Popular quotes about Clever! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 25
Mr. [Aldous] Huxley has been the alarming young man for a long time, a sort of perpetual clever nephew who can be relied on to flutter the lunch party. Whatever will he say next? How does he think of those things? He has been deplored once or twice, but feeling is in his favor: he is steadily read. He is at once the truly clever person and the stupid person's idea of the clever person; he is expected to be relentless, to administer intellectual shocks.
Elizabeth BowenI don't mind people putting us down, because if everybody really liked us, it would be a bore. You've got to have people putting you down. It doesn't give any edge to it if everybody just falls flat on their face saying, "You're great." We enjoy some of the criticisms as well, they're quite funny; some of the clever criticisms, not the ones that don't know anything, but some of the clever ones are quite fun.
John LennonPeople often say to me - how clever you are! How brilliant to be able to go from ballet to theatre as you do. I answer that it is not clever at all. It is the gift of looking at oneself coolly, of calculating the future objectively. I could see the danger signals as far as ballet was concerned before anyone else did, that's all.
Robert HelpmannPeople always fall in love with the most perfect aspects of each other's personalities. Who wouldn't? Anybody can love the most wonderful parts of another person. But that's not the clever trick. The really clever trick is this: Can you accept the flaws? Can you look at your partner's faults honestly and say, 'I can work around that. I can make something out of it.'? Because the good stuff is always going to be there, and it's always going to pretty and sparkly, but the crap underneath can ruin you.
Elizabeth Gilberta person who was clever ought to be clever enough not to be unjust or deliberately unkind to anyone.
Frances Hodgson BurnettOur [American] money system is structurally brittle. It doesn't matter if you put a very clever guy or a stupid guy at the wheel. The clever guy will take a half hour to have an accident, and the stupid guy will take ten minutes.
Bernard LietaerThere are so many people who are clever. There are 8000 people at Princeton who are more clever than the three of us at this table. BUT, we have the ability to give something that they don't have...which is us.
Mike BirbigliaThe most powerful political moments for me come when I feel like my actions are aligned with a certain truth. I can feel it. When I'm talking to a group and I'm saying something truthful, I can feel a power that comes out of those statements that is different than when I'm just being glib or clever.
Barack Obama'All men are created equal', 'government by consent of the governed', 'give me liberty or give me death'. Well, those are not just clever words, or those are not just empty theories.
Lyndon B. JohnsonA good Judoka never anticipates his action in a match, but his mind is as clever as a polished mirror which enables him to foresee precisely anything to happen and he displays freedom of his physique to cope with any change. Such mental state and physical action are called sei or tranquility and do or action, sometimes they are called ju and go or tenderness and sturdiness, in and yo or negative and positive, etc.
Kyuzo MifuneMiss Prism: Do not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel, Cecily. I wrote one myself in earlier days. Cecily: Did you really, Miss Prism? How wonderfully clever you are! I hope it did not end happily? I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much. Miss Prism: The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.
Oscar WildeClever people are never credited with their follies: what a deprivation of human rights!
Friedrich NietzscheChristmas in Bethlehem. The earliest dream: a cold, clear night made bright by a magnificent star, the smell of anger, marshals and clever men falling to their knees in love of the lovely baby, the avatar of faultless love...!!!
Lucinda FranksThere's a truth deeper than experience. It's beyond what we see, or even what we feel. It's an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever, and the reality from the perception. We're helpless, usually, in the face of it; and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any heart would willingly pay. It doesn't always help us to love the world, but it does prevent us from hating the world. And the only way to know that truth is to share it, from heart to heart, just as Prabhakar told it to me, just as I'm telling it to you now.
Gregory David RobertsI think some journalists and bloggers want their articles to be clever, and the way into that is by writing nasty things. I think our culture likes to be mean. I don't just find this in fashion - I find it in the news. More and more, it is about ripping people apart.
Tom FordOur great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man.
Bertrand RussellModern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at. At least, some of them are. But they are quite impossible to live with; they are too clever, too assertive, too intellectual. Their meaning is too obvious, and their method too clearly defined. One
Oscar WildeIt was a hard name having growing up as a child. Some kids would call me names like "Birbiglebug" and "Birbibliography" and "Faggot". Some were more clever than others.
Mike BirbigliaI've determined the ideal job for me is one where I can write clever essays about my life and my employer will give me enough money not only to live a comfortable existence, but also to buy many, many new pairs of shoes.
Jen LancasterThese weren't cheap modern books; these were books bound in leather, and not just leather, but leather from clever cows who had given their lives for literature after a happy existence in the very best pastures.
Terry PratchettI asked my mum, who's a very clever psychotherapist, and she says that kids love stories about death; they need it, they need to have stories that deal with death and explain it, as a place to put their fears.
Roald DahlThen I could not help wondering what the watching gods thought of us, with our clever masks and our jokes. What we think of crickets, perhaps, whose singing we hear with pleasure, though some of us smash them with our heels when they venture into sight.
Gene WolfeThe coaches of some players who are my own age keep saying publically about me: "This guy is going to be one of the greats." I am clever enough to know that they do not truthfully think so. They are trying to shake my confidence. Of course, this is a matter of tactics.
Alexander ZverevOne has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and unusual.
Thomas MannA culture in which guilt is automatically assumed to be neurotic and unhealthy has devised a remarkably clever way of protecting its self-interest.
Jonathan KozolWe are learning to do a great many clever things. The next great task will be to learn not to do them.
Gilbert K. ChestertonIf you're trying to hide something, you wouldn't keep getting away with it for 10 years. Nobody is that clever.
Lance ArmstrongBy this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the the impossible.
C. S. LewisI really liked Tom & Jerry. That was huge for me. I watched it every morning, before I walked to school. Even as a kid, I thought there was something really smart about it. I thought it was very clever.
Jason LeeI thought," Shad said slowly, "that she was offended if you referred to Blind Seer or Elation as her pets.""True," Derian assured him. "Absolutely the correct etiquette-to her face. However, well... When I first met Firekeeper, less than a year ago, her relationships with animals fell into pretty much two categories: those you ate and those you befriended. I remember that she thought we were pretty clever for bringing horses along so we wouldn't need to hunt our meat. It took me a while to show her they had other uses.
Jane LindskoldIf you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
Winston ChurchillI'm all alone. There has been no man in my life for several months now and although it would be nice to have a boyfriend, I can't just settle for anybody. The fact is I'm choosy, but mainly about a man's character. He has to be interesting, funny and clever. I don't even mind if he's not very good-looking.
Agyness Deyn...and there I suddenly found my articulate self in a dazzling land of smiling, jostling people wearing and not wearing all sorts of costumes and doing all sorts of clever things. And that's when I knew! What other life could there be but that of an actor?
Cary GrantI watch his hands, they're lumpy but clever. "Is there a word for adults when they aren't parents?" Steppa laughs. "Folks with other things to do?
Emma DonoghueThere are things roaming around inside my head as clever as Theseus in the Labyrinth. It's just that nobody ever gave them the necessary piece of string, so they'll never find their way out.
Geraldine McCaughreanOne of the most extraordinary examples in recent decades [of unitary visions of constitutional enterprise] is found in a book called "Takings"... Epstein makes an extremely clever but stunningly reductionist argument that the whole Constitution is really designed to protect private property... Can a constitution reflecting as diverse an array of visions and aspirations as ours really be reducible to such as sadly single-minded vision as that?
Laurence TribeMessi is much more than being clever. He is a genius who reserves all his expressiveness for football.
John Carlin