Pathetic Quotes - Page 3

• History is a pathetic junkyard of broken treaties.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Broken, Junkyard, Treaties

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• No author has created with less emphasis such pathetic characters as Chekhov has.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Character, Chekhov, Emphasis

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1981). “Lectures on Russian literature”, Harcourt

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• I'm convinced no one actually likes clubs. It's a conspiracy. We've been told they're cool and fun; that only "saddoes" dislike them. And no one in our pathetic little pre-apocalyptic timebubble wants to be labelled "sad" - it's like being officially declared worthless by the state. So we muster a grin and go out on the town in our millions.

  Charlie Brooker

  Fun, Clubs, Want

  Charlie Brooker (2009). “The Hell of it All”, p.3, Faber & Faber

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• Wine lovers have known for centuries that decanting wine before serving it often improves its flavor. Whatever the dominant process, the traditional decanter is a rather pathetic tool to accomplish it. A few years ago, I found I could get much better results by using an ordinary kitchen blender.

  Nathan Myhrvold

  Wine, Years, Kitchen

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• Thanks to capitalism, the importance placed on beauty has never been so manipulated. We are the guinea pigs force-fed ads that tell us how pathetic we are: that we will never be loved, happy or valuable unless we have the body, the face, the hair, even the personality that will apparently be ours, if only we buy their products.

  Beth Ditto

  Hair, Pigs, Personality

  "What would Beth Ditto do?" by Beth Ditto, www.theguardian.com. November 23, 2007.

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• He takes out a cigarette and offers one to me. "I try not to indulge. It's a filthy habit," I tell him. "I love that word filthy. I love the way you force it out of your mouth like it's some kind of vermin you want to get rid of." "You've had vermin in your mouth?" "You're mean in that way, you know. You don't let anyone get away with pathetic analogies.

  Melina Marchetta

  Mean, Trying, Analogies

  Melina Marchetta (2003). “Saving Francesca”

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• Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi looks in the mirror and sees a playboy of the old school. And men such as Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Charlie Sheen no doubt look at Berlusconi and think, 'Role model!' Women, of course, know otherwise. They see him as an aging, pathetic buffoon.

  Graydon Carter

  School, Men, Thinking

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• You're beautiful, every part of you. I love your hair, the way it looks, the way it feels. I love touching it, smelling it. I love the way you wrinkle your nose when you laugh. It makes me laugh, too, every time. And I love watching you eat. Sometimes you can't shovel it in fast enough, but when you get interested in a conversation, you forget there's anything in front of you. God knows, I love making love with you. I can't even talk about that without wanting you. I love your pathetic attachment to those seniors. I love how hard you work.

  Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  Beautiful, Senior, Love You

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• Delight in smooth sounding platitudes, refusal to face unpleasant facts ... genuine love of peace and pathetic belief that love can be its sole foundation ... the utter devotion of the Liberals to sentiment apart from reality ...though free from wickedness or evil design, played a definite part in the unleashing upon the world of horrors and miseries [WWII]

  Winston Churchill

  Reality, Genuine Love, Evil

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• Without the hope of posterity, for our race if not for ourselves, without the assurance that we being dead yet live, all pleasures of the mind and senses sometimes seem to me no more than pathetic and crumbling defences shored up against our ruin.

  P. D. James

  Race, Mind, Ruins

  P. D. James (2010). “The Children of Men”, p.21, Vintage

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• So, what, you got cigarette burns, too?" Gitanes said. Chip showed his palm, "It's nothing." "Self-inflicted. You pathetic American." "Different kind of prison" Chip said.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Self, Different, Kind

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• It now lately sometimes seemed a black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a subject or pursuit, and could go on caring this way for years on end. Could dedicate their entire lives to it. It seemed admirable and at the same time pathetic. We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe.

  David Foster Wallace

  Caring, Years, People

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• I'm about as big a star as the Baha'i faith has got, which is pretty pathetic.

  Rainn Wilson

  Stars, Baha, Bigs

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• Unless I have my aunt or my boyfriend to take care of me, I'm a little pathetic.

  Rufus Wainwright

  Aunt, My Boyfriend, Care

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• They separate us into groups. The Ringleaders and the Others. I belong to the Ringleaders because my weak, pathetic, traitorous, fundamentally base peers point to me when someone asks them who is in charge.

  Melina Marchetta

  Groups, Peers, Weak

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• War makes monsters of men, you once said to me Todd. Well, so does too much knowledge. Too much knowledge of your fellow man, too much knowledge of his weakness, his pathetic greed and vanity, and how laughably easy it is to control him.

  Patrick Ness

  War, Men, Vanity

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• He dunked his tea bag and watched the results critically. “I really must get a new supplier. This tea is pathetic. America just doesn’t understand tea at all.

  Rachel Caine

  America, Tea, Bags

  Rachel Caine (2007). “The Dead Girls' Dance: The Morganville Vampires”, p.123, Penguin

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• Could I betray my absent heart to save my pathetic life?

  Stephenie Meyer

  Heart, Betray, Absent

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• It's very tempting when you really want to be with someone to settle for much, much less - even a vague pathetic facsimile of less - than you would have ever imagined. Remember always what you set out to get, and please don't settle for less. These guys exist because there are a lot of women out there who allow them to.

  Greg Behrendt

  Guy, Want, Remember

  "He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys". Book by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo, November 2004.

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• Our words had to be circumspect. We could not write anything too negative about our circumstances. This was tricky, since the very form of a married woman's letter needed to include the usual complaints -- that we were pathetic, powerless, worked to the bone, homesick, and sad. We were supposed to speak directly about our feelings without appearing ungrateful, no-account, or unfilial.

  Lisa See

  Writing, Ungrateful, Feelings

  Lisa See (2011). “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan”, p.197, A&C Black

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• Poetry is only the highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be given to our conception of anything, whether pleasurable or painful, mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have, and of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant "satisfaction to the thought." This is equally the origin of wit and fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic.

  William Hazlitt

  Mean, Passion, Writing

  William Hazlitt (1845). “Lectures on the English Poets”, p.9

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• I'm knocking our pitiful, pathetic lawmakers. And I thank God that President Bush has stated, we need a Constitutional amendment that states that marriage is between a man and a woman.

  Jimmy Swaggart

  Marriage, Men, Thank God

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• The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, what a mess I am, I thought, what a fool, how foolish and narrow, how worthless, how pinched and pathetic, how helpless.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Suffering, Doe, Fool

  Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.33, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• What will die with me the day I die? What pathetic or frail image will be lost to the world? The voice of Macedonio Fernandez, the image of a bay horse in a vacant lot on the corner of Sarrano and Charcas, a bar of sulfur in the drawer of a mahogany desk?

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Horse, Voice, Bars

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• Sometimes fiction is more easily understood than true events. Reality is often pathetic.

  Young-Ha Kim

  Reality, Events, Fiction

  Young-ha Kim (2007). “I Have the Right to Destroy Myself”, p.52, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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