Popular quotes about Nonsense! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
It 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 TolstoyNine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.
Benjamin DisraeliTo 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 is amazing that when someone else spouts the nonsense you yourself believe you can readily perceive it as nonsense
Philip K. DickGoodness often blossoms like roses on very rickety trellis-work, and beauty can grow out of nonsense.
Hubert ButlerI do not like to employ secretaries that have more wit than myself. I am afraid to make them write all my nonsense.
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de SevigneBy deafness one gains in one respect more than one loses; one misses more nonsense than sense.
Horace WalpoleOne thing I detest most about the financial press is the lack of accountability. All sorts of nonsense is said without penalty.
Barry RitholtzFacts are ventriloquistโs dummies. Sitting on a wise manโs knee they may be made to utter words of wisdom; elsewhere, they say nothing, or talk nonsense, or indulge in sheer diabolism.
Aldous HuxleyAll 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 systematic corruption in FIFA. That is nonsense. We are financially clean and clear.
Sepp BlatterWhat is the power of life? With all the ungraceful dirt, nonsense, you remain graceful.
Harbhajan Singh YogiWhy 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?
Dmitri MendeleevYou may be right. I think it was round about Christmas when I got my Welsh dragon tattoo.โ At that, Tessa had to try very hard not to blush. โHow did that happen?โ Will made an airy gesture with his hand. โI was drunkโฆโ โNonsense. You were never really drunk.โ โOn the contraryโin order to learn how to pretend to be inebriated, once must become inebriated at least once, as a reference point. Six-Fingered Nigel had been at the mulled ciderโโ โYou canโt mean thereโs truly a Six-Fingered Nigel?
Cassandra ClareImagine 1050 blind persons each with a scrambled Rubik's cube, and try to conceive of the chance of them all simultaneously arriving at the solved form. You then have a chance of arriving by random shuffling, of just one of the many biopolymers on which life depends. The notion that not only the biopolymers but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.
Fred HoyleTo demand 'sense' is the hallmark of nonsense. Nature does not make sense. Nothing makes sense.
Ayn RandYou are very clever,' said the old man shyly. 'I would like to eat your brains, one day,' For some reason the books of etiquette that Daphne's grandmother had forced on her didn't quite deal with this. Of course, silly people would say to babies, 'You're so sweet I could gobble you all up!', but that sort of nonsense seemed less funny when it was said by a man in war paint who owned more than one skull. Daphne, cursed with good manners, settled for, 'It's very kind of you to say so.
Terry PratchettYou say that love is nonsense. I tell you it is no such thing. For weeks and months it is a steady physical pain, an ache about the heart, never leaving one, by night or by day; a long strain on one's nerves like toothache or rheumatism, not intolerable at any one instant, but exhausting by its steady drain on the strength.
Henry AdamsIโd heard you were dead.โ "I heard you wear a red lace corset,โ I said matter-of-factly. โBut I donโt believe every bit of nonsense that gets rumored about.
Patrick RothfussIt's nonsense to say that it's not in the bill. The reality is that the bill they will have passed to the Senate will have this language in it.
David KeatingI find it difficult to believe that I belong to such an idiotic, rotten species - the species that actually boasts of its freedom of will, heroism on command, senseless violence, and all of the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism.
Albert EinsteinYou know, when I sit in meetings and things are very tense and people take things extremely seriously and they invest a lot of their ego, I sometimes think to myself, 'Come on, you know, there's life and there's death and there is love.' And all of that ego business is nonsense compared to that.
Christine LagardeThey 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. KonigsburgEveryone from the pope to some hobo thinks, "I'm a human being. What am I doing here?" You can't get carried away with fame and fortune and all that. It's all nonsense. The whole pop-star side of it is all fun and good, but you don't get anywhere without putting in the hours. I get so fulfilled when we play a song live that we spent hours working on. It's all cool. Fame is something to have fun with, but you shouldn't take it too seriously because it is bollocks.
Chris MartinNonsense, when earnest, is impressive, and sometimes takes you in. If you are in a hurry, you occasionally mistake it for sense.
Benjamin DisraeliI 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 MendeleevThey don't understand the multi-life sequences. Anything they can't see in a laboratory, they think is nonsense.
Frederick LenzThe introduction of the cipher 0 or the group concept was general nonsense too, and mathematics was more or less stagnating for thousands of years because nobody was around to take such childish steps.
Alexander GrothendieckI 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 WintonOrganized 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. ShapiroI'm open to anyone who can or has demonstrated that they can effectively market and distribute with the best. It wouldn't hurt if they could put up with my nonsense too.
Vantile WhitfieldTo quote a recent customer email, โI really appreciate your thoughtful and professional response. I donโt get that a lot from customer service. Usually, itโs scripted nonsense that makes it seem like Iโve done something wrong. Youโve single-handedly improved my perception tenfold. Someone there ought to give you a pay raise."
Matt MickiewiczWe were all delighted, we all realized we were leaving confusion and nonsense behind and performing our one and noble function of the time, move.
Jack KerouacWhile 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 JeffersonI never used to watch horror films because I was a nervous type. I believed all the publicity about The Exorcist when it was released - you know, all that nonsense about people fainting in the cinema - and decided it would definitely freak me out. I particularly remember my girlfriend telling me about Suspiria - ironic considering my first ever film work was with Argento - and how scary it was.
Simon BoswellLet schoolmasters puzzle their brain, With grammar, and nonsense, and learning, Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, Gives genius a better discerning.
Oliver GoldsmithA man may debar nonsense from his library of reason, but not from the arena of his impulses.
Rex StoutThere's so much, I guess I want to say, nonsense about show business now. Because of reality television. I don't get this, because I was never raised to get this, but I don't understand wanting to be famous. Maybe it's because I was born famous, but I don't get it.
Lorna LuftI invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready, and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.
Henry FordThe capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.
Robert A. HeinleinWriting is not something you can do or you can't. It's not even something that 'other people do' or 'for smart people only' or even 'for people who finished school and went to University'. Nonsense. Anyone can do it. But no-one can do it straight off the bat. Like plastering, brain surgery or assembling truck engines, you have to do a bit of training - get your hands dirty - and make some mistakes.
Jasper Fforde