Famous Quotes & Sayings

Stephen Leacock

Most people tire of a lecture in ten minutes; clever people can do it in five. Sensible people never go to lectures at all. But the people who do go to a lecture and who get tired of it, presently hold it as a sort of grudge against the lecturer personally. In reality his sufferings are worse than theirs.

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

...the number one reason knitters knit is because they are so smart that they need knitting to make boring things interesting. Knitters are so compellingly clever that they simply can't tolerate boredom. It takes more to engage and entertain this kind of human, and they need an outlet or they get into trouble. "...knitters just can't watch TV without doing something else. Knitters just can't wait in line, knitters just can't sit waiting at the doctor's office. Knitters need knitting to add a layer of interest in other, less constructive ways.

Thomas Mann

One has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and unusual.

Thomas Carlyle

I never heard tell of any clever man that came of entirely stupid people.

Tom Shippey

Many sci-fi authors, we know, are as clever and tricky as so many Coyotes. Ms. Le Guin, though, has matured from the vividness and imagination she had from the beginning into wisdom and a clearsightedness that reaches past sympathy.

Steven Hall

There’s no way to really preserve a person when they’ve gone and that’s because whatever you write down it’s not the truth, it’s just a story. Stories are all we’re ever left with in our head or on paper: clever narratives put together from selected facts, legends, well edited tall tales with us in the starring roles

Stendhal

I no longer find such pleasure in that preeminently good society, of which I was once so fond. It seems to me that beneath a cloak of clever talk it proscribes all energy, all originality. If you are not a copy, people accuse you of being ill-mannered.

Shepard Fairey

The great thing about the Internet is, it has made it easier for people who are clever and resourceful to promote themselves.

Shawn Hatosy

Maybe I'm a little biased, but shows like 'Dexter' and 'Southland,' I'm just enthralled by that sort of storytelling, kind of clever and patient.

Philippa Gregory

When a man wants a mystery, it is generally better to leave him mystified. Nobody loves a clever woman.

Keith Jarrett

It is the individual voice, present to itself, that needs to be heard. We need to hear the process of the musician working on himself. We don't need to hear who is more clever with synthesizers. Our cleverness has created the world we live in, which in many ways, we're sorry about.

Ralph Fiennes

Ridicule is also a weapon against forces of evil. Really clever, intelligent ridicule.

Ted Leonsis

A successful business is either loved or needed.

James Lovelock

An inefficient virus kills its host. A clever virus stays with it.

James M. Barrie

Oh, the cleverness of me!

Stacy Schiff

Cleopatra stood at one of the most dangerous intersections in history; that of women and power. Clever women, Euripides had warned hundreds of years earlier, were dangerous.

Soren Kierkegaard

At one time my only wish was to be a police official. It seemed to me to be an occupation for my sleepless intriguing mind. I had the idea that there, among criminals, were people to fight: clever, vigorous, crafty fellows. Later I realized that it was good that I did not become one, for most police cases involve misery and wretchedness-not crimes and scandals.

Soren Kierkegaard

My scholarly expectation is then that I may succeed in becoming clever in philosophy in spite of my stupidity.

Soren Kierkegaard

I am so stupid that I cannot understand philosophy; the antithesis of this is that philosophy is so clever that it cannot comprehend my stupidity. These antitheses are mediated in a higher unity; in our common stupidity.

Soren Kierkegaard

The individual (no matter how well-meaning he might be, no matter how much strength he might have, if only he would use it) does not have the passion to rip himself away from either the coils of Reflection or the seductive ambiguities of Reflection; nor do the surroundings and times have any events or passions, but rather provide a negative setting of a habit of reflection, which plays with some illusory project only to betray him in the end with a way out: it shows him that the most clever thing to do is nothing at all.

Russell Banks

And out of a desire essentially to imitate what I was reading, I began to write, like a clever monkey.

Russell Baker

When it comes to cars, only two varieties of people are possible - cowards and fools.

Roger Kahn

Dempsey himself said you only spend so much time in the spotlight before they change the bulb. He had a very clever way with words.

Umberto Eco

We were clever enough to turn a laundry list into poetry.

Raymond Chandler

Show me a man or woman who cannot stand mysteries and I will show you a fool, a clever fool - perhaps - but a fool just the same.

Trenton Lee Stewart

Oh, here's a clever one. Do you remember this question from the first test?It reads, 'What wrong with this statement?' And do you know what Constance wrote in reply? She wrote, 'What's wrong with you?

Haruki Murakami

Has the dark shadow really disappeared? Or is it inside me, concealed, waiting for its chance to reappear? Like a clever thief hidden inside a house, breathing quietly, waiting until everyone’s asleep. I have looked deep inside myself, trying to detect something that might be there. But just as our consciousness is a maze, so too is our body. Everywhere you turn there’s darkness, and a blind spot. Everywhere you find silent hints, everywhere a surprise is waiting for you.

Karl Kraus

The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so they believe they are clever as he.

Otto von Bismarck

The less people know about how sausages and laws are made, the better they'll sleep at night

Winston Graham

I have never been clever enough - or egotistical enough to spend 300 pages dipping into the sludge of my own subconscious.

Winston Churchill

Any clever person can make plans for winning a war if he has no responsibility for carrying them out.

Wilson Mizner

In the battle of existence, Talent is the punch; Tact is the clever footwork.

W. C. Fields

The clever cat eats cheese and breathes down rat holes with baited breath.