Modern Life Quotes - Page 3

• Nobody is sicker than the man who is sick on his day off.

  Charles E. McKenzie

  Men, Sick, Days Off

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• To dream magnificently is not a gift given to all men, and even for those who possess it, it runs a strong risk of being progressively diminished by the ever-growing dissipation of modern life and by the restlessness engendered by material progress. The ability to dream is a divine and mysterious ability; because it is through dreams that man communicates with the shadowy world which surrounds him. But this power needs solitude to develop freely; the more one concentrates, the more one is likely to dream fully, deeply.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Running, Dream, Strong

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• You're getting old when you see a girl who looks like someone you used to know, and it turns out to be her daughter.

  Mike Connolly

  Girl, Daughter, Looks

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• A successful surgeon should be a man who, when asked to name the three best surgeons in the world, would have difficulty deciding on the other two.

  Denton Cooley

  Successful, Men, Names

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• For the past several centuries the bonding power of the family dinner table has been one of the few constants, and now it's binding no more. The potency of the media is now stronger than that of the family. The wonder is that families still exist at all, since the forces of modern life mainly all pull people away from a family centered way of life.

  Larry McMurtry

  Past, Media, People

  Larry McMurtry (2010). “Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections on Sixty and Beyond”, p.109, Simon and Schuster

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• Etiquette enables you to resolve conflict without just trading insults. Without etiquette, the irritations in modern life are so abrasive that you see people turning to the law to regulate everyday behavior. This frightens me; it's a major inroad on our basic freedoms.

  Judith Martin

  Irritation, Law, People

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• Young normal tigers do not eat people. If eaten by a tiger you may rest assured he was abnormal.

  Will Cuppy

  People, May, Normal

  Will Cuppy, P. G. Wodehouse (2005). “How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes”, p.107, David R. Godine Publisher

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• Modern life is given over to immoderation. Immoderation invades everything: actions and thought, public and private life.

  Simone Weil

  Action, Life Is, Given

  Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.153, Psychology Press

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• Modern life would not be possible if it were not for chemicals, nor would modern natural gas production.

  Aubrey McClendon

  Natural, Chemicals, Gas

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• Things like the financial markets - a proper grounding in mathematics could help the common man. I believe that if people are more familiar with mathematical concepts... it can help deal with modern life, which is increasingly complex.

  Viswanathan Anand

  Believe, Men, People

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• Oh God, modern life with all its feelings. ... We live in the most callous society ever, and all anybody talks about nowadays is getting in touch with their feelings. ... The world has become one enormous group therapy session. It's a terrible bore. My motto is, 'Thank you for not sharing!

  Jane Stanton Hitchcock

  Feelings, Groups, World

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• Modern life ... is often a mechanical oppression and liquor is the only mechanical relief.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Relief, Life Is, Oppression

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• An old-timer is someone who can remember when a naughty child was taken to the woodshed instead of to a psychiatrist.

  David Greenberg

  Children, Taken, Naughty

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• The problem of restoring integration and co-operation between man's beliefs about the world in which he lives and his beliefs about values and purposes that should direct his conduct is the deepest problem modern life. It is the problem of any philosophy that is not isolated from life.

  John Dewey

  Wisdom, Philosophy, Men

  John Dewey, Jo Ann Boydston, Stephen Toulmin (2008). “The Later Works, 1925-1953: 1929”, p.204, SIU Press

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• Ignorant people in preppy clothes are more dangerous to America than oil embargoes.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Oil, Clothes, America

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• I think the messiness and embodied nature of modern life just produces an enhanced signal for our attention.

  Richard Davidson

  Thinking, Focus, Attention

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• The problem of living in this modern world is the problem of finding room in it. The crowd principle is so universally at work through modern life that the geography of the world had been changed to conform to it. We live in crowds. We get our living in crowds. We are amused in herds.

  Gerald Stanley Lee

  Principles, World, Crowds

  Gerald Stanley Lee (1913). “Crowds: A Moving-picture of Democracy”

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• Commentators frequently blame MMORPGs for an increasing sense of isolation modern life. But virtual worlds are less a cause of that isolation than a response to it. Virtual worlds give back what has been scooped out of modern life. The virtual world is in important ways more authentically human than the real world. It gives us back community, a feeling of competence, and a sense of being an important person whom people depend on.

  Jonathan Gottschall

  Real, Giving, People

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• Kenney knows two essential truths about melodrama: First that it is most powerful when combined with irony and understatement; and second that it is a salient feature of modern life.

  Stefan Kanfer

  Powerful, Two, Essentials

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• Columbus and his men, they say, Conveyed the virus hither Whereby my features rot away And vital powers wither; Yet had they not traversed the seas And come infected back, Why, think of all the luxuries That modern life would lack.

  Richard Wilbur

  Men, Thinking, Sea

  1957 'Pangloss's Song', from Candide.

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• O born in days when wits were fresh and clear, And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames; Before this strange disease of modern life, With its sick hurry, its divided aims, Its heads o'ertax'd, its palsied hearts, was rife.

  Matthew Arnold

  Heart, Sick, Disease

  'The Scholar-Gipsy' (1853) l. 201

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• As the classes in modern life come together, we have become much more intensely class conscious. It's a very curious thing. But I deal with human beings with whom I've come in contact and have had a chance to closely observe. Their upper-classness is not a matter of particular fascination for me.

  Louis Auchincloss

  Class, Together, Fascination

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• Our civilization is first and foremost a civilization of means; in the reality of modern life, the means, it would seem, are more important than the ends.

  Jacques Ellul

  Mean, Reality, Civilization

  Jacques Ellul (2016). “Presence in the Modern World: A New Translation”, p.43, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• Anti-Islamist Muslims - who wish to live modern lives, unencumbered by burqas, fatwas and violent visions of jihad - are on the defensive and atomized. However eloquent, their individual voices cannot compete with the roar of militant Islam's determination, money (much of it from overseas) and violence. As a result, militant Islam, with its West-phobia and goal of world hegemony, dominates Islam in the West and appears to many to be the only kind of Islam.

  Daniel Pipes

  Determination, Voice, Goal

  "Voices of Islam". New York Post, September 23, 2003.

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• The single factor most responsible for the disruption of the family is the automobile. Its full effect cannot be assessed. Modern life, as we know, would be impossible without the ubiquitous motorcar. It broke up the old family and community.

  Alexander Lowen

  Community, Would Be, Impossible

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