Unsympathetic Quotes

• We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Relationship, Ideas, Voice

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• Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.

  H. G. Wells

  Eye, Space, Mind

  1898 The War of the Worlds, bk.1, ch.1.

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• Nobody's really unsympathetic, I think. People do good and bad things. If a character's totally unsympathetic, they're not real and I'm not interested. Even the real monsters have to have a spark of something you can relate to.

  Matthew Macfadyen

  Real, Character, Thinking

  "Matthew Macfadyen: 'I do have a good eye'" by Harriet Lane, www.theguardian.com. February 17, 2010.

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• I wanted readers to be genuinely unsure as to whether she's telling the truth or lying. It meant making her partly sympathetic, and partly unsympathetic, which wasn't easy.

  Lee Child

  Lying, Telling The Truth, Easy

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• Warm weather fosters growth: cold weather destroys it. Thus a man with an unsympathetic temperament has a scant joy: but a man with a warm and friendly heart overflowing blessings, and his beneficence will extend to posterity.

  Zicheng Hong

  Heart, Men, Blessing

  Zicheng Hong, Tze-chiang Chao (1959). “A Chinese Garden of Serenity: Epigrams from the Ming Dynasty "Discourses on Vegetable Roots"”

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• I think for being not unsympathetic that their appearance may also appear, so differently it, must; similarly as with animals, which meet us in very different forms, which look somehow harmonious however all. On exactly such forms I would stand.

  Ulrich Walter

  Thinking, Animal, Looks

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• I try to write about real women, real people - in other words flawed characters. I find flawed characters much more interesting than perfect ones and enjoy the challenge of making readers root for them in spite of their unsympathetic path and destructive choices. Life is about the gray areas. Things are seldom black and white, even when we wish they were and think they should be, and I like exploring this nuanced terrain.

  Emily Giffin

  Real, Writing, Character

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• It is a retarding element creating hatred and anger, and causing people to fight each other, and making them unsympathetic.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Anger, Fighting, Creating

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “Karma Yoga: The Yoga of Action”, p.42, Advaita Ashrama

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• [T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister than our habit of looking at them in the wrong way, through lenses clouded by distraction, exhaustion and fear, which blind us to the fact that they are really, despite a thousand differences, just altered versions of ourselves: fellow fragile, uncertain, flawed beings likewise craving love and in urgent need of forgiveness.

  Alain de Botton

  Assessment, Differences, Way

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• I played an unsympathetic part -- myself.

  Oscar Levant

  Oscar Levant (1965). “The Memoirs of an Amnesiac”

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• There's a feminist critique of Muslim Arbitration Tribunals, which I'm certainly not unsympathetic to, because as I keep saying, I come from a human rights context. But there's a feminist critique of Muslim Arbitration Tribunals specifically, which says women are going to have their rights eroded by virtue of the fact of these courts are going to negotiate settlements and negotiate the dropping of criminal charges against men. There's not been any evidence of that taking place.

  Sadakat Kadri

  Men, Feminist, Human Rights

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• There wasn't space to mood-up. I think Rose Byrne was just extraordinary. Talk about a character that could be really unsympathetic at times. She just jumped in these scenes that go from anger to hysteria to crying to laughing and back to anger. I just marveled.

  Susan Sarandon

  Character, Thinking, Hysteria

  Interview with George Saunders, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 27, 2016.

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• I suppose that the sympathetic/unsympathetic debate about characters sometimes feels to me like a misstatement of purpose. I always think of truly complex characters are falling between the cracks in that debate.

  Rick Moody

  Fall, Character, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Lars is played by Ryan Gosling, the Prince of Tics, whose idea of acting is to wait a few beats before reacting to other people's remarks, as if acting were merely a matter of adhering to the seven-second delay rule. Jack Nicholson has made a career out of doing this sort of thing, as did Paul Newman, as did Marlon Brando (who the other two learned it from), but they didn't do it all the time and they were more fun to look at... Lars And The Real Girl joins a number of other recent films in the category of motion pictures where the director doesn't know that his protagonist is unsympathetic.

  Joe Queenan

  Girl, Fun, Real

  "Mannequin for all seasons" by Joe Queenan, www.theguardian.com. March 14, 2008.

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• My attitudes aren't directed toward characters at all. I don't feel sympathetic toward some characters, unsympathetic toward others. I don't love some characters, feel contempt for others. They have attitudes; I don't.

  Don DeLillo

  Attitude, Character, Sympathetic

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.6, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I'm with Milton and the Rolling Stones: I don't find the Devil an unsympathetic character. But in any case, my fiction is populated as much by people who do good as it is by those who do bad. I'm interested in imaginatively accommodating as much of the human as possible, for which you need both moral extremes and everything in between.

  Glen Duncan

  Character, People, Devil

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• A story so cherished it has to be dressed in casualness to disguise its significance in case the listener turned out to be unsympathetic.

  Diane Setterfield

  Stories, Cases, Significance

  Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale”, p.269, Simon and Schuster

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• Hardy Cates," I said, coming into the room, "you behave, or I'll step on your tube." The nurse seemed taken aback by my unsympathetic bedside manner. But Hardy's gaze met mine in a moment of bright, hot voltage, and he relaxed, reassured in a way that cooing sympathy could never have done. "That only works if it's a breathing tube," he told me.

  Lisa Kleypas

  Taken, Breathing, Nurse

  Lisa Kleypas (2015). “The Travis Family Series, Books 1-3: Blue-Eyed Devil, Smooth Taking Stranger and Sugar Daddy”, p.171, St. Martin's Press

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• I’m not unsympathetic. But do you like me? Because this being gay business doesn’t mean you can just throw yourself at any guy and it’ll be fine because he’s not a girl. There are still people you like and people you don’t.

  Cassandra Clare

  Girl, Mean, Gay

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• Everyone has a masculine and feminine side; masculine qualities and feminine qualities. We've all got these sides to ourselves. And clothes can tell that story. People would think this is very unsympathetic, but I would always say to people, you don't actually need to go through with an operation, can't you just be? You are who you are! But then people say to me, "Oh, you're really dreadful, how would you know?".

  Vivienne Westwood

  Thinking, Masculine And Feminine, Clothes

  Source: www.elle.com

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• The attitude of foreign to English musicians is unsympathetic, self-opinionated and pedantic. They believe that their tradition is the only one (this is specially true of the Viennese) and that anything that is not in accordance with that tradition is "wrong" and arises from insular ignorance.

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  Attitude, Believe, Ignorance

  "R.V.W.: A Biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams". Book by Ursula Vaughan Williams, p. 243, letter to Lord Kennet (1941), 1964.

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• Eighty percent of our criminals come from unsympathetic homes.

  Hans Christian Andersen

  Home, Evil, Criminals

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• Most expositions of Aristotle's doctrines, when they have not been dictated by a spirit of virulent detraction, or unsympathetic indifference, have carefully suppressed all, or nearly all, the absurdities, and only retained what seemed plausible and consistent. But in this procedure their historical significance disappears.

  George Henry Lewes

  Historical, Doctrine, Spirit

  George Henry Lewes (1864). “Aristotle: a chapter from the history of science including analyses of Aristotle's scientific writings”, p.9, London : Smith, Elder and Company

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• Kids have to be tough to survive on the streets of Kathmandu, where older gang members often beat and rob them. They face cold winters, hunger, homelessness, and unsympathetic police. But under each hardened shell there is still a child.

  Craig Kielburger

  Children, Kids, Winter

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• What tends to happen in most movies is that strip clubs are used as a short hand for unsympathetic, sleazy people. And that's just a lazy cliché.

  Steve Coogan

  Hands, People, Lazy

  "Q&A: Steve Coogan on Sex, Drugs & Bad Press". Interview with Eric Spitznagel, www.esquire.com. July 9, 2013.

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