Silly Quotes - Page 24

• You say men ought to be hung for the way they are executing the law; I say the way it is being executed is quite as good as any of its antecedents. It is being executed in the precise way which was intended from the first, else why does no Nebraska man express astonishment or condemnation? Poor Reeder is the only public man who has been silly enough to believe that anything like fairness was ever intended, and he has been bravely undeceived.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Believe, Men, Law

  Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Carl Schurz, Joseph Choate, Francis F. Browne (2017). “LINCOLN – Complete 7 Volume Edition: Biographies, Speeches and Debates, Civil War Telegrams, Letters, Presidential Orders & Proclamations: Including the Introduction by Theodore Roosevelt & 3 Biographies: The Every-day Life of the President, Lincoln by Carl Shurz and Abraham Lincoln by Joseph H. Choate”, p.805, Madison & Adams Press

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• Darwinian evolution may be the most truthful and powerful idea ever generated by Western Science, but if we continue to illustrate our conviction with an indefensible, unsupported, entirely speculative, and basically rather silly story, then we are clothing a thing of beauty in rags - and we should be ashamed, "for the apparel oft proclaims the man.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Powerful, Men, Ideas

  Stephen Jay Gould (1999). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms: Essays on Natural History”, Three Rivers Press (CA)

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• When scientists need to explain difficult points of theory, illustration by hypothetical example - rather than by total abstraction - works well (perhaps indispensably) as a rhetorical device. Such cases do not function as speculations in the pejorative sense - as silly stories that provide insight into complex mechanisms - but rather as idealized illustrations to exemplify a difficult point of theory. (Other fields, like philosophy and the law, use such conjectural cases as a standard device.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Philosophy, Law, Illustration

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms”, p.310, Harvard University Press

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• All children are sweet at five. But at twelve they begin to get silly.

  Jean Anouilh

  Sweet, Children, Twelve

  Jean Anouilh (1958). “Jean Anouilh”

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• Women's emotions are still fitted for a kind of society that no longer exists. My deep emotions, my real ones, are to do with my relationship with a man. One man. But I don't live that kind of life, and I know few women who do. So what I feel is irrelevant and silly.

  Doris Lessing

  Real, Women, Deep Emotions

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• Fashion is always silly, for, before it can spread far, it must be calculated for silly people; as examples of sense, wit, or ingenuity could be imitated only by a few.

  Horace Walpole

  Fashion, People, Example

  Horace Walpole (1861). “The letters of Horace Walpole: earl of Orford”, p.278

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• Most people are too silly to be truly interested in any thing. They herd together like cattle, and do not know what is good for them.

  Frank R. Stockton

  People, Together, Herds

  Frank R. Stockton (1906). “THE QUEEN'S MUSEUM AND OTHER FANCIFUL TALES”

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• For years after 'The Last Waltz,' I got all kinds of silly movie offers - or, maybe, not silly, but parts that are not my calling lots of offers to play some wonderful boyfriend.

  Robbie Robertson

  Years, Play, Calling

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• It all sounds almost silly, but the fact is that the only way to change a corporate culture is to just change it.

  Gordon Bethune

  Sound, Culture, Way

  Gordon Bethune (1999). “From Worst to First: Behind the Scenes of Continental's Remarkable Comeback”, Wiley

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• When the child is twelve, your wife buys her a splendidly silly article of clothing called a training bra. To train what? I never had a training jock. And believe me, when I played football, I could have used a training jock more than any twelve-year-old needs a training bra.

  Bill Cosby

  Football, Children, Believe

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• To you a pious young girl who goes to mass and communion, seems pretty silly and childish; you take us for innocents... Well, let me tell you, sometimes we know more about evil than people who have only learned to offend God.

  Georges Bernanos

  Girl, People, Evil

  "Joy". Book by Georges Bernanos, 1929.

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• Behold a silly tender babe,In freezing winter night,In homely manger trembling lies;Alas! a piteous sight.

  Robert Southwell

  Lying, Winter, Night

  Saint Robert Southwell, William Joseph Walter (1817). “St. Peter's Complaint: And Other Poems”, p.47

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• What a vast Traffick is drove, what a variety of Labour is performed in the World to the Maintenance of Thousands of Families that altogether depend on two silly if not odious Customs; the taking of Snuff and smoking of Tobacco; both which it is certain do infinitely more hurt than good to those that are addicted to them!

  Bernard de Mandeville

  Hurt, Two, Smoking

  Bernard de Mandeville (1723). “The Fable of the Bees”, p.194, Jazzybee Verlag

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• I love stories where the impossible appears believable, plausible and real. Maybe it's silly, but it's one of the reasons Michael Crichton's writing always appealed to me: he took outlandish ideas and made them seem completely within the realm of possibility. I remember reading "Jurassic Park" and feeling like: "Oh, yeah - no, that's totally happening right now. They're bringing back dinosaurs!"

  J. J. Abrams

  Real, Reading, Writing

  "J. J. Abrams: By the Book". The New York Times Interview, www.nytimes.com. October 24, 2013.

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• I love simple food. I like to serve the entire animal, not only because it somehow provokes a customer to think about it, but also because to honor of the animal that has been killed for us to eat, you have to eat the whole thing. It would be silly to just eat the chops and throw everything else away.

  Mario Batali

  Food, Animal, Simple

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• You want to be a hero. That is why you do such silly things.

  Romain Rolland

  Hero, Want, Silly Things

  Romain Rolland (1938). “Jean Christophe”

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• There were two brothers called Both and Either; perceiving Either was a good, understanding, busy fellow, and Both a silly fellow and good for little, Philip said, "Either is both, and Both is neither.

  Plutarch

  Brother, Two, Understanding

  Plutarch (1871). “Plutarch's Morals”, p.195

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• The 'Women' had to do with the female painted through all ages, all those idols, and maybe I was stuck to a certain extent; I couldn't go on. It did one thing for me: it eliminated composition, arrangement, relationships, light - all this silly talk about line, colour and form - because that was the thing I wanted to get hold of.

  Willem de Kooning

  Light, Idols, Age

  Willem De Kooning, Gagosian Gallery (2004). “De Kooning: a centennial exhibition”

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• That's silly talk... Talk to my wife. She'll tell me I need to learn to just put my socks on the hamper.

  Barack Obama

  Wife, Needs, Hamper

  "Barack the Blessed" by Jim Geraghty, National Review, July 27, 2004.

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• But what is to be the fate of the great wen of all? The monster, called, by the silly coxcombs of the press, "the metropolis of the empire"?

  William Cobbett

  Fate, Monsters, Empires

  William Cobbett (2011). “Rural Rides (Two Volumes in One)”, p.43, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Nothing is more silly than silly laughter.

  Catullus

  Laughter

  "Carmina". XXXIX, 16,

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• We must get rid of the silly, sloppy idea that all people are equal in capacity.

  Ray Lyman Wilbur

  Ideas, People, Capacity

  "Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur, A Gentleman and a Scholar". Los Angeles Times, June 28, 1949.

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• When you see the way things deteriorate before your very eyes. Everything running down hill. It's kind of silly to even think about youth.

  Sam Shepard

  Running, Eye, Thinking

  Sam Shepard (2009). “Buried Child”, p.99, Vintage

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• Our doom is, to be sifted by the wind, heaped up, smoothed down like silly sands. We are less permanent than thought.

  Basil Bunting

  Wind, Sand, Doom

  1925 Villon, pt.1.

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• Silly what's his name, the Shrek, whoever he was on the television this morning?

  Paul Keating

  Morning, Names, Television

  "Vintage Keating". Book by Brian Carroll, 2010.

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