Nonchalance Quotes

• Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance.

  Francoise Sagan

  Feelings, Playing Jazz, Music Is

  87 Copy quote

• I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance, were it not for making living, which is rather a nouciance.

  Ogden Nash

  Leisure, Insouciance

  Ogden Nash (1931). “Hard lines”

  95 Copy quote

  Show source

• Employ in everything a certain casualness which conceals art and creates the impression that what is done and said is accomplished without effort and without its being thought about. It is from this, in my opinion, that grace largely derives.

  Baldassare Castiglione

  Art, Attitude, Effort

  26 Copy quote

• O joy of suffering! To struggle against great odds! to meet enemies undaunted! To be entirely alone with them! to find how much one can stand! To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, death, face to face! To mount the scaffold! to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance! To be indeed a God!

  Walt Whitman

  Death, Struggle, Gun

  Walt Whitman (1870). “Passage to India”, p.51, Haskell House Pub Limited

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• We have lit upon the gentle, sensitive mind And lost the old nonchalance of the hand; Whether we have chosen chisel, pen or brush, We are but critics, or but half create.

  William Butler Yeats

  Hands, Mind, Half

  William Butler Yeats (2011). “Selected Poems And Four Plays”, p.69, Simon and Schuster

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nonchalance is the ability to remain down to earth when everything else is up in the air.

  Earl Wilson

  Air, Earth, Ability

  17 Copy quote

• She had acquired some of his gypsy ways, some of his nonchalance, his bohemian indiscipline. She had swung with him into the disorders of strewn clothes, spilled cigarette ashes, slipping into bed all dressed, falling asleep thus, indolence, timelessness...A region of chaos and moonlight. She liked it there.

  Anais Nin

  Fall, Clothes, Bed

  18 Copy quote

• The Nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Attitude, Boys, Healthy

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1808). “Select Essays and Poems”, p.31

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The style of studied nonchalance is the psychological triumph of grace over order.

  G. Bruce Boyer

  Order, Grace, Style

  "True Style: The History and Principles of Classic Menswear". Book by G. Bruce Boyer, September 08, 2015.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are two cardinal human sins out of which all others derive, deviate, and dissipate: impatience and lassitude (or perhaps nonchalance). On account of impatience they are driven out of paradise; on account of lassitude or nonchalance they do not return. Perhaps, however, only one main sense of sin is given: impatience. On account of impatience they are driven out, on account of impatience they do not turn back.

  Franz Kafka

  Two, Paradise, Return

  6 Copy quote

• The nonchalance and dolce-far-niente air of nature and society hint at infinite periods in the progress of mankind.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Air, Progress

  Henry David Thoreau (1873). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.137

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have discovered a universal rule which seems to apply more than any other in all human actions or words: namely, to steer away from affectation at all costs, as if it were a rough and dangerous reef, and (to use perhaps a novel word for it) to practise in all things a certain nonchalance [sprezzatura] which conceals all artistry and makes whatever one says or does seem uncontrived and effortless.

  Baldassare Castiglione

  Cost, Use, Doe

  33 Copy quote

• I want to put a soul in a garment. I don't want my clothes to be perfect, because human beings are not perfect. You can meet somebody in one of my jackets and it can all look a bit wrong, but also human and beautiful. Cutting nonchalance into a garment is difficult, because you can't just make an oversized or an asymmetric garment - it will look ugly. Making it look natural is delicate work. If it's too obvious, then it looks fake. Balancing the garment is a painstaking task, because you have to keep in mind how the clothes move.

  Ann Demeulemeester

  Beautiful, Moving, Cutting

  16 Copy quote

• For me, in fact, the mark of the historic is the nonchalance with which it picks up an individual and deposits him in a trend, like a house playfully moved by a tornado.

  Mary McCarthy

  History, House, Trends

  Mary McCarthy (2002). “A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays”, New York Review of Books

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It should be done with the same degree of alacrity and nonchalance that you would display in authorizing a highly intelligent trained bear to remove your appendix.

  Daniel S. Greenberg

  Intelligent, Degrees, Done

  4 Copy quote

• Collections are certainly abundant online. It's complicated, because it's not like these people didn't want computers, although there was some nonchalance about it. I would sometimes ask the people I interviewed if they wished they had a computer, and in a lot of cases, it was like they couldn't process the question. You don't know what you don't have, I guess.

  Miranda July

  People, Want, Computer

  "The Rumpus Interview With Miranda July". Interview with Zack Ruskin, therumpus.net. April 18, 2012.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Practise in everything a certain nonchalance that shall conceal design and show that what is done and said is done without effort and almost without thought.

  Baldassare Castiglione

  Design, Effort, Done

  Baldassare Castiglione (2012). “The Book of the Courtier”, p.35, Courier Corporation

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• Thanks to Granna, Werner and Walter had grown up to be highly functioning, productive citizens - but if you were to ask Walter, Werner had a far easier time of it and lived his life with the sanctified nonchalance of those who will do anything to avoid dissecting their souls.

  Julia Glass

  Soul, Citizens, Thanks

  Julia Glass (2006). “The Whole World Over: A Novel”, Pantheon

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• But whereas a puppy will cringe away or roll on its back, groveling, a little boy may cover his shyness with nonchalance, with bravado, or with secrecy. And once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even where it does not exist-or, worse, will draw it forth from people simply by expecting it.

  John Steinbeck

  Boys, People, Rejection

  John Steinbeck (1952). “East of Eden, And, The Wayward Bus”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source