Nastiness Quotes

• We are trying to change the tones in the state capitals, and turn them toward bitter nastiness and partisanship.

  Grover Norquist

  Change, Trying, Tone

  "The Great Wealth Shift Upward: Corporatists’ War on the Working Class" by Michele Swenson, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 4, 2011.

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• The nastiness of women [in the 14th century] was generally perceived at the close of life when a man began to worry about hell, and his sexual desire in any case fading.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Women, Worry, Desire

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• It was the time when they loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Romantic, Grateful, Adversity

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• Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nastiness, and fabulous flashes of glory in the conjugal conspiracy. It was time when they both loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity. Life would still present them with other moral trials, of course, but that no longer mattered: they were on the other shore.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Grateful, Adversity, Hatred

  "Love in the Time of Cholera". Book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1985.

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• The shortest day has passed, and whatever nastiness of weather we may look forward to in January and February, at least we notice that the days are getting longer. Minute by minute they lengthen out. It takes some weeks before we become aware of the change. It is imperceptible even as the growth of a child, as you watch it day by day, until the moment comes when with a start of delighted surprise we realize that we can stay out of doors in a
  twilight lasting for another quarter of a precious hour.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Children, Twilight, Weather

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• The profoundly cynical premise of all religionists is that people are not capable of behaving decently toward one another unless they are lured with promises of pie in the sky and simultaneously terrorized by the threats of extreme nastiness in the eternal afterlife in hell.

  Barbara G. Walker

  Sky, Afterlife, Pie

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• You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that, oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was.

  Raymond Chandler

  Sleep, Caring, Oil And Water

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Big Sleep: A Novel”, p.230, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• Up until about 12 years ago we never, ever, wore flak jacket or helmets but now the nastiness has got worse.

  Kate Adie

  Years, Literature, Nasty

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• He's nice enough not to want to be associated with a nasty remark but not nice enough not to make it. Lacking the courage of one's nastiness does not make one nice.

  Michael Kinsley

  Nice, Doe, Want

  "Is Bush Nice? A Contrarian View" by Michael Kinsley, www.cnn.com. July 16, 1990.

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• I am a wicked man... But do you know, gentlemen, what was the main point about my wickedness? The whole thing, precisely was, the greatest nastiness precisely lay in my being shamefully conscious every moment, even in moments of the greatest bile, that I was not only not a wicked man but was not even an embittered man, that I was simply frightening sparrows in vain, and pleasing myself with it.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Men, Gentleman, Wicked

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• Some medical beast had revived tar-water in those days as a fine medicine, and Mrs. Joe always kept a supply of it in the cupboard; having a belief in its virtues correspondent to its nastiness. At the best of times, so much of this elixir was administered to me as a choice restorative, that I was conscious of going about, smelling like a new fence.

  Charles Dickens

  Funny, Humorous, Medicine

  Charles Dickens (1861). “Great Expectations”, p.18

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• It has, moreover, been proven that horror, nastiness, and the frightful are what give pleasure when one fornicates. Beauty is a simple thing; ugliness is the exceptional thing. And fiery imaginations, no doubt, always prefer the extraordinary thing to the simple thing.

  Marquis de Sade

  Beauty, Simple, Imagination

  Sade (marquis de), Marquis de Sade (1987). “The 120 days of Sodom and other writings”, Grove Pr

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• [defines a madman as] a man who preferred to become mad,in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor.

  Antonin Artaud

  Men, Ideas, Mad

  Antonin Artaud, Susan Sontag (1976). “Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings”, p.485, Univ of California Press

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• And what is an authentic madman? It is a man who preferred to become mad, in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor. So society has strangled in its asylums all those it wanted to get rid of or protect itself from, because they refused to become its accomplices in certain great nastinesses. For a madman is also a man whom society did not want to hear and whom it wanted to prevent from uttering certain intolerable truths.

  Antonin Artaud

  Men, Ideas, Mad

  Antonin Artaud (1988). “Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings”, p.485, Univ of California Press

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• I think most of us are fascinated by the macabre and by the weird and even the nastiness that comes along.

  Stephen King

  Thinking, Macabre, Fascinated

  Interview with Phil Konstantin, americanindian.net. July 1987.

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• I don't think [Parkinson's] is Gothic nastiness. There's nothing on the surface that's horrible about someone with a shaky hand. There's nothing horrible about someone in their life saying, "God, I'm really tired of this shaky hand thing" and me saying, "Me, too." That's our reality. We have no control over it.

  Michael J. Fox

  Tired, Thinking, Reality

  "Michael J. Fox Talks the Michael J. Fox Show, How Much the Show Draws From Real Life, Parkinson’s Humor, Has He Seen Mtv’s Teen Wolf, and More". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. July 29, 2013.

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• I always exposed the weakness rather than the nastiness.

  Michael Caine

  Weakness, Exposed

  Interview with Lesley Stahl, www.cbsnews.com. December 20, 2015.

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• But people try love and because they are unconscious... their longing is good, but their love is full of jealousy, full of possessiveness, full of anger, full of nastiness. Soon they destroy it. Hence for centuries they have depended on marriage. Better to start by marriage so that the law can protect you from destroying it. The society, the government, the court, the policeman, the priest, they will all force you to live in the institution of marriage, and you will be just a slave. If marriage is an institution, you are going to be a slave in it. Only slaves want to live in institutions.

  Rajneesh

  Marriage, Love Is, Government

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• So society has strangled in its asylums all those it wanted to get rid of or protect itself from, because they refused to become its accomplices in certain great nastinesses.

  Antonin Artaud

  Asylums, Madness, Misunderstood Genius

  "Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society". Essay by Antonin Artaud, 1947.

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• There's a nastiness out there that wants to harm me with words. These are my enemies - the ideologues, the populists, the columnists who don't like the fact that I take them on toe-to-toe. What I try to do is tell the truth. It's not the coin of the realm in politics.

  Ed Koch

  Enemy, Trying, Want

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• It's important for me to fight for principles. But I am not willing to cope with the nastiness of politics anymore and the endless destructive confrontations that it leads to.

  Ingrid Betancourt

  Fighting, Important, Principles

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• Words can be said in bitterness and anger, and often there seems to be an element of truth in the nastiness. And words don't go away, they just echo around.

  Jane Goodall

  Anger, Echoes, Going Away

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• On one level, I am a total softie, sort of depressed and afraid of losing the people I love or failing them. To disguise that, there's all this harsh, poop-centric, external swagger, full of nastiness. I'm a cloaking device.

  George Saunders

  People, Swagger, Levels

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• You've got to know what your 'thing' is, and you've got to call it a 'thing,' whether it's meanness, nastiness, un-forgiveness, arrogance, ego, resistance, rebelliousness or defiance. Everybody's got a 'thing,' and once you call your 'thing' a 'thing,' we can give it a place to be or dismiss it.

  Iyanla Vanzant

  Giving, Ego, Arrogance

  Interview with Regina R. Robertson, www.essence.com. September 14, 2012.

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• I don't like any nastiness on tv unless it's coming from me.

  Andy Kindler

  Tvs

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