or Life in the Woods,'Higher Laws'.

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• We can easily forgive want of means; but littleness, with means, is disgusting.

  Anne-Therese de Marguenat de Courcelles

  Mean, Forgiving, Want

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• Children who wish to become good and great men or good and noble women, should try to know well all the people whom they meet. Thus they will find that there is no one who has not much of good; and when they see some great folly, or some meanness, or some cowardice, or some fault or weakness in another person, they should examine themselves carefully. Then they will see that, perhaps, they too have some of the same fault in themselves - although perhaps it does not come out in the same way - and then they must try to conquer that fault.

  Bram Stoker

  Children, Men, People

  Bram Stoker (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Bram Stoker (Illustrated)”, p.2484, Delphi Classics

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• There were times when I asked myself whether I was being principled or simply a coward.... I was wrapped in the cocoon of tennis early in life, mainly by blacks like my most powerful mentor, Dr. Robert Walter Johnson of Lynchburg, Virginia. They insisted that I be unfailingly polite on the court, unfalteringly calm and detached, so that whites could never accuse me of meanness. I learned well. I look at photographs of the skinny, frail, little black boy that I was in the early 1950s, and I see that I was my tennis racquet and my tennis racquet was me. It was my rod and my staff.

  Arthur Ashe

  Powerful, Boys, Virginia

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• There is something in meanness which excites a species of resentment that never subsides, and something in cruelty which stirs up the heart to the highest agony of human hatred.

  Thomas Paine

  Heart, Agony, Hatred

  Thomas Paine (2016). “THE AMERICAN CRISIS – Revolutionary Work Which Inspired the American People to Fight for Their Independence: Including “The Life of Thomas Paine” – Extensive Biography of the Author”, p.57, e-artnow

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• Too much hard luck can create a permanent meanness of spirit in any creature.

  Jeannette Walls

  Luck, Too Much, Spirit

  Jeannette Walls (2009). “The Glass Castle: A Memoir”, p.120, Simon and Schuster

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• An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty.

  Samuel Johnson

  Characteristics, Cruelty, Infallible

  Samuel Johnson (1819). “The Beauties of Samuel Johnson: Consisting of Maxims and Observations, Moral, Critical, and Miscellaneous”, p.186

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• If every husband and every wife would constantly do whatever might be possible to ensure the comfort and happiness of his or her companion, there would be very little, if any, divorce. Argument would never be heard. Accusations would never be leveled. Angry explosions would not occur. Rather, love and concern would replace abuse and meanness.

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Husband, Divorce, Wife

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• To deride the hope of progress is the ultimate fatuity, the last word in poverty of spirit and meanness of mind.

  Peter Medawar

  Science, Mind, Progress

  Peter Brian Medawar (1996). “The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science”, p.119, Oxford University Press, USA

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• My idea of our civilization is that it is a shoddy, poor thing and full of cruelties, vanities, arrogances, meannesses and hypocrisies.

  Mark Twain

  Vanity, Civilization, Ideas

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.47, Courier Corporation

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• Ive seen the meanness of humans till I dont know why God aint put out the sun and gone away.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Gone Away, Sun, Humans

  Cormac McCarthy (2010). “Outer Dark”, p.192, Vintage

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• Adultery is a meanness and a stealing, a taking away from someone what should be theirs, a great selfishness, and surrounded and guarded by lies lest it should be found out. And out of meanness and selfishness and lying flow love and joy and peace beyond anything that can be imagined.

  Rose Macaulay

  Lying, Joy, Selfishness

  "The Towers of Trebizond". Book by Rose Macaulay, 1956.

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• I think the fear of being seen as childish or crazy severely limits our enjoyment of the world around us, thus inducing a state of boredom that in turn gives rise to much of the stupidity and meanness that oftem seem to epitomize the human condtion. In fact, these ills merely signify that the dues we pay for adult respectability are far too high, and bring some 'benefits' of questionable value.

  D. Patrick Miller

  Fear, Crazy, Thinking

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• Meanness is more in half-doing than in omitting acts of generosity.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Generosity, Half, Stinginess

  Elbert Hubbard, Bert Hubbard (1923). “Selected writings of Elbert Hubbard: his mintage of wisdom, coined from a life of love, laughter and work”

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• We should never stand upon ceremony with sincerity. We should never cheat and insult and banish one another by our meanness, if there were present the kernel of worth and friendliness. We should not meet thus in haste.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Friendship, Haste, Insult

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.243, Penguin

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• There is a false modesty, which is vanity; a false glory, which is levity; a false grandeur, which is meanness; a false virtue, which is hypocrisy, and a false wisdom, which is prudery.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Vanity, Hypocrisy, Modesty

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• I have stood your meanness as long as I intend to. You have played the part of a damn scoundrel, and if you were any part of a man I would slap your jaws and force you to resent it.

  Nathan Bedford Forrest

  War, Men, Long

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• I like that kind of thing. I like warmth and uncalled-for kindness, the small unnoticed generosities that speckle the meanness of the world.

  Roland Merullo

  Kindness, Generosity, World

  Roland Merullo (2009). “A Little Love Story: A Novel”, p.161, Vintage

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• Look here — we shall all die! Bear this in mind always, and then the spirit within will wake up. Then only, meanness will vanish from you, practicality in work will come, you will get new vigour in mind and body, and those who come in contact with you will also feel that they have really got something uplifting from you.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Uplifting, Mind, Looks

  "Complete Works".

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• Take the particular trick of false names. It seems to us particularly odious. We think when we show our contempt for those who use this subterfuge that we are giving them no more than they deserve. It is a meanness which we associate with criminals and vagabonds; a piece of crawling and sneaking...Men whose race is universally known, will unblushingly adopt a false name as a mask, and after a year or two pretend to treat it as an insult if their original and true name be used in its place.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Men, Thinking, Race

  Hilaire Belloc (1922). “The Jews”

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