Meanness Quotes - Page 6

• Meanness inherits a set of silverware and keeps it in the bank. Economy uses it only on important occasions, for fear of loss. Thrift sets the table with it every night for pure pleasure, but counts the butter spreaders before they are put away.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Loss, Night, Important

  Phyllis McGinley (1965). “Sixpence in Her Shoe”

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• A nation cannot afford to do a mean thing.

  Charles Sumner

  Mean, Nations

  Charles Sumner (2016). “The Complete Works of Charles Sumner”, p.5771, Library of Alexandria

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• Though you be sprung in direct line from Hercules, if you show a lowborn meanness, that long succession of ancestors whom you disgrace are so many witnesses against you; and this grand display of their tarnished glory but serves to make your ignominy more evident.

  Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux

  Long, Lines, Ancestry

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• When I was growing up, particularly during puberty in my teen years, I was so miserable because I elicited so much teasing and meanness from my teenage cohorts.

  Linda Hunt

  Growing Up, Teenage, Years

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• I just felt the power and the meanness of the man I was messing with.

  Muhammad Ali

  Men, Boxing, He Man

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• It is of dangerous consequence to represent to man how near he is to the level of beasts, without showing him at the same time his greatness. It is likewise dangerous to let him see his greatness without his meanness. It is more dangerous yet to leave him ignorant of either; but very beneficial that he should be made sensible of both.

  Blaise Pascal

  Greatness, Men, Ignorant

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• O you who sold yourself for the sake of something that will cause you suffering and pain, and which will also lose its beauty, you sold the most precious item for the cheapest price, as if you neither knew the value of the goods nor the meanness of the prize. Wait until you come on the Day of Mutual Loss and Gain and you will discover the injustice of this contract.

  Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya

  Pain, Islamic, Loss

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• Islam emphasized the internal purity of man that is achieved through the purity of the mind in realizing the Right and the purity of feelings through having the pure intention towards man, far away from the meanness of malevolence and hatred and through the purity of the movement that is not lunched except for the sake of justice, Good and life.

  Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah

  Men, Justice, Hatred

  "The mutual love between Allah and His servants". english.bayynat.org.lb.

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• [Meanness] is more ingrained in man's nature than Prodigality; the mass of mankind are avaricious rather than open-handed.

  Aristotle

  Men, Human Nature, Mass

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• We're only passers-by, and all you can do is love what you have in your life. A person has to fight the meanness that sometimes comes with you when you're born, sometimes grows if you aren't in lucky surroundings. It's our challenge to fend it off, leave it behind us choking and gasping for breath in the mud. It's our task to seek out something with truth for us, no matter if there is a hundred-mile obstacle course in the way, or a ramshackle old farmhouse that binds and binds.

  Jane Hamilton

  Fighting, Challenges, Tasks

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• More than a decade after our fellow citizens began bedding down on the sidewalks, their problems continue to seem so intractable that we have begun to do psychologically what government has been incapable of doing programmatically. We bring the numbers down--not by solving the problem, but by deciding it's their own damn fault.

  Anna Quindlen

  Numbers, Government, Faults

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• Fledgeby deserved Mr. Alfred Lammle's eulogium. He was the meanest cur existing, with a single pair of legs. And instinct (a word we all clearly understand) going largely on four legs, and reason always on two, meanness on four legs never attains the perfection of meanness on two.

  Charles Dickens

  Character, Two, Interesting

  Charles Dickens (1868). “Charles Dickens's works. Charles Dickens ed. [18 vols. of a 21 vol. set. Wanting A child's history of England; Christmas stories; The mystery of Edwin Drood].”, p.171

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• Parents have railed against shelters near schools, but no one has made any connection between the crazed consumerism of our kids and their elders' cold unconcern toward others. Maybe the homeless are not the only ones who need to spend time in these places to thaw out.

  Anna Quindlen

  School, Kids, Parent

  Anna Quindlen (2010). “Thinking Out Loud: On the Personal, the Political, the Public and the Private”, p.37, Ballantine Books

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• Right-wing propagandists like Limbaugh and Coulter are essentially entertainers, entertainers who stimulate prejudice, selfishness and meanness the way a comedian works for laughs or a tragedian plays for tears. Theirs is a new art form, exclusive to America and bewilderingly successful. In place of traditional conservative ideology, they offer their audience partisan belligerence and a complete package of mail-order hatreds, designed for the conceptually and ethically impaired.

  Hal Crowther

  Art, Successful, Order

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• I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group

  Peggy McIntosh

  Racism, Groups, Dominance

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• The moment we begin tolerating meanness, in ourselves and others, we are using our authorial power in the service of wrongdoing. We have both the capacity and the obligation to do better.

  Martha Beck

  Moments, Capacity, Obligation

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• I used to think, if I were the Lord, I would not suffer people to be tried as they are. But I have changed my mind on that subject. Now I think I would, if I were the Lord, because it purges out the meanness and corruption that stick around the saints, like flies around molasses.

  John Taylor

  Change, Thinking, People

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• We may please ourselves with the prospect of free and popular governments. But there is great danger that those governments will not make us happy. God grant they may. But I fear that in every assembly, members will obtain an influence by noise, not sense. By meanness, not greatness. By ignorance, not learning. By contracted hearts, not large souls.

  John Adams

  Heart, Ignorance, Greatness

  John Adams, Robert Joseph Taylor (1979). “Papers of John Adams”

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• Now see what a Christian is, drawn by the hand of Christ. He is a man on whose clear and open brow God has set the stamp of truth; one whose very eye beams bright with honor; in whose very look and bearing you may see freedom, manliness, veracity; a brave man--a noble man--frank, generous, true, with, it may be, many faults; whose freedom may take the form of impetuosity or rashness, but the form of meanness never.

  Frederick William Robertson

  Christian, Eye, Men

  Frederick William Robertson (1873). “ser. 1 God's revelation of heaven [and other sermons]. ser. 2 Christ's judgement respecting inheritance [and other sermons]. ser. 3 The tongue [and other sermons”, p.316

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• But the writer who endures and keeps working will finally know that writing the book was something hard and glorious, for at the desk a writer must try to be free of prejudice, meanness of spirit, pettiness, and hatred; strive to be a better human being than the writer normally is, and to do this through concentration on a single word, and then another, and another. This is splendid work, as worthy and demanding as any, and the will and resilience to do it are good for the writer's soul.

  Andre Dubus

  Book, Writing, Hatred

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• I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you could stomp on it.

  Gillian Flynn

  Real, Dark, Might

  Gillian Flynn (2014). “The Complete Gillian Flynn: Gone Girl, Dark Places, Sharp Objects”, p.449, Broadway Books

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• There are many persons ready to do what is right because in their hearts they know it is right. But they hesitate, waiting for theother fellow to make the first move--and he, in turn, waits for you. The minute a person whose word means a great deal dares to take the open- hearted and courageous way, many others follow. Not everyone can be turned aside from meanness and hatred, but the great majority of Americans is heading in that direction. I have a great belief in the future of my people and my country.

  Marian Anderson

  Country, Moving, Heart

  Marian Anderson (1956). “My Lord, what a Morning: An Autobiography”, p.312, University of Illinois Press

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• Know thyself as the pride of His creation, the link uniting divinity and matter; behold a part of God Himself within thee; remember thine own dignity nor dare descend to evil or meanness.

  Akhenaton

  Pride, Evil, Links

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• All traditions are also full of meanness for the sake of meanness.

  George Saunders

  Sake, Tradition

  "George Saunders on Trump, Mystery, and Why He Rejects Social Media". Interview with Catherine Woodiwiss, sojo.net. August 30, 2016.

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• At my age I can handle people writing junk about me on social media, but I sometimes air "mean tweets" on my show to highlight how destructive this meanness and bullying is to young people. I know how devastating it is for a young person to be the victim of such ugliness.

  Gretchen Carlson

  Bullying, Writing, Mean

  Source: frankviola.org

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