Popular quotes about Nonsense! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
If you're doing nonsense it has to be rather awful, because there'd be no point. I'm trying to think if there's sunny nonsense. Sunny, funny nonsense for children โ oh, how boring, boring, boring. As Schubert said, there is no happy music. And that's true, there really isn't. And there's probably no happy nonsense, either.
Edward GoreyThe 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 NietzscheValkyrie 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 LandyA virgin can conceive. A dead body can walk again. Your leprosy can be cured. The blind can see. Nonsense. Itโs not moral to lie to children. Itโs not moral to lie to ignorant, uneducated people and tell them that if they only would believe nonsense, they can be saved. Itโs immoral.
Christopher HitchensDon't for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.
Ludwig WittgensteinIt'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 HemingwayThat which, perhaps, hears more nonsense than anything in the world, is a picture in a museum.
Jules de GoncourtWe also heard the usual old nonsense that banning hunting would affect employment if we abolished crime we would put all the police out of work. If we abolished ill-health we would put all the nurses and doctors out of work. Will anybody argue that we should preserve crime and ill-health in order to keep people in jobs?
Ann WiddecombeThe notion of the competitiveness of countries, on the model of the competitiveness of companies, is nonsense.
Martin WolfOne thing I detest most about the financial press is the lack of accountability. All sorts of nonsense is said without penalty.
Barry RitholtzThis is a formidable enemy. To dismiss it as a bunch of 'cowards' perpetuating 'senseless acts of violence' is complacent nonsense. People willing to kill thousands of innocents while they kill themselves are not cowards. They are deadly vicious warriors and need to be treated as such.
Charles KrauthammerAll of these declarations of what writing ought to be, which I had myself-though, thank God I had never committed them to paper-I think are nonsense. You write what you write, and then either it holds up or it doesn't hold up. There are no rules or particular sensibilities. I don't believe in that at all anymore.
Jamaica KincaidThere is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage.
George Bernard ShawOurs is a precarious language, as every writer knows, in which the merest shadow line often separates affirmation from negation, sense from nonsense, and one sex from the other
James ThurberI don't try to intimidate anybody before a fight. That's nonsense. I intimidate people by hitting them.
Mike TysonThe very nature of Joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting.
C. S. LewisA lot of the fun lies in trying to penetrate the mystery; and this is best done by saying over the lines to yourself again and again, till they pass through the stage of sounding like nonsense, and finally return to a full sense that had at first escaped notice.
Anthony HechtIt's a curious thing in American life that the most abject nonsense will be excused if the utterer can claim the sanction of religion. A country which forbids an established church by law is prey to any denomination. The best that can be said is that this is pluralism of a kind.
Christopher HitchensDo not be selfish and feel new people will take more of the teacher's attention and you won't get it. That's nonsense. With that attitude, you won't get it. The teacher sees that attitude and will have very little to do with you.
Frederick LenzMan has a tendency to try to give clear reasons to be rational, but often you can see how all those reasons are not convincing and turn out to be a big nonsense.
Ai WeiweiIf people become ecstatic the whole society will have to change, because this society is based on misery. If people are blissful you cannot lead them to war -- to Vietnam, or to Egypt, or to Israel. No. Someone who is blissful will just laugh and say: This is nonsense!
RajneeshWith a metric you can really go to town, otherwise it is just abstract nonsense.
Jennifer Tour ChayesThe book of Genesis, a farrago of nonsense so wholly absurd that even Sunday-school scholars have to be threatened with Hell to make them accept it.
H. L. MenckenIf men were the automatons that behaviorists claim they are, the behaviorist psychologists could not have invented the amazing nonsense called 'behaviorist psychology.'
Robert A. HeinleinAll these biopics and biographies and people gossiping about so-and-so's drug abuse or who's sleeping with who, it's just a bunch of nonsense.
Cass McCombsIf anybody thinks they should listen to me because I'm a professor at MIT, that's nonsense. You should decide whether something makes sense by its content, not by the letters after the name of the person who says it.
Noam ChomskyI know for a fact that this idea of the Jews causing the war and the Jews being so all important is nonsense. But that was Hitler's idea, and...was pure fantasy. As I say, Hitler is a riddle to me and will always remain so.
Joachim von RibbentropI was told once by some country people that a magician should never tell his dreams because the telling will make them come true. But I say that is great nonsense.
Susanna ClarkeWhy do they [Americans] quarrel, why do they hate Negroes, Indians, even Germans, why do they not have science and poetry commensurate with themselves, why are there so many frauds and so much nonsense? I cannot soon give a solution to these questions ... It was clear that in the United States there was a development not of the best, but of the middle and worst sides of European civilization; the notorious general voting, the tendency to politics... all the same as in Europe. A new dawn is not to be seen on this side of the ocean.
Dmitri MendeleevWho cares what the state thinks about your relationship? They're giving you tax breaks and this and that - it's just nonsense. You want to live with somebody, then live with somebody. All that other stuff is just a way for the state monitoring and codifying certain activities and ostracizing others.
Dale PeckYou're a very difficult person to manipulate, you know." "Nonsense," he said. "You just have to promise me that I won't have to do a thing, and then I'll do anything you want." "Anything?" "Anything that doesn't require doing anything." "That's nothing, then." "Is it?" "Yes." "Well, that's something.
Brandon SandersonChrist was crucified because he would have nothing to do with the crowd (even though he addressed himself to all). He did not want to form a party, an interest group, a mass movement, but wanted to be what he was, the truth, which is related to the single individual. Therefore everyone who will genuinely serve the truth is by that very fact a martyr. To win a crowd is no art; for that only untruth is needed, nonsense, and a little knowledge of human passions. But no witness to the truth dares to get involved with the crowd.
Soren KierkegaardI have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt, and, of course, if it ceased to beat, I would cease to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there, noโsympathyโsentimentโnonsense.
Charles DickensOrganized religion is sane and not silly when read as myth and poetry rather than science and law. Religion speaks nonsense when taken literally, but reveals some of the deepest truths of humankind when understood mythically, poetically, and even allegorically-that is when it is read with an active and creative imagination.
Rami M. ShapiroThe theory that thought is merely a movement in the brain is, in my opinion, nonsense; for if so, that theory itself would be merely a movement, an event among atoms, which may have speed and direction but of which it would be meaningless to use the words 'true' or 'false'.
C. S. LewisI think that's the real shame: We spent the last 48 hours talking about these disgusting, disgusting comments and disgusting behavior instead of talking about hurricane relief or what's going on in Flint, Michigan. It's just appalling to have to be dealing with such nonsense and such disgusting, you know, criminal speech.
Natalie PortmanIn every province, the chief occupations, in order of importance, are lovemaking, malicious gossip, and talking nonsense.
VoltaireThere will never again be a day exactly like today. There will never again be a moment exactly like this moment. After my next birthday, I will never again be the age I am right now. After midnight tonight, today will be part of history. Someday I'll be dying and I'll wish I'd done all the things I want to do now. Someday I'll be dead and I won't be able to do anything. But today, right now, I'm alive. And yet I'm writing nonsense on the back of my literature book. But I'm alive. And yet I'm just sitting here. But I'm alive.
Ryan MillerSometimes I dream a sentence and write it down. Itโs usually nonsense, but sometimes it seems a key to another world.
Anne CarsonI've almost come to feel that it doesn't make much difference what you believe in - the thing that's important is a state of belief. It's much better to believe in nonsense than in nothing.
Margaret Ayer Barnes