Modern Life Quotes - Page 6

• Unlimited choice is paralyzing. The Internet has made this form of paralysis due to option overload a standard feature of comfortable modern life.

  Susan Orlean

  Choices, Internet, Form

  "Bootless" by Susan Orlean, www.newyorker.com. November 30, 2010.

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• I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.

  H. L. Mencken

  Sports, Hate, Common Sense

  Quoted in Fred Metcalfe The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations (1986).

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• The people who are always hankering loudest for some golden yesteryear usually drive new cars.

  Russell Baker

  People, Car, Yesteryear

  Russell Baker (1992). “Poor Russell's almanac”

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• It is now proved beyond doubt that smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.

  Fletcher Knebel

  Science, Marijuana, Smoking

  Reader's Digest December 1961

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• A neurotic is a man who builds a castle in the air. A psychotic is the man who lives in it. A psychiatrist is the man who collects the rent.

  Jerome Lawrence

  Science, Men, Air

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• Chris Ofili's suave, stippled, visually tricked-out paintings of the nineties, with their allover fields of shimmering dots and clumps of dung, are like cave paintings of modern life. They crackle with optical cockiness, love, and massive amounts of painterly mojo.

  Jerry Saltz

  Caves, Suave, Cave Paintings

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• Everything in modern city life is calculated to keep man from entering into himself and thinking about spiritual things. Even with the best of intentions a spiritual man finds himself exhausted and deadened and debased by the constant noise of machines and loudspeakers, the dead air and the glaring lights of offices and shops, the everlasting suggestion of advertising and propaganda. The whole mechanism of modern life is geared for a flight from God and from the spirit into the wilderness of neurosis.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Men, Thinking

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• It's a sad fact of modern life that if you drive long enough, sooner or later you must leave London behind.

  Ben Aaronovitch

  Long, London, Facts

  Ben Aaronovitch (2011). “Moon Over Soho”, p.10, Del Rey

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• A good catchword can obscure analysis for fifty years.

  Wendell Willkie

  Science, Years, Analysis

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• the costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.

  Oscar Wilde

  Depressing, Real, Elements

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray (Diversion Classics)”, p.34, Diversion Books

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• The key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picayune, the meaningless, the repetitive, the pointlessly complex. To be, in a word, unborable... It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.

  David Foster Wallace

  Keys, Boredom, Sides

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• To be, in a word, unborable.... It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish

  David Foster Wallace

  Keys, Boredom, Accomplish

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• We three belong to the Middle Ages. We have this need of heroism, and there is no place for such feelings in modern life. That is our tragedy. Once I wanted to be a saint. It seemed the only absolute act left to do, for what is most powerful in me is the craving for purity, greatness.

  Anais Nin

  Powerful, Greatness, Feelings

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• Thus, for followers of Christ, calling neutralizes the fundamental position of choice in modern life. “I have chosen you,” Jesus said, “you have not chosen me.” We are not our own; we have been bought with a price. We have no rights, only responsibilities. Following Christ is not our initiative, merely our response, in obedience. Nothing works better to debunk the pretensions of choice than a conviction of calling. Once we have been called, we literally “have no choice.

  Os Guinness

  Jesus, Responsibility, Rights

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• There are no private lives. This a most important aspect of modern life. That one of the biggest transformations we have seen in human life in our society is the diminution of the sphere of the private. That we must reasonably now all regard the fact that there are no secrets and nothing is private. Everything is public.

  Philip K. Dick

  Secret, Important, Our Society

  "Philip K. Dick: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations".

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• Coffee has ... expand[ed] humanity's working-day from twelve to a potential twenty-four hours. The tempo, the complexity, the tension of modern life, call for something that can perform the miracle of stimulating brain activity, without evil, habit-forming after-effects.

  Margaret Meagher

  Coffee, Evil, Miracle

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• I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.

  Oscar Wilde

  Mysterious, Secrecy, Thrive

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Joseph Bristow, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts”, p.171, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• It struck him that the truly characteristic thing about modern life was not its cruelty and insecurity, but simply its bareness, its dinginess, its listlessness. Life, if you looked about you, bore no resemblance not only to the lies that streamed out of the telescreens, but even to the ideals that the party was trying to achieve.

  George Orwell

  Lying, Party, Insecurity

  George Orwell (2014). “1984”, p.60, Arcturus Publishing

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• Every reiteration of the idea that _nothing matters_ debases the human spirit. Every reiteration of the idea that there is no drama in modern life, there is only dramatization, that there is no tragedy, there is only unexplained misfortune, debases us. It denies what we know to be true. In denying what we know, we are as a nation which cannot remember its dreams--like an unhappy person who cannot remember his dreams and so denies that he does dream, and denies that there are such things as dreams.

  David Mamet

  Dream, Drama, Unhappy Person

  David Mamet (1986). “Writing in restaurants”, Viking Adult

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• Human bodies are designed for regular physical activity. The sedentary nature of much of modern life probably plays a significant role in the epidemic incidence of depression today. Many studies show that depressed patients who stick to a regimen of aerobic exercise improve as much as those treated with medication.

  Andrew Weil

  Exercise, Epidemics, Play

  "10 Ways to Have a Happier Life" by Dr. Andrew Weil, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 8, 2011.

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• Modern life is so thin and shallow and fake. I look forward to when developers go bankrupt, Japan gets poorer and wild grasses take over.

  Hayao Miyazaki

  Japan, Fake, Looks

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• As worship begins in holy expectancy, it ends in holy obedience. Holy obedience saves worship from becoming an opiate, an escape from the pressing needs of modern life.

  Richard J. Foster

  Opiates, Needs, Becoming

  Richard J. Foster (1995*). “Richard Foster's treasury of Christian discipline”, Jossey-Bass

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• The problem with making an extrinsic reward the only destination that matters is that some people will choose the quickest route there, even if it means taking the low road. Indeed, most of the scandals and misbehavior that have seemed endemic to modern life involve shortcuts.

  Daniel H. Pink

  Mean, People, Rewards

  Daniel H. Pink (2010). “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”, p.51, Canongate Books

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• A pedestrian ought to be legally allowed to toss at least one hand grenade at a motorist every day.

  Brendan Behan

  Hands, Toss, Pedestrians

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• Our task is to strike a balance, to find a middle way, to learn not to overextend ourselves with extraneous activities and preoccupations, but to simplify our lives more and more. The key to finding a happy balance in modern life is simplicity.

  Sogyal Rinpoche

  Keys, Simplicity, Balance

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