Pathetic Quotes - Page 3

• History is a pathetic junkyard of broken treaties.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Broken, Junkyard, Treaties

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• There is no reason to make the search for friendship sound like an animal instinct. Friendship does not always come as a result of a search; it can come when we least look for it, just as it denies itself when we pursue it too earnestly and with pathetic eagerness.

  Martin E. Marty

  Friendship, Animal, Sound

  Martin E. Marty (1980). “Friendship”, Tabor Pub

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• The idea of a judgment of history is secularism's vain, meaningless, hopeless, pathetic attempt to devise a substitute for what the great Abrahamic traditions of faith know is the final judgment of almighty God, who is not an impersonal force. History is not God. God is God. History is not our judge. God is our Judge.

  Robert P. George

  Ideas, Judging, Finals

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• Institutions have the pathetic megalomania of the computer whose whole vision of the world is its own program.

  Mary Douglas

  Vision, World, Computer

  Mary Douglas (1986). “How Institutions Think”, p.92, Syracuse University Press

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• I think personal diplomacy has caused a lot of mischief and harm, and has impeded the progress of peace in the world. It leads to a very great fallacy - the almost pathetic belief of some Foreign Ministers - that, if they had lunch with someone and called him by his Christian name, they have changed the fundamental facts of relationship between nations.

  Paul Hasluck

  Leadership, Christian, Thinking

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• I always listen, I ask children, I even ask adults in tennis, "What are your children playing?" And most of the time it's not tennis. It's pathetic.

  Billie Jean King

  Children, Tennis, Adults

  Interview with Jonathan Scott, www.tennis.com. December 17, 2013.

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• I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.... My hemmings and hawings over the telephone cause long-distance callers to switch from their native English to pathetic French. At parties, if I attempt to entertain people with a good story, I have to go back to every other sentence for oral erasures and inserts.... In these circumstances nobody should ask me to submit to an interview if by "interview" a chat between two normal human beings is implied.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Children, Distance, Party

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• The human race may be compared to a writer. At the outset a writer has often only a vague general notion of the plan of his work, and of the thought he intends to elaborate. As he proceeds, penetrating his material, laboring to express himself fitly, he lays a firmer grasp on his thought; he finds himself. So the human race is writing its story, finding itself, discovering its own underlying purpose, revising, recasting a tale pathetic often, yet none the less sublime.

  Felix Adler

  Writing, Race, Sublime

  Felix Adler (1914). “The Standard”

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• By success, of course, I do not mean that you may become rich, famous, or powerful for that does not, of necessity, represent achievement. Indeed, not infrequently, such individuals represent pathetic failure as persons.

  Norman Vincent Peale

  Wise, Powerful, Mean

  Dr. Norman Vincent Peale (2007). “Stay Alive All Your Life”, p.14, Simon and Schuster

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• I never have goals or dreams. My sister says it's pathetic and lazy, but I had a goal, to tell jokes to pay bills and not have to live in a trailer. So, I think I'm living my fantasy. I don't have another.

  Kathleen Madigan

  Dream, Thinking, Goal

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• People, especially the liberals, just live in this world where if anything is said that offends anybody even a little bit, not only does that person have to apologize; sometimes they have to go away forever. Go away, bad person. My analysis of this is that most of us don't do anything decent in our life. I'm not saying we're evil. I'm just saying we don't make a contribution, so the way they [liberals] think they're making a contribution is to point at the bad people [which] is somehow even more pathetic.

  Bill Maher

  Thinking, People, Evil

  Source: www.usatoday.com

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• Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist. But if unlimited or unbalanced power of disposing property, be put into the hands of those who have no property, France will find, as we have found, the lamb committed to the custody of the world. In such a case, all the pathetic exhortations and addresses of the national assembly to the people, to respect property, will be regarded no more than the warbles of the songsters of the forest.

  John Adams

  Hands, People, Liberty

  "Discourses on Davila : A Series of Papers on Political History first published in the Gazette of the United States". Book by John Adams, No. 13, 1805.

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• A poet over 30 is pathetic

  H. L. Mencken

  Poet

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• As pathetic as it was, she'd rather hold on to the possibility of something perfect than be hit with the reality of nothing much.

  Francine Pascal

  Reality, Perfect, Possibility

  Francine Pascal (2013). “Fearless 2: Twisted; Kiss; Payback”, p.418, Simon and Schuster

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• And I ask myself what it is about me that makes this wonderful, beautiful woman return. Is it because I'm pathetic, helpless in my current state, completely dependent on her? Or is it my sense of humour, my willingness to tease her, to joke my way into painful, secret places? Do I help her understand herself? Do I make her happy? Do I do something for her that her husband and son can't do? Has she fallen in love with me? As the days pass and I continue to heal, my body knitting itself back together, I begin to allow myself to think that she has.

  Mohsin Hamid

  Beautiful, Husband, Son

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• Hello, cell. How are you? Still dank and dirty? Me? I've taken up a new habit: talking to my cell. It's like talking to myself but slightly more pathetic.

  Brandon Mull

  Dirty, Taken, Cells

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• Tranq'd by your own gun,"Lev says."How pathetic.

  Neal Shusterman

  Gun

  Neal Shusterman (2012). “Unwholly”, p.355, Simon and Schuster

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• Glaring at the Gasman, ter Borcht said, “Your time is coming to an end, you pathetic failure of an experiment. Vhat you say now is how you vill be remembered.” Gazzy’s blue eyes flashed. “Then you can remember me telling you to kiss my-” “Enough!” ter Borcht said.

  James Patterson

  Eye, Kissing, Blue

  James Patterson (2010). “Maximum Ride Boxed Set #1”, p.615, Hachette UK

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• Andrew hated to see her humiliated and pathetic like this; but he half hated her too for landing herself in it, when any idiot could have seen.

  J. K. Rowling

  Half, Idiot, Andrew

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• Stop it. Seriously. This isn't funny.' 'You're right.' A pause. 'It's pathetic.

  Sarah Dessen

  Pauses

  Sarah Dessen (2011). “What Happened to Goodbye”, p.118, Penguin

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• Life is not a series of pathetic, meaningles actions. Some of them are so far from pathetic, so far from meaningless as to be beyond reason, maybe beyond forgiveness.

  Judith Guest

  Action, Life Is, Reason

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• When it’s quiet in my head like this, that’s when the voice doesn’t need to tell me how pathetic I am. I know it in the deepest part of me. When it’s quiet like this, that’s when I truly hate myself.

  Portia de Rossi

  Hate, Voice, Needs

  Portia de Rossi (2011). “Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain”, p.8, Simon and Schuster

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• Why does everybody have to be with somebody? It’s a stupid delusion and a really pathetic way of thinking.

  J.A. Redmerski

  Stupid, Thinking, Doe

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• Sadness of any sort is also seductive, particularly if it seems deep-rooted, even spiritual, rather than needy or pathetic—it makes people come to you.

  Robert Greene

  Spiritual, Sadness, People

  Robert Greene (2010). “The Art Of Seduction”, p.76, Profile Books

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• When my daughter left for college, I lost my in-house consultant to youth culture. There's just stuff I don't get. And there's something kind of pathetic about someone my age trying to pretend she gets it, so I don't try to pretend.

  Emily Yoffe

  Daughter, College, House

  Source: www.theguardian.com

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