Nonsense Quotes - Page 37

• I get fed up with all this nonsense of ringing people up and lighting cigarettes and answering the doorbell that passes for action in so many modern plays.

  Graham Greene

  Writing, Play, People

  Graham Greene, Henry J. Donaghy (1992). “Conversations with Graham Greene”, p.37, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Who will show me any Constitutional injunction which makes it the duty of the American people to surrender everything valuable in life, and even life, itself, whenever the purposes of an ambitious and mischievous government may require it? ... A free government with an uncontrolled power of military conscription is the most ridiculous and abominable contradiction and nonsense that ever entered into the heads of men.

  Daniel Webster

  Military, Men, America

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• We can look forward to four more years of wonderful, inspirational speeches full of wit, poetry, music, love and affection, plus more goddamn nonsense.

  David Brinkley

  Years, Political, Democracy

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• I think as an actor, you're more like a dancer, and you have to use your body. I don't understand all these questions about nudity. It's a nonsense. He's an actor, an artist, so get on with it.

  Steve McQueen

  Thinking, Artist, Dancer

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

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• I don't want to talk about nonsense because it doesn't help me.

  Steve McQueen

  Want, Helping, Help Me

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

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• I'm quite a romantic person - everyone loves being treated a little bit special, no matter how hard you are on the surface. I live in movie land; my head is full of nonsense.

  Sharleen Spiteri

  Love Is, Land, Special

  Source: www.mirror.co.uk

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• There is no such thing as "natural law": this expression is nothing but old nonsense... Prior to laws, what is natural is only the strength of the lion, or the need of the creature suffering from hunger or cold, in short, need.

  Stendhal

  Expression, Law, Suffering

  "Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black)". Book by Stendhal (Volume II, Chapter XLIV), November 1830.

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• Criticism talks a good deal of nonsense, but even its nonsense is a useful force. It keeps the question of art before the world, insists upon its importance.

  Henry James

  Art, Criticism, World

  Henry James, John L. Sweeney (1956). “The Painter's Eye: Notes and Essays on the Pictorial Arts”, p.10, Univ of Wisconsin Press

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• Then she told herself to stop her nonsense. If you looked for things to make you feel hurt and wretched and unnecessary, you were certain to find them, more easily each time, so easily, soon, that you did not even realize you had gone out searching. Women alone often developed into experts at the practice. She must never join their dismal league.

  Dorothy Parker

  Hurt, Practice, League

  Dorothy Parker (2002). “Complete Stories”, p.264, Penguin

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• In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find - if it's a good novel - that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have changed a little... But it's very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Believe, Reading, Different

  Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Wood (1980). “The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction”, p.158, Ultramarine Publishing

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• I don't believe in school prayer. I think it's total nonsense...who is the teacher there that is going to have them pray? And is the teacher going to be Catholic or Mormon or Episcopalian or what? It just causes all sorts of problems. And what are the kids praying about anyway? Does it really matter, does praying in school...what are you doing it for? The whole thing just opens up all sorts of elements of discussion. I think it's crazy.

  Charles M. Schulz

  Teacher, Prayer, Crazy

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• The theme of the dance was "Great Romances," or some such nonsense. There were projections of supposedly great couples from the past on the walls of the gym. Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Hermione and Ron, Bonnie and Clyde, etc.

  Gabrielle Zevin

  Wall, Couple, Past

  Gabrielle Zevin (2011). “All These Things I've Done”, p.177, Macmillan

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• Valkyrie dialed Skulduggery's number and he picked up. 'Hey,' she said, 'It's me.' Skulduggery paused. 'No it's not. If it were me, then I'd be talking to myself, and I don't do that any more. I certainly don't RING myself. That's one of the first signs of madness, and if it's not, it should be.' She sighed. 'Are you finished talking nonsense?' 'I haven't talked nonsense all morning. I miss it.

  Derek Landy

  Morning, Talking, Numbers

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• This man, who for twenty-five years has been reading and writing about art, and in all that time has never understood anything about art, has for twenty-five years been hashing over other people's ideas about realism, naturalism and all that nonsense; for twenty-five years he has been reading and writing about what intelligent people already know and about what stupid people don't want to know--which means that for twenty-five years he's been taking nothing and making nothing out of it. And with it all, what conceit! What pretension!

  Anton Chekhov

  Art, Stupid, Reading

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• It wasn’t like in the storybooks. No witches lurked at crossroads disguised as crones, waiting to reward travelers who shared their bread. Genies didn’t burst from lamps, and talking fish didn’t bargain for their lives. In all the world, there was only one place humans could get wishes: Brimstone’s shop. And there was only one currency he accepted. It wasn’t gold, or riddles, or kindness, or any other fairy-tale nonsense, and no, it wasn’t souls, either. It was weirder than any of that. It was teeth.

  Laini Taylor

  Kindness, Talking, Waiting

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• Often I hear people say they do not have time to read. That's absolute nonsense. If one really wants to learn, one has to decide what is important. Spending an evening on the town? Attending a ball game? Or learning something that can be with you your life long.

  Louis L'Amour

  Games, Long, People

  Louis L'Amour (2008). “Education of a Wandering Man”, p.11, Bantam

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• I was thinking, "So, I’m Emperor, am I? What nonsense! But at least I'll be able to make people read my books now.

  Robert Graves

  Book, Thinking, People

  Robert Graves, Richard Francis (2000). “I, Claudius ; and, Claudius the god”, Carcanet Press Ltd.

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• It was one lesson he never forgot.You don't sit back when you or a loved one is being assaulted.And you don't act like the goverment with their "proportional responses" and all that nonsense.If someone hurts you,mercy and pity must be put aside,You eliminate the enemy.You scorch the earth.

  Harlan Coben

  Hurt, Enemy, Lessons

  Harlan Coben (2010). “Tell No One”, p.39, Hachette UK

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• I am interested only in "nonsense"; only in that which makes no practical sense. I am interested in life only in its absurd manifestations.

  Daniil Kharms

  Absurd, Manifestation, Practicals

  Daniil Kharms, Neil Cornwell (1993). “Incidences”, Serpents Tail

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• Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask - half our great theological and metaphysical problems - are like that.

  C. S. Lewis

  Thinking, Squares, Yellow

  C.S. Lewis (2012). “A Grief Observed”, p.33, Faber & Faber

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• I can’t have it either. It affects the babies in utero.” “Nonsense,” he said, tossing his long auburn hair over one shoulder. Life would be easier if he wasn’t so damned good-looking. “Why, my mother drank wine every day, and I turned out just fine.” “I think you’re proving my point for me,” I said dryly

  Richelle Mead

  Mother, Baby, Wine

  Richelle Mead (2011). “Shadow Heir”, p.16, Kensington Publishing Corp.

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• How often do we talk just to fill up the quiet space? How often do we waste our breath talking about nonsense?

  Colleen Patrick-Goudreau

  Talking, Space, Waste

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• It does not make you less of a woman to need a man. To need one to exist, yes, this is nonsense. To need one to give one scope and importance, this is dishonest. But to need a man, one man, to bring joy and passion? This is life

  Nora Roberts

  Passion, Men, Giving

  Nora Roberts (2015). “Summer Desserts”, p.91, Harlequin

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• JACK That is nonsense. If I marry a charming girl like Gwendolen, and she is the only girl I ever saw in my life that I would marry, I certainly won't want to know Bunbury. ALGERNON Then your wife will. You don't seem to realize, that in married life three is company and two is none. JACK That, my dear young friend, is the theory that the corrupt French Drama has been propounding for the last fifty years. ALGERNON Yes; and that the happy English home has proved in half the time.

  Oscar Wilde

  Girl, Drama, Home

  Oscar Wilde, Peter Raby (2008). “The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays: Lady Windermere's Fan; Salome; A Woman of No Importance; An Ideal Husband; The Importance of Being Earnest”, p.259, Oxford Paperbacks

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• I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready, and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.

  Henry Ford

  Men, Discovery, Years

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