Irritating Quotes

• Prejudice: Sometimes it's like a hair across your cheek. You can't see it, you can't find it with your fingers, but you keep brushing at it because the feel of it is irritating.

  Marian Anderson

  Hate, Hair, Prejudice

  65 Copy quote

• Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.

  W. H. Auden

  Funny Friendship, Funny Best Friend, Differences

  31 Copy quote

• After all it is those who have a deep and real inner life who are best able to deal with the irritating details of outer life.

  Evelyn Underhill

  Happiness, Real, Personality

  Evelyn Underhill, Carol Poston (2010). “The Making of a Mystic: New and Selected Letters of Evelyn Underhill”, p.273, University of Illinois Press

  60 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

  Carl Jung

  Relationship, Leadership, Spiritual

  Carl Gustav Jung (1973). “Memories, dreams, reflections”, Random House Inc

  349 Copy quote

  Show source

• Stop waiting for others to change. Recognize that every person has the right to be whatever they choose-even if you irritate yourself about it.

  Wayne Dyer

  Change, Being Yourself, Acceptance

  65 Copy quote

• In some cases, I quite like irritating people who need to be irritated.

  Robert Smith

  People, Needs, Irritated

  24 Copy quote

• You are precisely as big as what you love and precisely as small as what you allow to annoy you.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Love, Inspirational, Philosophy

  80 Copy quote

• Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.

  George Orwell

  Jobs, Book, Feelings

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.289, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm not afraid of death, but I resent it. I think it's unfair and irritating.

  Viggo Mortensen

  Thinking, Unfair, Not Afraid

  7 Copy quote

• Worried about being a dull fellow? You might develop your talent for being irritating.

  Mason Cooley

  Literature, Dull, Might

  5 Copy quote

• Authority figures are so irritating. Because they always tell you to do things for reasons that aren't very good. That sums up what authority is about for me.

  Rupert Everett

  Reason, Authority, Figures

  8 Copy quote

• A relative of mine ... spends his time producing improved breeds of sheep and pigs and chickens. So patronising and irritating to teh Almighty, I should think.

  Hector Hugh Munro

  Thinking, Sheep, Pigs

  4 Copy quote

• Ring tones are just irritating, aren't they?

  James Purefoy

  Tone, Rings

  7 Copy quote

• Nothing is as irritating as the fellow who chats pleasantly while he's overcharging you.

  Kin Hubbard

  Sarcastic, Sarcasm, Literature

  13 Copy quote

• I have always had a talent for irritating women since I was fourteen.

  Marilyn Monroe

  Inspiring, Talent, Fourteen

  Marilyn Monroe (2006). “My Story”, p.128, Taylor Trade Publishing

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you ever have the good fortune to create a great advertising campaign, you will soon see another agency steal it. This is irritating, but don't let it worry you; nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else's advertising.

  David Ogilvy

  Business, Agency, Worry

  David Ogilvy (1963). “Confessions of an advertising man”, Holiday House

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• A fondness for satire indicates a mind pleased with irritating others; for myself, I never could find amusement in killing flies.

  Madame Roland

  Mind, Amusement, Killing

  10 Copy quote

• May every young scientist remember and not fail to keep his eyes open for the possibility that an irritating failure of his apparatus to give consistent results may once or twice in a lifetime conceal an important discovery.

  Patrick Blackett, Baron Blackett

  Failure, Eye, Science

  7 Copy quote

• If someone irritates you, it is only your own response that is irritating you. Therefore, when anyone seems to be provoking you, remember that it is only your judgment of the incident that provokes you. -

  Epictetus

  Irritated, Remember, Judgment

  11 Copy quote

• Waking up is unpleasant, you know. You are nice and comfortable in bed. It is irritating to be woken up. That's the reason the wise guru will not attempt to wake people up. I hope I'm going to be wise here and make no attempt whatsoever to wake you up if you are asleep. It is really none of my business, even though I say to you at times, "Wake up!" My business is to do my thing, to dance my dance. If you profit from it fine; if you don't, too bad! As the Arabs say, "The nature of rain is the same, but it makes thorns grow in the marshes and flowers in the gardens."

  Anthony de Mello

  Wise, Nice, Rain

  Anthony De Mello (2011). “Awareness: Conversations with the Masters”, p.6, Image

  39 Copy quote

  Show source

• The fact is, people who don't have any misfortunes are very irritating to their neighbours. No opportunities for popping in with condolences and new-laid eggs. No visits to the afflicted. No opportunities for the milk of human kindness to flow. Naturally it doesn't.

  Patricia Wentworth

  Kindness, Condolences, Opportunity

  Patricia Wentworth (1992). “The Ivory Dagger”, Perennial

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Despite her cough, Rose was in unusually good spirits. That was irritating. If I’m to trade my life for Rose’s, I’d appreciate her exhibiting a touch of melancholy. Also acceptable would be despair.

  Franny Billingsley

  Appreciate, Rose, Despair

  Franny Billingsley (2011). “Chime”, p.65, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you reflect on your life, you may recall times when you couldn't see the value of some person and were tempted to brush him or her off. It takes hindsight to recognize that the very situation you may have seen as an irritating bother turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Wouldn't life be a much more enjoyable and meaningful experience if we decided to look at the difficult people and irritating situations as blessings in disguise? If we look deeply enough, we might see how these experiences as situations that motivate us to grow and change for the better.

  John Templeton

  Meaningful, Adversity, Blessing

  11 Copy quote

• I can't tell you how irritating it is to be an atheist in a haunted house.

  Matthew Tobin Anderson

  Atheist, House, I Can

  4 Copy quote

• Among the more irritating consequences of our flagrantly religious society is the special dispensation that mainstream religions receive. We all may talk about religion as a powerful social force, but unlike other similarly powerful institutions, religion is not to be questioned, criticized or mocked.

  Natalie Angier

  Religious, Atheist, Powerful

  5 Copy quote