Cynical Quotes - Page 17

• Sink into morbid, cynical reflection on how much romantic heartbreak is to do with ego and miffed pride rather than actual loss

  Helen Fielding

  Pride, Loss, Reflection

  Helen Fielding (2016). “Bridget Jones's Diary: Picador Classic”, p.121, Pan Macmillan

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Funny, Writing

  "Bite-Size Twain: Wit and Wisdom from the Literary Legend".

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• As a result, I've been portrayed as a cynical barbarian preying on the very clients I was charged to defend.

  Jack Abramoff

  Barbarians, Clients, Results

  "Jack in a Box". Zagorin, A., content.time.com. April 30, 2005.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Some cynical Frenchman has said that there are two parties to a love-transaction: the one who loves and the other who condescends to be so treated.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Party, Two, Said

  William Makepeace Thackeray (2016). “Vanity Fair (Diversion Classics)”, p.160, Diversion Books

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Cynical is the name we give those we fear may be laughing at us.

  Stephen Fry

  Names, Giving, Laughing

  Stephen Fry (2014). “The Hippopotamus”, p.93, Soho Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the greatest gifts we receive from dogs is the tenderness they evoke in us. The disappointments of life, the injustices, the battering events that are beyond our control, and the betrayals we endure, from those we befriended and loved, can make us cynical and turn our hearts into flint – on which only the matches of anger and bitterness can be struck into flame. By their delight in being with us, the reliable sunniness of their disposition, the joy they bring to playtime, the curiosity with which they embrace each new experience, dogs can melt cynicism,and sweeten the bitter heart.

  Dean Koontz

  Dog, Disappointment, Betrayal

  11 Copy quote

• Sure, I’m dramatic and sloppily semi-cynical and semi-sentimental. But, in leisure years I could grow and choose my way. Now I am living on the edge. We all are on the brink, and it takes a lot of nerve, a lot of energy, to teeter on the edge, looking over, looking down into the windy blackness and not being quite able to make out, through the yellow, stinking mist, just what lies below in the slime, in the oozing, vomit-streaked slime; and so I could go on, my thoughts, writing much, trying to find the core, the meaning for myself.

  Sylvia Plath

  Lying, Writing, Years

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.32, Anchor

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• All romantics meet the same fate some day. Drunk and cynical and boring someone in some dark cafe.

  Joni Mitchell

  Fate, Dark, Drunk

  32 Copy quote

• What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human [...] is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic.

  David Foster Wallace

  Hips, Sentimental, Kind

  "Infinite Jest". Book by David Foster Wallace, 1996.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Go to Old Delhi,and look at the way they keep chickens there in the market. Hundred of pale hens and brightly colored roosters, stuffed tightly into wire-mesh cages. They see the organs of their brothers lying around them.They know they are next, yet they cannot rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop. The very same thing is done with humans in this country.

  Aravind Adiga

  Country, Brother, Lying

  30 Copy quote

• Peel off these dusty wool blankets of apathy and antipathy and cynical desiccation. I want life in all its stupid sticky rawness.

  Isaac Marion

  Stupid, Apathy, Wool

  Isaac Marion (2011). “Warm Bodies: A Novel”, p.229, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Time is like a river flowing endlessly through the universe. And if you poled your flatboat in that river you might fight your way against the current and travel upstream into the past. Or go with the flow and rush into the future. This was in a less cynical time before toxic waste dumping and pollution filled the waterway of Chronus with the detritus of empty hours wasted minutes years of repetition and time that has been killed.

  Harlan Ellison

  Fighting, Past, Years

  Harlan Ellison (1989). “Harlan Ellison's watching”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Auschwitz is outside of us, but it is all around us, in the air. The plague has died away, but the infection still lingers and it would be foolish to deny it. Rejection of human solidarity, obtuse and cynical indifference to the suffering of others, abdication of the intellect and of moral sense to the principle of authority, and above all, at the root of everything, a sweeping tide of cowardice, a colossal cowardice which masks itself as warring virtue, love of country and faith in an idea.

  Primo Levi

  Country, Roots, Air

  71 Copy quote

• The idea of a Supreme Being who creates a world in which one creature is designed to eat another in order to subsist, and then pass a law saying, "Thou shalt not kill," is so monstrously, immeasurably, bottomlessly absurd that I am at a loss to understand how mankind has entertained or given it house room all this long.

  Peter De Vries

  Loss, Order, Law

  11 Copy quote

• The wise man tests before he talks. The critic but follows the fad of a cynical and apathetic age.

  L. Ron Hubbard

  Wise, Men, Age

  L. Ron Hubbard (1987). “Self Analysis”, p.3, Bridge Publications, Inc.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• For myself, I find I become less cynical rather than more--remembering my own sins and follies; and realize that men's hearts are not often as bad as their acts, and very seldom as bad as their words.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Heart, Men, Remember

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2014). “The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien”, p.337, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this, that you are dreadfully like other people.

  James Russell Lowell

  Humility, Equality, People

  James Russell Lowell (1871). “My Study Windows”, p.49

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Cynically speaking, one could say that it is true to life to be cynical about it.

  Paul Tillich

  True Life

  Paul Tillich, F. Forrester Church (1999). “The Essential Tillich”, p.183, University of Chicago Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.

  Terry Pratchett

  Real, Fantasy, Cynicism

  Terry Pratchett (2016). “Seriously Funny: The Endlessly Quotable Terry Pratchett”, p.9, Random House

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Just because you're naked doesn't mean you're sexy. Just because you're cynical doesn't mean you're cool.

  Tom Robbins

  Sexy, Mean, Naked

  Tom Robbins (2005). “Villa Incognito”, p.235, Bantam

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Heart, Thinking, Our World

  "The Rich Boy" (1926)

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• Don’t talk like that, Dill,” said Aunt Alexandra. “It’s not becoming to a child. It’s – cynical.” “I ain’t cynical, Miss Alexandra. Tellin’ the truth’s not cynical, is it?” “The way you tell it, it is.

  Harper Lee

  Children, Aunt, Missing

  Harper Lee (1960). “TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Music is storming, driving, relentless, devotional, slinky, subtle, heartbreakingly-beautiful sounds that, lyrically, switch from the cynical to the sanguine, the defeated to the defiant, dealing in love, war, beauty, children, romance, rejection, Pethedine, poetry, panties, God, Auden, Johnny Cash, cold potatoes, too-much-money, not enough money, writer’s block, flowers, animals and more flowers. But maybe I’m projecting here.

  Nick Cave

  Beautiful, Children, Block

  59 Copy quote

• I may have grown cynical from long service, but this is a tendency I do not like, and I sometimes think I'd rather be a dog and bay at the moon than stay in the Senate another six years and listen to it.

  John Sharp Williams

  Dog, Thinking, Moon

  4 Copy quote

• Despite his cynical exterior, he had a good heart-and Lissa owned most of it.

  Richelle Mead

  Heart, Despite, Exterior

  Richelle Mead (2010). “Vampire Academy: Blood Promise”, p.263, Penguin UK

  16 Copy quote

  Show source