Awfulness Quotes

• In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Men, Loathing, Existentialism

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2016). “The Birth of Tragedy”, p.65, Friedrich Nietzsche

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've gotten a lot of livid letters about the awfulness of my work. I've never known what to make of it. Why do people bother to write if they hate what I do?

  Lynda Barry

  Hate, Writing, People

  "Barefoot on the Shag" by Pamela Grossman, www.cnn.com. May 21, 1999.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Such things as anguish, woe, affliction, guilt, feelings of awfulness, and utter wretchedness, the bread and butter of Days of Yore and Russians, sadly have very little staying power in these lickety-split Modern Times.

  Marisha Pessl

  Feelings, Guilt, Affliction

  Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.166, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• This boy has negative charisma. He walks into a room and the oxygen starts to evaporate. I guess that's why girls sleep with him. They find his awfulness transfixing. He's like a lousy 1970's disaster movie that they can't bring themselves to turn off, even though it is making their life worse every minute they leave it on.

  Emma Forrest

  Girl, Sleep, Boys

  4 Copy quote

• I suppose I really seemed mad, then; but it was only through the awfulness of having said nothing but the truth, and being thought to be deluded.

  Sarah Waters

  Mad, Said, Nothing But The Truth

  5 Copy quote

• Crazy Love is crazy good! Leslie What's brain is evidently crowded with strangeness, awfulness, wonderfulness, wildness, madness of all kinds...and love. Lots of love. How lucky we are that her imagination runs deep, runs true, runs onto the page in crazily beautiful stories -- and lucky, so very lucky, to be holding those stories right now in our hands.

  Molly Gloss

  Beautiful, Running, Crazy

  4 Copy quote

• Having become conscious of the truth he once perceived, man now sees only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence, he now understands the symbolic element in Ophelia's fate, he now recognizes the wisdom of the woodland god, Silenus: it nauseates him.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Fate, Men, Nausea

  4 Copy quote

• A person should go out on the water on a fine day to a small distance from a beautiful coast, if he would see Nature really smile. Never does she look so delightful, as when the sun is brightly reflected by the water, while the waves are gently rippling, and the prospect receives life and animation from the glancing transit of an occasional row-boat, and the quieter motion of a few small vessels. But the land must be well in sight; not only for its own sake, but because the immensity and awfulness of a mere sea-view would ill accord with the other parts of the glittering and joyous scene.

  Augustus William Hare

  Beautiful, Distance, Sight

  Augustus William Hare (1827). “Guesses at Truth”, p.8

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• After most deaths, I imagine, the awfulness lies in how everything’s changed….there’s a hole. It’s person-shaped and it follows you everywhere…. For us what was killing was how nothing had changed. We’d been waiting to be transformed, and now here we were, back in our old life.

  Elizabeth McCracken

  Lying, Waiting, Imagine

  6 Copy quote

• Why is the awfulness of families such a popular reason for starting another?

  Peter De Vries

  Reason, Starting

  Peter De Vries (2012). “The Blood of the Lamb: A Novel”, p.36, University of Chicago Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A dim consciousness of infinite mystery and grandeur lies beneath all the commonplace of life . There is an awfulness and a majesty around us, in all our little worldliness .

  Albert Pike

  Lying, Littles, Majesty

  Albert Pike “Morals and Dogma : Scottish Rite in Freemasonry”, Lulu.com

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Marriage is a step so grave and decisive that it attracts light-headed, variable men by its very awfulness.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Men, Light, Variables

  'Virginibus Puerisque' (1881) 'Virginibus Puerisque, pt. 1'

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• My experience is that journalists report on the nearest-cliche algorithm, which is extremely uninformative because there aren't many cliches, the truth is often quite distant from any cliche, and the only thing you can infer about the actual event was that this was the closest cliche. It is simply not possible to appreciate the sheer awfulness of mainstream media reporting until someone has actually reported on you. It is so much worse than you think.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Thinking, Media, Appreciate

  Comment to the article "Predictible Fakers" by Robin Hanson, www.overcomingbias.com. January 20, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Wonderful is the depth of thy words, whose surface is before us, gently leading on the little ones: and yet a wonderful deepness, O my God, a wonderful deepness. It is awe to look into it; even an awfulness of honour, and a trembling of love.

  Saint Augustine

  Depth, Looks, Littles

  11 Copy quote

• I feel like a lot of my aesthetic was in response to feeling the awfulness and cheapness of that [ the 70'th].

  Daniel Clowes

  Feelings, Aesthetic, Feels

  Interview with Noel Murray, www.avclub.com. October 19, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• All I try to do is as earnestly and as acutely as I can, conceive a character and try to portray this character just honestly. If the humor is within the absurdity and the awfulness of situations, then let it be seen that way.

  Patrick Warburton

  Character, Trying, Way

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Forgiving and being reconciled to our enemies or our loved ones are not about pretending that things are other than they are. It is not about patting one another on the back and turning a blind eye to the wrong. True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the abuse, the hurt, the truth. It could even sometimes make things worse. It is a risky undertaking but in the end it is worthwhile, because in the end only an honest confrontation with reality can bring real healing. Superficial reconciliation can bring only superficial healing.

  Desmond Tutu

  Hurt, Real, Healing

  124 Copy quote

• . . .only the victims and survivors can truly comprehend the awfulness of that time and place; the rest of us live on the other side of the fence, staring through from our own comfortable place, trying in our own clumsy ways to make sense of it all.

  John Boyne

  Trying, Way, Sides

  8 Copy quote

• It's disquieting to reflect that one's dreams never symbolize one's real wishes, but always something Much Worse... If I really wanted to be passionately embraced by Peter, I should dream of dentists or gardening. I wonder what unspeakable depths of awfulness can only be expressed by the polite symbol of Peter's embraces?

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Dream, Real, Wish

  4 Copy quote

• However baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it.

  Herman Melville

  Baby, Men, Sea

  Herman Melville (2016). “Moby Dick (World Classics, Unabridged)”, p.190, Vij Books India Pvt Ltd

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Animals are God's creatures, not human property, nor utilities, nor resources, nor commodities, but precious beings in God's sight. ...Christians whose eyes are fixed on the awfulness of crucifixion are in a special position to understand the awfulness of innocent suffering. The Cross of Christ is God's absolute identification with the weak, the powerless, and the vulnerable, but most of all with unprotected, undefended, innocent suffering.

  Andrew Linzey

  Christian, Eye, Animal

  11 Copy quote

• His eyes were frighteningly alive, the curve of his mouth savage and pleased. It suddenly didn't seem at all surprising that he should be able to pull things from his dreams. In that moment, Blue was a little in love with all of them. Their magic. Their quest. Their awfulness and strangeness. Her raven boys.

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Love, Dream, Eye

  Maggie Stiefvater (2013). “The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, Book 2)”, p.15, Scholastic Inc.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• In that moment, Blue was a little in love with all of them. Their magic. Their quest. Their awfulness and strangeness. Her raven boys.

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Boys, Ravens, Blue

  Maggie Stiefvater (2012). “The Raven Boys”, p.336, Scholastic Inc.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Forgiveness is taking seriously the awfulness of what has happened when you are treated unfairly. Forgiveness is not pretending that things are other than the way they are.

  Desmond Tutu

  Forgiveness, Way, Pretending

  20 Copy quote

• It's the very awfulness of [murder] that makes reading about it feel so cozy.

  Louise Doughty

  Reading, Cozy, Murder

  6 Copy quote