Frivolous Quotes - Page 5

• Society is frivolous, and shreds its day into scraps, its conversation into ceremonies and escapes.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Society, Conversation, Ceremony

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.53, Courier Corporation

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• Anybody can lead a frivolous life. A frivolous writer, however, must have taste and intelligence.

  Mason Cooley

  Taste

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• Everyone seems to assume that the unscrupulous parts of journalism will be the frivolous or jocular parts. This is against all ethical experience. Jokes are generally honest. Complete solemnity is almost always dishonest. The writer of the snippet merely refers to a frivolous and fugitive fact in a frivolous and fugitive way. The writer of the leading article has to write about a fact he has known for 20 minutes as though he has studied it for 20 years.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Writing, Years, Way

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• The fact that oppressive and corrupt regimes can borrow money in the name of the whole country means that the country's future generations will be weighed down by interest and repayment burdens, even if the money has been frittered away in some frivolous way, embezzled or used for weapons to suppress the country's population.

  Thomas Pogge

  Country, Mean, Names

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• My dad was an engineer and so I had this picture of science and technology and pursuits of the mind as being more impressive than artistic pursuits, which I saw a as kind of frivolous.

  Scott McCloud

  Dad, Technology, Mind

  "Scott McCloud's 'Zot!' is out of this world". Interview with Patrick Montero, www.nydailynews.com. August 24, 2008.

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• The frivolous work of polished idleness.

  James Mackintosh

  Work, Polished, Idleness

  James Mackintosh (1872). “On the Progress of Ethical Philosophy: Chiefly During the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries”, p.232

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• If you can take something as ultimately frivolous [as a comic book] in the cosmic scale of things in the universe and what's important - people being born and dying and everything else that's gonna happen today - if one gay kid in Shawnee Mission, Kansas, reads an X-Men comic and feels for a second like maybe they're not entirely alone in the world - that's amazing. I'll take it. Whatever size victory that is, I will take.

  Matt Fraction

  Book, Kids, Gay

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• The life we led was a proof of man's capacity for adaptation.I think that even the condemned souls in purgatory after time develop a sort of homely routine.That is ,by the way, why most prison memoirs are unreadable.The difficulty of conveying to the reader an idea of a nightmare world from which he has emerged makes the author depict the prisoner's state of mind as an uninterruped continuity of despair.He fears to appear frivolous or to spoil his effect by admitting that even in the depths of misery cheerfulness keeps breaking in.

  Arthur Koestler

  Men, Thinking, Ideas

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• He's the best of us. The best of our best, the best that each of us will ever build or ever love. So pray for this Guardian of our growth and choose him well, for if he be not truly blessed, then our designs are surely frivolous and our future but a tragic waste of hope. Bless our best and adore for he doth bear our measure to the Cosmos.

  John Steakley

  Blessed, Design, Growth

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• Be sincere and true to your word, serious and careful in your actions; and you will get along even among barbarians, But if you are not sincere and untrustworthy in your speech, frivolous and careless in your actions, how will you get along even among your own neighbors? When stand, see these principles in front of you; in your carriage see them on the yoke. Then you may be sure to get along.

  Confucius

  Honesty, Principles, Yoke

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• I understood that all the material of a literary work was in my past life, I understood that I had acquired it in the midst of frivolous amusements, in idleness, in tenderness and in pain, stored up by me without my divining its destination or even its survival, as the seed has in reserve all the ingredients which will nourish the plant.

  Marcel Proust

  Pain, Past, Survival

  Marcel Proust (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Marcel Proust (Illustrated)”, p.4860, Delphi Classics

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• I'm not interested in playing the field and all that stuff because frankly I'm not into frivolous relationships.

  Taylor Momsen

  Stuff, Fields, Not Interested

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• A lot of people still think caring about clothes is a dubious, unserious, frivolous, girlie thing.

  Jerry Saltz

  Caring, Thinking, Clothes

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• I'm a designer, and I work very hard at that. People sometimes want to put down fashion by saying it's frivolous or superficial, but it's not that way at all. It's actually very hard work.

  Donatella Versace

  Fashion, Hard Work, People

  Interview with Nicki Minaj, www.interviewmagazine.com. December 8, 2011.

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• When music is allowed to take the place of devotion and prayer, it is a terrible curse. Young people assemble together to sing, and, although professed Christians, frequently dishonor God and their faith by their frivolous conversation and their choice of music.

  Ellen G. White

  Christian, Prayer, People

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• Even in the things that look most frivolous there has to be the threat of something quite painful to make the comedy work. I suppose the play of mine that's best know is NOISES OFF, which everyone thinks is a simple farce about actors making fools of themselves. But I think it makes people laugh because everyone is terrified inside themselves of having some kind of breakdown, of being unable to go on. When people laugh at that play, they're laughing at a surrogate version of the disaster which might occur to them.

  Michael Frayn

  Simple, Thinking, Play

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• I don't want to be too strict, because I think kids can get rebellious, but I want to raise my daughter to be passionate about doing good things and pursuing real things and hobbies instead of frivolous materialistic stuff.

  Holly Madison

  Daughter, Mother, Real

  "Holly Madison: Boyfriend Pasquale Rotella and I Are 'Wackos,' Have Pretend Conversations With Our Baby 'All the Time'". Us Weekly Interview, www.usmagazine.com. January 26, 2013.

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• Society is infected with rude, cynical, restless, and frivolous persons who prey upon the rest, and whom no public opinion concentrated into good manners, forms accepted by the sense of all, can reach; the contradictors and railers at public and private tables, who are like terriers, who conceive it the duty of a dog of honor to growl at any passer-by, and do the honors of the house by barking him out of sight.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dog, Sight, Cynical

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.407

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• Playing sport was somewhat frivolous, but I liked it. I rebelled a little bit, and wouldn't go to music lessons and things like that, but I would go and play ball. My parents learned to love it because they saw how much I got out of it.

  Mike Krzyzewski

  Sports, Play, Parent

  "Duke of the Court". Interview, www.achievement.org. May 22, 1997.

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• I don't find life unbearably grave. I find it almost intolerably frivolous.

  Sebastian Faulks

  Graves

  Sebastian Faulks (2007). “Engleby: A Novel”, Doubleday Books

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• Reader, I am myself the subject of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and so vain a matter.

  Bernard Malamud

  Book, Would Be, Matter

  BERNARD MALAMUD (1979). “DUBLIN'S LIVES”

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• Frivolous lawsuits are booming in this county. The U.S. has more costs of litigation per person than any other industrialized nation in the world, and it is crippling our economy.

  Jack Kingston

  Cost, World, Rehabilitation

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• My children weary me. I can only see them as defective adults: feckless, destructive, frivolous, sensual, humorless.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Children, Sensual, Adults

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• If you have to design something, choose things that we need as opposed to frivolous things that we might just want for a month or two for bragging rights.

  Saul Griffith

  Rights, Two, Design

  "Built to Last". Good Magazine Interview, www.good.is. January 14, 2010.

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• Fashion is an illusion. It's a multibillion-pound industry that has to appear frivolous. Designers work and work and work, all night sometimes.

  Philip Treacy

  Fashion, Night, Pounds

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