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Shabby Quotes

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Shabby Quotes

“There is a certain class of people who prefer to say that their fathers came down in the world through their own follies than to boast that they rose in the world through their own industry and talents. It is the same shabby-genteel sentiment, the same vanity of birth which makes men prefer to believe that they are degenerated angels rather than elevated apes.”

PeopleMenWorldBelieveCertainFatherClassTalentIndustryBirthAngelRoseVanityFollySentimentsBoastApesAncestryShabby
Book:The Martyrdom of Man
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“I never have held death in contempt, though in the course of my explorations I have oftentimes felt that to meet one's fate on a noble mountain, or in the heart of a glacier, would be blessed as compared with death from disease, or from some shabby lowland accident. But the best death, quick and crystal-pure, set so glaringly open before us, is hard enough to face, even though we feel gratefully sure that we have already had happiness enough for a dozen lives.”

LifeFeelsHeartHardEnoughWould BeFacesCoursesFeltFateDyingGratitudePureMountainDiseaseBlessedAccidentsNobleExplorationContemptDozenCrystalsBeing BlessedGlaciersShabby
Book:John Muir: His Life and Letters and Other Writings
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“I’m not interested in changing either my suit or my car or whatever with every change in fashion. That’s irrelevant. I don’t judge myself or my friends by their fashions. Of course, I don’t approve of people who are sloppy and unnecessarily shabby or dishevelled… But I’m not impressed by a US$5,000 or US$10,000 Armani suit.”

PeopleCoursesFashionCarJudgingMy FriendsSuitsNot InterestedImpressedIrrelevantSingaporeSloppyShabbyNot ImpressedArmani
Book:The Wit & Wisdom of Lee Kuan Yew
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“Anyone who has read Yeats's wonderful Autobiography will remember his Sligo shabby, shadowed, half country and half sea, full of confused romance, superstition, poverty, eccentricity, unrecognized anachronism, passion and ignorance and the little boy's misery. Yeats was treated well but was bitterly unhappy; he prayed that he would die, and used often to say to himself: "When you are grown up, never talk as grown-up people do of the happiness of childhood.”

PeopleWellsLittlesCountryRememberRomanceUsedDiesPassionHalfBoysPovertyWonderfulSeaChildhoodIgnoranceMiseryUnhappyTreatedConfusedSuperstitionsAutobiographyLittle BoysEccentricityShabbyYeatsAnachronism
Author:Randall Jarrell
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“It is a wonderful advantage to a man, in every pursuite or avocation, to secure an adviser in a sensible woman. In woman there is at once a subtle delicacy of tact, and a plain soundness of judgement, which are rarely combined to an equal degree in man. A woman, if she be really your friend, will have a sensitive regard for your character, honor, repute. She will seldom counsel you to do a shabby thing: for a woman friend always desires to be proud of you.”

IfsMenCharacterDesireFriendshipWonderfulProudHonorEqualDegreesAdvantageRegardSecureSensitiveJudgementSubtleSensibleBe ProudDelicacyAdviserTactProud Of YouShabbySoundness
Author:Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
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“It is not every man that can afford to wear a shabby coat; and worldly wisdom dictates to her disciples the propriety of dressing somewhat beyond their means, but of living somewhat within them,--for every one, sees how we dress, but none see how we live, except we choose to let them. But the truly great are, by universal suffrage, exempted from these trammels, an may live or dress as they please.”

MenMayMeanPleaseUniversalDressesAppearanceEvery ManDiscipleCoatsWorldlyDressingsSuffrageProprietyShabbyWorldly WisdomUniversal Suffrage
Book:Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
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“What does one save for, anyhow? For a few tired hours at the end of life when one sits and counts dollars? Or do we save so that those last years will not be mentally barren or esthetically shabby? I try to save a few things to furnish my mind decently, on the theory that no auctioneer can get in there to sell off all the furniture.”

TryingYearsMindDoeEndsLastsHoursTheoryFutureSellsTiredDollarsLast YearFurnitureBarrenEnd Of LifeShabby
Author:Margaret Culkin Banning
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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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“It is curious, isn't it, that things you know well never look dirty and dilapidated-other people's old furniture looks shabby and moth-eaten. “I would never have that horrible old couch in my room,” you say. But your own old couch is every bit as bad and you are not disgusted with its appearance; it is your friend, you see, and you remember it when it was new and smart. Friends that you have known for a long time and love very dearly never seem to grow old.”

PeopleKnowsWellsLooksLongSeemsRememberGrowsBitsRoomsKnownLong TimeSmartAnd LoveAppearanceHorribleCuriousDirtyFurnitureCouchesMothsDisgustedTime And LoveShabby
Author:D.E. Stevenson
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“In the early forties and fifties almost everybody "had about enough to live on," and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby.”

MenYearsWellsEnoughYoungMotherWealthWifeFashionDaughterHundredDollarsDareQueensFortyDisplayVulgarAlasBostonVictoriaYoung LadiesShabbyWives And MothersPlainness
Author:M. E. W. Sherwood
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“... nothing seems completely to differentiate the poor but poverty. We find no adjectives to fit them, as a whole, only those of which Want is the mother. "Miserable" covers many; "shabby" most, and I am sadly aware that, in a large majority of minds, "disagreeable" includes them all.”

WantMindWholeSeemsMotherPoorPovertyFitMajorityMiserableDisagreeableAdjectivesDifferentiateShabbyClassism
Book:Beauty for Ashes, by Albion Fellows Bacon; with Numerous Illustrations
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“I write a lot and I will have some originals on the record. I think it is a mistake for an artist like me to think I am a better writer than Cole Porter. I think it is important to realize what my strengths are. I do like to write and I'm not shabby but I don't think I'm the most brilliant writer. I think it would be a shame and sort so egotistical to say I don't need these wonderful writers. These men created works of art and wrote hundreds of beautiful songs. It would be a mistake for me to say at this point in my career that I am so good.”

ThinkingMenNeedsWritingArtImportantWould BeBeautifulArtistSongRealizingMistakeCareersRecordsWonderfulShameOriginalsBrilliantLike MeWorks Of ArtEgotisticalShabby
Author:Michael Buble
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“It was not the beautiful or pleasant feelings that gave me new insight, but the ones against which I fought most strongly: feelings that made me experience myself as shabby, petty, mean, helpless, humiliated, demanding, resentful or confused, and above all, sad and lonely. It was precisely through these experiences, which I had shunned for so long, that I became certain that I now understood something about my life, stemming from the core of my being, something that I could not have learned from any book.”

MeanLongMadeBookFeelingsBeautifulCertainUnderstoodLonelyInsightCorePleasantConfusedHelplessPettyHumiliatedResentfulShabbySad And Lonely
Author:Alice Miller
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“It is very important that you only do what you love to do. you may be poor, you may go hungry, you may lose your car, you may have to move into a shabby place to live, but you will totally live. And at the end of your days you will bless your life because you have done what you came here to do. Otherwise, you will live your life as a prostitute, you will do things only for a reason, to please other people, and you will never have lived. and you will not have a pleasant death.”

PeopleMayImportantEndsReasonDoneMovingDeathLosesPoorCarPleaseHungryPleasantBlessLive Your LifeWhat You LovePlaces To LiveShabby
Author:Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
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“And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure . . . And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky! Then you will say to them, 'Yes, the stars always make me laugh!' And they will think you are crazy. It will be a very shabby trick that I shall have played on you.”

ThinkingWantLooksSometimesStarsPleasureGriefKnownLaughingSkyCrazySorrowMy FriendsWindowTricksLook UpMake Me LaughShabby
Author:Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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“Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”

PeopleHas BeensRealMatterEyeHairUglyJointsChildren's BooksReal YouCatchyShabbyWedding CeremonyChildren's LiteratureChildren BookChildren LiteratureWriting Children's BooksBecoming Real
Book:The Velveteen Rabbit: Or, How Toys Become Real
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“I’m writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you’ve done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God’s grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you.”

IfsMenWritingWellsMayChildrenLittlesDoeHas BeensDoneSeemsRememberBehindsWonderDoubtGraceMiracleTownsGreat ThingsNo DoubtOld ManSooner Or LaterGod's GraceRemember MeShabbyLittle Towns
Book:Gilead: A Novel
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“The true men of action in our time those who transform the world are not the politicians and statesmen but the scientists. Unfortunately poetry cannot celebrate them because their deeds are concerned with things, not persons, and are therefore speechless. When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.”

MenWorldFeelsPersonsArtActionScienceRoomsMistakeCompanyPoliticianConcernedScientistDeedsDrawingCelebrateOur TimeStatesmenDukesTrue ManSpeechlessShabby
Author:W. H. Auden
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“And isn't the whole world yours? For how often you set it on fire with your love and saw it blaze and burn up and secretly replaced it with another world while everyone slept. You felt in such complete harmony with God, when every morning you asked him for a new earth, so that all the ones he had made could have their turn. You thought it would be shabby to save them and repair them; you used them up and held out your hands, again and again, for more world. For your love was equal to everything.”

WorldLifeMadeWholeHandsWould BeEarthUsedTurnsFeltMorningFireSawsEqualHarmonyWhole WorldEvery MorningAgain And AgainReplacedAnother WorldNew EarthShabby
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“Mr L Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he was a carbon-based life form descended from an ape. More specifically he was forty, fat and shabby and worked for the local council. Curiously enough, though he didn't know it, he was also a direct male-line descendant of Genghis Khan, though intervening generations and racial mixing had so juggled his genes that he had no discernible Mongoloid characteristics, and the only vestiges left in Mr L Prosser of his mighty ancestry were a pronounced stoutness about the tum and a predilection for little fur hats.”

KnowsHumansLittlesEnoughFormLeftLinesGenerationsDirectMalesLocalsFatsCharacteristicsHatsFortyGenesCarbonCouncilApesFurAncestryMixingDescendantsShabbyIntervening
Author:Douglas Adams
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“She went out and took a last long look at the shabby little library. She knew she would never see it again. Eyes changed after they looked at new things. If in the years to be she were to come back, her new eyes might make everything seem different from the way she saw it now. The way it was now was the way she wanted to remember it.”

IfsWayYearsLooksLittlesLongDifferentSeemsMightEyeWantedLastsRememberSawsChangedLibraryNew ThingsShabbyNew Eyes
Book:A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
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