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Pathetic Quotes

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Pathetic Quotes

“Americans are cultured from their earliest years to be either one-sided douloi or one-sided banausoi, i.e. either they cannot think abstractively/conceptually/orchestrally or else they can only think abstractively. Thinking in a truly rational dialectic between intuition and intellect is just beyond the reach of our nation of emotionalist helots. What prevails among us truly has to be called not thinking but "thinking," a pathetic surrogate for actual thinking for the benefit of existentially or modally crippled mentalities.”

ThinkingYearsNationsBenefitsIntuitionIntellectRationalMentalityPatheticCrippledOne SidedDialecticsSurrogates
Author:Kenny Smith
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“I do believe you have a wound too. I do believe it is both specific to you and common to everyone. I do believe it is the thing about you that must be hidden and protected, it is the thing that must be tap danced over five shows a day, it is the thing that won't be interesting to other people if revealed. It is the thing that makes you weak and pathetic. It is the thing that truly, truly, truly makes loving you impossible. It is your secret, even from yourself. But it is the thing that wants to live.”

PeopleIfsWantBelieveShowsInterestingCommonSecretFiveImpossibleWeakWoundsProtectedPatheticLoving You
Author:Charlie Kaufman
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“In the political, the social, the economic, even the cultural sphere, the revolutions of our time have been revolutions "against" rather than revolutions "for"... On the whole throughout this period the man--or party--that stood for doing the positive has usually cut a pathetic figure; well meaning but ineffectual, civilized but unrealistic, he was suspect alike to [by both] the ultras of destruction and the ultras of preservation and restoration.”

MenWellsHas BeensWholePoliticalSocialPartyCuttingEconomicFiguresRevolutionPeriodsDestructionOur TimeSuspectsCivilizedSpheresPreservationPatheticRestorationUltras
Book:Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New
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“It is the specialist's task to talk about means, about centimeters. An artist's task is to talk about the goal, about kilometers, thousands of kilometers. The organizing role of art consists of infecting the reader, of arousing him with pathos or irony -- the cathode and anode in literature. But irony that is measured in centimeters is pathetic, and centimeter-sized pathos is ridiculous. No one can be carried away by it. To stir the reader, the artist must speak not of means but of ends, of the great goal toward which mankind is moving.”

InspirationalMeanArtEndsMovingArtistLiteratureSpeakGoalRolesMankindReaderTasksRidiculousIronyPatheticSpecialistsCarried AwayPathos
Author:Yevgeny Zamyatin
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“it is not men that most women worry about when they rise to the defense of the status quo. Their apparent endorsement of male supremacy is, rather, a pathetic striving for self-respect, self-justification, and self-pardon. After fifteen hundred years of subjection to men, Western woman finds it almost unbearable to face the fact that she has been hoodwinked and enslaved by her inferiors - that the master is lesser than the slave.”

MenYearsHas BeensSelfFactsFacesWorryMastersHundredSlaveStriveWesternMalesDefenseSelf RespectJustificationFifteenInferiorsStatus QuoPatheticUnbearablePardonSupremacyEndorsementsSubjectionSelf Justification
Author:Elizabeth Gould Davis
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“Sin is more dangerous than wild bears, more deadly than blazing forest fires. Ask Nebuchadnezzar, who lost his mind because he refused to deal with his pride. Ask Samson, who was reduced to a pathetic shred of a man because he never got control over the lusts of his flesh. Ask Achan and Ananias and Sapphira, who all lost their lives over “small,” secret sins.”

MenMindAsksLostSinDealsSecretFireDangerousPrideBearsFleshLustForestsPatheticBlazingForest FiresSamson
Book:Holiness: The Heart God Purifies
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“The idea that money brings power and independence is an illusion. What money usually brings is the need for more money - and there is a shabby and pathetic powerlessness that comes with that need. The inability to risk new lives, new work, new styles of thought and experience, is more often than not tied to the bourgeois fear of reducing one's material standard of living. That is, indeed, to be owned by possessions, to be governed by a sense of property rather than by a sense of self.”

NeedsIdeasSelfMoneyRiskStyleMaterialsStandardsIllusionIndependencePropertyPossessionTiedMore MoneyNew LifeInabilityPatheticReducingBourgeoisSense Of SelfStandards Of LivingPowerlessnessShabbyNew Work
Author:Vivian Gornick
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“The hardest thing about being a guy is that women don't accept that you really are just a simple, pathetic, labrador retriever-like creature. That we live in a world were women actually expect you to think thoughtful thoughts, and have real emotions, which we don't have. Having to try to live up to the imaginary ideal that women have of what men are, instead of just being what you are, which is just a pathetic creature, but still.”

ThinkingMenWorldTryingStillsRealGuySimpleEmotionAcceptingCreaturesIdealsHardestThoughtfulImaginaryJust BeingHardest ThingPatheticRetrieversReal EmotionLabradors
Author:Dave Barry
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“It's just human nature - isn't it? - to be more attracted to something that's taboo. If someone tells you not to smoke, you wanna smoke. If they say, 'Don't do drugs,' you wanna do drugs. That's why I've always thought that the best way to stop people taking drugs is to legalise the fucking things. It would take people about five seconds to realise that being an addict is a terribly unattractive and pathetic way to be, whereas at the moment it still has that kind of rebel cool vibe to it, y'know?”

PeopleIfsKnowsWayHumansKindStillsMomentsFiveHuman NatureKingsDrugBest WaySmokeRealisingSecondsRebelAddictPatheticTabooUnattractive
Author:Ozzy Osbourne
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“Death is the twin of love and mother of us all, she struggles equally for men and women and never accepts differences of caste or class. It's death that quickens us and brings us forth on sheets of love, clasped between sleep and wakefulness and barely breathing for a spell, and thus my death shall be like everybody else's death, as majestic and as pathetic as a king or a beggar's, neither more nor less.”

MenDeathMotherDifferencesSleepAcceptingClassStruggleKingsMen And WomenBreathingSpellsTwinsSheetsPatheticBeggarMajesticCastes
Book:Sweet Diamond Dust: And Other Stories
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“I found Mr. Carter's actions toward the Republic of China so incredible that they defy description by socially acceptable expletives. If December 7, 1941 was a "day of infamy" then December 15, 1978 ranks right up there in international betrayal...The pathetic thing about this whole mess, however, is that it is typical of this administration's conduct of foreign affairs, which could be kindly described as being riddled by ineptitude and hypocrisy.”

IfsWarWholeActionFoundColdIncrediblesAffairInternationalChinaBetrayalMessAdministrationHypocrisyDescriptionRepublicAcceptableCold WarTypicalPatheticCarterDecemberInfamyForeign AffairsExpletivesIneptitudeDecember 7December 7 1941
Author:Barry Goldwater
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“Philosophy would do well to desist from issuing any further injunctions about the need to re-establish the meaningfulness of existence, the purposefulness of life, or mend the shattered concord between man and nature. It should strive to be more than a sop to the pathetic twinge of human self-esteem. Nihilism is not an existential quandary but a speculative opportunity.”

MenNeedsShouldHumansWellsSelfPhilosophyOpportunityExistenceSelf EsteemStriveEsteemExistentialPatheticNihilismShatteredMan And NatureMeaningfulnessPurposefulness
Author:Ray Brassier
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“It is pathetic to observe how lowly the motives are that religion, even the highest, attributes to the deity... To be given the best morsel, to be remembered, to be praised, to be obeyed blindly and punctiliously - these have been thought points of honor with the gods.”

Has BeensGivenAtheismHonorHighestPositive AtheismRememberedMotiveAttributesDeitiesPathetic
Book:Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana
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“An entirely new factor has appeared in the social development of the country, and this factor is the Irish-American, and his influence. To mature its powers, to concentrate its action, to learn the secret of its own strength and of England's weakness, the Celtic intellect has had to cross the Atlantic. At home it had but learned the pathetic weakness of nationality; in a strange land it realised what indomitable forces nationality possesses. What captivity was to the Jews, exile has been to the Irish: America and American influence have educated them.”

Has BeensCountryHomeActionAmericaForceSocialSecretInfluenceLandStrangeDevelopmentWeaknessCrossesEnglandJewIntellectFactorsEducatedMatureExilePatheticNationalityRealisedSocial DevelopmentCaptivityCelticIndomitable
Author:Oscar Wilde
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