Platitudes Quotes - Page 4

• The process of living seems to consist in coming to realize truths so ancient and simple that, if stated, they sound like barren platitudes.

  C. S. Lewis

  Simple, Sound, Realizing

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.215, Simon and Schuster

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• The French are a tremendously verbal race: they kill you with their assurances, their repetitions, their reasons, their platitudes, their formulae, their propositions, their solutions.

  Christina Stead

  Race, Reason, Repetition

  Christina Stead (1992). “A Web of Friendship: Selected Letters, 1928-1973”, Angus & Robertson Publishers

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• Where in this small-talking world can I find A longitude with no platitude?

  Christopher Fry

  Talking, World

  'The Lady's not for Burning' (1949) act 3

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• One likes to think there's something in it, that old platitude amor vincit omnia. But if I've learned one thing in my short sad life, it is that that particular platitude is a lie. Love doesn't conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.

  Donna Tartt

  Lying, Thinking, Sad Life

  Donna Tartt (2011). “The Secret History”, p.211, Vintage

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• The bleakness of what faces us is difficult to swallow. As long as we engage in happy platitudes and a false kind of vision of the possible, it may empower you over the short term, but it is eventually, because of the reality in front of us, going to lead to despair and cynicism and apathy. It's better to swallow hard the bitter pill of what we're up against.

  Chris Hedges

  Reality, Long, Empowering

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. July 14, 2011.

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• I want to explore marriage without the usual Hallmark Card platitudes. Life is difficult, and I like movies that acknowledge that.

  Harold Ramis

  Usual, Cards, Want

  Source: www.ericspitznagel.com

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• If some dude I'd never heard of managed to broadcast a platitude like that to the whole globe, I'd probably just feel like I was being spammed.

  Damian Kulash

  Heard, Feels, Globes

  "Damian Kulash of OK Go: On Creativity, Design, and Activism". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• In this post-modern culture in which we live - where people question absolute truth - stories are resistant to platitudes; they're resistant to me making declarations of truth to them. A story can do that in kind of a Trojan-horse fashion.

  Max Lucado

  Fashion, Horse, People

  Source: www.preaching.com

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• Our society is just less open to platitudes, more open to stories.

  Max Lucado

  Stories, Our Society

  Source: www.preaching.com

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• Is there anything more terrible than a "call"? It affords an occasion for the exchange of the most threadbare commonplaces. Calls and the theatre are the two great centers for the propagation of platitudes.

  Miguel de Unamuno

  Two, Theatre, Conversation

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• A man who has the courage of his platitudes is always a successful man. The instructed man is ashamed to pronounce in an orphic manner what everybody knows, and because he is silent people think he is making fun of them. They like a man who expresses their own superficial thoughts in a manner that appears to be profound. This enables them to feel that they are themselves profound.

  Van Wyck Brooks

  Fun, Successful, Men

  Van Wyck Brooks (1958). “From a writer's notebook”

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• I don't 'support the troops' or any of those other hollow and hypocritical platitudes uttered by Republicans and frightened Democrats. Here's what I do support: I support them coming home. I support them being treated well.

  Michael Moore

  Home, Support, Troops

  "Those Who Say ‘I Support the Troops’ Really Don’t" by Michael Moore, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 3, 2013.

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• It is strange how long we rebel against a platitude until suddenly in a different lingo it looms up again as the only verity.

  Ruth Benedict

  Long, Rebel, Different

  Ruth Benedict (2011). “An Anthropologist at Work”, p.123, Transaction Publishers

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• Delight in smooth sounding platitudes, refusal to face unpleasant facts ... genuine love of peace and pathetic belief that love can be its sole foundation ... the utter devotion of the Liberals to sentiment apart from reality ...though free from wickedness or evil design, played a definite part in the unleashing upon the world of horrors and miseries [WWII]

  Winston Churchill

  Reality, Genuine Love, Evil

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• If I were to envy any persons on this planet, it would be mountain hermits. You often hear old platitudes such as, 'Speak out. Be heard.' On the contrary, a breath of fresh air would be something like: 'Silence, think for at least 15 minutes, and then maybe speak out.

  Criss Jami

  Thinking, Air, Speaks Out

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.55, Criss Jami

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• The dictum that human nature cannot be changed is one of those tiresome platitudes that conceal from the ignorant the depths of their own ignorance.

  Bertrand Russell

  Ignorance, Ignorant, Depth

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• Above all, beware of platitudes, i.e., word combinations that have already appeared a thousand times.... As a general rule, try to find new combinations of words (not for the sake of their novelty, but because every person sees things in an individual way and must find his own words for them).

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Trying, Sake, Way

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• The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of the writer. This is completely understood about poetry or fiction, but it is too seldom realized about books of fact. And yet the impulse which drives a man to poetry will send another man into the tide pools and force him to try to report what he finds there.... It would be good to know the impulse truly, not to be confused by the 'services to science' platitudes or the other little mazes into which we entice our minds so that they will not know what we are doing.

  John Steinbeck

  Confused, Book, Reality

  John Steinbeck (1995). “The Log from the Sea of Cortez”, p.29, Penguin

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• The Sixties was a perfect storm of disaffection with political leaders trying to pass off the same old platitudes to maintain the status quo and an unexpected courageousness in the masses of youth. Nothing on this scale had ever happened before in U.S. history and it hasn't happened since.

  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  Perfect, Leader, Political

  Source: www.sbnation.com

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• The idea of Macbeth as a conscience-torm ented man is a platitude as false as Macbeth himself. Macbeth has no conscience. His main concern throughout the play is that most selfish of all concerns: to get a good night's sleep.

  Mary McCarthy

  Good Night, Selfish, Sleep

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• They sat quietly together for a few minutes, Joe holding Fiona's hand, Fiona sniffling. No flowery words, no platitudes passed between them. Joe would have done anything to ease her suffering, but he knew nothing he might do, or say, could. Her grief would run its course, like a fever, and release her when it was spent. He would not shush her or tell her it was God's will and that her da was better off. That was rubbish and they both knew it. When something hurt as bad as this, you had to let it hurt. There were no shortcuts.

  Jennifer Donnelly

  Running, Hurt, Grief

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