Unimportant Quotes - Page 2

• I suppose the process of acceptance will pass through the usual four stages:
  (i) this is worthless nonsense;
  (ii) this is an interesting, but perverse, point of view;
  (iii) this is true, but quite unimportant;
  (iv) I always said so.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Acceptance, Views, Interesting

  Journal of Genetics, Vol. 58, 1963.

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• I mean you're given all these lessons for the unimportant things--piano-playing, typing. You're given years and years of lessons in how to balance equations, which Lord knows you will never have to do in normal life. But how about parenthood? Or marriage, either, come to think of it. Before you can drive a car you need a state-approved course of instruction, but driving a car is nothing, nothing, compared to living day in and day out with a husband and raising up a new human being.

  Anne Tyler

  Husband, Mean, Thinking

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• Most of our life is unimportant, filled with trivial things from morning till night. But when it is transformed by love it is of interest even to the angels.

  Dorothy Day

  Morning, Angel, Night

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• When you understand that you will die to-morrow, if not to-day, and nothing will be left, then everything is so unimportant!... So one goes on living, amusing oneself with hunting, with work - anything so as not think of death

  Leo Tolstoy

  Thinking, Hunting, Goes On

  Leo Tolstoy (2016). “Anna Karenina (World Classics, Unabridged)”, p.326, Vij Books India Pvt Ltd

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• It is completely unimportant. That is why it is so interesting.

  Agatha Christie

  Interesting

  The Murder of Roger Ackroyd ch. 7 (1926)

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• We're on vacation, Kaia, Strider grumbled. You weren't invited. She waved away his words as if they were unimportant. Deep down I know you meant to invite me, so ta-da. Here I am. You're welcome. It's scary how well you know us. Here, pay for this, William said, dumping his candy into Strider's arms. We'll be in the care. Making out.

  Gena Showalter

  Vacation, Here I Am, Scary

  Gena Showalter (2016). “The Darkest Secret”, p.148, HQN Books

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• All this long human story, most passionate and tragic in the living, was but an unimportant, a seemingly barren and negligible effort, lasting only for a few moments in the life of the galaxy. When it was over, the host of the planetary systems still lived on, with here and there a casualty, and here and there among the stars a new planetary birth, and here and there a fresh disaster.

  Olaf Stapledon

  Stars, Long, Effort

  Olaf Stapledon (1931). “Last and First Men, & Star Maker: Two Science-fiction Novels”, p.379, Courier Corporation

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• Consider him in his highest incarnation: the university professor. What is his function? Simply to pass on to fresh generations of numskulls a body of so-called knowledge that is fragmentary, unimportant, and, in large part, untrue. His whole professional activity is circumscribed by the prejudices, vanities and avarices of his university trustees, i.e., a committee of soap-boilers, nail manufacturers, bank-directors and politicians. The moment he offends these vermin he is undone. He cannot so much as think aloud without running a risk of having them fan his pantaloons.

  H. L. Mencken

  Education, Running, Thinking

  "Minority Report".

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• It was certainly not this mummified and outrageously painted old woman he was seeing before him, but the entire "female species," as it was his custom to call women. The individual disappeared, the features were obliterated, whether young or senile, beautiful or ugly - those were mere unimportant variations. Behind each woman rises the austere, sacred and mysterious face of Aphrodite.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Beautiful, Female, Variation

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• The smallest decisions made had such profound repercussions. One ten-minute wait could save a life… Or end it… One wrong turn down the right street or one seemingly unimportant conversation, and everything was changed. It wasn’t right that each lifetime was defined, ruined, ended, and made by such seemingly innocuous details. A major life-threatening event should come with a flashing warning sign that either said ABANDON ALL HOPE or SAFETY AHEAD. It was the cruelest joke of all that no one could see the most vicious curves until they were over the edge, falling into the abyss below.

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Fall, Curves, Safety

  Sherrilyn Kenyon (2016). “Chronicles of Nick”, p.344, St. Martin's Griffin

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• an intoxication with forbidden knowledge in which the natural things become unimportant.

  Anne Rice

  Natural, Intoxication, Forbidden

  Anne Rice (2011). “The Vampire Chronicles Collection: Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned”, p.710, Ballantine Books

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• I'm me and you're you, and all of them out there are them. And we're all so different and equally unimportant.

  Jenny Downham

  Different

  Jenny Downham (2007). “Before I Die”, David Fickling Books

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• Plainly, this unwillingness to give ground even on unimportant disagreements is the symptom of some deepseated insecurity, as was my one-time fondness for making teasing remarks (which I amended when I read Anthony Powell's matter-of-fact observation that teasing is an unfailing sign of misery within) and as is my very pronounced impatience. The struggle, therefore, is to try and cultivate the virtuous side of these shortcomings: to be a genial host while only slightly whiffled, for example, or to be witty at the expense of one's own weaknesses instead of those of other people.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Witty, Struggle, People

  Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Hitch 22: A Memoir”, p.302, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• Ah, if everyone was as sensitive as you! There's no girl who hasn't gone through that. And it's all so unimportant!

  Leo Tolstoy

  Break Up, Girl, Gone

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• I had a sense then of how if we truly understood how many of the unimportant things we do will end up outliving us, we'd never be able to go on.

  David Levithan

  Unimportant Things, Goes On, Able

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• In the heroic effort of the handcart pioneers, we learn a great truth. All must pass through a refiner’s fire, and the insignificant and unimportant in our lives can melt away like dross and make our faith bright, intact, and strong. There seems to be a full measure of anguish, sorrow, and often heartbreak for everyone, including those who earnestly seek to do right and be faithful. Yet this is part of the purging to become acquainted with God.

  James E. Faust

  Strong, Fire, Lds

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• Film is, to me, just unimportant. But people are very important.

  John Cassavetes

  People, Important, Film

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• Because I want every breath you take to be empty unless you're close enough to smell me. Every word you speak to be unimportant unless it's to me. Every sound you hear empty unless it's my voice. I want you to remember that whatever pleasure you have from now on, you'll have it from me. ~Rurik Wilder~

  Christina Dodd

  Voice, Smell, Sound

  Christina Dodd (2007). “Touch of Darkness: Darkness Chosen”, p.91, Penguin

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• No experience has been too unimportant, and the smallest event unfolds like a fate, and fate itself is like a wonderful, wide fabric in which every thread is guided by an infinitely tender hand and laid alongside another thread and is held and supported by a hundred others

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Fate, Hands, Events

  Rainer Maria Rilke (2001). “Letters to a Young Poet”

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• And if someone felt that his life had been an utter failure, and that he himself was only one among millions of wholly unimportant people who could be replaced as easily as broken windowpanes, he would go and pour out his heart to Momo. And, even as he spoke, he would come to realize by some mysterious means that he was absolutely wrong: that there was only one person like himself in the whole world, and that, consequently, he mattered to the world in his own particular way. Such was Momo's talent for listening.

  Michael Ende

  Mean, Heart, People

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• You may look back on your life and accept it as good or evil. But it is far, far harder to admit that you have been completely unimportant; that in the great sum of things all a man's endless grapplings are no more significant than the scuttlings of a cockroach. The universe is neither friendly nor hostile. It is merely indifferent. This makes me ecstatic. I have reached a nirvana of negativity. I can look futility in the face and still see promise in the stars.

  Sebastian Horsley

  Stars, Men, Evil

  "Farewell Sebastian Horsley: a true bohemian" by Emily Hill, www.theguardian.com. June 17, 2010.

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• In fact, though their acquaintance had been so short, they had guessed, as always happens between lovers, everything of any importance about each other in two seconds at the utmost, and it now remained only to fill in such unimportant details as what they were called; where they lived; and whether they were beggars or people of substance.

  Virginia Woolf

  Two, People, Details

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1260, Delphi Classics

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• Nothing that ever happens is so unimportant that it doesn't change things.

  David Eddings

  Happens

  David Eddings, Leigh Eddings (1997). “Polgara the Sorceress”, Del Rey

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• The city glitters past us with its sharp edges, reminding us of how tiny, how weak, how totally unimportant we are.

  Joe Meno

  Past, Cities, Glitter

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• By using money as the scapegoat and work as our all-consuming routine, we are able to conveniently disallow ourselves to do otherwise: 'John, I'd love to talk about the gaping void I feel in my life, the hopelessness that hits me like a punch in the eye every time I start my computer in the morning, but I have so much work to do! I've got at least three hours of unimportant email to reply to before calling prospects who said 'no' yesterday. Gotta run!

  Tim Ferriss

  Running, Morning, Eye

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