Unnatural Quotes - Page 13

• Perfect is determined in shortened measures of time, not over long periods of time or lifetimes. It would be unnatural.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Long, Perfect, Would Be

  8 Copy quote

• The truest definition of evil is that which represents it as something contrary to nature; evil is evil because it is unnatural; a vine which should bear olive-berries, an eye to which blue seems yellow, would be diseased; an unnatural mother, an unnatural son, an unnatural act, are the strongest terms of condemnation.

  Frederick William Robertson

  Mother, Eye, Son

  Frederick William Robertson (1858). “Sermons Preached at Trinity Chapel, Brighton: Third Series”, p.23

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sleeping alone seemed unnatural to me, and pitiful, something done in hospitals or when you're contagious.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Sleep, Done, Contagious

  4 Copy quote

• How unnatural the imposed view, imposed by a puritanical ethos, that passionate love belongs only to the young, that people are dead from the neck down by the time they are forty, and that any deep feeling, any passion after that age, is either ludicrous or revolting!

  May Sarton

  Passion, Love Is, Views

  May Sarton (2014). “Journal of a Solitude”, p.63, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• At times there is nothing so unnatural as nature.

  Carolyn Wells

  Nature

  4 Copy quote

• We Americans, with our terrific emphasis on youth, action, and material success, certainly tend to belittle the afternoon of life and even to pretend it never comes. We push the clock back and try to prolong the morning, over-reaching and over-straining ourselves in the unnatural effort. ... In our breathless attempts we often miss the flowering that waits for afternoon.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Morning, Waiting, Missing

  11 Copy quote

• A farce is that in poetry which grotesque (caricature) is in painting. The persons and actions of a farce are all unnatural, and the manners false, that is, inconsistent with the characters of mankind; and grotesque painting is the just resemblance of this.

  John Dryden

  Character, Farce, Action

  4 Copy quote

• A man may be cheerful and contented in celibacy, but I do not think he can ever be happy; it is an unnatural state, and the best feelings of his nature are never called into action.

  Robert Southey

  Marriage, Men, Thinking

  Robert Southey (1856). “Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey”, p.258

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• You will not think it unnatural that those who have an object depending, which strongly engages their hopes and fears, should be somewhat inclining to superstition.

  Edmund Burke

  Thinking, Superstitions, Should

  Edmund Burke (1847). “The Speeches of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke”, p.531

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• For no matter what learned scientists may say, race is, politically speaking, not the beginning of humanity but its end, not the origin of peoples but their decay, not the natural birth of man but his unnatural death.

  Hannah Arendt

  Men, Race, Humanity

  Hannah Arendt (1968). “Imperialism: Part Two Of The Origins Of Totalitarianism”, p.49, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Planning stuff out sucks. If you plan stuff out, you wind up talking in a very monotonous, unnatural way.

  CM Punk

  Talking, Wind, Stuff

  Interview with Tom Breihan, www.gq.com. July 13, 2011.

  74 Copy quote

  Show source

• Can you suggest any suitable aspersions to spread abroad about Mrs. Thatcher? It is idle to suggest she has unnatural relations with Mrs. Barbara Castle; what is needed is something socially lower: that she eats asparagus with knife and fork, or serves instant mash potatoes.

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Knives, Gossip, Potatoes

  Sylvia Townsend Warner, William Maxwell (1982). “Letters”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I don't mind being regarded as perverted and unnatural, but I would die if people thought I was a Democrat.

  Florence King

  Party, People, Political

  Florence King (1991). “Lump It Or Leave It”, p.191, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• of all the deprivations which afflict humankind, none is more dreadful than loneliness. A corrosive, it eats the heart out. People were meant to live by twos, with someone close with whom to share good and bad, to hear breathing in the dark room at night. Being alone is the one unnatural act.

  Zelda Popkin

  Loneliness, Heart, Dark

  4 Copy quote

• Good men seek it by the natural means of the virtues; evil men, however, try to achieve the same goal by a variety of concupiscences, and that is surely an unnatural way of seeking the good. Don't you agree?

  Boethius

  Mean, Men, Evil

  Boethius (2012). “The Consolation of Philosophy”, p.70, Courier Corporation

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• There's something unnatural about a woman finding babies or, more specifically, conversation about babies, boring. They'll think she's bitter, jealous, lonely. But she's also bored of everybody telling her how lucky she is, what with all that sleep and all that freedom and spare time, the ability to go on dates or head off to Paris at a moments notice. It sounds like they're consoling her, and she resents this and feels patronized by it.

  David Nicholls

  Baby, Lonely, Jealous

  4 Copy quote

• To be effective, morality has to be reasoned (or worked out). To want ("vouloir", Fr.) to repress evil only by coercion, and to obtain morality by a sort of training with the help of constraint, without motivating it from within, is to make it an unnatural result, devoided of lastind value.

  African Spir

  Evil, Training, Coercion

  "Paroles d'un sage: Choix de pensées d'African Spir" ("Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir") by Hélène Claparède-Spir, (p. 59), 1937.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Trying to act normal is the most unnatural behavior of all.

  Sharyn McCrumb

  Trying, Normal, Behavior

  Sharyn McCrumb (2010). “Lovely in Her Bones”, p.39, Ballantine Books

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• In bad or corrupted natures the body will often appear to rule over the soul, because they are in an evil and unnatural condition. At all events we may firstly observe in living creatures both a despotical and a constitutional rule; for the soul rules the body with a despotical rule, whereas the intellect rules the appetites with a constitutional and royal rule. And it is clear that the rule of the soul over the body, and of the mind and the rational element over the passionate, is natural and expedient; whereas the equality of the two or the rule of the inferior is always hurtful.

  Aristotle

  Two, Evil, Soul

  Aristotle, (2016). “Aristotle's Politics: Writings from the Complete Works: Politics, Economics, Constitution of Athens”, p.7, Princeton University Press

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The mind must not be forced; artificial and constrained manners fill it with foolish presumption, through unnatural elevation and vain and ridiculous inflation, instead of solid and
  vigorous nutriment.

  Blaise Pascal

  Mind, Ridiculous, Foolish

  Blaise Pascal, Henry Rogers, Victor Cousin, Charles Louandre (1861). “The Thoughts, Letters and Opuscules of Blaise Pascal”, p.513

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the beginning, there was no retirement. There were no old people. In the Stone Age, everyone was fully employed until age 20, by which time nearly everyone was dead, usually of unnatural causes. Any early man who lived long enough to develop crow's-feet was either worshiped or eaten as a sign of respect.

  Mary-Lou Weisman

  Retirement, Feet, Long

  "The History of Retirement, From Early Man to A.A.R.P." by Mary-Lou Weisman, www.nytimes.com. March 21, 1999.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no doubt, that man is not built to be a carnivorous animal. What a sweet, pleasing and innocent sight is the spectacle of a table served that way and what a difference to a make up of fuming animal meat, slaughtered and dead! Man in no way has the constitution of a carnivorous being. Hunt and voracity are unnatural to him. Man has neither the sharp pointed teeth or claws to slaughter his prey. On the contrary his hands are made to pick fruits, berries and vegetables and teeth appropriate to chew them.

  John Ray

  Sweet, Men, Animal

  "Humanimal". Book by Vergil Z. Ozeca, p. 171, 2010.

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• For the most part, improvising while cameras are rolling is very difficult. 99% of people you should never ask to do that, because they're under pressure, the clock is running, 80 people are staring at you...it's always unnatural.

  Albert Brooks

  Running, People, Pressure

  4 Copy quote

• Creativity is our true nature; blocks are an unnatural thwarting of a process at once as normal and as miraculous as the blossoming of a flower at the end of a slender green stem.

  Julia Cameron

  Block, Flower, Creativity

  Julia Cameron (2012). “The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity”, p.10, Souvenir Press

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• UNNATURAL CAUSES tears back the veil to show the socio-economic and racial inequities in health as well as the public policies that underpin them. Should be required viewing.

  Andy Stern

  Tears, Veils, Causes

  4 Copy quote