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The most serious parody I have ever heard was this: In the beginning was nonsense, and the nonsense was with God, and the nonsense was God.
Friedrich NietzscheIt is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. A handsome woman talks nonsense, you listen and hear not nonsense but cleverness. She says and does horrid things, and you see only charm. And if a handsome woman does not say stupid or horrid things, you at once persuade yourself that she is wonderfully clever and moral.
Leo TolstoyValkyrie dialed Skulduggery's number and he picked up. 'Hey,' she said, 'It's me.' Skulduggery paused. 'No it's not. If it were me, then I'd be talking to myself, and I don't do that any more. I certainly don't RING myself. That's one of the first signs of madness, and if it's not, it should be.' She sighed. 'Are you finished talking nonsense?' 'I haven't talked nonsense all morning. I miss it.
Derek LandyFootball makes nonsense of class. It may make nonsense of colour in some circumstances.
Peter TempleWhat (Stephen) Hawking says in his book The Grand Design is the universe exists because it needed to exist, and because it needed to exist, it therefore created itself. His conclusion merely restates his premise, which means his argument is circular. Nonsense is nonsense, even when spoken by famous scientists.
John LennoxTo have or not to have [chemical weapons] is a possibility, but to depend on what media says is nonsense, or to depend on some of the reports of the intelligence is nonsense and that was proven when they invaded Iraq ten years ago and they said "Iraq has stockpiles of WMD" and it was proven after the invasion that this was false ; it was fraud. So, we can't depend on what one magazine wrote.
Bashar al-AssadIt's all nonsense. It's only nonsense. I'm not afraid of the rain. I am not afraid of the rain. Oh, oh, God, I wish I wasn't.
Ernest HemingwayLet us simmer over our incalculable cauldron, our enthralling confusion, our hotchpotch of impulses, our perpetual miracle - for the soul throws up wonders every second. Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is death; conformity is death; let us say what comes into our heads, repeat ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or thinks or says. For nothing matters except life.
Virginia WoolfWhen people talk of atoms obeying fixed laws, they are either ascribing some kind of intelligence and free will to atoms or they are talking nonsense. There is no obedience unless there is at any rate a potentiality of disobeying.
Samuel ButlerI certainly should have,' he agrees, smiling and thinking what an absurd and universally-accepted bit of nonsense it is, that your best friends must necessarily be the ones who best understand you. As if there weren't far too much understanding in the world already; above all, that understanding between lovers, celebrated in song and story, which is actually such torture that no two of them can bear it without frequent separations or fights.
Christopher IsherwoodLearning -the kind of ignorance affected by (and affecting) civilized races, as distinguished from ignorance, the sort of learning incurred by savages. See nonsense.
Ambrose BierceUsually the nonsense liberals spout is kind of cute, but in wartime their instinctive idiocy is life-threatening.
Ann CoulterOne thing I detest most about the financial press is the lack of accountability. All sorts of nonsense is said without penalty.
Barry RitholtzBill Clinton persuaded some people that he was really a civilized character and his Administration had the best interests of humanity at heart. These days we don't have to put up with that nonsense. It's very clear that the George W. Bush Administration is out of control. It contains some truly dangerous people.
John PilgerMy dreams are the usual incoherent nonsense. Like most writers, at some point in my career I thought, well, I have these great dreams but I always forget them in the morning so Iโll leave a pad on my bedside table so I can write it down, and then you have some incredible dream and you write it down and the next morning you wake up and youโve written โpurple socksโ.
George R. R. MartinYou would make a ship sail against the winds and currents by lighting a bonfire under her decks? I have no time for such nonsense.
Napoleon BonaparteThe last level of metaphor in the Alice books is this: that life, viewed rationally and without illusion, appears to be a nonsense tale told by an idiot mathematician.
Martin GardnerYume is a no-nonsense dog. There are many people here, with camcorders running, lights shining and cameras clicking. She is being a guard dog.
Vladimir PutinIn the presence of some people we inevitably depart From ourselves: we are inaccurate, we say things we do not feel, And talk nonsense. When we get home we are conscious that we Have made fools of ourselves. Never go near these people.
Francois de La RochefoucauldSome people want tolerance to mean now that all ideas are equally valid. That's nonsense. There are some things that are right and there are some things that are wrong.
Rick WarrenThe most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most. The power which the sea requires in the sailor makes a man of him very fast, and the change of shores and population clears his head of much nonsense of his wigwam.
Ralph Waldo EmersonI do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books. I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me. My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams -- like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves.
Hermann HesseTheodore Dalrymple is a brilliant observer of both medicine and society, and his book wittily engages with two versions of the current nonsense: orthodox medicine on drug addiction, and romantic poets on the wisdom you supposedly enjoy from getting high.
Kenneth MinogueIt's [Los Angeles] mostly full of nonsense and delusion and egomania. They think they'll be young and beautiful forever, even though most of them aren't even young and beautiful now.
Christopher HitchensNonsense wakes up the brain cells. And it helps develop a sense of humor, which is awfully important in this day and age. Humor has a tremendous place in this sordid world. It's more than just a matter of laughing. If you can see things out of whack, then you can see how things can be in whack.
Dr. SeussWith a metric you can really go to town, otherwise it is just abstract nonsense.
Jennifer Tour ChayesI don't think he would have had any trouble answering Justice Sonia Sotomayor's excellent challenge in a case involving GPS surveillance. She said we need an alternative to this whole way of thinking about the privacy now which says that when you give data to a third party, you have no expectations of privacy. And [Louis] Brandeis would have said nonsense, of course you have expectations of privacy because it's intellectual privacy that has to be protected. That's my attempt to channel him on some of those privacy questions.
Jeffrey RosenEvery succeeding scientific discovery makes greater nonsense of old-time conceptions of sovereignty.
Anthony EdenThey are saying that if life has a structure, a staff, a sensible scaffold, we hang our nonsense on it. And they are saying that broken parts add color and music to the staff of life.
E. L. KonigsburgI believe that. But I want you to know something โ when it comes to all this enemies nonsense, Iโm out. I am a neutral country. I am Switzerland. I refuse to be affected by territorial disputes between mythical creatures. Jacob is family. You are . . . well, not exactly the love of my life, because I expect to love you for much longer than that. The love of my existence. I donโt care whoโs a werewolf and whoโs a vampire. If Angela turns out to be a witch, she can join the party, too.
Stephenie MeyerObserve that noses were made to wear spectacles; and so we have spectacles. Legs were visibly instituted to be breeched, and we have breeches. Stones were formed to be quarried and to build castles; and My Lord has a very noble castle; the greatest Baron in the province should have the best house; and as pigs were made to be eaten, we eat pork all year round; consequently, those who have asserted all is well talk nonsense; they ought to have said that all is for the best.
VoltaireI never read Freud. I've never been attracted to anything he has said, and I think he's started a lot of nonsense with psychiatry and that business. I don't think psychiatry can help or has helped anybody. I think it's a big fraud (pun not intended) on the public.
Bob DylanIn reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find - if it's a good novel - that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have changed a little... But it's very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed.
Ursula K. Le GuinOne problem I have with talking about myself in the context of class divisiveness is that I can be - and indeed have been - used by others to demonstrate its absence and that it's only a matter of hard work to move upward socially. After all, how could I complain about anything, if the retort is: "But look where you got to? It can't be all that bad." But this is nonsense as an argument quite aside from its empirical absurdity because no single case can invalidate a statistical claim.
Zia Haider RahmanThe idea is that inside every human being, however unprepossessing, there is a glorious, talented, and overwhelmingly attractive personality. Nonsense. Inside each of us is a mess of unruly, primitive impulses, and these can sometimes, under the strenuous self-discipline and dedication of art, result in notable creativity.
Margaret HalseyI don't think it's people's utterances that limit the writing. It's the activity itself. It's actually pretty hard to convey to someone who's not a surfer. The sensation is the thing. And it's tough to describe without resorting to clichรฉs or mystical nonsense.
Tim WintonWhen a man ends up in the White House who boasts about not having a clue and who says that specialist knowledge is elite nonsense, then a critical point has been reached. Then you will have an obviously irresponsible man sitting in a position that requires the utmost degree of responsibility.
Martin SchulzIn truth, the Library includes all verbal structures, all variations permitted by the twenty-five orthographical symbols, but not a single example of absolute nonsense.
Jorge Luis BorgesIn every province, the chief occupations, in order of importance, are lovemaking, malicious gossip, and talking nonsense.
VoltaireYou swore you loved me, and laughed and warned me that you would not love me forever. I did not hear you. You were speaking in a language I did not understand. Never, never, I can conceive of a love which is able to foresee its own termination. Love is its own eternity. Love is in every moment of its being: all time. It is the only glimpse we are permitted of what eternity is. So I did not hear you. The words were nonsense.
Thornton WilderDevotion means for the total; it is never for Rama, never for Krishna. Of course, Rama and Krishna are implied in the total, but it is never for a chosen one. Love is always for the chosen one, devotion is for the whole. So you cannot be a devotee of Rama. If you are for Rama, you are only a lover; and when you are a lover, then competition is bound to be there. Then Krishna will be a competitor, and Christ will be a competitor, and the same jealousies, the same conflicts, and all the same nonsense will follow. It has followed.
RajneeshIt was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now.
Anthony BurgessWhile wading through the whimsies, the puerilities, and unintelligible jargon of this work [Plato's Republic], I laid it down often to ask myself how it could have been that the world should have so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense as this?
Thomas Jefferson