Frivolous Quotes - Page 9

• But young men have not only this frivolous ambition of being thought masters of execution, inciting them on the one hand, but also their natural sloth tempting them on the other. They are terrified at the prospect before them, of the toil required to attain exactness. The impetuosity of youth is disgusted at the slow approaches of a regular siege, and desires, from mere impatience of labour, to take the citadel by storm. They wish to find some shorter path to excellence, and hope to obtain the reward of eminence by other means, than those which the indispensable rules of art have prescribed.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Art, Ambition, Mean

  Sir Joshua Reynolds (1867). “The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds: Containing His Discourses, Idlers, A Journey to Flanders and Holland, and His Commentary on Du Fresnoy's Art of Painting; to which is Prefixed an Account of the Life and Writings of the Author by Edward Malone”, p.12

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• In all my life I never met anyone so frivolous as you two, so crazy and unbusinesslike. I tell you in plain Russian your property is going to be sold and you don't seem to understand what I say.

  Anton Chekhov

  Crazy, Two, Mets

  Anton Chekhov (2012). “Ten Plays”, p.296, Courier Corporation

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• I enter into discussion and argument with great freedom and ease, inasmuch as opinion finds me in a bad soil to penetrate and take deep root in. No propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, whatever contrast it offers to my own. There is no fancy so frivolous and so extravagant that it does not seem to me quite suitable to the production of the human mind.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Roots, Mind, Ease

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• I am frivolous. But sometimes, that's the problem of my Christian education, when I know I've been frivolous, and I know I have to do it, then I feel guilty.

  Catherine Deneuve

  Christian, Problem, Sometimes

  Interview with Geoff Andrew, www.theguardian.com. September 21, 2005.

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• I had too many businesses that are frivolous. I have enough. What interests me most is under-served communities. We need a new style of empowering these people, and new approaches.

  Russell Simmons

  People, Community, Empowering

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• The fight against bad English is not frivolous.

  George Orwell

  Fighting

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.157, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I now began for the first time to envy those young cubs at the university who had fine scholars to tell them what was what; professors who had devoted their lives to mastering and focusing ideas in every branch of learning; who were eager to distribute the treasures they had gathered before they were overtaken by the night. But now I pity undergraduates, when I see what frivolous lives many of them lead in the midst of precious fleeting opportunity. After all, a man's Life must be nailed to a cross either of Thought or Action. Without work there is no play.

  Winston Churchill

  Opportunity, Night, Men

  "My Early Life: A Roving Commission". Book by Winston Churchill, 1930.

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