Scoundrels Quotes - Page 7

• I have no idea what the mind of a lowlife scoundrel is like, but I know what the mind of an honest man is like; it is terrifying.

  Abel Hermant

  Truth, Honesty, Crazy

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• Whenever "A" attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon "B," "A" is most likely a scoundrel.

  H. L. Mencken

  Life, War, Government

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• Sir, he [Bolingbroke] was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotsman to draw the trigger at his death.

  Samuel Johnson

  Fire, Religion, Coward

  "The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D". Book by James Boswell, 1791.

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• But . . . I may as well say what I should not otherwise have said, that I always knew in my heart Walt Whitman’s mind to be more like my own than any other man’s living. As he is a very great scoundrel this is not a pleasant confession.

  Gerard Manley Hopkins

  Heart, Men, Mind

  Quoted in Denis Donoghue England, Their England (1988).

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• The problem is that you cannot prove yourself against someone who is much weaker than yourself. They are in a lose/lose situation. If you are strong and fighting the weak, then if you kill your opponent then you are a scoundrel... if you let him kill you, then you are an idiot. So here is a dilemma which others have suffered before us, and for which as far as I can see there is simply no escape.

  Martin Van Creveld

  Strong, Fighting, Opponents

  "Sharon’s Last Option" by Martin Van Creveld, www.counterpunch.org. November 16, 2002.

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• Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel.

  H. L. Mencken

  Saving, Annoying, Improving

  Newspaper Days: 1899 - 1906 ch. 2 (1941)

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• Everyone who does not agree with me is a traitor and a scoundrel.

  George III

  Doe, Traitor, Agree

  "Saratoga: Turning Point of America's Revolutionary War". Book by Richard M Ketchum, p. 65, 1997.

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• I have stood your meanness as long as I intend to. You have played the part of a damn scoundrel, and if you were any part of a man I would slap your jaws and force you to resent it.

  Nathan Bedford Forrest

  War, Men, Long

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• What if man is not really a scoundrel, man in general, I mean, the whole race of mankind-then all the rest is prejudice, simply artificial terrors and there are no barriers and it's all as it should be.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Mean, Men, Race

  Fyodor Dostoyevsky (2006). “Crime and Punishment”, p.61, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Dave Rudabaugh is an ignorant scoundrel! I disapprove of his very existence. I considered ending it myself on several occasions but self-control got the better of me.

  Doc Holliday

  Self, Ignorant, Dave

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• To be connected with the church is to be associated with scoundrels, warmongers, fakes, child-molesters, murderers, adulterers, and hypocrites of every description. It also, at the same time, identifies you with saints and the finest persons of heroic soul within every time, country, race, and gender. To be a member of the church is to carry the mantle of both the worst sin and the finest heroism of soul . . . because the church always looks exactly as it looked at the original crucifixion, God hung among thieves.

  Ronald Rolheiser

  Country, Children, Hypocrite

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• Our history is every human history; a black and gory business, with more scoundrels than wise men at the lead, and more louts than both put together to cheer and follow.

  Philip Wylie

  Wise, Cheer, Men

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• A man's behaviour may be quite harmless and even beneficial, when he ismorally behaving like a scoundrel. And he may do great harm when he is morally acting on the highest principles.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Men, Acting, Principles

  1906 BB. The Doctor's Dilemma, act 3.

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• What is noble, lyrical, tender in the upper level shown is also with the servants, scoundrels, and scamps, as in a distorting mirror. This contrast seems to me a most appealing musical theme--to show love in its noble and crude forms, romanticism and crass realism mixed as in everyday life.

  Stefan Zweig

  Mirrors, Musical, Everyday

  Richard Strauss, Stefan Zweig (1977). “A Confidential Matter: The Letters of Richard Strauss and Stefan Zweig, 1931-1935”, p.70, Univ of California Press

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• We handed the most important belongings of our people - the railroads and the banks - to aliens who 2000 years ago had turned the temple into a house of usury. Back then there was a man who had the bravery to drive out these scoundrels with a whip! If today a national socialist is seen with such a temple-whip, he's thrown into jail.

  Julius Streicher

  Men, Years, Jail

  "Kampf dem Weltfeind", Stürmer publishing house, Nuremberg, 1938.

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• Society is older than government. But every persisting society implies the existence of government and laws; for a society without government and laws is at once overturned by its madmen and scoundrels and lapses into barbarism.

  William Batchelder Greene

  Government, Law, Lapses

  William Batchelder Greene (1875). “Socialistic, Communistic, Mutualistic, and Financial Fragments”, p.21

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• Every passion gives a particular cast to the countenance, and is apt to discover itself in some feature or other. I have seen an eye curse for half an hour together, and an eyebrow call a man a scoundrel.

  Joseph Addison

  Passion, Eye, Men

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1826). “The Spectator: With Notes, and a General Index”, p.114

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• A concern with 'public morality' is - if not the last refuge of a scoundrel - the first foray of the fascist.

  Erica Jong

  Lasts, Firsts, Morality

  Erica Jong (2007). “What Do Women Want?: Essays by Erica Jong”, p.86, Penguin

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• Human nature is a scoundrel's favorite explanation.

  Mason Cooley

  Humanity, Human Nature, Explanation

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• Only by himself, with one acre and a house, will a dunce be a dunce. Once he manages to gain power, he'll turn into a scoundrel.

  Franz Grillparzer

  House, Stupidity, Acres

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• Has the art of politics no apparent utility? Does it appear to be unqualifiedly ratty, raffish, sordid, obscene, and low down, andits salient virtuosi a gang of unmitigated scoundrels? Then let us not forget its high capacity to soothe and tickle the midriff, its incomparable services as a maker of entertainment.

  H. L. Mencken

  Art, Politics, Entertainment

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• No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man. In the highest confidence there is always a flavor of doubt--a feeling, half instinctive and half logical, that, after all, the scoundrel may have something up his sleeve.

  H. L. Mencken

  Trust, Believe, Men

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.10, Vintage

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• In fame's temple there is always a niche to be found for rich dunces, importunate scoundrels, or successful butchers of the human race.

  Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

  Successful, Race, Temples

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• The Peloponnesian War turns out to be no dry chronicle of abstract cause and effect. No, it is above all an intense, riveting, and timeless story of strong and weak men, of heroes and scoundrels and innocents too, all caught in the fateful circumstances of rebellion, plague, and war that always strip away the veneer of culture and show us for what we really are.

  Thucydides

  Strong, War, Hero

  Thucydides, Victor Davis Hanson, Robert B. Strassler (2008). “The Landmark Thucydides”, p.23, Simon and Schuster

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• Whenever I see 'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels', a total comedy classic, I get the urge to feel the breeze of the south of France in the summer!

  Gwyneth Paltrow

  Summer, Dirty, Rotten

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