Surly Quotes

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  If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning 'Good morning' at total strangers.

  Maya Angelou

  Love, Funny, Life

  Maya Angelou (2012). “The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou”, p.424, Modern Library

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• All men, even the most surly are influenced by affection.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Love, Family, Happiness

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1836). “Letters”, p.155

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• Anyway, whacking a surly bartender ain't much of a crime.

  Larry McMurtry

  Bartender, Crime

  Larry McMurtry (2010). “Lonesome Dove: A Novel”, p.329, Simon and Schuster

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• The Scots are poor, cries surly English pride; True is the charge, nor by themselves denied. Are they not then in strictest reason clear, Who wisely come to mend their fortunes here?

  Charles Churchill

  Pride, Scotland, Cry

  Charles Churchill, George Gilfillan (1855). “The poetical works of Charles Churchill: with memoir, critical dissertation, and explanatory notes / by the Rev. George Gilfillan”, p.68

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• The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives.

  Ronald Reagan

  Space, Crew, Honored

  The Space Shuttle "Challenger" Tragedy Address, delivered 28 January 1986

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• If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.

  Maya Angelou

  Inspirational, Life, Smile

  Maya Angelou (2012). “The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou”, p.424, Modern Library

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• Lord, confound this surly sister, blight her brow with blotch and blister, cramp her larynx, lung and liver, in her guts a galling give her.

  John Millington Synge

  Sister, Giving, Lord

  John Millington Synge (2008). “The Complete Works of J. M. Synge”, p.446, Wordsworth Editions

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• No longer mourn for me when I am dead Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world that I am fled From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell.

  William Shakespeare

  Sad, Giving, Sullen

  Sonnet 71

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• When chill November's surly blast
  Made fields and forests bare.

  Robert Burns

  Fields, Forests, November

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• The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God.

  Ronald Reagan

  Goodbye, Morning, Journey

  The Space Shuttle "Challenger" Tragedy Address, delivered 28 January 1986

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• Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds, - and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there, I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air.

  John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

  Laughter, Military, Clouds

  In K. Rhys More Poems from the Forces (1943) "High Flight"

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• A ward, and still in bonds, one day
  I stole abroad;
  It was high spring, and all the way
  Primrosed and hung with shade;
  Yet was it frost within,
  And surly winds
  Blasted my infant buds, and sin
  Like clouds eclipsed my mind.

  Henry Vaughan

  Spring, Clouds, Wind

  Henry Vaughan (1976). “The complete poems”, Penguin Group USA

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• I have been called a curmudgeon, which my obsolescent dictionary defines as a "surly, illmannered, badtempered fellow." ... Nowadays, curmudgeon is likely to refer to anyone who hates hypocrisy, cant, sham, dogmatic ideologies, the pretenses and evasions of euphemism, and has the nerve to point out unpleasant facts and takes the trouble to impale these sins on the skewer of humor and roast them over the fires of empiric fact, common sense, and native intelligence. In this nation of bleating sheep and braying jackasses, it then becomes an honor to be labeled curmudgeon.

  Edward Abbey

  Hate, Fire, Sheep

  "A Voice Crying in the Wilderness".

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• Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace, Where never the lark, nor even eagle flew- And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod The high, untrespassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

  John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

  Wind, Space, Blue

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• Wish and learn to smooth away the surly wrinkles, to raise your lids frankly, and change the fiends to confident, innocent angels, suspecting and doubting nothing, and always seeing friends where they are not sure of foes.

  Emily Bronte

  Angel, Wrinkles, Doubt

  Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2009). “The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.408, Penguin

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• Nature is no sentimentalist, - does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman; but swallows your ship like a grain of dust. The cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Nature, Men, Dust

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.256, Penguin

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• When I'm not writing, I tend to get depressed and a little bit surly. And then when I'm writing, suddenly I feel enlivened. Now the only thing as I'm getting older that I notice is that it's a pattern.

  George Saunders

  Writing, Getting Older, Patterns

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Books are savaged and careers destroyed by surly snots who write anonymous reviews and publishers can't be bothered to protest this institutionalized corruption.

  Warren Murphy

  Book, Writing, Careers

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• Like an animal, cancer sleeps, prowls, hibernates, turns surly or placid.

  Marni Jackson

  Cancer, Sleep, Animal

  Marni Jackson (2003). “Pain: The Fifth Vital Sign”, p.311, A&C Black

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• Understand me: I wish to be a man from somewhere, a man among men. You see, a slave, when he passes by, weary and surly, carrying a heavy load, limping along and looking down at his feet, only at his feet to avoid falling down; he is in his town, like a leaf in greenery, like a tree in a forest, argos surrounds him, heavy and warm, full of herself; I want to be that slave, Electra, I want to pull the city around me and to roll myself up in it like a blanket. I will not leave.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Fall, Men, Cities

  "The Flies". Play by Jean-Paul Sartre, Orestes to Electra, Act 2, 1943.

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• If you can fall in love again and again if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical you've got it half licked.

  Henry Miller

  Falling In Love, Cynical, Forgiving

  Henry Miller, John Calder (1985). “A Henry Miller reader”, Riverrun Pr

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• I've inherited the worst of each parent. I have my father's hypochondria and lack of concentration. I have his amorality. I have everything bad that he had. Then I have my mother's surly, pill-like, complaining, whining attitude.

  Woody Allen

  Mother, Attitude, Father

  Interview with Douglas McGrath, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 1, 2008.

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• Choose a good disagreeable friend, if you be wise--a surly, steady, economical, rigid fellow.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Friends, Wise, Steady

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1869). “The book of snobs. Sketches and travels in London. Denis Duval”, p.121

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• Life is a system of relations rather than a positive and independent existence; and he who would be happy himself and make others happy must carefully preserve these relations. He cannot stand apart in surly and haughty egoism; let him learn that he is as much dependent on others as others are on him.

  George Augustus Henry Sala

  Independent, Make Others Happy, Would Be

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• I had the heaviest paper round in Ilkley, West Yorks, and if you look at my shoulders one is still lower than the other. I also did a milk round for a day. It was awful. I was a very surly milkman, because it was very cold, very dark and very early. I am a lark, not an owl, but not in winter when it's chilly. Apart from that I went straight into gardening at 15.

  Alan Titchmarsh

  Dark, Winter, Owl

  Source: www.mirror.co.uk

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