Nonsense Quotes - Page 31

• To his enemies the householder must be a hero. Them he must resist. That is the duty of the householder. He must not sit down in a corner and weep, and talk nonsense about non-resistance. If he does not show himself a hero to his enemies he has not done his duty.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Hero, Enemy, Done

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.48, Manonmani Publishers

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• In truth, the Library includes all verbal structures, all variations permitted by the twenty-five orthographical symbols, but not a single example of absolute nonsense.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Library, Twenties, Example

  Jorge Luis Borges (1964). “Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings”, p.57, New Directions Publishing

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• What is the power of life? With all the ungraceful dirt, nonsense, you remain graceful.

  Harbhajan Singh Yogi

  Inspirational, Bhajans, Dirt

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• From the earliest time the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Generations, Aging, Young

  Cakes and Ale ch. 11 (1930)

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• As a final crash of self-indulgent nonsense, when the incontrovertible truth of your panoramic and murderous deceit has even begun to cost your political party seemingly perpetual congressional seats....When somebody asks you, sir, about the cooked books and faked threats you foisted on a sincere and frightened nation; when somebody asks you, sir, about your gallant, noble, self-abnegating sacrifice of your golf game so as to soothe the families of the war dead; this advice, Mr. Bush: Shut the hell up! Good night and good luck.

  Keith Olbermann

  Good Night, War, Party

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• Everyone says you have to be a specialist, and if you conduct Wagner you cannot conduct Mozart - this is nonsense.

  Georg Solti

  Wagner, Specialists, Ifs

  "Conductors on Record". Book by John L. Holmes, pp. 256-261, 1988.

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• I am convinced that any photographic attempt to show the complete man is nonsense. We can only show, as best we can, what the outer man reveals. The inner man is seldom revealed to anyone, sometimes not even the man himself.

  Arnold Newman

  Men, Sometimes, He Man

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• I love exaggerated, and I love eccentric, but you must be comfortable. Otherwise it is nonsense. There is nothing charming about a woman who cannot walk in her shoes.

  Manolo Blahnik

  Shoes, Eccentric, Charming

  "Manolo Blahnik: 'There is nothing charming about a woman who cannot walk in her shoes'". Interview with Jess Cartner-Morley, www.theguardian.com. November 20, 2012.

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• If you live in a baboon troop in the Serengeti, you only have to work three hours a day for your calories, and predators don't mess with you much. What that means is you've got nine hours of free time every day to devote to generating psychological stress toward other animals in your troop. So the baboon is a wonderful model for living well enough and long enough to pay the price for all the social-stressor nonsense that they create for each other. They're just like us: They're not getting done in by predators and famines, they're getting done in by each other.

  Robert M. Sapolsky

  Stress, Mean, Animal

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• This whole notion of a post racial America was nonsense from the very beginning. It was a bad idea, a bad notion, a bad formulation when it was first raised.

  Tavis Smiley

  Ideas, America, Firsts

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• You don't have to be the best guitar player, or have the best voice, or even be the best looking person - writing a song that moves people is worth more than all the other nonsense. (Just look at Bob Dylan - he's got almost no vocal range at all, but his songs are deeply moving and iconic.) If I had to offer one piece of advice: Write a song that moves people, and write it from within yourself. Your personal narrative is more engaging and moving than anything else you can imagine in your mind.

  Ryan Ross

  Song, Moving, Writing

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• You know, there's that silly saying 'We're born alone and we die alone' -it's nonsense. We're surrounded at birth and surrounded at death. It is in between that we're alone.

  Tom Rachman

  Silly, Birth, Born

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• Like Karl Kraus [Wittgenstein], was seldom pleased by what he saw of the institutions of men, and the idiom of the passerby mostly offended his ear - particularly when they happened to speak philosophically; and like Karl Kraus, he suspected that the institutions could not but be corrupt if the idiom of the race was confused, presumptuous, and vacuous, a fabric of nonsense, untruth, deception, and self-deception.

  Thomas Szasz

  Confused, Men, Race

  "Anti-Freud: Karl Kraus's Criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry". Book by Thomas Szasz and Karl Kraus (p. 67), March 1, 1990.

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• I am sure the man who powders most, perfumes most, embroiders most, and talks most nonsense, is most admired. Though to be candid, there are some who have too much good sense to esteem such monkey-like animals as these, in whose formation, as the saying is, the tailors and barbers go halves with God Almighty.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Animal, Men, Half

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1858). “The life and letters of Thomas Jefferson: being his autobiography and select correspondence, from original manuscripts”, p.183

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• I am looking forward very much to getting back to Cambridge, and being able to say what I think and not to mean what I say: two things which at home are impossible. Cambridge is one of the few places where one can talk unlimited nonsense and generalities without anyone pulling one up or confronting one with them when one says just the opposite the next day.

  Bertrand Russell

  Home, Mean, Thinking

  Bertrand Russell, Nicholas Griffin (2002). “The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The Private Years, 1884-1914”, p.25, Psychology Press

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• If you ask "Should we be in space?" you ask a nonsense question. We are in space. We will be in space.

  Frank Herbert

  Space, Should, Asks

  "The Maker of Dune: Insights of a Master of Science Fiction". Book edited by Tim O'Reilly, essay "Man's Future in Space", (1981), 1987.

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• How do you know that nonsense isn't a good thing? If human nonsense had been nurtured and developed for centuries, just as intelligence has, then perhaps something extraordinarily precious could have come from it.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Good Things, Century, Humans

  Yevgeny Zamyatin (2007). “We”, p.115, Modern Library

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• Though we speak nonsense, God will pick out the meaning of it.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Speak, Gods Will, Picks

  Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Julian Hawthorne (2015). “Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of “The Scarlet Letter”, “The House of Seven Gables” and “Twice-Told Tales””, p.225, e-artnow

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• This old notion that work is drudgery is nonsense. Most days, even back when Xerox was under siege, I could not wait to get to the office.

  Ursula Burns

  Office, Waiting, Siege

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• If others examined themselves attentively, as I do, they would find themselves, as I do, full of inanity and nonsense. Get rid of it I cannot without getting rid of myself.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Ifs

  Michel de Montaigne (2003). “The Complete Works: Essays, Travel Journal, Letters”, Everyman's Library

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• While the easiest way in metaphysics is to condemn all metaphysics as nonsense, the easiest way in morals is to elevate the common practice of the community into a moral absolute.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Practice, Community, Way

  Daniel J. Boorstin (1993). “The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson”, p.111, University of Chicago Press

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• There's nothing like being in fashion. A man that has once got his character up for a wit is always sure of a laugh, say what he may. He may utter as much nonsense as he pleases, and all will pass current. No one stops to question the coin of a rich man; but a poor devil cannot pass off either a joke or a guinea without its being examined on both sides. Wit and coin are always doubted with a threadbare coat.

  Washington Irving

  Fashion, Character, Men

  Washington Irving, Charles Neider (1998). “The Complete Tales of Washington Irving”, p.274, Da Capo Press

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• Every language is so full of its own proprieties that what is beautiful in one is often barbarous, nay, sometimes nonsense, in another.

  John Dryden

  Beautiful, Language, Sometimes

  John Dryden, Keith Walker (2003). “The Major Works”, p.163, Oxford University Press, USA

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• To die for faction is a common evil, But to be hanged for nonsense is the devil.

  John Dryden

  Evil, Common, Factions

  John Dryden (1808). “The Works of John Dryden: Now First Collected in Eighteen Volumes. Illustrated with Notes, Historical, Critical, and Explanatory, and a Life of the Author”, p.334

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• Nonsense is socially OK, but not stupidity.

  Mason Cooley

  Stupidity, Not Stupid

  "City Aphorisms, Fourteenth Selection". Book by Mason Cooley, 1994.

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