Unfriendly Quotes

• Nature is the mother and the habitat of man, even if sometimes a stepmother and an unfriendly home.

  John Dewey

  Mother, Nature, Home

  John Dewey, Jo Ann Boydston, Abraham Kaplan (2008). “The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925-1953, Volume 10: 1934, Art as Experience”, p.34, SIU Press

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• A severe though not unfriendly critic of our institutions said that the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it.

  Walter Bagehot

  House, Looks, Fierce

  'The English Constitution' (1867) 'The House of Lords'

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• To fail is a natural consequence of trying, To succeed takes time and prolonged effort in the face of unfriendly odds. To think it will be any other way, no matter what you do, is to invite yourself to be hurt and to limit your enthusiasm for trying again.

  David Viscott

  Hurt, Failure, Thinking

  DAVID VISCOTT (1971). “FEEL FREE”

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• Pernicious weed! whose scent the fair annoys, Unfriendly to society's chief joys: Thy worst effect is banishing for hours The sex whose presence civilizes ours.

  William Cowper

  Weed, Sex, Joy

  William Cowper, Robert Southey, William Harvey (1835). “The Works of William Cowper, Comprising His Poems, Correspondence, and Translations”, p.163

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• At times the world may seem an unfriendly and sinister place, but believe that there is much more good in it than bad. All you have to do is look hard enough. and what might seem to be a series of unfortunate events may in fact be the first steps of a journey.

  Daniel Handler

  Believe, Hard Times, Journey

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• There is no teaching until the pupil is brought into the same state or principle in which you are; a transfusion takes place; he is you, and you are he; then is a teaching; and by no unfriendly chance or bad company can he ever lose the benefit.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Teaching, Benefits, Principles

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1320, Delphi Classics

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• My children, as long as you live, the shadow of the Hiss Case will brush you. In every pair of eyes that rests on you, you will see pass, like a cloud passing behind a woods in winter, the memory of your father - dissembled in friendly eyes, lurking in unfriendly eyes.

  Whittaker Chambers

  Memories, Children, Father

  Whittaker Chambers (2014). “Witness”, p.22, Regnery Publishing

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• I am decidedly unfriendly during a golf game, from the first hole to the last.

  Rafael Nadal

  Golf, Games, Lasts

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• As authors, we all expect criticism from time to time, and we all have our ways of coping with unfriendly reviews.

  Joanne Harris

  Criticism, Way, Coping

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• Being carefree, you can fit in anywhere. If you’re not carefree you keep on bumping up against things. Your life becomes so narrow, so tight; it gets very claustrophobic. Carefree means being wide open from within, not constricted. Carefree doesn’t mean careless. It is not that you don’t care about others, not that you don’t have compassion or are unfriendly. Carefree is being really simple, from the inside. Dignity is not conceit but rather what shines forth from this carefree confidence.

  Tsoknyi Rinpoche

  Mean, Simple, Compassion

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• He seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of it's frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface; but there was nothing nothing unfriendly in his silence. I simply felt that he lived in a depth of moral isolation too remote for casual access, and I had the sense that his loneliness was not merely the result of his personal plight, tragic as I guessed that to be, but had in it, as Harmon Gow had hinted, the profound accumulated cold of many Starkfield winters.

  Edith Wharton

  Loneliness, Winter, Profound

  Ethan Frome preface (1911)

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• The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it.

  Walter Bagehot

  House, Political, Looks

  "The greatest obstacles to Lords reform sit in the Commons" by Andrew Rawnsley, www.theguardian.com. June 23, 2012.

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• and what might seem to be a series of unfortunate events may in fact be the first steps of a journey.

  Daniel Handler

  Journey, Events, May

  "Fictional character: Violet Baudelaire". "A Series of Unfortunate Events", www.imdb.com. 2004.

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• It is because the world is so full of suffering, that your happiness is a gift. It is because the world is so full of poverty, that your wealth is a gift. It is because the world is so unfriendly, that your smile is a gift. It is because the world is so full of war, that your peace of mind is a gift. It is because the world is in such despair, that your hope and optimism is a gift. It is because the world is so afraid, that your love is a gift.

  Robert Holden

  Happiness, War, Love Is

  Robert Holden (2011). “Happiness Now!: Timeless Wisdom for Feeling Good Fast”, p.118, Hay House, Inc

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• Advice is unfriendly to learning, especially when it is sought. Most of the time when people seek advice, they just want to be heard. Advice at best stops the conversation, definitely inhibits learning, and at worst claims dominance.

  Peter Block

  Learning, Knowledge, People

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• Inflation is really like drugging the baby universe with speed. The supercool union of the hitherto unfriendly gods was blessed by amphetamine, and this made the universe inflate rather than just expand. The early orgy of expansion in the universe comes to an abrupt end as soon as the supercooled particle stuff finally freezes.

  Joao Magueijo

  Baby, Blessed, Expansion

  Joao Magueijo (2011). “Faster Than The Speed Of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation”, p.152, Random House

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• Micromessaging -- communicating with other human beings through visual, audible, sublingual means, no doubt predates our ability to speak. We actually read micromessages quite naturally without thinking about them. You might say human beings read each other's micromessages subconsciously, in the same way that one dog understands another dog is unfriendly simply because the dog's fur is standing on end. The dogs read each other perfectly. It's not all that different for people.

  Stephen Young

  Dog, Mean, Thinking

  Stephen Young (2006). “Micromessaging”, p.7, McGraw Hill Professional

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• In London, people can be so... well, it's not even a case of people being unkind or unfriendly. You just don't make any contact in London. You go from A to B with your eyes on the pavement.

  Carey Mulligan

  Eye, People, London

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• The highest degree of meekness consists in seeing, serving, honoring, and treating amiably, on occasion, those who are not to our taste, and who show themselves unfriendly, ungrateful, and troublesome to us.

  Saint Francis de Sales

  Ungrateful, Taste, Degrees

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• The intellect searches out the Absolute order of things as they stand in the mind of God, and without the colors of affection. The intellectual and the active powers seem to succeed each other, and the exclusive activity of the one generates the exclusive activity of the other. There is something unfriendly in each to the other, but they are like the alternate periods of feeding and working in animals; each prepares and will be followed by the other.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Knowledge, Animal, Order

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.39, Penguin

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• I could no longer afford to be jealous or unfriendly, because, as soon as I was, a bandage came down over my eyes, and I was bound hand and foot and cast aside. All at once a black hole opened, and I was helpless inside it. But when I was happy and serene, approached people with confidence and thought well of them, I was rewarded with light.

  Jacques Lusseyran

  Jealous, Eye, Light

  Jacques Lusseyran (2014). “And There Was Light: The Extraordinary Memoir of a Blind Hero of the French Resistance in World War II”, p.15, New World Library

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• As a farmer, man himself became closely attached to the landscape, firmly rooted to the soil that supported him. At times the soil seemed bountiful and kindly and again stubborn and unfriendly, but it was always a challenge to man's cunning.

  Charles Kellogg

  Men, Challenges, Stubborn

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• Adversity is like the period of the rain. . . cold, comfortless, unfriendly to people and to animals; yet from that season have their birth the flower, the fruit, the date, the rose and the pomegranate.

  Walter Scott

  Rain, Flower, Adversity

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• renown, n. A degree of distinction between notoriety and fame - a little more supportable than the one and a little more intolerable than the other. Sometimes it is conferred by an unfriendly and inconsiderate hand.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Hands, Littles, Degrees

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.181, 谷月社

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• New fathers, political prisoners, traumatised presidential aides, resolute schoolboys, MEPs addressing unfriendly chambers - we all find that Shakespeare has magically anticipated our precise circumstances. How he was possible, I still don't understand; but there isn't a day I'm not grateful that he speaks to me in my own language.

  Daniel Hannan

  Father, Grateful, Presidential

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