Sneer Quotes - Page 3

• It is the custom to sneer at the modern apartment-house, television, big-city Christmas, with its commercial taint . . . office parties, artificial . . . Christmas trees . . . but future generations in search of their lost Christmases may well remember its innocence; yes, and its beauty, too.

  Paul Gallico

  Beauty, Party, Cities

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• Neither evil tongues, rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all the dreary intercourse of daily life, shall ever prevail against us.

  William Wordsworth

  Life, Perseverance, Kindness

  William Wordsworth (2012). “William Wordsworth: Everyman's Poetry”, p.49, Hachette UK

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• The most heated defenders of a science, who cannot endure the slightest sneer at it, are commonly those who have not made very much progress in it and are secretly aware of this defect.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Science, Secret, Progress

  "Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook F 8, 1799.

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• It's funny how sometimes historians sneer at journalists, yet they depend on us in the future for the material that they mine. You realize that some of the stories wouldn't have been told if you hadn't gotten to them. There is that sense of capturing a moment that was just about to go over the horizon.

  Lawrence Wright

  Sometimes, Realizing, Moments

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The sure foundations of the state are laid in knowledge, not in ignorance; and every sneer at education, at culture, at book learning, which is the recorded wisdom of the experience of mankind, is the demagogue's sneer at intelligent liberty, inviting national degeneracy and ruin.

  George William Curtis

  Book, Ignorance, Intelligent

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• the pyramids were built for pharaohs on the happy theory that they could take their stuff with them. Versailles was built for kings on the theory that they should live surrounded by the finest stuff. The Mall of America is built on the premise that we should all be able to afford this stuff. It may be a shallow culture, but it's by-God democratic. Sneer if you dare; this is something new in world history.

  Molly Ivins

  Kings, Shopping, Pyramids

  Molly Ivins (2010). “You Got to Dance with Them What Brung You”, p.94, Vintage

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• In doing your best serving others for free, a lot of eyebrows will raise and sneers will curve many a - faces. But in the end those incredulous to what you put up with to help, no longer matter. It's not between you and those snobs, but with whom you have given your hand to lift, and of course to God who Is watching and noting it in your book.

  Mother Teresa

  Book, Curves, Hands

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• I've an irritating chuckle, I've a celebrated sneer,
  I've an entertaining snigger, I've a fascinating leer;
  To everybody's prejudice I know a thing or two;
  I can tell a woman's age in half a minute--and I do

  W. S. Gilbert

  Two, Age, Prejudice

  'Princess Ida' (1884) act 1

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• The widening of woman's sphere is to improve her lot. Let us do it, and if the world scoff, let it scoff if it sneer, let it sneer.

  Lucy Stone

  Inspirational, Acceptance, World

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• She is not old, she is not young, The Woman with the Serpent's Tongue. The haggard cheek, the hungering eye, The poisoned words that wildly fly, The famished face, the fevered hand, Who slights the worthiest in the land, Sneers at the just, contemns the brave, And blackens goodness in its grave.

  William Watson

  Anger, Eye, Hands

  William Watson (1909). “New Poems”

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• The amazing thing about Freak Out! was that there was nothing quite like it in rock 'n roll at the time. It was really simultaneously crude and ugly, and incredibly sophisticated. The Beatles were funny, but there was nothing with the kind of sneer that you could feel in the music of Frank Zappa.

  Matt Groening

  Rocks, Ugly, Rock N Roll

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• Thanksgiving Day - Let all give humble, hearty, and sincere thanks, now, but the turkeys. In the island of Fiji they do not use turkeys, they use plumbers. It does not become you and me to sneer at Fiji.

  Mark Twain

  Food, Humble, Islands

  Pudd'nhead Wilson ch. 18, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" (1894)

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• Will none wipe the sneer off the face of the cosmos?

  Poul Anderson

  Science, Cosmos, Wipe

  "The Broken Sword".

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• I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.

  Herbert Hoover

  Character, Criticism, Cottages

  Herbert Hoover (1929). “The New Day: Campaign Speeches of Herbert Hoover, 1928”, p.109, Stanford University Press

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• There is an honesty which is but decided selfishness in disguise. The person who will not refrain from expressing his or her sentiments and manifesting his or her feelings, however unfit the time, however inappropriate the place, however painful this expression may be, lays claim, forsooth, to our approbation as an honest person, and sneers at those of finer sensibilities as hypocrites.

  Arthur Helps

  Honesty, Hypocrite, Expression

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• I am an absurd idealist. But I believe that all that must come true. For, unless it comes true, the world will be laid desolate. And I believe that it can come true.

  Leslie Charteris

  Laughter, Believe, Fighting

  "The Last Hero".

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• If you make a fool of yourself in front of a cat, he will sneer at you, if you are sober; he will leave the room if you are drunk. If you make a fool of yourself in front a dog, he will make a fool of himself, too.

  Chuck Jones

  Dog, Cat, Drunk

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• A horse, if he happens to have a contemptuous disposition, can sneer very effectively.

  Esther Meynell

  Horse, Disposition, Contemptuous

  Esther Meynell (1940). “A Woman Talking”, London, Chapman & Hall [1940.]

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• Goethe's devil is a cultivated personage and acquainted with the modern sciences; sneers at witchcraft and the black art even while employing them, and doubts most things, nay, half disbelieves even his own existence.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Art, Black, Doubt

  Thomas Carlyle (1872). “Miscellanies”, p.135

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• As anyone who has the slightest knowledge of my work knows, I have little in common with Larkin, who was tall, taciturn and thin-on-top, and unlike him I laugh, nay, sneer, in the face of death. I will concede one point: we are both lesbian poets.

  Carol Ann Duffy

  Laughing, Littles, Faces

  "Winning Lines". Interview with Peter Forbes, www.theguardian.com. August 31, 2002.

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• Being right is not too difficult. Your choose your perception. You select your information. You leave out what does not suit you. You drag in some general-purpose value words. You throw in a sneer or two about the opposition, and you are a fine fellow who made a fine speech.

  Edward de Bono

  Two, Suits You, Perception

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• Giving thanks is that: making the canyon of pain into a megaphone to proclaim the ultimate goodness of God when Satan and all the world would sneer at us to recant.

  Ann Voskamp

  Pain, Giving, World

  Ann Voskamp (2012). “One Thousand Gifts Devotional: Reflections on Finding Everyday Graces”, p.197, Zondervan

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• So I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them: Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

  Carl Sandburg

  Strong, Cities, Giving

  "Chicago" l. 10 (1916)

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• The Anarchists' uncompromising rejection of the State, the subject of Marxian sneers for its "absolutist" and "Utopian" character, makes much better sense in the present era than the Marxist relativist and historical approach. The pacifists also seem to be more realistic than the Marxist both in their understanding of modern war and also in their attempts to do something about it.

  Dwight Macdonald

  War, Character, Rejection

  Dwight Macdonald (194?). “Root is man: progressivism vrs. radicalism”

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• I mean, you're right about the fire and war, all that. But that Rapture stuff--well, if you could see them all in Heaven--serried ranks of them as far as the mind can follow and beyond, league after league of us, flaming swords, all that, well, what I'm trying to say is who has time to go round picking people out and popping them up in the air to sneer at the people dying of radiation sickness on the parched and burning earth below them? If that's your idea of a morally acceptable time, I might add.

  Terry Pratchett

  War, Mean, Ideas

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