Inconsiderate Quotes

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One of my main regrets in life is giving considerable thought to inconsiderate people.
Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
Keep in mind, hurting people often hurt other people as a result of their own pain. If somebody is rude and inconsiderate, you can almost be certain that they have some unresolved issues inside. They have some major problems, anger, resentment, or some heartache they are trying to cope with or overcome. The last thing they need is for you to make matters worse by responding angrily.
Joel Osteen (Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential)
I'm having a panic attack, you inconsiderate ass.
Tahereh Mafi (Restore Me (Shatter Me, #4))
Stop that, I told my brain. Also, the wedding is tomorrow, said my brain. Get out of my head. My brain refused to get out of my head. Inconsiderate brain.
Rick Riordan (The Hammer of Thor (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, #2))
If men gave birth, they'd be less inconsiderate.
Gabriel García Márquez
A man who goes into a restaurant and blatantly disrespects the servers shows a strong discontent with his own being. Deep down he knows that restaurant service is the closest thing he will ever experience to being served like a king.
Criss Jami (Killosophy)
If the entire world sought to make itself worthy of happiness rather than make itself happy, then the entire world would be happy.
Criss Jami (Venus in Arms)
We love winners, even though they’re very rarely particularly likeable people. They’re almost always obsessive and selfish and inconsiderate. That doesn’t matter. We forgive them. We like them while they’re winning.
Fredrik Backman (Beartown (Beartown, #1))
And he’s right to say that every faction loses something when it gains a virtue: the Dauntless, brave but cruel; the Erudite, intelligent but vain; the Amity, peaceful but passive; the Candor, honest but inconsiderate; the Abnegation, selfless but stifling.
Veronica Roth (Allegiant (Divergent, #3))
God favors men and women who delight in being made worthy of happiness before the happiness itself.
Criss Jami (Killosophy)
Sometimes," I ventured, "it doesn't occur to boys that their mother was ever young and pretty. . . I couldn't stand it if you boys were inconsiderate, or thought of her as if she were just somebody who looked after you. You see I was very much in love with your mother once, and I know there's nobody like her...
Willa Cather (My Ántonia)
She slams the door shut without saying please or thank you or goodbye. And even though she’s the most inconsiderate person I’ve ever met in real life, I can’t stop smiling. I think we may have just bonded.
Colleen Hoover (Maybe Not (Maybe, #1.5))
Please don’t hate you??!! I hate that I love you. Loving you made me waste a year of my life. Loving you made me be passionate about nothing but you. Loving you made me take risks I never would have otherwise. Loving you made me give it up to you. Loving you made me neglect my parents and Amy. Loving you made me not care that my grandma just died. Loving you made me turn out bitter and hopeless like her. Loving you made me hate myself for being dumped by you. Loving you made me deluded, irrational, inconsiderate, and a liar. And because I love you, you’re always going to haunt me.
Daria Snadowsky (Anatomy of a Boyfriend (Anatomy, #1))
To the most inconsiderate asshole of a friend, I’m writing you this letter because I know that if I say what I have to say to your face I will probably punch you. I don’t know you anymore. I don’t see you anymore. All I get is a quick text or a rushed e-mail from you every few days. I know you are busy and I know you have Bethany, but hello? I’m supposed to be your best friend. You have no idea what this summer has been like. Ever since we were kids we pushed away every single person that could possibly have been our friend. We blocked people until there was only me and you. You probably haven’t noticed, because you have never been in the position I am in now. You have always had someone. You always had me. I always had you. Now you have Bethany and I have no one. Now I feel like those other people that used to try to become our friend, that tried to push their way into our circle but were met by turned backs. I know you’re probably not doing it deliberately just as we never did it deliberately. It’s not that we didn’t want anyone else, it’s just that we didn’t need them. Sadly now it looks like you don’t need me anymore. Anyway I’m not moaning on about how much I hate her, I’m just trying to tell you that I miss you. And that well . . . I’m lonely. Whenever you cancel nights out I end up staying home with Mum and Dad watching TV. It’s so depressing. This was supposed to be our summer of fun. What happened? Can’t you be friends with two people at once? I know you have found someone who is extra special, and I know you both have a special “bond,” or whatever, that you and I will never have. But we have another bond, we’re best friends. Or does the best friend bond disappear as soon as you meet somebody else? Maybe it does, maybe I just don’t understand that because I haven’t met that “somebody special.” I’m not in any hurry to, either. I liked things the way they were. So maybe Bethany is now your best friend and I have been relegated to just being your “friend.” At least be that to me, Alex. In a few years time if my name ever comes up you will probably say, “Rosie, now there’s a name I haven’t heard in years. We used to be best friends. I wonder what she’s doingnow; I haven’t seen or thought of her in years!” You will sound like my mum and dad when they have dinner parties with friends and talk about old times. They always mention people I’ve never even heard of when they’re talking about some of the most important days of their lives. Yet where are those people now? How could someone who was your bridesmaid 20 years ago not even be someone who you are on talking terms with now? Or in Dad’s case, how could he not know where his own best friend from college lives? He studied with the man for five years! Anyway, my point is (I know, I know, there is one), I don’t want to be one of those easily forgotten people, so important at the time, so special, so influential, and so treasured, yet years later just a vague face and a distant memory. I want us to be best friends forever, Alex. I’m happy you’re happy, really I am, but I feel like I’ve been left behind. Maybe our time has come and gone. Maybe your time is now meant to be spent with Bethany. And if that’s the case I won’t bother sending you this letter. And if I’m not sending this letter then what am I doing still writing it? OK I’m going now and I’m ripping these muddled thoughts up. Your friend, Rosie
Cecelia Ahern (Love, Rosie)
Life sometimes reminds us that it is sometimes heartless by giving something or someone we really need to someone who does not need or even want them or it.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
If someone is inconsiderate or rude to you, risk telling them how it made you feel or that you didn’t appreciate being treated that way. If you tend to talk yourself out of anger by telling yourself that you don’t want to make waves, try telling yourself instead that it is okay to make waves sometimes and risk letting people know how you really feel.
Beverly Engel (The Nice Girl Syndrome: Stop Being Manipulated and Abused -- And Start Standing Up for Yourself)
We are all born rude. No infant has ever appeared yet with the grace to understand how inconsiderate it is to disturb others in the middle of the night.
Judith Martin (Common Courtesy: In Which Miss Manners Solves the Problem That Baffled Mr. Jefferson)
There was no meaning in life, and man by living served no end. It was immaterial whether he was born or not born, whether he lived or ceased to live. Life was insignificant and death without consequence. Philip exulted, as he had exulted in his boyhood when the weight of a belief in God was lifted from his shoulders: it seemed to him that the last burden of responsibility was taken from him; and for the first time he was utterly free. His insignificance was turned to power, and he felt himself suddenly equal with the cruel fate which had seemed to persecute him; for, if life was meaningless, the world was robbed of its cruelty. What he did or left undone did not matter. Failure was unimportant and success amounted to nothing. He was the most inconsiderate creature in that swarming mass of mankind which for a brief space occupied the surface of the earth; and he was almighty because he had wrenched from chaos the secret of its nothingness. Thoughts came tumbling over one another in Philip's eager fancy, and he took long breaths of joyous satisfaction. He felt inclined to leap and sing. He had not been so happy for months. 'Oh, life,' he cried in his heart, 'Oh life, where is thy sting?
W. Somerset Maugham (Of Human Bondage)
I shall be considered completely beyond the pale if I am dashed upon the rocks. Aunt will be so uncomfortable. Most inconsiderate of me.
Cindy Anstey (Love, Lies and Spies)
I blame the Internet. Its inconsiderate inclusion of everything.Success is transparent and accessible, hanging down where it can tease but not touch us. We talk into these scratchy microphones and take extra photographs but I still feel like there are just SO MANY PEOPLE. Every day, 1,035.6 books are published; sixty-six million people update their status each morning. At night, aimlessly scrolling, I remind myself of elementary school murals. One person can make a difference! But the people asking me what I want to be when I grow up don't want me to make a poster anymore. They want me to fill out forms and hand them rectangular cards that say HELLO THIS IS WHAT I DO.
Marina Keegan (The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories)
Speaking a painful truth should be done only in love - like wielding a sword with no hilt - it should pain oneself in direct proportion to the amount of force exerted.
Criss Jami (Healology)
brushes his mouth against the corner of mine, and Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, it takes every ounce of the not-inconsiderable restraint I’ve spent years exercising around Percy not to rip all my clothes off right then, passersby be damned. But I am nothing if not a gentleman, and a gentleman does not take his trousers off in a public place, particularly if the great love of his life is asking him to refrain.
Mackenzi Lee (The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue (Montague Siblings, #1))
All men are selfish, brutal and inconsiderate--and I wish I could find one.
Shulamith Firestone (The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution)
when i love, it happens almost all at once. it is inconsiderate, unrefined - a child screeching in a supermarket it's a thunderclap. it is a small village blackout. it is aphrodite rising from the sea foam, fully formed.
Salma Deera (Letters From Medea)
It was inconsiderate, she thought, how blandly people mentioned the future in the sick rooms. Phrases like next summer were always popping out; people made such assumptions about their own continuity.
Larry McMurtry (Terms of Endearment)
Power without compassion is like a giant that blocks the sunlight.
Criss Jami (Healology)
Ignorance and inconsideration are the two great causes of the ruin of mankind.
John Tillotson
So inconsiderable a thing is fortune in respect of human nature, and so insufficient to give content to a covetous mind, that an empire of that mighty extent and sway could not satisfy the ambition of two men;
Plutarch (Plutarch's Lives: Volume II)
The peculiar predicament of the present-day self surely came to pass as a consequence of the disappointment of the high expectations of the self as it entered the age of science and technology. Dazzled by the overwhelming credentials of science, the beauty and elegance of the scientific method, the triumph of modern medicine over physical ailments, and the technological transformation of the very world itself, the self finds itself in the end disappointed by the failure of science and technique in those very sectors of life which had been its main source of ordinary satisfaction in past ages. As John Cheever said, the main emotion of the adult Northeastern American who has had all the advantages of wealth, education, and culture is disappointment. Work is disappointing. In spite of all the talk about making work more creative and self-fulfilling, most people hate their jobs, and with good reason. Most work in modern technological societies is intolerably dull and repetitive. Marriage and family life are disappointing. Even among defenders of traditional family values, e.g., Christians and Jews, a certain dreariness must be inferred, if only from the average time of TV viewing. Dreary as TV is, it is evidently not as dreary as Mom talking to Dad or the kids talking to either. School is disappointing. If science is exciting and art is exhilarating, the schools and universities have achieved the not inconsiderable feat of rendering both dull. As every scientist and poet knows, one discovers both vocations in spite of, not because of, school. It takes years to recover from the stupor of being taught Shakespeare in English Lit and Wheatstone's bridge in Physics. Politics is disappointing. Most young people turn their backs on politics, not because of the lack of excitement of politics as it is practiced, but because of the shallowness, venality, and image-making as these are perceived through the media--one of the technology's greatest achievements. The churches are disappointing, even for most believers. If Christ brings us new life, it is all the more remarkable that the church, the bearer of this good news, should be among the most dispirited institutions of the age. The alternatives to the institutional churches are even more grossly disappointing, from TV evangelists with their blown-dry hairdos to California cults led by prosperous gurus ignored in India but embraced in La Jolla. Social life is disappointing. The very franticness of attempts to reestablish community and festival, by partying, by groups, by club, by touristy Mardi Gras, is the best evidence of the loss of true community and festival and of the loneliness of self, stranded as it is as an unspeakable consciousness in a world from which it perceives itself as somehow estranged, stranded even within its own body, with which it sees no clear connection. But there remains the one unquestioned benefit of science: the longer and healthier life made possible by modern medicine, the shorter work-hours made possible by technology, hence what is perceived as the one certain reward of dreary life of home and the marketplace: recreation. Recreation and good physical health appear to be the only ambivalent benefits of the technological revolution.
Walker Percy (Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book)
Narcissistic parents don’t really recognize their children as people separate from them. Instead, they see their children as little extensions of themselves. The needs of the child are defined by the needs of the parent, and the child who tries to express his needs is often accused of being selfish or inconsiderate.
Jonice Webb (Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect)
I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.
Carl Sagan
You don't hurry a thinker, and you don't talk to him when he's thinking. It's just inconsiderate.
Christopher Moore (Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings)
Anna, we’re the bad guys.” “That doesn’t mean we’re inconsiderate dicks.
Natalie Zina Walschots (Hench (Hench, #1))
My brain refused to get out of my head. Inconsiderate brain.
Rick Riordan (The Hammer of Thor (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, #2))
Please don’t hate you??!! I hate that I love you. Loving you made me waste a year of my life. Loving you made me be passionate about nothing but you. Loving you made me take risks I never would have otherwise. Loving you made me give it up to you. Loving you made me neglect my parents and Amy. Loving you made me not care that my grandma just died. Loving you made me turn out bitter and hopeless like her. Loving you made me hate myself for being dumped by you. Loving you made me deluded, irrational, inconsiderate, and a liar. And because I love you, you’re always going to haunt me. I’ll never be able to have another birthday without wondering how you’re celebrating yours. I’ll never be able to think another guy is more handsome, talented, intelligent, or worth loving than you, despite all your faults (and there are many). I’ll never be able to check my e-mail without praying I’ll find a message from you with the subject line I love you, Dom—please come back to me. Meanwhile, every corner of this city is laced with memories of us together, and I’ll never be able to leave the house without hoping and dreading that I’ll run into you. You stole Fort Myers from me, and I lived here first, you fucking thief. You actually may be one of my last thoughts when I die.
Daria Snadowsky (Anatomy of a Boyfriend (Anatomy, #1))
It is *essential* to such a government, that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans, and claim for their government the honorable title of republic.
James Madison
To stay cheerful when involved in a gloomy and exceedingly responsible business is no inconsiderable art: yet what could be more necessary than cheerfulness? Nothing succeeds in which high spirits play no part. Only excess of strength is proof of strength.
Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols / The Anti-Christ)
Otto said, raising an eyebrow. ‘You know it’s almost like people don’t want me interfering with their highly advanced experimental weapon systems these days.’ ‘How very inconsiderate of them,’ Raven said.
Mark Walden (Deadlock (H.I.V.E., #8))
Fine. Sit around being inconsiderate asses…and you wonder why none of you are married. (Zarina) (Sway cleared his throat meaningfully.) Oh, shush. You don’t count. You had an arranged marriage. These losers can’t get a girl for more than three and half minutes it takes them to embarrass themselves with their feeble gropings that always disappoint. (Zarina)
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Born of Ice (The League: Nemesis Rising, #3; The League: Nemesis Legacy, #2))
I find that kind of “look at me” narcissism terribly inconsiderate. If you need attention that badly, set yourself on fire.
Joan Rivers (I Hate Everyone...Starting with Me)
Following this logic, the millions of people who perished during epidemics of influenza in the early twentieth century should have really pulled themselves together, instead of making all this fuss and dying in the most inconsiderate manner.
Claire D. Simone (That's What Women Do: A Feminist Manifesto)
Normal people are not always boring. On the contrary. Volatility and passion, although often more romantic and enticing, are not intrinsically preferable to a steadiness of experience and feeling about another person (nor are they incompatible). These are beliefs, of course, that one has intuitively about friendships and family; they become less obvious when caught up in a romantic life that mirrors, magnifies, and perpetuates one's own mercurial emotional life and temperament. It has been with my pleasure, and not-inconsiderable pain, that I have learned about the possibilities of love - its steadiness and its growth - from my husband, the man with whom I had lived for almost a decade.
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
Where are you going?" I asked, as Frank swung his feet off the bed. "I'd hate the dear old thing to be disappointed in us," he answered. Sitting up on the side of the ancient bed, he bounced gently up and down, creating a piercing rhythmic squeak. The Hoovering in the hall stopped abruptly. After a minute or two of bouncing, he gave a loud, theatrical groan and collapsed backward with a twang of protesting springs. I giggled helplessly into a pillow, so as not to disturb the breathless silence outside. Frank waggled his eyebrows at me. "You're supposed to moan ecstatically, not giggle," he admonished in a whisper. "She'll think I'm not a good lover." "You'll have to keep it up for longer than that, if you expect ecstatic moans," I answered. "Two minutes doesn't deserve any more than a giggle." "Inconsiderate little wench. I came here for a rest, remember?" "Lazybones. You'll never manage the next branch on your family tree unless you show a bit more industry than that.
Diana Gabaldon (Outlander (Outlander, #1))
How vast those Orbs must be, and how inconsiderable this Earth, the Theatre upon which all our mighty Designs, all our Navigations, and all our Wars are transacted, is when compared to them. A very fit consideration, and matter of Reflection, for those Kings and Princes who sacrifice the Lives of so many People, only to flatter their Ambition in being Masters of some pitiful corner of this small Spot.
Christiaan Huygens (Cosmotheoros: or, conjectures concerning the inhabitants of the planets)
But the best, in my opinion, was the home life in the little flat--the ardent, voluble chats after the day's study; the cozy dinners and fresh, light breakfasts; the interchange of ambitions--ambitions interwoven each with the other's or else inconsiderable--the mutual help and inspiration; and--overlook my artlessness--stuffed olives and cheese sandwiches at 11 p.m.
O. Henry (The Four Million)
the patriotic or religious bumper stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers, who are usually talking on cell phones as they cut people off in order to get just twenty stupid feet ahead in the traffic jam...
David Foster Wallace (This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life)
My code of life and conduct is simply this: work hard, play to the allowable limit, disregard equally the good and bad opinion of others, never do a friend a dirty trick, eat and drink what you feel like when you feel like, never grow indignant over anything, trust to tobacco for calm and serenity, bathe twice a day . . . learn to play at least one musical instrument and then play it only in private, never allow one's self even a passing thought of death, never contradict anyone or seek to prove anything to anyone unless one gets paid for it in cold, hard coin, live the moment to the utmost of its possibilities, treat one's enemies with polite inconsideration, avoid persons who are chronically in need, and be satisfied with life always but never with one's self.
George Jean Nathan
He was the most inconsiderable creature in that swarming mass of mankind which for a brief space occupied the surface of the earth; and he was almighty because he had wrenched from chaos the secret of its nothingness.
W. Somerset Maugham (Of Human Bondage)
School is disappointing. If science is exciting and art is exhilarating, the schools and universities have achieved the not inconsiderable feat of rendering both dull. As every scientist and poet knows, one discovers both vocations in spite of, not because of school. It takes years to recover from the stupor of being taught Shakespeare in English Lit and Wheatstone's bridge in Physics.
Walker Percy (Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book)
What are the tales?" Adrienne asked wryly. "His exploits are legendary!" "His conquests are legion. 'Tis rumored he's traveled the world accompanied by only the most beautiful lasses." "'Tis said there isna a comely lass in all of Scotia he hasna tumbled" "in England, too!" "and he canna recall any of their names." "He is said to have godlike beauty, and a practiced hand in the fine art of seduction." "He is fabulously wealthy and rumors say his castle is luxurious beyond compare." Adrienne blinked. "Wonderful. A materialistic, unfaithfill, beautiful playboy of a self-indulged, inconsiderate man with a bad memory. And he's all mine. Dear sweet God, what have I done to deserve this?" she wondered aloud. Twice, she brooded privately.
Karen Marie Moning (Beyond the Highland Mist (Highlander, #1))
Not being offended is a way of saying, “I have control over how I’m going to feel, and I choose to feel peaceful regardless of what I observe going on. When you feel offended, you’re practicing judgment. You judge someone else to be stupid, insensitive, rude, arrogant, inconsiderate, or foolish, and then you find yourself upset and offended by their conduct. What you may not realize is that when you judge another person, you do not define them. You define yourself as someone who needs to judge others.
Wayne W. Dyer (10 Secrets for Success and Inner Peace (Puffy Books))
In the hands of a cruel person, honesty can be a lethal weapon.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
You stole five cars. Instead of going into prison or juvenile detention, you endured nothing more than volunteer work. Now that you are paying back your legal fees, which were not inconsiderable, perhaps you need to suffer more in your service. It's good for the soul." "Suffering is good for the soul? You're sitting in your cute little office drinking your gross-ass tea that smells like bacon-" "It's Lapsang souchong." "It's disgusting. You're drinking disgusting tea and writing homilies in your room-temperature office while I"m dying in there. I don't see you suffering." "I have suffered. My suffering has ended." "Did you find Jesus?" "No, I found you.
Tiffany Reisz (The Saint (The Original Sinners, #5))
He that will not set himself proudly at the top of all things, but will consider the immensity of this fabric, and the great variety that is to be found in this little and inconsiderable part of it which he has to do with, may be apt to think that, in other mansions of it, there may be other and different intelligent beings, of whose faculties he has as little knowledge or apprehension as a worm shut up in one drawer of a cabinet hath of the senses or understanding of a man; such variety and excellency being suitable to the wisdom and power of the Maker. -- 1690
John Locke (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding)
People often told him how humble he was, but they did not mean real humility, it was merely that he did not flaunt his membership in the wealthy club, did not exercise the rights it brought—to be rude, to be inconsiderate, to be greeted rather than to greet—and because so many others like him exercised those rights, his choices were interpreted as humility.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Americanah)
There are things you don’t notice until you accompany someone with a wheelchair. One is how rubbish most pavements are, pockmarked with badly patched holes, or just plain uneven. Walking slowly next to Will as he wheeled himself along, I noticed how every uneven slab caused him to jolt painfully, or how often he had to steer carefully round some potential obstacle. Nathan pretended not to notice, but I saw him watching too. Will just looked grim-faced and resolute. The other thing is how inconsiderate most drivers are. They park up against the cutouts on the pavement, or so close together that there is no way for a wheelchair to actually cross the road. I was shocked, a couple of times even tempted to leave some rude note tucked into a windscreen wiper, but Nathan and Will seemed used to it. Nathan pointed out a suitable crossing place and, each of us flanking Will, we finally crossed.
Jojo Moyes (Me Before You (Me Before You, #1))
I am submitting two pieces to be excluded in your show. Thank you for your inconsideration.
Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable that I would not rather know it than not know it.
Samuel Johnson
To say the least, it was inconsiderate of Diana’s almost-dead husband to show up at her engagement party.
Robin Lee Hatcher (Beloved (Where the Heart Lives, #3))
Children are begotten by their parents out of sheer malice and dragged into the world out of the greatest imaginable inconsiderateness.
Thomas Bernhard (Gargoyles)
That was vampires for you: always going for the jugular, both literally and metaphorically. They were messing up his love life as well as being inconsiderate party guests who had got blood in Magnus’s stereo system at his last party and turned Clary’s idiot friend Stanley into a rat, which was just bad manners.
Cassandra Clare (What to Buy the Shadowhunter Who Has Everything (The Bane Chronicles, #8))
You!” she screamed. “He’s … that’s the guy that saved Winter.” Though the guard was immobile, probably thanks to Cinder, his face was free to twist with disgust as his eyes traveled the length of Iko’s battered body, dead wires, loose parts, and all. “And you’re that disturbing robot.” Iko bristled. “The correct term is escort-droid, you ignorant, inconsiderate—” “Iko.” She
Marissa Meyer (Winter (The Lunar Chronicles, #4))
The sound of Big Ben striking the half-hour struck out between them with extraordinary vigour, as if a young man, strong, indifferent, inconsiderate, were swinging dumb-bells this way and that.
Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway (annotated): The Virginia Woolf Library Annotated Edition)
The world was in terrible shape, and I'm glad we stood up and said what we believed; but a lot of the time we'd say these beautiful things about justice and fairness and equality, but we weren't so nice to each other. We'd be jealous and we'd gossip, and we'd be moody and difficult and rude and inconsiderate. Why do I say 'we'? I mean I would be all that-- and if at the time I ever came near to knowing what I'd become, I'd dodge, I'd duck, I'd go on the offensive: the terrible Wall Street bankers. Lots of them were terrible-- and so were lots of us.
Dorothy Day
If you will cling to Nature, to the simple in Nature, to the little things that hardly anyone sees, and that can so unexpectedly become big and beyond measuring; if you have this love of inconsiderable things and seek quite simply, as one who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier, more coherent and somehow more conciliatory for you, not in your intellect, perhaps, which lags marveling behind, but in your inmost consciousness, waking and cognizance.
Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)
Kindly intentioned, but not considerate.
Marilynne Robinson (Gilead (Gilead, #1))
Everyone, everything deserved some time to be. To figure out what they were. Even a painting. Bitter finishing it was just her telling it what she thought it was, or what she’d seen it as. It hadn’t decided for itself yet. Jam didn’t want to be rude, or inconsiderate, so she went back to bed.
Akwaeke Emezi (Pet)
O VENENO ARDENTE DO DESGOSTO. THE WHITE HOT POISON OF ANGER. When others make us angry at them- at their shamelessness, injustice, inconsideration- then they exercise power over us, they proliferate and gnaw at our soul, then anger is like a white-hot poison that corrods all mild, noble and balanced feelings and robs us of sleep. Sleepless, we turn on the light and are angry at the anger that has lodged like a succubus who sucks us dry and debilitates us. We are not only furious at the damage, but also that it develops in us all by itself, for while we sit on the edge of the bed with aching temples, the distant catalyst remains untouched by the corrosive force of the anger that eats at us. On the empty internal stage bathed in the harsh light of mute rage, we perform all by ourselves a drama with shadow figures and shadow words we hurl against enemies in helpless rage we feel as icy blazing fire in our bowels. And the greater our despair that is only a shadow play and not a real discussion with the possibility of hurting the other and producing a balance of suffering, the wilder the poisonous shadows dance and haunt us even in the darkest catacombs of our dreams. (We will turn the tables, we think grimly, and all night long forge words that will produce in the other the effect of a fire bomb so that now he will be the one with the flames of indignation raging inside while we, soothed by schadenfreude, will drink our coffee in cheerful calm.) What could it mean to deal appropriately with anger? We really don't want to be soulless creatures who remain thoroughly indifferent to what they come across, creatures whose appraisals consist only of cool, anemic judgments and nothing can shake them up because nothing really bothers them. Therefore, we can't seriously wish not to know the experience of anger and instead persist in an equanimity that wouldn't be distinguished from tedious insensibility. Anger also teaches us something about who we are. Therefore this is what I'd like to know: What can it mean to train ourselves in anger and imagine that we take advantage of its knowledge without being addicted to its poison? We can be sure that we will hold on to the deathbed as part of the last balance sheet- and this part will taste bitter as cyanide- that we have wasted too much, much too much strength and time on getting angry and getting even with others in a helpless shadow theater, which only we, who suffered impotently, knew anything about. What can we do to improve this balance sheet? Why did our parents, teachers and other instructors never talk to us about it? Why didn't they tell something of this enormous significance? Not give us in this case any compass that could have helped us avoid wasting our soul on useless, self-destructive anger?
Pascal Mercier (Night Train to Lisbon)
Anyone who’d stop feeling up or finger banging a woman in favour of taking a fucking phone call is an inconsiderate asshole you shouldn’t be opening your legs for.” “I’m seeing that now.” “I’m serious, Lydia.” I studied the tabletop, needing a moment to pull myself together. “How long have we known each other? What, half an hour, an hour?” “Ah.” Turning in his seat, he checked out an old wooden clock on the kitchen wall. “Yeah. about that.” “Are you aware that most people wait a little longer before discussing the rules of etiquette in regards to finger banging? Who they should and shouldn’t open their legs for? Things like that.” “That so?” “It is.” “Well, fuck.” He sat back, outright grinning at me.
Kylie Scott (Dirty (Dive Bar, #1))
When two people in a marriage are more concerned about getting the golden eggs, the benefits, than they are in preserving the relationship that makes them possible, they often become insensitive and inconsiderate, neglecting the little kindnesses and courtesies so important to a deep relationship. They begin to use control levers to manipulate each other, to focus on their own needs, to justify their own position and look for evidence to show the wrongness of the other person. The love, the richness, the softness and spontaneity begin to deteriorate.
Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change)
You know the meaning of the word "gentleman." It means a gentle man—a man who does things gently, with love. That is the whole art and mystery of it. The gentle man cannot in the nature of things do an ungentle, an ungentlemanly thing. The ungentle soul, the inconsiderate, unsympathetic nature, cannot do anything else. "Love doth not behave itself unseemly.
Henry Drummond (The Best of Henry Drummond: The Greatest Thing in the World, Eternal Life, Beautiful Thoughts, Natural Law in the Spiritual World and More!)
The world is harsh and inconsiderate, and you can rely only on your family.
Gary Shteyngart (Little Failure)
We think we can plan our lives," he muttered. "We think we can model reality. But chaos is an intrusive, inconsiderate bitch.
Linda Nagata (The Bohr Maker (The Nanotech Succession, #1))
The State (meaning the gov't and society) derives no inconsiderable advantage from the peoples instruction (in other words, education). The more they are instructed, the less liable they are to the delusions of enthusiasm and superstition. . . . The expense of the institutions for education and religious instruction, is likewise, no doubt, beneficial to the whole society, and may, therefore, without injustice, be defrayed by the general contribution of society.
Adam Smith
Who is a bad man and who is a good man? What is the definition? The bad man is one who is inconsiderate of others. The bad man is one who uses others and has no respect for others. The bad man is one who thinks he is the center of the world and everybody is just to be used. Everything exists for him. The bad man is one who thinks that other persons are just means for his gratification. Keep this definition in mind because you ordinarily think the bad man is the criminal. The bad man may not be the criminal: all bad men are not criminals. All criminals are bad, but all bad men are not criminals. A few of them are judges, a few of them are very respectable people, a few of them are politicians, presidents and prime ministers, a few of them are even parading as saints. So when we will be talking about this sutra, remember the definition of a bad man - Buddha says a bad man is one who has no consideration for others. He simply thinks about himself only - he thinks he is the center of existence and he feels the whole existence is made for him. He feels authorized to sacrifice everybody for his own self. He may not be bad ordinarily, but if this is the attitude, then he is a bad man. Who is a good man? Just the opposite of the bad man: one who is considerate of others, who gives as much respect to others as he gives to himself, and who does not pretend in any way that he is the center of the world, and who has come to feel that everybody is the center of the world. The world is one, but millions of centers exist. He is very respectful. He never uses the other as a means. The other is an end in itself. His reverence is tremendous. Watch, watch your own life.
Osho (The Buddha Said...: Meeting the Challenge of Life's Difficulties)
the map they are using does not indicate the village of Orce, how very inconsiderate on the part of the cartographers, I’ll bet they didn’t forget to indicate their own hometowns, in future they should remember how vexing it is for someone to check out his birthplace on a map only to find a blank space, this has given rise to the gravest of problems for those trying to establish personal and national identities.
José Saramago
The many ... whom one chooses to call the people, are indeed a collection, but only as a multitude, a formless mass, whose movement and action would be elemental, irrational, savage, and terrible." "Public opinion deserves ... to be esteemed as much as to be despised; to be despised for its concrete consciousness and expression, to be esteemed for its essential fundamental principle, which only shines, more or less dimly, through its concrete expression." "The definition of the freedom of the press as freedom to say and write what one pleases, is parallel to the one of freedom in general, viz., as freedom to do what one pleases. Such a view belongs to the uneducated crudity and superficiality of naïve thinking." "In public opinion all is false and true, but to discover the truth in it is the business of the great man. The great man of his time is he who expresses the will and the meaning of that time, and then brings it to completion; he acts according to the inner spirit and essence of his time, which he realizes. And he who does not understand how to despise public opinion, as it makes itself heard here and there, will never accomplish anything great." "The laws of morality are not accidental, but are essentially Rational. It is the very object of the State that what is essential in the practical activity of men, and in their dispositions, should be duly recognized; that it should have a manifest existence, and maintain its position. It is the absolute interest of Reason that this moral Whole should exist; and herein lies the justification and merit of heroes who have founded states - however rude these may have been." "Such are all great historical men, whose own particular aims involve those large issues which are the will of the World Spirit. ... World historical men - the Heroes of an epoch - must be recognized as its clear-sighted ones; their deeds, their words are the best of that time. Great men have formed purposes to satisfy themselves, not others." "A World-Historical individual is devoted to the One Aim, regardless of all else. It is even possible that such men may treat other great, even sacred interests inconsiderately; conduct which is indeed obnoxious to moral reprehension. But so mighty a form must trample down many an innocent flower or crush to pieces many an object in its path.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
But he never looked at his daughter, and strode out of the room, leaving in the minds of the women a sense, half of awe, half of amusement, and the extravagant, inconsiderate, uncivilized male, outraged somehow and gone bellowing to his lair with a roar which still sometimes reverberates in the most polished of drawing rooms.
Virginia Woolf (Night and Day)
The answer was obvious. Life had no meaning. On the earth, satellite of a star speeding through space, living things had arisen under the influence of conditions which were part of the planet's history; and as there had been a beginning of life upon it so, under the influence of other conditions, there would be an end: man, no more significant than other forms of life, had come not as the climax of creation but as a physical reaction to the environment. Philip remembered the story of the Eastern King who, desiring to know the history of man, was brought by a sage five hundred volumes; busy with affairs of state, he bade him go and condense it; in twenty years the sage returned and his history now was in no more than fifty volumes, but the King, too old then to read so many ponderous tomes, bade him go and shorten it once more; twenty years passed again and the sage, old and gray, brought a single book in which was the knowledge the King had sought; but the King lay on his death-bed, and he had no time to read even that; and then the sage gave him the history of man in a single line; it was this: he was born, he suffered, and he died. There was no meaning in life, and man by living served no end. It was immaterial whether he was born or not born, whether he lived or ceased to live. Life was insignificant and death without consequence. Philip exulted, as he had exulted in his boyhood when the weight of a belief in God was lifted from his shoulders: it seemed to him that the last burden of responsibility was taken from him; and for the first time he was utterly free. His insignificance was turned to power, and he felt himself suddenly equal with the cruel fate which had seemed to persecute him; for, if life was meaningless, the world was robbed of its cruelty. What he did or left undone did not matter. Failure was unimportant and success amounted to nothing. He was the most inconsiderate creature in that swarming mass of mankind which for a brief space occupied the surface of the earth; and he was almighty because he had wrenched from chaos the secret of its nothingness.
W. Somerset Maugham (Of Human Bondage)
every faction loses something when it gains a virtue: the Dauntless, brave but cruel; the Erudite, intelligent but vain; the Amity, peaceful but passive; the Candor, honest but inconsiderate; the Abnegation, selfless but stifling.
Veronica Roth (Allegiant (Divergent, #3))
The last werewolf tripped over Raphael Santiago’s foot. Alec hastily hit him in the back of the head with the hilt of his seraph blade, and the werewolf stayed down. “That was an accident,” said Raphael, with Lily and Elliott sticking close behind him. “He got in my way as I was trying to leave.” “Okay,” Alec panted. He wiped dust and sweat out of his eyes. Bat the DJ staggered toward them, claws out, and Alec flipped his seraph blade so he was holding the hilt again. “Someone dropped a piece of roof on me,” Bat told him, blinking in a way that was more owlish than wolfish. “Inconsiderate.” Alec realized Bat was not so much on a murderous out-of-control rampage as mildly concussed. “Easy there,” he said, as Bat tumbled against his chest. He looked around for the most trustworthy person, for someone to be on his team. He took a gamble and dumped Bat into Lily’s arms. “Watch him for me, will you?” he asked. “Make sure he gets out all right.” “Put that werewolf down immediately, Lily,” Raphael ordered. “It really hurts that you would say that,” Bat muttered, and shut his eyes. Lily considered Bat’s head, pillowed on her lavender bosom. “I don’t want to put him down,” she announced. “The Shadowhunter gave this DJ to me.” Bat opened one eye. “Do you like music?” “I do,” said Lily. “I like jazz.” “Cool,” said Bat. Raphael threw up his hands. “This is ridiculous! Fine,” he snapped. “Fine. Let’s just vacate the collapsing mansion, shall we? Can we all agree on that one fun, non-suicidal activity?
Cassandra Clare (The Red Scrolls of Magic (The Eldest Curses, #1))
I think it’s time to go ahead and start, don’t you? We don’t want them to have enough time to make a trip back to shore with her.” Galen swims to within an inch of my face. His lazy grin sends a thousand butterflies whipping up a tornado in my stomach. “Start what? The rescue, or the rest of our lives together?” Just the words make my heart jump, let alone the look he gives me when he says it. We haven’t had much time to talk about what all this means for us, but at least I know we can be together. On our own terms, in our own time. Finally. “Both,” I breathe. “This is not the time to be all mushy,” Rayna calls from below us. “I swear you two are expert time wasters. So inconsiderate.” Galen winks at me and dives to his sister. “Wait,” I call to him. He stops. “I just wanted to say, I like your big fin. I think it’s sexy.” Which is the truth. Now t’s more than double the size of any other Syrena. I know he’s self-conscious about it; he thinks it makes him stand out more. What Galen doesn’t realize is that he already stood out. He was already special. This new fin doesn’t change anything. Well, except for making me hotter for him than I already was. “Really?” Galen says. I nod and blow him a kiss. By his confused expression, he has no idea what I’m doing. My Syrena human ambassador still has a lot to learn about the intimate details of the human world. And I’ll be happy to assist him with that.
Anna Banks (Of Triton (The Syrena Legacy, #2))
And the numerous delays due to vandalism on the tracks or leaves on the line or sun on the line or a body under a train How very inconsiderate, not to her To choose to throw yourself in front of a mechanical iron beast weighing thousands of tons and racing at a top speed of one hundred and forty miles per hour? To choose such a brutal and dramatic finale Carole knows what drives people to such despair, knows what it’s like to appear normal but to feel herself swaying Just one leap away From The amassed crowds on the platforms who carry enough hope in their hearts to stay alive Swaying Just one leap away from Eternal Peace
Bernardine Evaristo (Girl, Woman, Other)
To stay cheerful when involved in a gloomy and exceedingly responsible business is no inconsiderable art: yet what could be more necessary than cheerfulness? Nothing succeeds in which high spirits play no part. Only excess of strength is proof of strength. - A revaluation of all values, this question mark so black, so huge it casts a shadow over him who sets it up - such a destiny of a task compels one every instant to run out into the sunshine so as to shake off a seriousness grown all too oppressive.
Friedrich Nietzsche
I do not know why people here have taken upon themselves the duty of making attempts at speaking to me. I work hard to keep the ‘don’t speak to me’ look on my face and yet it seems they read it as ‘please speak to me’….It really is very inconsiderate. Sometimes one just wants to be alone with one’s thoughts and not have to deal with bad breath and body odour so early in the morning.
Kopano Matlwa (Coconut)
It’s not illegal, all right? Now move, or I swear to God, I will strip naked right here and dance the bourrée!” I thrust my hands on my hips and looked at him expectantly. He didn’t even glance at the people around us. He didn’t get flustered. And Reid always got flustered. Instead, he kept his eyes trained on mine, a slow smirk spreading across his face. “Do it.” I narrowed my eyes and straightened my shoulders, drawing myself up to my full—if not inconsiderable—height. “I will. Don’t think I won’t. I’ll do it right now.” He raised his brows, still smirking. “I’m waiting.
Shelby Mahurin (Serpent & Dove (Serpent & Dove, #1))
I am grabbed by the scruff of the neck and pitched clean out of the room. It seems that this sudden aversion stems from human disgust with those barely visible and totally insignificant insects which I harbor. A heartless and most callous attitude! How can such inconsiderate behavior possibly be justified by the presence in my coat of one or two thousand footling fleas? The answer is, of course, that Article One of those Laws of Love (by which all humans creatures regulate their lives) specifically enjoins that «ye shall love one another for so long as it serves thine individual interest.»
Natsume Sōseki (I Am a Cat (Chinese Edition))
A brief, well-crafted story that is relevant to your topic is one of the most potent ways to maintain the attention of your audience. But the story must be kind. Benjamin Disraeli said: "Never tell unkind stories." Inconsiderate and insensitive stories do not bring grace to those who hear them, and may actually leave the audience dispirited.
Bruna Martinuzzi (Presenting with Credibility)
Did you think to have me against a tree in Hyde Park? On a public footpath?” “I was not exactly thinking,” he said. “And how could you expect me to, under the onslaught of you?” She rolled her eyes and turned away and marched down the footpath. “I can’t believe you’re playing injured innocence. Did I throw myself at you, my lord?” “No, and it’s extremely inconsiderate of you not to, when I’ve taken such great pains to make myself attractive to you. Why must I always be the one to make advances? Why can’t you make a little more effort?
Loretta Chase (Vixen in Velvet (The Dressmakers, #3))
Here is the kind of thought pattern that runs through the mind of the child in the alcoholic family system: “If I feel guilty, then I am responsible. And if I am responsible, then I can do something to fix it, to change it, to make it different.” Giving up your guilt also means giving up your sense that you have control over the situation. And, of course, loss of control is a disaster. You have grown up to be the perfect doormat for an inconsiderate person. Often you end up in a perfect give-and-take relationship . . . you give, they take.
Janet Geringer Woititz (Struggle for Intimacy)
Justine, you may remember, was a great favourite of yours; and I recollect you once remarked that if you were in an ill humour, one glance from Justine could dissipate it, for the same reason that Ariosto gives concerning the beauty of Angelica —she looked so frank-hearted and happy. My aunt conceived a great attachment for her, by which she was induced to give her an education superior to that which she had at first intended. This benefit was fully repaid; Justine was the most grateful little creature in the world: I do not mean that she made any professions I never heard one pass her lips, but you could see by her eyes that she almost adored her protectress. Although her disposition was gay and in many respects inconsiderate, yet she paid the greatest attention to every gesture of my aunt. She thought her the model of all excellence and endeavoured to imitate her phraseology and manners, so that even now she often reminds me of her.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Frankenstein)
A nod at Beatrice who held absolutely still. "She said she would come with me. She insisted on it. She stamped her little foot at me." He pointed down to her toes as if she were a child yet. Then he straightened his shoulders. "But I sent her back to the nursery, where she belonged, and told her to play with her dolls instead. As everyone knows, a female on a hunt is a distraction at best and bad luck at worse." Which explained why Beatrice went into the woods with her hound alone, George thought. She looked now as though she had gone to some other place where she could not hear her father's words and thus could not be hurt by them. George wondered how often she was forced to go to that place. Did King Helm not see how much she was like him? It seemed she was rejected for any sign of femininity yet also rejected for not showing enough femininity, How could she win?
Mette Ivie Harrison (The Princess and the Hound (The Hound Saga #1))
I tick off each quality in my mind as he says it -- fear, low intelligence, dishonesty, aggression, selfishness. He is talking about the factions. And he's right to say that every faction loses something when it gains a virtue: the Dauntless, brave but cruel; the Erudite, intelligent but vain; the Amity, peaceful but passive; the Candor, honest but inconsiderate; the Abnegation, selfless but stifling.
Veronica Roth (Allegiant (Divergent, #3))
What does it mean to be inconsiderate? It is most simply a failure to think carefully, to reflect, and to pay attention. It may be living life in the dark, blindly and selfishly following a course without pausing to consider the options. It may be allowing faith to fall into a rut from lack of attention and thoughtlessness. Either way, being inconsiderate prevents growth, quells joy, and leads to a fail use to leave a legacy of eternal consequence.
Camilla Camp Williams (Inconsiderate)
So before and during the war, the Bush administration had to build up an image in people's minds of Iraq as a monstrous military superpower, in order to mobilize enough popular hysteria so that people here would go along with their policies. And again, the media did their job 100 percent. So I don't know how well you remember what was going on around the country back then, but people were literally quaking in their boots about the extraordinary might of Iraq―it was a superpower with artillery we'd never dreamt of, all this kind of stuff.93 I mean, this was a defenseless Third World country that was so weak it had been unable to defeat post-revolutionary Iran in eight years of warfare [from 1980 to '88]―and that was with the support of the United States, the Soviet Union, all of Europe, the Arab oil countries: not an inconsiderable segment of world power. Yet with all those allies, Iraq had been unable to defeat post-revolutionary Iran, which had killed off its own officers' corps and barely had an army left: all of a sudden this was the superpower that was going to conquer the world? You really had to be a deeply brainwashed Western intellectual even to look at this image―a defenseless Third World country threatening the two most advanced military forces in the world, the United States and Britain―and not completely collapse in ridicule. But as you recall, that's what all of them were saying―and people here really believed it.
Noam Chomsky (Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky)
Can we really put Ben (hereby representing all men) on such a pedestal? Having tamed those beasts set aside for him, is it not like Ben to seek out that which has historically (regardless of how brief a history) been set aside for women? Woolf criticizes the masculine in her work with the repetition of the phrases uttered by that inconsiderate individual who makes the claim that women cannot paint or write. Is Ben not committing the same crime as that unfortunate character? In stating "[b]etter like this, bitch," Ben employs a word that I would consider to be demasculinizing, rather than feminine. In using the word bitch, he seizes this scholarly investigation and, if you will, pisses on it, claiming it as his own. His statement is an outright challenge. This is a book I stole from women, and I urinated on it. You'd better appreciate my conquest or I will also urinate on you.
Caris O'Malley
The immediate advantage to herself was by no means inconsiderable, for it supplied her with endless jokes against them both. At the park she laughed at the colonel, and in the cottage at Marianne. To the former her raillery was probably, as far as it regarded only himself, perfectly indifferent; but to the latter it was at first incomprehensible; and when its object was understood, she hardly knew whether most to laugh at its absurdity, or censure its impertinence, for she considered it as an unfeeling reflection on the colonel's advanced years, and on his forlorn condition as an old bachelor.
Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility)
Dear New Orleans, What a big, beautiful mess you are. A giant flashing yellow light—proceed with caution, but proceed. Not overly ambitious, you have a strong identity, and don’t look outside yourself for intrigue, evolution, or monikers of progress. Proud of who you are, you know your flavor, it’s your very own, and if people want to come taste it, you welcome them without solicitation. Your hours trickle by, Tuesdays and Saturdays more similar than anywhere else. Your seasons slide into one another. You’re the Big Easy…home of the shortest hangover on the planet, where a libation greets you on a Monday morning with the same smile as it did on Saturday night. Home of the front porch, not the back. This engineering feat provides so much of your sense of community and fellowship as you relax facing the street and your neighbors across it. Rather than retreating into the seclusion of the backyard, you engage with the goings-on of the world around you, on your front porch. Private properties hospitably trespass on each other and lend across borders where a 9:00 A.M. alarm clock is church bells, sirens, and a slow-moving eight-buck-an-hour carpenter nailing a windowpane two doors down. You don’t sweat details or misdemeanors, and since everybody’s getting away with something anyway, the rest just wanna be on the winning side. And if you can swing the swindle, good for you, because you love to gamble and rules are made to be broken, so don’t preach about them, abide. Peddlin worship and litigation, where else do the dead rest eye to eye with the livin? You’re a right-brain city. Don’t show up wearing your morals on your sleeve ’less you wanna get your arm burned. The humidity suppresses most reason so if you’re crossing a one-way street, it’s best to look both ways. Mother Nature rules, the natural law capital “Q” Queen reigns supreme, a science to the animals, an overbearing and inconsiderate bitch to us bipeds. But you forgive her, and quickly, cus you know any disdain with her wrath will reap more: bad luck, voodoo, karma. So you roll with it, meander rather, slowly forward, takin it all in stride, never sweating the details. Your art is in your overgrowth. Mother Nature wears the crown around here, her royalty rules, and unlike in England, she has both influence and power. You don’t use vacuum cleaners, no, you use brooms and rakes to manicure. Where it falls is where it lays, the swerve around the pothole, the duck beneath the branch, the poverty and the murder rate, all of it, just how it is and how it turned out. Like a gumbo, your medley’s in the mix. —June 7, 2013, New Orleans, La.
Matthew McConaughey (Greenlights)
...her own restless coveting of his love and the slow but sure ebullience of her desire for him; then the Nawab's martydom and her spiritual homelessness and physical loneliness; there was so much, so many portraits and landscapes, like the bright pages of an album of words and pictures. They filled her heart overflowing with the tangy, coppery taste of blood that flows from failure, and pricked her soul with nostalgia, for what was and what could have been. She had never thought that happy memories could come accompanied with so much regret, so much pain, so much repining, and discontent. If you plucked a rose without due care, its thorn pricked you to protest the thoughtlessness and the inconsiderateness you had displayed in taking away its crowning glory. Here, it was nothing else but the rose which was the thorn: its each and every petal was saturated with the scents of the past but it stung like the scorpion plant. But was it possible not to touch those memories? For their scents traveled in and out of your being like breath, and their colours were inside every blink of your eye.
Shamsur Rahman Faruqi (The Mirror of Beauty)
Close friendships, Gandhi says, are dangerous, because “friends react on one another” and through loyalty to a friend one can be led into wrong-doing. This is unquestionably true. Moreover, if one is to love God, or to love humanity as a whole, one cannot give one's preference to any individual person. This again is true, and it marks the point at which the humanistic and the religious attitude cease to be reconcilable. To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others. The autobiography leaves it uncertain whether Gandhi behaved in an inconsiderate way to his wife and children, but at any rate it makes clear that on three occasions he was willing to let his wife or a child die rather than administer the animal food prescribed by the doctor. It is true that the threatened death never actually occurred, and also that Gandhi — with, one gathers, a good deal of moral pressure in the opposite direction — always gave the patient the choice of staying alive at the price of committing a sin: still, if the decision had been solely his own, he would have forbidden the animal food, whatever the risks might be. There must, he says, be some limit to what we will do in order to remain alive, and the limit is well on this side of chicken broth. This attitude is perhaps a noble one, but, in the sense which — I think — most people would give to the word, it is inhuman. The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals. No doubt alcohol, tobacco, and so forth, are things that a saint must avoid, but sainthood is also a thing that human beings must avoid. There is an obvious retort to this, but one should be wary about making it. In this yogi-ridden age, it is too readily assumed that “non-attachment” is not only better than a full acceptance of earthly life, but that the ordinary man only rejects it because it is too difficult: in other words, that the average human being is a failed saint. It is doubtful whether this is true. Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings. If one could follow it to its psychological roots, one would, I believe, find that the main motive for “non-attachment” is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual, is hard work. But it is not necessary here to argue whether the other-worldly or the humanistic ideal is “higher”. The point is that they are incompatible. One must choose between God and Man, and all “radicals” and “progressives”, from the mildest Liberal to the most extreme Anarchist, have in effect chosen Man.
George Orwell