Complaints Quotes - Page 21

• Please don't worry. It's a psychological complaint, common amongst ex-librarians. You see, she thinks she's a coffee table edition.

  Alan Moore

  Coffee, Thinking, Worry

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• real misery delights not in reproaches and complaints. It is like charity and love - silent, long suffering and mild.

  Lady Caroline Lamb

  Real, Long, Suffering

  Lady Caroline Lamb (1972). “Glenarvon (1816).”, Scholars Facsimilies & Reprint

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• Some people are never content with their lot, let what will happen. Clouds and darkness are over their heads, alike whether it rain or shine. To them every incident is an accident, and every accident a calamity.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Rain, Clouds, People

  Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1870). “Feathers for Arrows: Or Illustrations for Preachers and Teachers, from My Note Book”, p.61

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• Lord knows what incommunicable small terrors infants go through, unknown to all. We disregard them, we say they forget, because they have not the words to make us remember. ... By the time they learn to speak they have forgotten the details of their complaints, and so we never know. They forget so quickly, we say, because we cannot contemplate the fact that they never forget.

  Margaret Drabble

  Children, Details, Facts

  The Millstone (1965)

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• I fear - as far as I can tell - that most undergraduate degrees in computer science these days are basically Java vocational training. I've heard complaints from even mighty Stanford University with its illustrious faculty that basically the undergraduate computer science program is little more than Java certification.

  Alan Kay

  Stanford University, Training, Java

  ACM Queue, Volume 2, issue 9, queue.acm.org. December 27, 2004.

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• We have found other terms far less vague than the old ones to designate the same complaints. It's a great advance linguistically.

  Jean Anouilh

  Found, Term, Vague

  Jean Anouilh (1958). “The waltz of the toreadors: a play in three acts. Translated by Lucienne Hill”

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• Some of the most vocal critics of the way things are being done are people who have done nothing themselves, and whose only contributions to society are their complaints and moral exhibitionism.

  Thomas Sowell

  People, Exhibitionism, Done

  "Random Thoughts". www.jewishworldreview.com. October 17, 2005.

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• Friendship is far more delicate than love. Quarrels and fretful complaints are attractive in the last, offensive in the first. And the very things which heap fewel on the fire of ardent passion, choke and extinguish sober and true regard. On the other hand, time, which is sure to destroy that love of which half certainly depends on desire, is as sure to increase a friendship founded on talents, warm with esteem, and ambitious of success for the object of it.

  Hester Lynch Piozzi

  Passion, Fire, Hands

  Hester Lynch Piozzi, Penelope Pennington (2005). “The Intimate Letters of Piozzi and Pennington”, Nonsuch Pub

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• What is called chance is the instrument of Providence and the secret agent that counteracts what men call wisdom, and preserves order and regularity, and continuation in the whole, for ... I firmly believe, notwithstanding all our complaints, that almost every person upon earth tastes upon the totality more happiness than misery; and therefore if we could correct the world to our fancies, and with the best intentions imaginable, probably we should only produce more misery and confusion.

  Horace Walpole

  Believe, Men, Order

  Horace Walpole (1904). “The letters of Horace Walpole: fourth earl of Orford”

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• I hated waiting. If I had one particular complaint, it was that my life seemed composed entirely of expectation.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Expectations, Waiting, Hated

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• I understand that in the UK there have already been 10,000 complaints from viewers about these remarks, which people see, rightly, as offensive. I want Britain to be seen as a country of fairness and tolerance. Anything detracting from this I condemn.

  Gordon Brown

  Country, People, Tolerance

  "Reality TV Racism Row Grips Viewers". uk.reuters.com. January 19, 2007.

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• The chance you had is the life you've got. You can make complaints about what people, including you, make of their lives after they have got them, and about what people make of other people's lives, ...but you mustn't wish for another life. You mustn't want to be somebody else.

  Wendell Berry

  People, Wish, Want

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• I hated waiting. If I had one particular complaint, it was that my life seemed composed entirely of expectation. I expected — an arrival, an explanation, an apology. There had never been one, a fact I could have accepted, were it not true that, just when I had got used to the limits and dimensions of one moment, I was expelled into the next and made to wonder again if any shapes hid in its shadows.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Apology, Expectations, Waiting

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• Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior's world.

  Pema Chodron

  Warrior, Inspire, Everyday

  Pema Chodron (2002). “The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times”, p.85, Shambhala Publications

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• Its so hard to talk when you want to kill yourself. That's above and beyond everything else, and it's not a mental complaint-it's a physical thing, like it's physically hard to open your mouth and make the words come out. They don't come out smooth and in conjunction with your brain the way normal people's words do; they come out in chunks as if from a crushed-ice dispenser; you stumble on them as they gather behind your lower lip. So you just keep quiet.

  Ned Vizzini

  Depression, Ice, People

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• Take care, Jeffy. I’ll see you soon, right? Just remember not to throw food at the nurses. I don’t want to get any complaint calls, OK? Steven, I don’t throw food at…oh, that was a joke, right? Yup, buddy boy. It was a joke. But seriously, no kissing the nurses on the lips, either. It messes up their makeup. Eeeeeeewwwww!

  Jordan Sonnenblick

  Kissing, Boys, Makeup

  Jordan Sonnenblick (2010). “Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie”, p.64, Scholastic Inc.

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• I have never been able to understand the complaint that a story is "depressing" because of its subject matter. What depresses me are stories that don't seem to know these things go on, or hide them in resolute chipperness; "witty stories," in which every problem is the occasion for a joke; "upbeat" stories that flog you with transcendence. Please. We're grown ups now.

  Tobias Wolff

  Witty, Depressing, Stories

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• Too often, complaint is not about principled objection on moral grounds, but opportunistic objection on grounds of self-interest. To rectify this, we need to work on mastering the art of complaint.

  Julian Baggini

  Art, Self, Needs

  "Don't complain less - do it better" by Julian Baggini, www.theguardian.com. July 14, 2010.

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• All say, ‘how hard it is that we have to die’ -- a strange complaint to come from the mouths of those who have had to live.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Death, Dying

  Mark Twain (2016). “Pudd'nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins”, p.94, Broadview Press

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• I can’t talk about my books. I have written them and tried to forget them. I have written once, and readers have read me many times, no? I try to think of what I wrote, it’s very unhealthy to think about the past, the case of elegies is very sad, as much as the case of complaints.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Book, Past, Thinking

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• Well, it seems a bit silly, looking there,” said Will. “It’s not like Mortmain’s going to lodge a complaint against the Shadow-hunters through official channels. ‘Very upset Shadowhunters refused to all die when I wanted them to. Demand recompense. Please mail cheque to A. Mortmain, 18 Kensington Road—

  Cassandra Clare

  Silly, Upset, Shadow

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• Is your face a beautiful blossom or a sweet torture? I have no complaints but my heart is tempted to let you hear of its sorrows.

  Rumi

  Beautiful, Sweet, Heart

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• Jesus loved the will of His Father. He embraced the limitations, the necessities, the conditions, the very chains of His humanity as He walked and worked here on earth, fulfilling moment by moment His divine commission and the stern demands of His incarnation. Never was there a word or even a look of complaint.

  Elisabeth Elliot

  Jesus, Father, Humanity

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• I'm remembering how this works. How life doesn't have to be only anxiety about what's gone wrong or could go worng, and complaints about the world around you. How a person you're excited about can remind you there's stuff going on beyond... routine oil changes and homework. Stuff that matters. Stuff to look forward to.

  Sara Zarr

  Oil, Anxiety, Routine

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• By all means, avoid words—threats, complaints, justification, narratives, reframing, attempts to win arguments, supplications; avoid words!

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Mean, Winning, Narrative

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2010). “The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms”, p.95, Random House

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