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...By a 'silly' theory I mean one which may be held at the time when one is talking or writing professionally, but which only an inmate of a lunatic asylum would think of carrying into daily life. ... It must not be supposed that the men who maintain these theories and beliefs are 'silly' people. Only very acute and learned men could have thought of anything so odd or defended anything so preposterous against the continual protests of common sense.
C. D. BroadAnd he remembered thinking then that if she died, he was certain he wouldn't cry. For it would be the dying face of an unknown, a street face, a newspaper image, and it was suddenly so very wrong that he had begun to cry, not at death but at the thought of not crying at death, a silly empty man near a silly empty woman.
Ray BradburyI like silly things. I think that "silly-stupid" or "stupid-smart" might be my philosophy, which is to combine a veneer of intelligence with an undercurrent of crass stupidity. Sometimes that stupidity is in the form of the actual joke that's being told, or it could be in the way the joke is told. Like, repetition is really stupid, but it's really funny. Or it could be that the punchline itself is stupid.
Michael ShowalterOh, talking is not so bad as that," said the Jester. "True, most people say only silly things when they speak. But it's easier to ignore them if you're saying silly things yourself.
Pseudonymous BoschI think I always wanted to be an actor - sounds a bit boring, doesn't it? And I pretended once that I wanted to be a vet because one of the teachers asked me and saying you want to be an actor sounds a little bit silly. And I do still feel a bit silly saying it. You feel a bit fraudulent.
Sophie ThompsonWalter Plinge said: "You know she asked me a very silly question Mrs Ogg! It was a silly question any fool knows the answer!" "Oh, yes," said Nanny. "About houses on fire, I expect..." "Yes! What would I take out of our house if it was on fire!" "I expect you were a good boy and said you'd take your mum," said Nanny. "No! My mum would take herself!" "What would you take out then, Walter?" Nanny said. "The fire!
Terry PratchettThere is something silly about grown men and women striving to reduce their vision of themselves and of civilization to bean counting.
John Ralston SaulThere is much appeal for me in Eastern religion, the little I know of it. And something thorny in me finds American adaptations of Buddhism terribly self-indulgent, silly, gooey in the way the English call "wet."
Robert PinskyI'm not melancholy; I'm a happy-go-lucky person, kind of silly. I like funny things. I have a lot of energy. I tend to like music that's mellow, though.
Norah JonesWe were pretty normal - suburban kids having a good time playing in bands. We were silly. We weren't dark, intense, humorless people. Humor was one of the connecting forces among us. It was more like camaraderie.
David PajoI would like to write a novel, or at least try to write one, although my motives are not entirely pure. For one thing, I get asked about writing novels so much that I feel guilty about never having written one. And although I have no strong desire to write a novel, I would hate not to try. That would just be silly. On the other hand, I hate the idea of slogging through something that turns out to be not good.
Kelly LinkDon't spend most of your time on the voices that don't count, voices that are going to add too little worth to your future. Don't waste time on the shallow and the silly. Tune those voices out and tune in voices that are going to add something to your life
Jim RohnWeโre taught to do things the right way. But if you want to discover something that other people havenโt, you need to do things the wrong way. Initiate a failure by doing something thatโs very silly, unthinkable, naughty, dangerous. Watching why that fails can take you on a completely different path. Itโs exciting, actually. To me, solving problems is a bit like a drug. Youโre on it, and you canโt get off.
James DysonArtistic judgments are silly if expressed as dogmas, at least until we get an "artometer" which can measure objectively how many micro-michelangelos or kilo-homers of genius a given artifact has in it.
Robert Anton Wilson[Moses] probably said to himself, 'Must stop or I shall be getting silly.' That is why there are only ten commandments.
Mrs. Patrick CampbellThe Supreme Court said nothing about silliness, but I suspect it may play more of a role than one might suppose. People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust... Probably the first slave ship, with Negroes lying in chains on its decks, seemed commonsensical to the owners who operated it and to the planters who patronized it. But such a vessel would not be in the realm of common sense today. The only sense that is common, in the long run, is the sense of change.
E. B. WhiteI don't mind being goofy and silly. I love to make people laugh and I'm not self-conscious.
Malin AkermanSilly ideas, worth the admission price in smiles, but they're true. Is high-energy physics interesting because it's true or because it's crazy?
Richard BachI would even go to Washington, which is saying something for me, just to glimpse Jane Q. Public, being sworn in as the first female president of the United States, while her husband holds the Bible and wears a silly pill box hat and matching coat.
Anna QuindlenAs with most consensual crimes, this prohibition of hemp is both silly and sinister.
Peter McWilliamsWine has been to me a firm friend and a wise counsellor. Wine has lit up for me the pages of literature, and revealed in life romance lurking in the commonplace. Wine has made me bold, but not foolish; has induced me to say silly things, but not do them. If such small indiscretions standing in the debit column of wine's account were added up, they would amount to nothing in comparison with the vast accumulation on the credit side.
Duff CooperThe actual assertion that the Census Bureau could behave in such a way as to tilt things one way or the other way in the partisan sense, is, on the face of it, a silly charge. It's the same Census Bureau that's considered to be incompetent by some people, and then some of the same people are saying that this incompetent agency is so clever and so Machiavellian that it can design a census for partisan reasons.
Kenneth PrewittThe old system where every child was locked away and set into nonstop, daily cut throat competition with every other child for silly prizes called grades is broken beyond repair. If it could be fixed it could have been fixed by now. Good riddance.
John Taylor GattoShe thinks she knows everything that goes on inside me, and she doesnโt know a thing. What did she want from me โ to tell the truth all the time? To run around saying it did matter to me that I live in a world where you can grow old and be alone and have to get down on your hands and knees and beg for friends? A place where people just sort of forget about you because you get a little old and your mindโs a bit senile or silly? Did she think that didnโt bother me underneath?
Paul ZindelWe all need something to help us unwind at the end of the day. You might have a glass of wine, or a joint, or a big delicious blob of heroin to silence your silly brainbox of its witterings but there has to be some form of punctuation, or life just seems utterly relentless.
Russell BrandPick-a-lock, Pick-a-lock, you'll regret the day, When you took a mouse thief and locked him away, Silly cat, look at that, it's two for one, A thief and a warrior, by dawn will be gone.
Brian JacquesFeminism is ridiculous. Feminists are silly idealists who want to be on top. There is no real equality in sexual relationships - someone always wins.
Mary McCarthyCulture is a perversion. It fetishizes objects, creates consumer mania, it preaches endless forms of false happiness, endless forms of false understanding in the form of squirrelly religions and silly cults. It invites people to diminish themselves and dehumanize themselves by behaving like machines.
Terence McKennaHis gaze was a lot steadier than her heartbeat. โSheโs the reason for those whispered phone calls I used to overhear, isnโt she?โ โDonโt be silly. I was talking to my lover.โ โShe told me she lives at a place called Brookdale. After I hung up, I did a little research on the Web. Your talent for obfuscation continues to amaze me.โ โHey, I havenโt obfuscated in weeks. Makes you go blind.
Susan Elizabeth PhillipsI don't have any frustrations. It sounds a little silly, but life is too short for me. I don't worry about all the things that happen, I just think about what to do with them. I work a lot with blind people in my spare time and I count my blessings every day.
Paul PolmanFew countries have produced such arrogance and snobbishness as America. Particularly is this true of the American woman of the middle class. She not only considers herself the equal of man, but his superior, especially in her purity, goodness, and morality. Small wonder that the American suffragist claims for her vote the most miraculous powers. In her exalted conceit she does not see how truly enslaved she is, not so much by man, as by her own silly notions and traditions. Suffrage can not ameliorate that sad fact; it can only accentuate it, as indeed it does.
Emma GoldmanIt's just silly to look at the incredibly steep decline in the mainline and the clear institutional weakening of Catholicism in the 1960s and 70s and pretend that something really big didn't change then. It did change. There really was a significant institutional decline.
Ross DouthatHe couldnโt see why people made such a fuss about people eating their silly old fruit anyway, but life would be a lot less fun if they didnโt. And there was never an apple, in Adamโs opinion, that wasnโt worth the trouble you got into for eating it.
Neil GaimanSuch silly things, children -- and so embarrassing -- because they keep changing themselves out of shame, out of a need to be loved or something. While animals are born who they are, accept it, and that is that. They live with greater peace than people do.
Gregory Maguire