Quotes for All
Wish and learn to smooth away the surly wrinkles, to raise your lids frankly, and change the fiends to confident, innocent angels, suspecting and doubting nothing, and always seeing friends where they are not sure of foes. Emily Bronte
I have been called a curmudgeon, which my obsolescent dictionary defines as a \”surly, illmannered, badtempered fellow.\” … Nowadays, curmudgeon is likely to refer to anyone who hates hypocrisy, cant, sham, dogmatic ideologies, the pretenses and evasions of euphemism, and has the nerve to point out unpleasant facts and takes the trouble to impale these … Read more
We all accuse Vladimir Putin of Cold War nostalgia, but Washington’s elites – politicians and intellectuals – miss the old days as well. They wish for the world in which the United States was utterly dominant over its friends, its foes were to be shunned entirely, and the challenges were stark, moral, and vital. Today’s … Read more
If a farmer and his family can get up at 5:30 every morning to milk cows, surly we can get up at that time to practice basketball. Don Meyer
Human affairs are so obscure and various that nothing can be clearly known. This was the sound conclusion of the Academic sceptics, who were the least surly of philosophers. Desiderius Erasmus
I wish there really was such a thing as a Time-Clock Puncher, though. I wish some gigantic, surly, stone-fisted Soap Mahoney-type guy went around the world smashing every clock in sight till there weren’t any more and people got so confused about when to go to the mill or school or church that they gave … Read more
Very slowly, she peeked around the tree trunk. Saw a slim, petite figure, flanked by two very large, very dangerous-looking soldier of fortune types picking their way through the bodies and the rubble. Amy? Oh, God. It was Amy. Get away from her, Jenna ordered, stepping out from behind the conifer, wielding the iron pan … Read more
The Scots are poor, cries surly English pride; True is the charge, nor by themselves denied. Are they not then in strictest reason clear, Who wisely come to mend their fortunes here? Charles Churchill
Vin snorted, kneeling in the low tent as she pulled her belt tight; then she crawled over to him. I don’t know how you read while riding, she said. Oh, it’s quite easy – if you aren’t afraid of horses. I’m not afraid of them, Vin said. They just don’t like me. They know I … Read more
Fate handed Barack Obama the best of all political gifts – a dyspeptic, surly, spiteful opposition on the one hand and very unpopular financiers on the other – and he wouldn’t come out punching, name names, or go for the jugular. It was as if while getting mugged by guys with brass knuckles, he turned … Read more