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Quotes About Nonsense

And, after speech, it provided a readier instrument for the dissemination of nonsense than the world has ever known until our time.
~ Will Durant
Christianity must be divine since it has lasted 1,700 years despite the fact that it is so full of villainy and nonsense. [Voltaire] shows how almost all ancient peoples had similar myths, and hastily concludes that the myths are thereby proved to have been the inventions of priests: the first divine was the first rogue who met the first fool.
~ Will Durant
Christianity must be divine," he says, in one of his most unmeasured sallies, "since it has lasted 1,700 years despite the fact that it is so full of villainy and nonsense."79 He shows how almost all ancient peoples had similar myths, and hastily concludes that the myths are thereby proved to have been the inventions of priests: "the first divine was the first rogue who met the first fool.
~ Will Durant
But the height of audacity in serving up pure nonsense, in stringing together senseless and extravagant mazes of words, such as had previously been known only in madhouses, was finally reached in Hegel, and became the instrument of the most bare-faced general mystification that has ever taken place, with a result which will appear fabulous to posterity, and will remain as a monument to German stupidity.
~ Will Durant
I think the story compels its own style to a great extent that the writer don't need to bother too much about style. If he's bothering about style, then he's going to write precious emptiness–-not necessarily nonsense... it'll be quite beautiful and quite pleasing to the ear, but there won't be much content in it. ~William Faulkner~
~ William Faulkner
What they then wanted was an authoritarian Germany which at home would put an end to democratic "nonsense" and the power of the trade unions and in foreign affairs undo the verdict of 1918, tear off the shackles of Versailles, rebuild a great Army and with its military power restore the country to its place in the sun. These
~ William L. Shirer
Virgina Woolf versus Edward Lear." "Christ Alive," said Billy. "Are those my only choices?" "I went for Lear," said Leon. "Partly out of fidelity to the letter L. Partly because given the choice between nonsense and boojy wittering you blatantly have to choose nonsense.
~ China Mieville
Only half-wits can stumble into such enormities.
~ Chinua Achebe
Henny was beautifully, wholeheartedly vile: she asked no quarter and gave none to the foul world, and when she told her children tales of the villainies they could understand, it was not to corrupt them, but because, for her, the world was really so. How could their father, said she, so fool them with his lies and nonsense?
~ Christina Stead
Among all the nonsense, mistakes, and bad ideas we come up with, maybe some truth will sneak in.
~ Henning Mankell
He talked to her as people commonly do talk in society—all sorts of nonsense, but nonsense to which he could not help attaching a special meaning in her case.
~ Leo Tolstoy
He talked to her as people commonly do talk in society—all sorts of nonsense, but nonsense to which he could not help attaching a special meaning in her case. Although he said nothing to her that he could not have said before everybody, he felt that she was becoming more and more dependent upon him, and the more he felt this, the better he liked it, and the tenderer was his feeling for her.
~ Leo Tolstoy
The papers are full of murders -- strange murders. It is all nonsense that there are as many brains as there are men; mankind has only one intellect, and it is beginning to get muddled.
~ Leonid Andreyev
What nonsense! There's nothing so clean as a healthy pussy!
~ Leonora Carrington
Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask--half our great theological and metaphysical problems--are like that.
~ lewis c s iv
If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?
~ Lewis Carroll
"Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with," the Mock Turtle replied, "and the different branches of Arithmetic—Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision."
~ Lewis Carroll
The regular course was Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with; and then the different branches of Arithmetic — Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.
~ Lewis Carroll
'Twas brillig, and the slithy tovesDid gyre and gimble in the wabe;All mimsy were the borogoves,And the mome raths outgrabe.Beware the Jabberwock, my son!The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!Beware the Jubjub bird, and shunThe frumious Bandersnatch!
~ Lewis Carroll
If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?
~ Lewis Carroll
I don't think..." then you shouldn't talk, said the Hatter.
~ Lewis Carroll
Mad Hatter: "Why is a raven like a writing-desk?" "Have you guessed the riddle yet?" the Hatter said, turning to Alice again. "No, I give it up," Alice replied: "What's the answer?" "I haven't the slightest idea," said the Hatter
~ Lewis Carroll
We're all mad here.
~ Lewis Carroll
Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.
~ Lewis Carroll