Spite Quotes - Page 37

• This day's nothingness
  as if from spite
  became a flame
  and scorched the lips
  of children and poets.

  Adam Zagajewski

  Children, Flames, Lips

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• I never saw anything more like real warfare in my life - only the attack was all on one side. The police, in spite of their numbers, apparently thought they could not cope with the crowd.

  Walter Crane

  Real, Numbers, Police

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• A search of one's life and soul will reveal the hand of God. The outpouring of his blessings come with our afflictions, not in spite of them. Afflictions be praised!

  Elaine A. Cannon

  Life, Blessing, Hands

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• Porgy is...an interesting example of what can be done by talent in spite of a bad setup. With a libretto that should never have been accepted on a subject that should never have been chosen, a man who should never have attempted it has written a work that has a considerable power.

  George Gershwin

  Men, Interesting, Example

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• There will always be those who want to make paintings of the human form with all its parts all where they should be, in spite of progress.

  Philip Pearlstein

  Humanity, Progress, Want

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• Some princes are born in palaces. Some are born in mangers. But a few are born in the imagination, out of scraps of history and hope... Barack Hussein Obama did not win because of the color of his skin. Nor did he win in spite of it. He won because at a very dangerous moment in the life of a still young country, more people than have ever spoken before came together to try to save it. And that was a victory all its own.

  Nancy Gibbs

  Country, Winning, Color

  "The Courtier Chronicles". www.weeklystandard.com. November 17, 2008.

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• The pious farmer, who ne'er misses pray'rs, With patience suffers unexpected rain; He blesses Heav'n for what its bounty spares, And sees, resign'd, a crop of blighted grain. But, spite of sermons, farmers would blaspheme, If a star fell to set their thatch on flame.

  Mary Wortley Montagu

  Stars, Rain, Flames

  Mary Wortley Montagu, James Archibald Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie Wharncliffe (1837). “The Letters and Works: In Three Volumes”, p.425

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• The idea of a wanton woman is something I have inserted into almost all of my books. An outlaw figure who is disallowed in the community because of her imagination or activity or status - that kind of anarchic figure has always fascinated me. And the benefits they bring with them, in spite of the fact that they are either dismissed or upbraided - something about their presence is constructive in the long run.

  Toni Morrison

  Running, Book, Ideas

  O, The Oprah Magazine, November 2003.

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• In spite of the poor economy, almost 70 percent of Americans occasionally splurge on luxury items -- like a blanket on a plane, or a peanut.

  Jay Leno

  Luxury, Peanuts, Economy

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• Anybody can work when everything goes smoothly, when there is nothing to trouble him; but a man must be made of the right kind of stuff who can rise above the things which harass and handicap the weak, and do his work in spite of them. Indeed, this is the test of greatness.

  Orison Swett Marden

  Greatness, Men, Tests

  Orison Swett Marden (1910). “Getting on”

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• There is something that is much more scarce, something finer far, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability. The sternest comment that can be made against employers as a class lies in the fact that men of Ability usually succeed in showing their worth in spite of their employer, and not with his assistance and encouragement.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Encouragement, Lying, Class

  Elbert Hubbard (1901). “A Message to Garcia and Thirteen Other Things: As Written”

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• This country of ours has more wealth than any nation, but that's not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military on Earth, but that's not what makes us strong. Our universities and our culture are the envy of the world, but that's not what keeps the world coming to our shores. Instead, it is that American spirit - that American promise - that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but what is unseen, that better place around the bend.

  Barack Obama

  Country, Strong, Powerful

  Democratic National Convention Presidential Nomination Acceptance, delivered 28 August 2008, INVESCO Field at Mile High Stadium, Denver, Colorado

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• What [Nietzsche] calls slave morality is to him purely spite-morality; and this spite-morality gave new names to all ideals. Thus impotence, which offers no reprisal, became goodness; craven baseness became humility; submission to him who was feared became obedience; inability to assert one's self became reluctance to assert one's self, became forgiveness, love of one's enemies. Misery became a distinction

  Georg Brandes

  Humility, Self, Names

  Georg Brandes (2015). “Friedrich Nietzsche (English Edition)”, p.17, WILLIAM HEINEMANN

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• The world is rather shot to pieces [end of World War II - 1945], but the spectators climb out of their caves and pretend to have again become normal and customary humans who ask each other's pardon instead of eating one another or sucking each other's blood. The entertaining folly of war evaporates, distinguished boredom sits down again on the dignified old overstuffed chairs.. .May I report about myself that I have had a truly grotesque time, brim-full with work, Nazi persecutions, bombs, hunger, and again and again work - in spite of everything [a. o. using his bed sheets as canvas for the new paintings].

  Max Beckmann

  War, Blood, Boredom

  "Max Beckmann". Book by Stephan Lackner, 1983.

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• The time for the kingdom may be far off, but the task is plain: to retain our share in God in spite of peril and contempt. There is a war to wage against the vulgar, the glorification of the absurd, a war that is incessant, universal. Loyal to the presence of the ultimate in the common, we may be able to make it clear that man is more than man, that in doing the finite he may perceive the infinite .

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  War, Men, Tasks

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1997). “Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays”, p.11, Macmillan

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• The anchor of meaning resides in an abyss, deeper than the reach of despair. Yet the abyss is not not infinite; its bottom may suddenly be discovered within the confines of a human heart or under the debris of might doubts. This may be the vocation of man: to say "Amen" to being and to the Author of being; to live in defiance of absurdity, notwithstanding futility and defeat; to attain faith in God even in spite of God.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Heart, Men, Anchors

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1965). “Who is Man?”, p.80, Stanford University Press

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• As the reflections of our pride upon our defects are bitter, disheartening, and vexatious, so the return of the soul towards God is peaceful and sustained by confidence. You will find by experience how much more your progress will be aided by this simple, peaceful turning towards God, than by all your chagrin and spite at .the faults that exist in you.

  Francois Fenelon

  Pride, Reflection, Simple

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• O Lord! take my heart, for I cannot give it; and when Thou hast it, O! keep it, for I cannot keep it for Thee; and save me in spite of myself, for Jesus Christ's sake.

  Francois Fenelon

  Jesus, Heart, Giving

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• We must frankly confess, then, using our empirical common sense and ordinary practical prejudices, that in the world that actually is, the virtues of sympathy, charity, and non-resistance may be, and often have been, manifested in excess. ... You will agree to this in general, for in spite of the Gospel, in spite of Quakerism, in spite of Tolstoi, you believe in fighting fire with fire, in shooting down usurpers, locking up thieves, and freezing out vagabonds and swindlers.

  William James

  Believe, Fighting, Fire

  William James (1985). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.284, Harvard University Press

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• an Autobiography is the truest of all books; for while it inevitably consists mainly of extinctions of the truth, shirkings of the truth, partial revealments of the truth, with hardly an instance of plain straight truth, the remorseless truth is there, between the lines, where the author-cat is raking dust upon it which hides from the disinterested spectator neither it nor its smell... the result being that the reader knows the author in spite of his wily diligences.

  Mark Twain

  Book, Cat, Dust

  Mark Twain (2016). “The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain”, p.55, Chartwell

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• Oh courage...oh yes! If only one had that...Then life might be livable, in spite of everything.

  Henrik Ibsen

  Might, Ifs

  "Hedda Gabler". Play by Henrik Ibsen, Hedda, Act II, 1890.

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• I have been, or seemed, hard with everyone because I was carried away by a sort of brutality born of my distrust in myself and my ill-humor. I have felt so badly equipped, so soft, in spite of the fact that my attitude towards art seemed to me so just. I was disgusted with everyone, and especially myself.

  Edgar Degas

  Art, Attitude, Brutality

  "Degas: An Intimate Portrait" by Ambroise Vollard, translated by Randolph T. Weaver. Dover, (p. 43), 1986.

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• Lesbian feminists, for all their ideals of sisterhood and solidarity, can treat each other with a fickleness, a parasitic exploitativeness, and vicious spite that have to be seen to be believed.

  Camille Paglia

  Sisterhood, Feminist, Vicious

  Camille Paglia (2011). “Vamps & Tramps: New Essays”, p.80, Vintage

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• Organized religion has too often followed the road of other people's institutions. It has made adjustments, compromises, and surrenders to a materialistic civilization for the benefit of material security in spite of occasional twinges of conscience and moral protests. The result has been that today much of organized religion is materialistically solvent but spiritually bankrupt.

  Saul Alinsky

  Civilization, People, Religion

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• The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer: as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger portions of it. Thus the observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite of our endeavours to elude or avoid it.

  David Hume

  Philosophy, Ignorance, Perfect

  David Hume (1793). “Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects”, p.31

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