Impudence Quotes

• Because impudence is a vice, it does not follow that modesty is a virtue; it is built upon shame, a passion in our nature, and may be either good or bad according to the actions performed from that motive.

  Bernard de Mandeville

  Nature, Passion, May

  Bernard de Mandeville (1723). “The Fable of the Bees”, p.36, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Impudence is the worst of all human diseases.

  Euripides

  Disease, Worst, Humans

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• Bold knaves thrive without one grain of sense, But good men starve for want of impudence.

  John Dryden

  Men, Good Man, Want

  'Constantine the Great' (1684) epilogue

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• True wisdom is plenty of experience, observation, and reflection. False wisdom is plenty of ignorance, arrogance, and impudence.

  Josh Billings

  Ignorance, Reflection, Arrogance

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• Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.

  John Ruskin

  Teaching, Complaining, Literature

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• It may be a species of impudence to think that the way you understand God is the way God is. (60).

  Joseph Campbell

  Inspirational, God, Thinking

  Joseph Campbell (2001). “Thou Art that: Transforming Religious Metaphor”, p.60, New World Library

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• I haven't got as much money as some folks, but I've got as much impudence as any of them, and that's the next thing to money.

  Josh Billings

  Funny, Money, Next

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• Villainy, when detected, never gives up, but boldly adds impudence to imposture.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Giving Up, Add, Villainy

  Oliver Goldsmith (1854). “The Works of Oliver Goldsmith: Enquiry into the present state of polite learning. The citizen of the world”, p.467

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• Nothing pleases a woman quite so well as to look so sweet that a man wants to kiss her, and then abuse him for his impudence.

  E. W. Howe

  Sweet, Women, Kissing

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• Want of principle is power. Truth and honesty set a limit to our efforts, which impudence and hypocrisy easily overleap.

  William Hazlitt

  Honesty, Power, Hypocrisy

  William Hazlitt (1871). “The Round Table. A collection of Essays ... By W. H. and Leigh Hunt”, p.487

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• It takes great labor to uncover the convincing simple speech of the heart. Poetic candor comes with hard labor, so even does impetuosity and impudence.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Heart, Simple, Doe

  Kenneth Rexroth, Bradford Morrow (1989). “More Classics Revisited”, p.28, New Directions Publishing

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• There are seasons in every country when noise and impudence pass current for worth; and in popular commotions especially, the clamors of interested and factious men are often mistaken for patriotism.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Country, Men, Noise

  Alexander Hamilton, John Church Hamilton (1850). “The Works of Alexander Hamilton: Miscellanies, 1774-1789: A full vindication; The farmer refuted; Quebec bill; Resolutions in Congress; Letters from Phocion; New-York Legislature, etc”, p.159

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• Folly often goes beyond her bounds, but impudence knows none.

  Ben Jonson

  Rudeness, Folly, Knows

  Ben Jonson (1756). “The Works of Ben. Jonson: Underwoods. Timber; or, Discoveries made upon men and matter. Horace, Of the art of poetry [with an English translation by Jonson]. The English grammar. Leges convivales, rules for the Tavern Academy. The case is altered”, p.78

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• Satiation, like any state of vitality, always contains a degree of impudence, and that impudence emerges first and foremost when the sated man instructs the hungry one.

  Anton Chekhov

  Men, Vitality, Degrees

  Letter to A.S. Suvorin, October 20, 1891.

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• Impertinence will intermeddle in things in which it has no concern, showing a want of breeding, or, more commonly, a spirit of sheer impudence.

  George Crabbe

  Disrespect, Want, Spirit

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• But twice-two-makes-four is for all that a most insupportable thing. Twice-two-makes-four is, in my humble opinion, nothing but a piece of impudence. Twice-two-makes-four is a farcical, dressed-up fellow who stands across your path with arms akimbo and spits at you.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Humble, Math, Two

  Fyodor Dostoevsky (2012). “The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky”, p.124, Modern Library

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• The exhibition has now become no more than a bazaar where mediocrity spreads itself out with impudence. The exhibitions are useless and dangerous... they ought to be abolished.

  Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

  Mediocrity, Bazaars, Useless

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• I suppose if there were a part of the world in which mastodon still lived, somebody would design a new gun, and men, in their eternal impudence, would hunt mastodon as they now hunt elephant. Impudence seems to be the word. At least David and Goliath were of the same species, but, to an elephant, a man can only be a midge with a deathly sting.

  Beryl Markham

  Gun, Men, Elephants

  Beryl Markham (2012). “West with the Night”, p.227, Open Road Media

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• Being myself animated by feelings of affection toward my fellowmen, I am saddened by the modern system of advertising. Whatever evidence it offers of enterprise, ingenuity, impudence, and resource in certain individuals, it proves to my mind the wide prevalence of that form of mental degradation which is called gullibility.

  Joseph Conrad

  Sadness, Feelings, Mind

  Joseph Conrad (2015). “A Set of Six”, p.103, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• There are no friends more inseparable than pride and hardness of heart, humility and love, falsehood and impudence.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Heart, Humility, Pride

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• Lust is inseparably accompanied with the troubling of all order, with impudence, unseemliness, sloth, and dissoluteness.

  Plato

  Order, Lust, Sloth

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• You must never believe what the newspapers say. I stand aghast at the impudence of the lies they contain, things not only false in fact, but absolutely impossible.

  Anna Brownell Jameson

  Lying, Believe, Facts

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• When Fashion hath once Established, what Folly or craft began, Custom makes it Sacred, and 'twill be thought impudence or madness, to contradict or question it.

  John Locke

  Fashion, Crafts, Sacred

  John Locke (1728). “Two Treatises of Government: In the Former the False Principles & Foundation of Sir Robert Filmer & His Followers, are Detected & Overthrown; the Latter is an Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent & End of Civil Government”, p.49

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• Wealth, howsoever got, in England makes lords of mechanics, gentlemen of rakes; Antiquity and birth are needless here; 'Tis impudence and money makes a peer.

  Daniel Defoe

  Gentleman, England, Peers

  Daniel Defoe (1855). “The Novels and Miscellaneous Works of Daniel De Foe”, p.443

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• What was said by the Latin poet of labor--that it conquers all things--is much more true when applied to impudence.

  Henry Fielding

  Latin, Conquer, Poet

  Henry Fielding, William Ernest Henley (1903). “The Complete Works of Henry Fielding, Esq: The history of the life of the late Mr.Jonathan Wild and A journey from this world to the next, &c”

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