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Hudibras has defined nonsense, as Cowley does wit, by negatives. Nonsense, he says, is that which is neither true nor false. These two great properties of nonsense, which are always essential to it, give it such a peculiar advantage over all other writings, that it is incapable of being either answered or contradicted.
Joseph AddisonNonsense, it was all nonsense: this whole damned outfit, with its committees, its conferences, its eternal talk, talk, talk, was a great con trick; it was a mechanism to earn a few hundred men and women incredible sums of money.
Doris LessingI do not think that G. H. Hardy was talking nonsense when he insisted that the mathematician was discovering rather than creating, nor was it wholly nonsense for Kepler to exult that he was thinking God's thoughts after him. The world for me is a necessary system, and in the degree to which the thinker can surrender his thought to that system and follow it, he is in a sense participating in that which is timeless or eternal.
Brand BlanshardThe plays of children are nonsense, but very educative nonsense. So it is with the largest and solemnest things, with commerce, government, church, marriage, and so with the history of every man's bread, and the ways by which he is to come by it.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWe 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 WiddecombeFear of the devil is nonsense. Fear of demons is foolish. The Spirit of God anointing the Christian heart makes the soul impregnable to the powers of darkness.
John G. LakeItโs only when youโve lost someone that you realize the nonsense of that phrase โItโs a small worldโ. It isnโt. Itโs a vast, devouring world, especially if youโre alone.
Clive BarkerChange is always subjective. To talk of evil and misery is nonsense, because they do not exist outside. If I am immune from all anger, I never feel angry. If am immune from all hatred, I never feel hatred.
Swami VivekanandaDon't judge others. Always be open to them. Avoid the cult mentality, you know, the super-slick, "I'm superior because I meditate, because I'm on the pathway to enlightenment," the subtle ego nonsense, terrible trap.
Frederick LenzI think we have a fascinating new and quite dominant input into politics - and it wont go away. From time to time, people articulate a view that we should ban opinion polls, but that's nonsense.
Jim BolgerThe perfect integrity of The NewYork Times, and its writers, is not precisely 'just silly nonsense,'
Hedi SlimaneThe notion of the competitiveness of countries, on the model of the competitiveness of companies, is nonsense.
Martin WolfNaturally, along the way, there are beings and forces that will challenge you. They want to try and get some of your power, take it away from you, all this nonsense, and of course, you just defeat them.
Frederick LenzOften a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances... and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, which people see as ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn.
Saint AugustineThe notion that everyone would like Christianity to be true, and therefore all atheists are brave men who have accepted the defeat of all their deepest desires, is simply impudent nonsense.
C. S. LewisThe 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 EmersonFor me science fiction is a way of thinking, a way of logic that bypasses a lot of nonsense. It allows people to look directly at important subjects.
Gene RoddenberryI have heard a good many pretend that they are going to die; or that they have died, for aught that I know. Nonsense! I'll defy them to do it. They have n't got life enough in them.... Only half a dozen or so have died since the world began.
Henry David ThoreauIf you're a preacher, you talk for a living, so even if you don't make sense, you learn to make nonsense eloquently.
Andrew YoungAnd, in addition to all the miseries, the young are not wise. They have very little understanding about life. Who wants to live every day when you don't know what's going on? When people are manipulating you, telling you to buy this perfume and you'll be beautiful, or this pair of jeans and you'll be sexy-and you believe them! It's such nonsense.
Morrie Schwartz...people today are so accustomed to pretentious nonsense that they see nothing amiss in reading without understanding, and many of them at length discover that they can without difficulty write in like manner themselves and win applause for it. And so it perpetuates itself.
George Albert WellsThese issues that exist among people that we are Iranian and what we need to do for Iran are not correct; these issues are not correct. This issue, which is perhaps being discussed everywhere, regarding paying attention to nation and nationality is nonsense in Islam and is against Islam. One of the things that the designers of Imperialism and their agents have promoted is the idea of nation and nationality.
Ruhollah KhomeiniLive in constant gratitude. No matter what the condition today, no matter how dark, how dreary, how painful and difficult....to day is merely the passing outcome of yesterday's nonsense. How you feel today, and what you give your attention to, builds tomorrow.
James Arthur RayI know that I reached a point where I wasn't going to let the nonsense happening before me slide anymore.
Ariana MadixMy father would always tell me that creativity didn't matter at the diner. When I was probably 14 or 15, I would put - I mean, it was a no-nonsense place - but I would try to put a sprig of parsley or orange curl on the omelets, or something like that. He'd be like "Don't do that!"
Grant AchatzPeople will often, almost always, prefer a male God. A male image of God gives them this sense of security, safety, order, no nonsense. So that's where their psyche is at. Probably it's something that they've got to go through. Not that there isn't a need for order in the world, but the mystical level seems to be the mature level of religion, and there the question is not order but union - divine union. And so, without some integration of the feminine, usually you never get to the mystical level.
Richard RohrWrite it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety. Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in. Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This new day is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.
Ralph Waldo EmersonAbsolute freedom is absolute nonsense! We gain freedom in anything through commitment, discipline, and fixed habit.
Richard J. FosterI do agree that the science is not settled on this. The idea we would put Americans' economy in jeopardy based on scientific theory that is not settled yet to me is nonsense. Just because you have a group of scientists who stood up and said this is the fact... Galileo got outvoted for a spell. To put Americans' economic future in jeopardy, asking us to cut back in areas that would have monstrous economic impact on this country is not good economics and I would suggest is not necessarily good science.
Rick PerryThe 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. MenckenProselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us. Sometimes after a meeting I want to arrange another one because new ideas are born and I discover new needs. This is important: to get to know people, listen, expand the circle of ideas. The world is crisscrossed by roads that come closer together and move apart, but the important thing is that they lead towards the Good.
Pope FrancisIn 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 GuinI 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 ClarkeThey don't understand the multi-life sequences. Anything they can't see in a laboratory, they think is nonsense.
Frederick LenzThe Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti once remarked that observing without evaluating is the highest form of human intelligence. When I first read this statement, the thought, 'What nonsense!' shot through my mind before I realized that I had just made an evaluation.
Marshall B. RosenbergMathematics is the queen of disciplines.... it will drive the nonsense out of your head!
Leo TolstoyFrom the earliest time the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.
W. Somerset MaughamI've realised that as long as the youth has the ability to use social media and their voice is there, people can actually cut through the nonsense and see what's really going on. People are live streaming from the ground, so everyone's starting to become more aware. When you pull back from this playground of duality, where someone is right and someone is wrong, you recognise that this is the way things have played out for years and years. And as long as the youth culture can see the madness that's going on in the world, there will eventually be a revolution.
Craig DavidI think our culture is sick and tired of fluffy nonsense and people want something more sincere and heartfelt.
Joseph Gordon-LevittIt has become fashionable in Washington to argue that Obamacare cannot be reversed. That is nonsense. It's a fight worth waging, and a fight which can be won.
Bobby JindalYou are too smart and too knowledgeable to believe much of the nonsense you have been espousing on global warming and many other issues.
Howard WolpeIn every province, the chief occupations, in order of importance, are lovemaking, malicious gossip, and talking nonsense.
Voltaire