Unfortunate Quotes - Page 3

• Weak mortals, chained to the earth, creatures of clay as frail as the foliage of the woods, you unfortunate race, whose life is but darkness, as unreal as a shadow, the illusion of a dream.

  Aristophanes

  Dream, Race, Darkness

  Aristophanes (2012). “The Birds”, p.21, Courier Corporation

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Though defensive violence will always be 'a sad necessity' in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men.

  Saint Augustine

  Eye, Gun, Men

  14 Copy quote

• Ridicule is the unfortunate destiny of the ridiculous.

  James Howard Kunstler

  Destiny, Ridiculous, Ridicule

  James Howard Kunstler (2003). “The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition”, p.11, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am an unfortunate and deserted creature, I look around and I have no relation or friend upon earth. These amiable people to whom I go have never seen me and know little of me. I am full of fears, for if I fail there, I am an outcast in the world forever.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  People, Forever, Looks

  Hilary Bailey, Mary Wollstonecraft (2007). “Frankenstein's Bride: Frankenstein Or the Modern Prometheus”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Of course my moods change, but the average is serenity. I have a firm faith in art, a firm confidence in its being a powerful stream which carries a man to a harbor, though he himself must do his bit too; at all events, I think it such a great blessing when a man has found his work that I cannot count myself among the unfortunate. I mean, I may be in certain relatively great difficulties, and there may be gloomy days in my life, but I shouldn't like to be counted among the unfortunate, nor would it be correct if I were.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Art, Powerful, Mean

  Vincent van Gogh (1971). “Van Gogh's "diary"; the artist's life in his own words and art”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• A wretched woman is more unfortunate than a wretched man.

  Victor Hugo

  Women, Men, Wretched

  Victor Hugo, Frank Lee Benedict (1874). “Ninety-three”, p.253, Dawson Bros.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• From the writer's point of view, critics should be ignored, although it's hard not to do what they suggest. I think it's unfortunate to have critics for friends. Suppose you write something that stinks, what are they going to say in a review? Say it stinks? So if they're honest, they do, and if you were friends you're still friends, but the knowledge of your lousy writing and their articulate admission of it will be always something between the two of you, like the knowledge between a man and his wife of some shady adultery.

  William Styron

  Writing, Men, Thinking

  9 Copy quote

• Part of what attracted me to the village was it had a lot of parallels to contemporary issues. Like, fear and the way fear controls us. How the governing body of a town, or a nation, controls us through fear. They might mean well by it, but we are conditioned to be afraid of things. Fear of the unknown. Fear of terrorism. And it's unfortunate.

  Adrien Brody

  Mean, Issues, Village

  Roundtable interview, www.ign.com. July 30, 2004.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are an unfortunate priest-ridden race and always were and always will be tell the end of the chapter.... A priest-ridden Godforsaken race.

  James Joyce

  Race, Ends, Chapters

  4 Copy quote

• To doubt is a misfortune, but to seek when in doubt is an indispensable duty. So he who doubts and seeks not is at once unfortunate and unfair.

  Blaise Pascal

  Doubt, Unfair, Duty

  Blaise Pascal, Auguste Molinier (1905). “The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Young writers if they are to mature require a period of between three and seven years in which to live down their promise. Promise is like the mediaeval hangman who after settling the noose, pushed his victim off the platform and jumped on his back, his weight acting a drop while his jockeying arms prevented the unfortunate from loosening the rope. When he judged him dead he dropped to the ground.

  Cyril Connolly

  Writing, Years, Promise

  Cyril Connolly (2008). “Enemies of Promise”, p.109, University of Chicago Press

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Moreover, nothing is so rare as to see misfortune fairly portrayed; the tendency is either to treat the unfortunate person as though catastrophe were his natural vocation, or to ignore the effects of misfortune on the soul, to assume, that is, that the soul can suffer and remain unmarked by it, can fail, in fact, to be recast in misfortune's image.

  Simone Weil

  Soul, Suffering, Facts

  Simone Weil (2005). “War and the Iliad”, New York Review of Books

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The fastidious are unfortunate: nothing can satisfy them.
  [Lat., Les delicats sont malheureux,
  Rien ne saurait les satisfaire.]

  Jean de La Fontaine

  Satisfaction, Fastidious

  8 Copy quote

• Without discipline and detachment, an actor is an emotional slob, spilling his insides out. This abandonment is having an unfortunate vogue. It is tasteless, formless, absurd. Without containment there is no art. All this vomiting and wheezing and bursting at the seams is no more great acting than the convulsions of raving maniacs.

  Bette Davis

  Art, Emotional, Discipline

  Bette Davis (1962). “The lonely life: an autobiography”, Putnam's

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• Legal documents have mistrust written all over them. It's unfortunate, but the human DNA is so tuned to kind of taking you for granted that we tend to protect ourselves legally. That's why I don't read them as, if I read them, I will go soft. To me, the human relationship is far more important than the professional bond I share with anyone.

  Karan Johar

  Dna, Important, Kind

  6 Copy quote

• The classical theorists resemble Euclidean geometers in a non-Euclidean world who, discovering that in experience straight lines apparently parallel often meet, rebuke the lines for not keeping straight as the only remedy for the unfortunate collisions which are occurring. Yet, in truth, there is no remedy except to throw over the axiom of parallels and to work out a non-Euclidean geometry.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Work Out, World, Lines

  John Maynard Keynes (2006). “General Theory Of Employment , Interest And Money”, p.15, Atlantic Publishers & Dist

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Hat head is a sad affliction wherein the chosen hat and the selected hairstyle are grossly incompatible. The unfortunate combination results in a condition that can be hidden only with the application of another hat.

  Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

  Affliction, Hats, Results

  Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (2006). “Knitting Rules!: The Yarn Harlot's Bag of Knitting Tricks”, p.103, Storey Publishing

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• O friendship! thou fond soother of the human breast, to thee we fly in every calamity; to thee the wretched seek for succor; on thee the care-tired son of misery fondly relies; from thy kind assistance the unfortunate always hopes relief, and may be sure of--disappointment.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Friendship, Disappointment, Tired

  Oliver Goldsmith (1856). “The Miscellaneous Works: Letters from a citizen of the world, to his friend in the East. A familiar introduction to the study of natural history”, p.116

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The misery of human life is made up of large masses, each separated from the other by certain intervals. One year the death of a child; years after, a failure in trade; after another longer or shorter interval, a daughter may have married unhappily; in all but the singularly unfortunate, the integral parts that compose the sum-total of the unhappiness of a man's life are easily counted and distinctly remembered.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Daughter, Children, Men

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Illustrated)”, p.1054, Delphi Classics

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• half the good intentions of my life have been frustrated by my unfortunate habit of putting things off till to-morrow.

  Maria Edgeworth

  Procrastination, Frustrated, Half

  Maria Edgeworth, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1823). “Works of Maria Edgeworth: Popular tales. 1823”, p.363

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think Hollywood is in love with sequels. If it's successful once, just jazz it up and shoot it out there again. I think it's unfortunate.

  Paul Newman

  Successful, Thinking, Hollywood

  Interview With Jeff Otto, www.ign.com. June 9, 2006.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am convinced the most unfortunate people are those who would make an art of love. It sours other effort. Of all artists, they are certainly the most wretched.

  Norman Mailer

  Love, Art, People

  Norman Mailer (1992). “Advertisements for Myself”, p.181, Harvard University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the unfortunate consequences of the intellectualization of man's spiritual life was that the word "spirit" was lost and replaced by mind or intellect, and that the element of vitality which is present in "spirit" was separated and interpreted as an independent biological force. Man was divided into a bloodless intellect and a meaningless vitality. The middle ground between them, the spiritual soul, in which vitality and intentionality are united, was dropped.

  Paul Tillich

  Spiritual, Independent, Men

  Paul Tillich (1988). “Writings on religion”

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• Some of these guys are so violent that it is hard for witnesses to come forward, and they get involved in repeat criminal activities, so it is unfortunate that they had to die, but it did kind of end the cycle that we were struggling with.

  Ray Nagin

  Struggle, Guy, Criminals

  "Mayor: Crime Part of New Orleans `Brand'". The Associated Press, www.washingtonpost.com. August 10, 2007.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The modern poet has no essential alliance with regular schemes of any sorts.He reserves the right to adapt his rhythm to his mood, to modulate his metre as he progresses. Far from seeking freedom and irresponsibility (implied by the unfortunate term free verse) he seeks a stricter discipline of exact concord of thought and feeling.

  Herbert Read

  Discipline, Feelings, Progress

  "Collected Essays in Literary Criticism". Book by Herbert Read, 1938.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source