Ridiculous Quotes - Page 8

• Be neither too early in the fashion, nor too long out of it, nor too precisely in it; what custom hath civilized is become decent, till then ridiculous; where the eye is the jury thy apparel is the evidence.

  Francis Quarles

  Fashion, Eye, Long

  Francis Quarles (1844). “Enchiridion Institutions, Essays and Maxims, political, moral & divine. Divided into four centuries. By Francis Quarles”, p.71

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• Sex is God's joke on the human race ... if we didn't have sex to make us ridiculous, She would have had to think up something else instead.

  Erica Jong

  Sex, Thinking, Race

  Erica Jong (1985). “Parachutes & kisses”, Signet

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• I long to be ... Like Other People! The extraordinary, ungetatable, oddly cruel Other People, with their way of wantonly hurting and then accusing you of being thin-skinned, sulky, vindictive or ridiculous.

  Jean Rhys

  Hurt, Long, People

  Jean Rhys (1985). “Tales of the wide Caribbean”, Heinemann Educational Publishers

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• A single woman with a narrow income must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid, the proper sport of boys and girls, but a single woman of fortune is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody else.

  Jane Austen

  Girl, Sports, Boys

  Jane Austen (2007). “The Complete Novels of Jane Austen”, p.824, Wordsworth Editions

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• A man who owns a dog is, in every sense of the words, its master; the term expresses accurately their mutual relations. But it is ridiculous when applied to the limited possession of a cat.

  Agnes Repplier

  Dog, Cat, Men

  Agnes Repplier (1893). “Essays in Idleness”, Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin

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• I wonder what especial sanctity attaches itself to fifteen minutes. It is always the maximum and the minimum of time which will enable us to acquire languages, etiquette, personality, oratory ... One gathers that twelve minutes a day would be hopelessly inadequate, and twenty minutes a wasteful and ridiculous excess.

  Agnes Repplier

  Learning, Personality, Twenties

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• It's not our disadvantages or shortcomings that are ridiculous, but rather the studious way we try to hide them, and our desire to act as if they did not exist.

  Giacomo Leopardi

  Desire, Trying, Way

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• Oh, we are ridiculous animals; and if the angels have any fun in them, how we must divert them!

  Horace Walpole

  Fun, Angel, Animal

  Horace Walpole, John Wright, George Agar-Ellis Dover (1st baron) (1840). “The letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford: including numerous letters now first published from the original manuscripts”, p.253

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• To want to become angels while we are still on earth ... is ridiculous.

  Teresa of Avila

  Angel, Perfection, Earth

  Saint Teresa (of Avila) (1946). “General introduction. Life. Spiritual relations”

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• We shouldn't even need the word 'atheism'. If people didn't invent ridiculous imaginary gods, rational people wouldn't have to deny them.

  Ricky Gervais

  People, Religion, Atheism

  Twitter post from Mar 3, 2012

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• Abstraction in photography is ridiculous, and is only an imitation of painting. We stopped imitating painters a hundred years ago, so to imitate them in this day and age is laughable.

  Berenice Abbott

  Photography, Years, Age

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• A picture is what it is and I've never noticed that it helps to talk about them, or answer specific questions about them, much less volunteer information in words. It wouldn't make any sense to explain them. Kind of diminishes them. People always want to know when something was taken, where it was taken, and, God knows, why it was taken. It gets really ridiculous. I mean, they're right there, whatever they are.

  William Eggleston

  Taken, Mean, People

  "Out of the ordinary" by Sean O'Hagan, www.theguardian.com. July 24, 2004.

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• I've known Prince for many years - I worked on the "Raspberry Beret" video - and Kirstie [Alley] and I used to fight about him.He once sent a card [saying] he had penned a song about me, called "Palomino Pleasure Ride." I remember bringing this card to work one time and showing Kirstie and saying: "See? Now who's the better friend?" It was so ridiculous.

  Kirstie Alley

  Song, Fighting, Years

  "'The Best TV Show That's Ever Been'". Interview with Brian Raftery, www.gq.com. September 27, 2012.

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• Absurdity is the one thing love can't stand; it can overlook anything else, -- coldness, or weakness, or viciousness, -- but just be ridiculous and that's the end of it!

  Margaret Deland

  Weakness, Ends, Absurdity

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• If you pick up some paint with your brush and make somebody's nose with it, this is rather ridiculous when you think of it, theoretically or philosophically. It's really absurd to make an image, like a human image, with paint, today.

  Willem de Kooning

  Thinking, Noses, Today

  Barbara Hess, Willem De Kooning (2004). “Willem de Kooning, 1904-1997: Content as a Glimpse”, p.33, Taschen

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• No doubt the testimony of natural reason, on whatever exercised, must, of necessity, stop short of those truths which it is the object of revelation to make known; still it places the existence and personal attributes of the Deity on such grounds as to render doubts absurd and atheism ridiculous.

  John Herschel

  Doubt, Atheism, Deities

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• Life is a game in which the player must appear ridiculous.

  Julian Fellowes

  Player, Games, Life Is

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• [I] wish that the land-tax went a little more according to situation than it does. 'Tis really ridiculous, how one has to pay five times as much as another, without any reason that ever I heard tell.

  Harriet Martineau

  Land, Wish, Doe

  Harriet Martineau (1834). “Illustrations of taxation”, p.50

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• It is ridiculous to take on a man's job just in order to be able to say that 'a woman has done it - yah!' The only decent reason for tackling a job is that it is your job and you want to do it.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Jobs, Men, Order

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• Folklore is a collection of ridiculous notions held by other people, but not by you and me.

  Margaret Halsey

  People, Myth, Notion

  Margaret Halsey (1952). “The Folks at Home”

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• the mind naturally accommodates itself, even to the most ridiculous improprieties, if they occur frequently.

  Fanny Burney

  Mind, Repetition, Accommodate

  Frances Burney, Fanny Burney (2015). “Complete Works of Frances Burney (Delphi Classics)”, p.301, Delphi Classics

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• A real love letter is absolutely ridiculous to everyone except the writer and the recipient.

  Myrtle Reed

  Real, Letters, Love Letter

  Myrtle Reed (2012). “The Spinster Book”, p.90, tredition

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• Fire had an almost magical quality that suggested anything was possible. Early on, man even believed that fire was a god that had to be fed with animal sacrifices in order to burn brightly. Today we have evolved a long way from this ridiculous notion of a 'fire god' and now rightfully understand God to be a bearded being who lives amongst the clouds and hates Jews and homosexuals.

  Amy Sedaris

  God, Hate, Sacrifice

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• To say that my grief will be eternal would be ridiculous - nothing is eternal.

  Marie Bashkirtseff

  Grief, Would Be, Eternal

  Marie Bashkirtseff (1919). “Marie Bashkirtseff: the journal of a young artist, 1860-1884”

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• Among other things I think humor is a shield, a weapon, a survival kit. So here we are several billion of us, crowded into our global concentration camp for the duration. How are we to survive? Solemnity is not the answer, any more than witless and irresponsible frivolity is. I think our best chance lies in humor, which in this case means a wry acceptance of our predicament. We don't have to like it but we can at least recognize its ridiculous aspects, one of which is ourselves.

  Ogden Nash

  Lying, Mean, Acceptance

  "A Gleeful Splash of Ogden Nash" by Jonathan Yardley, www.washingtonpost.com. May 08, 2005.

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