Banality Quotes - Page 4

• The young people who come to me in the hope of hearing me utter a few memorable maxims are quite disappointed. Aphorisms are not my forte, I say nothing but banalities.... I listen to them and they go away delighted.

  Andre Gide

  Memorable, People, Listening

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• I was filled with angst in college, that I struggled with the question of my future, the meaning of my life - spoiled sheltered rich girl collides with great books and is devastated by her own banality.

  Elizabeth Kostova

  Girl, Book, College

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• She always imagined that evil played out on a large canvas- wars, concentration camps, gas chambers, the partitioning of nations. Now she realized that evil had a domestic side, and its very banality protected it from exposure.

  Thrity Umrigar

  War, Evil, Sides

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• The mystery lies in the here and now. The mystery is: What is one to do with oneself? As you get older you begin to realize the trick time is playing, and that unless you do something about it, the passage of time is nothing but the encroachment of the horrible banality of the past on the pure future. The past devours the future like a tape recorder, converting pure possibility into banality. The present is the tape head, the mouth of time. Then where is the mystery and why bother kicking through the ashes? Because there is a clue in the past.

  Walker Percy

  Time, Lying, Past

  Walker Percy (2011). “Lancelot”, p.46, Open Road Media

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• If truth were not boring, science would have done away with God long ago. But God as well as the saints is a means to escape the dull banality of truth.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Mean, Long Ago, Saint

  "Tears and Saints". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1937.

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• ... In contrast to the "banality of evil," which posits that ordinary people can be responsible for the most despicable acts of cruelty and degradation of their fellows, I posit the "banality of heroism," which unfurls the banner of the heroic Everyman and Everywoman who heed the call to service to humanity when their time comes to act. When that bell rings, they will know that it rings for them. It sounds a call to uphold what is best in human nature that rises above the powerful pressures of Situation and System as the profound assertion of human dignity opposing evil.

  Philip Zimbardo

  Powerful, Hero, People

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• Each of us keeps, battened down inside himself, a sort of lunatic giant; impossible socially, but full scale; and it's the knockings and battering we sometimes hear in each other that keep our banter from utter banality.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Depression, Giants, Impossible

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• Among human beings there is no greater banality than death. Second in order, because it is possible to die without being born, comes birth, and next comes marriage.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Order, Next, Birth

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2015). “A Book For Free Spirits 2: Human Book”, p.170, 谷月社

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• Exclamation points are the most irritating of all. Look! they say, look at what I just said! How amazing is my thought! It is like being forced to watch someone else's small child jumping up and down crazily in the center of the living room shouting to attract attention. If a sentence really has something of importance to say, something quite remarkable, it doesn't need a mark to point it out. And if it is really, after all, a banal sentence needing more zing, the exclamation point simply emphasizes its banality!

  Lewis Thomas

  Children, Writing, Jumping

  Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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• As a jealous man, I suffer four times over: because I am jealous, because I blame myself for being so, because I fear that my jealousy will wound the other, because I allow myself to be subject to a banality: I suffer from being excluded, from being aggressive, from being crazy, and from being common.

  Roland Barthes

  Crazy, Jealous, Men

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• Most photographs are of life, what goes on in the world. And that's boring, generally. Life is banal, you know. Let's say that an artist deals with banality. I don't care what the discipline is.

  Garry Winogrand

  Artist, Discipline, Goes On

  Source: www.americansuburbx.com

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• Cannot Hannah Arendt's 'banality of evil' be subject to transposition: the evil of banality?

  Studs Terkel

  Evil, Subjects

  Studs Terkel (1980). “American Dreams: Lost and Found”, p.21, The New Press

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• Once you start rewriting, you're not able to stop. With each draft the fundamental banality and worthlessness of the material becomes more evident even as its vitality and spontaneity are drained from it.

  Barry N. Malzberg

  Able, Rewriting, Vitality

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• One would think America big enough to set aside wilderness preserves for the many of our citizens who seek to escape the incessant crowd, to search for solace in solitude amidst a sanctuary far removed from the banality of beer ads and cigarette commercials.

  Frank Church

  Beer, Thinking, America

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• In woman sex corrects banality, in men it aggravates it.

  Machado de Assis

  Sex, Men

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• I believe such passion-even passion born of fear and anxiety-is far better than a life of banality.

  Lori Nelson

  Believe, Passion, Anxiety

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• We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to the banalities of the conversation manual. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener's aunt is in the house.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Beautiful, Country, Aunt

  W. Somerset Maugham (2009). “The Moon and Sixpence”, p.292, The Floating Press

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• Language is in decline. Not only has eloquence departed but simple, direct speech as well, though pomposity and banality have not.

  Edwin Newman

  Simple, Departed, Speech

  Edwin Newman (1974). “Strictly Speaking: Will america be the Death of English?”

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• Pearl Harbor is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on December 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. Its centerpiece is 40 minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality. The film has been directed without grace, vision, or originality, and although you may walk out quoting lines of dialog, it will not be because you admire them.

  Roger Ebert

  Two, Grace, Vision

  "Pearl Harbor" by Roger Ebert, www.rogerebert.com. May 25, 2001.

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• Any effort... to make the obscure obvious is likely to be unappealing, for the penalty of failure is confusion while the reward of success is banality.

  Nelson Goodman

  Confusion, Effort, Obscurity

  Nelson Goodman (2012). “The Structure of Appearance”, p.1, Springer Science & Business Media

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• Surely, a single bunch of carrots painted naively, just as we personally see it, is worth all the endless banalities of the Schools, all those dreary pictures concocted out of tobacco juice according to time-honored formulas?

  Paul Cezanne

  School, Juice, Tradition

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• There is no blue without yellow and without orange, and if you put in blue, then you must put in yellow, and orange too, mustn't you? Oh well, you will tell me that what I write to you are only banalities.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Writing, Blue, Yellow

  Vincent van Gogh (2014). “Delphi Complete Works of Vincent van Gogh (Illustrated)”, p.2736, Delphi Classics

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• Art is no longer anything more than a kind of meta-language for banality.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Art, Language, Kind

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• Put crudely, one is left with a choice between two unsatisfactory combinations: artistic integrity married to spiritual compromise; and spiritual integrity married to artistic banality-or, worse, art compromised on both counts. Neither one will satisfy those who recognize the fundamental necessity of integrity in both faith and art.

  John Walford

  Spiritual, Art, Integrity

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• There is no community service in Seinfeld. But rather than lauding that, I think it shows the insane banality of it.

  Jason Alexander

  Thinking, Community, Insane

  "The End of 'Seinfeld'". www.rollingstone.com. May 28, 1998.

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