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Platitudes Quotes

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Platitudes Quotes

“However true or not they may be to us, the trouble with all those tired, platitudinous, hackneyed mantras, which go along the lines of 'Christianity is not a religion, but a relationship,' is that many of us use them not as cries to embrace the grace of God but rather as licenses and/or excuses to celebrate sin. Make way for our beloved and ready, willing and able Christ to clean up your life already.”

ReligionChristSinChristianityGraceRelationshipHolinessHypocrisyPlatitudesFalse Christianity
Book:Healology
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“From love's absolutism to love's absolution? No: I don't believe in the cosy narratives of life some find necessary, just as I choke on comforting words like redemption and closure. Death is the only closure I believe in; and the wound will stay open until that final shutting of the doors. As for redemption, it's far too neat, a movie-maker's bromide; and beyond that, it feels like something grand, which human beings are too imperfect to deserve, much less bestow upon themselves.”

LoveDeathSadRedemptionRealismClosurePlatitudesClichésJulian BarnesThe Only Story
Book:The Only Story
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“Of course, Mary Magdalene would have very little tolerance for the Christian platitudes and vapid optimism that seem to swirl around these kinds of tragic events. Those platitudes are tempting, but they're nothing but luxuries for people who've never had demons (or at least have never admitted to them). But equally, she would reject nihilism, or the idea that there is no real meaning in life or death - ideas present in so much of postmodernity. Those ideas, too, are luxuries, but they are for those who have never been freed from demons.”

ChristianFaithJesusLossChristianityGrievingDemonsPlatitudesMary Magdalene
Book:Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint
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“But I do not know much - except perhaps the One - as it is written thus: 'Nothing except Jesus.' Yet even added up...just copy-cat expressions, wanna-be humble platitudes, try-hard lip service, feel-strong sayings, feel-good quotations plus virtue-signalling slogans and such...these things are not enough: because He must know me.”

ChristSlogansKnowing GodRelationship With GodSaved By GracePlatitudesLip ServiceCopycatVirtue SignallingWannabe
Author:Criss Jami
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“Leadership obeys the principle of Hooke's law to the very bone. It explains: When an elastic material is stretched, it returns to its original position. But when it's over stretched beyond its limit point, it loses its elasticity and becomes plastic, and later cuts or breaks. As a leader, in your leadership disposition, it behoves of you to acquaint yourself with this very leadership principle that edges forward. It's however, a human nature to adopt to an environment, so, leaders are humans, they tend to have this rapore with their followers which is somewhat a must needed. But the ability for such one to return and recollect to knowing his boundary makes a good leader. A phenomenon whereby he becomes drunk of platitudes, then it comes to a time where they (followers) dictate for him. And even sought and suggest plans without his consent or knowing, it has gotten to the point of plastic and break respectively.”

LawLeadershipAbilityEnvironmentPositionPhenomenonPlasticDispositionPrinciplePlatitudesMaterialBoundaryFollowershipStretchedElasticAcquaintHookeHooke S LawLimit PointRapore
Author:Richmond Akhigbe
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“One of the most common platitudes we heard was that “words failed.” But words were not failing us at all. It was not true that there was no way to describe our experience. We had plenty of language to talk to each other about the horror of what was happening, and talk we did. If there was a communication problem it was that there were too many words; they were far too heavy and too specific to be inflicted upon others. If something was failing it was the functionality of routine, platitudinous language—the comforting clichés were now inapplicable and perfectly useless. We instinctively protected other people from the knowledge we possessed; we let them think that words failed, because we knew they didn’t want to be familiar with the vocabulary we used daily. We were sure they didn’t want to know what we did; we didn’t want to know it either.”

WordsIllnessPlatitudesClichesCommunication ProblemWords Failed
Book:The Book of My Lives
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“Why is wisdom so fair? Why is beauty so wise? Because all else is temporary, while beauty and wisdom are the only real and constant aspects of truth that can be perceived by human means. And I don't mean the kind of surface beauty that fades with age, or the sort of shallow wisdom that gets lost in platitudes. True beauty grips your gut and squeezes your lungs, and makes you see with utmost clarity exactly what is before you. True wisdom then steps in, to interpret, illuminate, and form a life-altering insight.”

HumansKindMeanRealAgeFormLostStepsWiseFairsAspectConstantInsightSurfaceClarityGutsTemporaryFadesShallowLungsTrue BeautyPlatitudesTrue WisdomLife Altering
Author:Vera Nazarian
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“Talk can neither be verified nor falsified in any rigorous sense. This is an open secret which hermeneutics and aesthetics, from Aristotle to Croce, have laboured to exorcise or to conceal from themselves and their clients. This ontological, which is to say both primordial and essential axiom (or platitude) of ineradicable undecidability needs, none the less, to be closely argued.”

NeedsSecretEssentialsClientsAestheticsAxiomsPlatitudesHermeneutics
Author:George Steiner
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“The life of God - the life which the mind apprehends and enjoys as it rises to the absolute unity of all things - may be described as a play of love with itself; but this idea sinks to an edifying truism, or even to a platitude, when it does not embrace in it the earnestness, the pain, the patience, and labor, involved in the negative aspect of things.”

MindMayDoeIdeasPlayGodPainEnjoyInvolvedNegativeAspectLaborAll ThingsAbsolutesEmbraceUnityEarnestnessPlatitudesTruism
Author:Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
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“There is a geographical element in all belief-saying what seem profound truths in India have a way of seeming enormous platitudes in England, and vice versa . Perhaps the fundamental difference is that beneath a tropical sun individuality seems less distinct and the loss of it less important.”

WayImportantSeemsBeliefDifferencesLossSunElementsIndiaEnglandFundamentalsProfoundIndividualityVicesEnormousVice VersaSeemingTropicalPlatitudesProfound Truth
Book:A kind of compulsion, 1903-1936
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“I fight against the gluttony of time with so many very amusing weapons with gestures and with three attitudes and with charming phrases; with tears and with tinsel, and with sugar-coated pills, and with platitudes slightly regilded. Yes, and I fight him also with little mirrors wherein gleam confusedly the corruptions of lust, and ruddy loyalty, and a bit of moonshine, and the pure diamond of the heart's desire, and the opal cloudings of human compromise: but, above all, I fight that ravening dotard with the strength of my own folly.”

HumansHeartLittlesDesireFightingThreeBitsMy OwnAttitudeTearsPureWeaponsMirrorsCorruptionLoyaltyLustCompromisePhrasesFollySugarGesturesDiamondCharmingPillsAmusingGleamGluttonyPlatitudesOpalMoonshineTinsel
Book:The Witch-woman: A Trilogy about Her
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“Given, a man with moderate intellect, a moral standard not higher than the average, some rhetorical affluence and a great glibness of speech, what is the career in which, without the aid of birth or money, he may most easily attain power and reputation in English society? Where is that Goshen of mediocrity in which a smattering of science and learning will pass for profound instruction, where platitudes will be accepted as wisdom, bigoted narrowness as holy zeal, unctuous egoism as God-given piety?”

MenMayGivenMoralCareersAtheismBirthHigherHolySpeechStandardsProfoundAverageIntellectPositive AtheismAidsAcceptedReputationMediocrityInstructionModeratesZealPietyEgoismAffluenceRhetoricalPlatitudesEnglish Society
Book:The Essays of George Eliot
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“As if paralyzed by the national fear of ideas, the democratic distrust of whatever strikes beneath the prevailing platitudes, it evades all resolute and honest dealing with what, after all, must be every healthy literature's elementary materials.”

IfsIdeasLiteratureHonestMaterialsHealthyDemocraticStrikesDistrustPrevailingParalyzedResoluteAmerican LiteraturePlatitudes
Book:H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series
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“When Catholicism goes bad it becomes the world-old, world-wide religio of amulets and holy places and priestcraft. Protestantism,in its corresponding decay, becomes a vague mist of ethical platitudes. Catholicism is accused of being too much like all the other religions; Protestantism of being insufficiently like a religion at all. Hence Plato, with his transcendent Forms, is the doctor of Protestants; Aristotle, with his immanent Forms, the doctor of Catholics.”

WorldFormToo MuchHolyDoctorsCatholicWideCatholicismEthicalDecayVaguePlatoAccusedMistProtestantsTranscendentCorrespondingOld WorldPlatitudesProtestantismHoly PlacesAmulets
Book:The Allegory of Love
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“German writings attain popularity through a great name, or through personalities, or through good connections, or through effort,or through moderate immorality, or through accomplished incomprehensibility, or through harmonious platitude, or through versatile boredom, or through constant striving after the absolute.”

WritingLiteratureNamesEffortPersonalityConnectionsAbsolutesConstantStriveBoredomAccomplishedPopularityModeratesHarmoniousImmoralityPlatitudesVersatile
Author:Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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“The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of the writer. This is completely understood about poetry or fiction, but it is too seldom realized about books of fact. And yet the impulse which drives a man to poetry will send another man into the tide pools and force him to try to report what he finds there.... It would be good to know the impulse truly, not to be confused by the 'services to science' platitudes or the other little mazes into which we entice our minds so that they will not know what we are doing.”

KnowsMenTryingMindLittlesBookFactsRealityWould BeForceFictionDesignUnderstoodPatternsBe GoodImpulseConfusedReportsControlledPoolTidesAnother ManMazesPlatitudes
Book:The Log from the Sea of Cortez
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“Once he could read and write he would have a mind fit to rule. So ran the democratic doctrine. But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of history, but quite innocent of original thought.”

WritingMindGivenFitUniversalOriginalsDemocraticDoctrineInnocentAdvertisingDataRanLiteracyStampsSlogansRubberTabloidsEditorialsPlatitudesTrivialityOriginal Thought
Author:Edward Bernays
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“I hope I need not confess that a large part of my stock in trade consists of platitudes rescued from the cobwebbed shelves of yesterday... This borrowing and refurbishing of shop-worn goods, as a matter of fact, is the invariable habit of traders in ideas, at all times and everywhere. It is not, however, that all the conceivable human notions have been thought out; it is simply, to be quite honest, that the sort of men who volunteer to think out new ones seldom, if ever, have wind enough for a full day's work.”

IfsThinkingMenNeedsHumansHas BeensIdeasMatterEnoughFactsHonestWindHabitTradeNotionYesterdayAll TimeShopsGoodsWornVolunteerShelvesMatter Of FactBorrowingTradersPlatitudes
Book:In Defense of Women: Human Sexuality
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“Being unique seems more desirable than ever. People are exhausted by clichés, by platitudes, by mass-produced realities, by what's been done and done and done. The role of a true artist is to present their own unique vision, and so it has always made sense to me that works of art should be radical.”

PeopleShouldArtMadeDoneRealitySeemsArtistVisionRolesMassUniqueRadicalWorks Of ArtExhaustedDesirableTrue ArtistsPlatitudesBeing Unique
Author:Porochista Khakpour
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“The bleakness of what faces us is difficult to swallow. As long as we engage in happy platitudes and a false kind of vision of the possible, it may empower you over the short term, but it is eventually, because of the reality in front of us, going to lead to despair and cynicism and apathy. It's better to swallow hard the bitter pill of what we're up against.”

KindMayLongHardRealityFacesDifficultTermVisionFrontsDespairBitterEmpoweringApathyCynicismPillsShort TermPlatitudesBleakness
Author:Chris Hedges
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