Affront Quotes & Sayings

The cry: Audacity! is a Fiat lux. It is necessary, for the sake of the forward march of the human race, that there should be proud lessons of courage permanently on the heights. Daring deeds dazzle history and are one of man's great sources of light. The dawn dares when it rises. To attempt, to brave, to persist, to persevere, to be faithful to one's self, to grasp fate bodily, to astound catastrophe by the small amount of fear that it occasions us, now to affront unjust power, again to insult drunken victory, to hold one's position, to stand one's ground; that is the example which nations need, that is the light which electrifies them. The same formidable lightning proceeds from the torch of Prometheus to Cambronne's short pipe. — Victor Hugo

If you're just grinding up hamburger at McDonald's, I see that as a bit of an affront to living things. You're not really honoring the life. — Bryan Fuller

As Summer into Autumn slips
And yet we sooner say
"The Summer" than "the Autumn," lest
We turn the sun away,
And almost count it an Affront
The presence to concede
Of one however lovely, not
The one that we have loved -
So we evade the charge of Years
On one attempting shy
The Circumvention of the Shaft
Of Life's Declivity. — Emily Dickinson

House-training, I must tell you, is a formality that can elude young dachshunds for some time; this is particularly true in climates that affront their sensibilities with outrageous meteorological insults. Rain, for example, or a startling gust of wind. — Mary Doria Russell

Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine is a gross violation of that nation's sovereignty and an affront to the international community. — Rand Paul

It might be judged an affront to your understanding should I go about to prove this first principle; the existence of a Diety and that He is the Creator of the universe, for that would suppose you ignorant of what all mankind in all ages have agreed in. — Benjamin Franklin

I will not allow anybody to interfere," said Mrs. Pocket. "I am surprised, Matthew, that you should expose me to the affront of interference. — Charles Dickens

It falls to you, Sancho, if you wish to take revenge for the affront committed against your donkey; I shall assist you from here with helpful words and advice. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

The filibuster is an affront to commonly understood democratic norms, but then so is the Senate. — Hendrik Hertzberg

Restitution costs: "He shall restore it in full, and shall add a fifth to it." Restitution costs twenty percent according to Leviticus. Guilt requires not simply equity and an even balance, but gift beyond affront. It requires surplus compensation. Such a rule is both economically shrewd and psychologically sound. Israel is required to move beyond grudging restoration, until it is "pressed down and running over. — Walter Brueggemann

Despite my best efforts, I'm not quite perfect. Let's just say I'm like one of those Hopi blankets where they leave a tiny flaw so as to not affront the Lord. — Jen Lancaster

If you are going to be serving a living thing, you have to honor that living thing with some kind of care and thought and preparation to rationalize the taking of that life in some way. Where if you're just grinding up hamburger at McDonald's, I see that as a bit of an affront to living things. — Bryan Fuller

We sit in silence, drinking hot chocolate and contemplating the act that death is a monstrous affront to the living and shouldn't be allowed. — Anna Maxted

One cannot properly drink without self-deception: the lips have to deny the liquor that just passed down the throat. It was surely for the relief of drunkards that the Lord God did not write upon the stone tablets the commandment: thou shalt not lie. The word has to deny the addiction. Among the tribe of alcoholics, lying is a badge of honor - the truth is first an indiscretion, later an affront, and finally a source of despair. If you truly drink, you have to announce to all and sundry that you do not drink; if you admit you drink, that means you do not truly drink. True all-out drinking has to be concealed; anyone who reveals it is giving in, confessing to helplessness, and all that remains for him is weeping, the gnashing of teeth, and the 12 step program. — Jerzy Pilch

Volyova did not like planets at the best of times, and gas giants struck her as an unreasonable affront to human scale and frailty. In that respect, they were almost as bad as stars. — Alastair Reynolds

Jesus, she called her cat "Mr. Purrsie Purrs." Colt didn't know much about cats but he knew hers wasn't a stupid one and if the damn thing understood English and recognized this affront to his dignity he'd scratch her eyes out. — Kristen Ashley

A creditor is worst than a master; for a master owns only your physical presence, whereas a creditor owns your dignity and may affront it. — Victor Hugo

Waking up was a daily cruelty, an affront, and she avoided it by not sleeping. — Gregory Maguire

He shrugged. "You got out of bed. The universe does seem to take that as a personal affront." The — Seanan McGuire

As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal there will be those who will delight to offer affront to your idol. — A.W. Tozer

And old affront will stir the heart Through years of rankling pain. — Jean Ingelow

Corporate secrets bouncing around a computer system thats open to the world? Hey, that's fair game and they deserve the embarrassment of its discovery. But using this knowledge to line your pockets or, worse, using insider knowledge to get the information and then calling that hacking is an affront to any of us who hack for the sake of learning. — Emmanuel Goldstein

For eventually one gets over reality's affront to one's innocence. One grows accustomed to the melancholy fact that we all sell ourselves at one time or another, that whoring is the dirty little secret of our success as human beings. — Paul Russell

Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food. — Anthony Bourdain

The idea that I hear from the right wing in the last few decades, is that any sort of sacrifice is an affront to my liberty as an American to be a pig the way I want to. — Bill Maher

Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom and trade and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures you and all men and all events. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trapnel wanted, among other things, to be a writer, a dandy, a lover, a comrade, an eccentric, a sage, a virtuoso, a good chap, a man of honour, a hard case, a spendthrift, an opportunist, a raisonneur; to be very rich, to be very poor, to possess a thousand mistresses, to win the heart of one love to whom he was ever faithful, to be on the best of terms with all men, to avenge savagely the lightest affront, to live to a hundred full of years and honour, to die young and unknown but recognized the following day as the most neglected genius of the age. Each of these ambitions had something to recommend it from one angle or another, with the possible exception of being poor - the only aim Trapnel achieved with unqualified mastery - and even being poor, as Trapnel himself asserted, gave the right to speak categorically when poverty was discussed by people like Evadne Clapham. — Anthony Powell

The laws against public nudity make no sense. The idea that Jerry Falwell can go topless while Cindy Crawford cannot is an absolute affront to logic, common sense and the 5000 year human struggle for aesthetic taste. — Peter McWilliams

The opposition of fundamentalist preachers and leaders to the civil rights movement was deeply connected to their historic separatism. They believed in an inerrant Bible that had been inspired by God, and they also believed that God explicitly ordained the separation of the races. The claims of the civil rights marchers were an affront to their interpretation of the Bible, and not just to their racial beliefs. — Andrew Himes

Sooner or later something had to give. But President Bush, faced with the unprecedented affront of 9-11, could not wait to take action. So he had to do what we were capable of doing, and he did it brilliantly. — Alexander Haig

The disparities of income and wealth in the world today are an affront to any reflective person. — John Kay

It is an affront to treat falsehood with complaisance. — Thomas Paine

And the same man who spends so many days and nights in fury and despair at losing some office or at some imaginary affront to his honour is the very one who knows that he is going to lose everything through death and feels neither anxiety nor emotion. — Blaise Pascal

[...] it would have been an affront to all good souls who had worked for a better world over the millennia not to engineer a system for preserving finer thoughts after the millennium arrived and all ideologies died and people became animals once more. — Douglas Coupland

Accustomed, as it is, to think of man as a dualism of mind and body, and to regard the former as "sensible" and the latter as a "dumb" animal, our cultture is an affront to the wisdom of nature and a ruinous exploitation of the human organism as a whole. — Alan W. Watts

Every man - in the development of his own personality - has the right to form his own beliefs and opinions. Hence, suppression of belief, opinion and expression is an affront to the dignity of man, a negation of man's essential nature.
[Toward a General Theory of the First Amendment (1963)] — Thomas I. Emerson

Hoarding is both unnecessary and an affront to God, who is perfectly capable of providing abundantly for those who trust in him. — Richard B. Hays

This is the second time she has turned me down, and with an apparent attempt to affront me. How does she manage to disappoint and intrigue simultaneously? — Noe

Our sex still strikes an awe upon the brave,
And only cowards dare affront a woman. — George Farquhar

What are you supposed to be?" she asked in Arnesian. "A fish?"
Alucard made a noise of mock affront. "Obviously," he said, brandishing the helmet, "I'm a dragon."
"Wouldn't it make more sense for you to be a fish?" challenged Lila. "After all, you do live on the sea, and you are rather slippery, and - "
"I'm a dragon," he interjected. "You're just not being very imaginative. — Victoria Schwab

Oh," Cretia said, raking her with a smug sneer. "She's your bodyguard. I get it now. Makes sense, since she has more testosterone than both of you combined." She drifted off. Zarya glared at him as he finally released her. "You should have let me rip her hair out by the dyed roots." Maris tsked at her. "Oh please. The last thing you want to do is get her acidic blood on your beautiful dress. Think of the poor designer who'd curse you for the affront to his hard work." "Yes, — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Arabs, for example, are thought of as camel-riding, terroristic, hook-nosed, venal lechers whose undeserved wealth is an affront to real civilization. Always there lurks the assumption that although the Western consumer belongs to a numerical minority, he is entitled either to own or to expend (or both) the majority of the world resources. Why? Because he, unlike the Oriental, is a true human being. — Edward W. Said

Everything said about Gen Xers
both positive and negative
was completely true. Twenty-somethings in the nineties rejected the traditional working-class American lifestyle because (a) they were smart enough to realize those values were unsatisfying, and (b) they were totally fucking lazy. Twenty-somethings in the nineties embraced a record like Nirvana's Nevermind because (a) it was a sociocultural affront to the vapidity of the Reagan-era paradigm, and (b) it fucking rocked. Twenty-somethings in the nineties were by and large depressed about the future, mostly because (a) they knew there was very little to look forward to, and (b) they were obsessed with staring into the eyes of their own self-absorbed sadness. There are no myths about Generation X. It's all true. — Chuck Klosterman

Toleration ought in reality to be merely a transitory mood. It must lead to recognition. To tolerate is to affront. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Thank You! Thanks very much. NMH couldn't make it,but we're Ashland Avenue, and we're here to rock!" No, I think. You're Ashland Avenue and you're here to suck.
We thought Neutral Milk Hotel was playing?" and I look down and say, "Me
I stammer for a second, and then say "too. I'm here for them too."
The girl leans into my ear to shout above the atonal arrythmic affront to decency that is Ashland Avenue. "Ashland Avenue is no Neutral Milk Hotel. — John Green

He muttered something foul and then climbed the stairs, rapping twice on Timmie's door.
"Right, then, mate, terribly sorry for my unspeakable rudeness, and I do beg your pardon,"
he said with admirable humbleness when Timmie cracked it open. Only I could pick up the
slight edge to his voice as he went on. "I can only say that it was caused by my natural
affront to the notion of her as my sister. Since I'll be shagging her tonight, you can
imagine how I'd be distressed at the thought of rogering my sibling."
"You schmuck!" I burst as Timmie's jaw dropped. "The only thing you'll be shagging
tonight is yourself!"
"You wanted sincerity," he countered. "Well, luv, I was sincere. — Jeaniene Frost

When I'm asked about the relevance to Black people of what I do, I take that as an affront. It presupposes that Black people have never been involved in exploring the heavens, but this is not so. Ancient African empires - Mali, Songhai, Egypt - had scientists, astronomers. The fact is that space and its resources belong to all of us, not to any one group. — Mae Jemison

I hate Mother's Day. If anything, it's an affront to all women who think full-time moms have never worked a day in their lives. Which reminds me of a good joke: What do you call an angry feminist on Mother's Day? You don't. — Kimberly Guilfoyle

The bravery founded upon the hope of recompense, upon the fear of punishment, upon the experience of success, upon rage, upon ignorance of dangers, is common bravery, and does not merit the name. True bravery proposes a just end, measures the dangers, and, if it is necessary, the affront, with coldness. — Francois De La Noue

That's why it's hard, I think, to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. I love that line from the Bible, but it's so incredibly difficult sometimes, because when you've got reason to rejoice, you forget what it's like to mourn, even if you swear you never will. And because when you're mourning, the fact that someone close to you is rejoicing seems like a personal affront. — Shauna Niequist

Curiously, Laura Warholic is one of those novels in which the characters actually read books.You don't often see this in contemporary fiction. People resent polysyllabic words, find it showing off, never look them up, refuse to play. Words are to a writer what paint is to an artist. I am amazed at how readers refuse to enjoy the out-of-the-way fact, the astonishing detail, the original thought. Style is taken as an affront by stupid and lazy people. Just say it, they say. Sure! Should I die or should I live basically sums up Hamlet's "To Be or Not to Be" soliloquy. Why didn't he just say so!? — Alexander Theroux

An American soldier, Saddam in his sights, has a picture of a naked, buxom woman on his dashboard, an obvious affront to Muslim sensibilities. — Margo Kingston

An Affront to the Rule of Law and to the Constitution Itself — John Boehner

It is a great affront to God to jest with sacred things, particularly to make sport with the word and ordinances of God, or to treat them with lightness, — Matthew Henry

Slavery stands as an affront to human dignity. — Allan Dare Pearce

You cruel, hard-hearted gods!" I flung the goblet in his direction. Hermes barely had time to dart out of its way before it hit the wall and shattered to small pieces. "You're all the same! Hsst! Jealous! Vindictive! That's what you are! You allow yourselves to take pleasure with any mortal you wish. Let a goddess do the same. Let a goddess choose a mortal for her lover, and you set off in a fury of revenge against her as if her actions are an affront to you. And all the while, you male gods allow yourselves all kinds of liberties you deny to us females. — Tamara Agha-Jaffar

Words without deeds is an affront to the principle that guides our Nation and makes a mockery of the values we as public servants claim to love. — Jon Corzine

Against the background of this luminous and sparkling stage Bond stood in the sunshine and felt his mission to be incongruous and remote and his dark profession an affront to his fellow actors. — Ian Fleming

A path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you ... Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself alone, one question ... Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't it is of no use. — Carlos Castaneda

Israel is not just any small country. It is the only small country - the only country, period - whose neighbors publicly declare its very existence an affront to law, morality and religion and make its extinction an explicit , paramount national goal. Iran, Libya, and Iraq conduct foreign policies designed for the killing of Israelis and the destruction of their state. They choose their allies (Hamas, Hezbollah) and develop their weapons (suicide bombs, poison gas, anthrax, nuclear missiles) accordingly. Countries as far away as Malaysia will not allow a representative of Israel on their soil or even permit the showing of 'Schindler's List' lest it engender sympathy for Zion. — Charles Krauthammer

Excepting Will," Mrs. Bulloch amended. "Such an affront to put upon ye, Thomas! Yon man'll not enjoy heaven if he gets there." "He'll — D.E. Stevenson

The United States is guilty. We're not treating people fairly. We're not treating people with dignity. Building a wall is an affront and an insult, and we have no right. — Rush Limbaugh

Why did you laugh right before you lost consciousness."
"Death's an adventure. I lived big. Rigor mortis makes your face stick. So, who knew how to thaw me?"
"Death's an insult."
"At least an affront," I agree. — Karen Marie Moning

She sounded angry. That was the way she'd been as long as he'd known her. If she became ill, it irritated her. She was annoyed by sickness. She seemed to regard it as a personal affront. — Richard Matheson

Nature has placed the need to see justice done in some souls, and the need to flout and affront it in others. — Jose Marti

No one's ever successfully insulted him, because he refuses to be insulted. People do their best, but Yung won't even acknowledge the attempt of an affront. — Trish Mercer

Edith was in the mood to think that any pleasure enjoyed away from her was a tacit affront, or at best a proof of indifference. — Elizabeth Gaskell

And it was not that he seemed to have forgotten or intentionally forgiven the affront, but simply that he did not regard it as an affront — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Tea is an affront to lunch and an insult to dinner. — Mark Twain

Nonconformity is an affront to those in the mainstream. — David Miller

Modern slavery - be it bonded labor, involuntary servitude, or sexual slavery - is a crime and cannot be tolerated in any culture, community, or country ... [It] is an affront to our values and our commitment to human rights. — Hillary Clinton

A responsible man remained unflappable in the face of personal loss. He would wave away an affront... — Elliot West

In a society as mobile as your own, many people are totally anonymous to those around them. They do not care what they do before strangers or to strangers. If one feels no shame, punishment only angers. If one feels shame, punishment is almost unnecessary. Logically, therefore, your prisons should seek to instill shame, but even if it were possible, it would offend your civil libertarians to do so. "Shaming" others is considered an affront to their dignity. — Sheri S. Tepper

I have always hated flying. The idea of it is an affront to nature. People are meant to stay on the ground. — Lisa Kleypas

We lose everything because everything remains except us. And therefore any form of posterity may be an affront, and perhaps any memory, as well. — Javier Marias

Any path is only a path, and there is no affront to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you. — Carlos Castaneda

I would like to take you seriously but to do so would affront your intelligence. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Appeal. Guy's like you get all excited about the appeal. Don't you see that I view the very existence of an appeal as a disastrous failure? No much worse, a personal affront of the highest order for which I blame you. — Sergio De La Pava

The Obama administration is an affront to every freedom-loving American, and a threat to every private sector job in this country. — Rick Perry

The God Wars had not been a pleasant time for Craftsmen and Craftswomen around the world. One day, you're a simple thaumaturge, idly meddling in matters man was not meant to comprehend. The next, a collection of beings as old as humanity, with legions of followers, declare war on your "kind", and neighbours who once thought you a harmless eccentric with a fondness for mystic sigils and foul unguents see you as an affront to Creation. — Max Gladstone

A reaper in a bubble bath? What an affront to the dignity of death. — Moira Rogers

As long as you have a beating heart, it's never too late. But you do need to get on with it [. . .] every second you squander is an affront to an unforgiving universe. — Andrea Waltz

Hundreds had come to the castle gates to bear witness to the burning of the Seven. The smell in the air was ugly. Even for soldiers, it was hard not to feel uneasy at such an affront to the gods most had worshiped all their lives. — George R R Martin

Only when painting isn't painting can there be an affront to modesty. — Pablo Picasso

He was a dork, a dink, a dong ... Why should the male member be used as a term of abuse? No man hated his own dorkdinkdong, quite the opposite. But maybe it was an affront that any other man had one. That must be the truth. — Margaret Atwood

I jerk around and see Sister Dora, a portly woman who's the head cook in the kitchen, staring daggers at me. This is nothing new. She stares daggers at everyone who walks through the lunch line holding a tray, as though our needing sustenance is a personal affront. — Pittacus Lore

Orthodoxy often requires us to be hard precisely where the world is soft, and soft where the world is hard. It means condemning the homosexual lifestyle and being labeled bigots. It means caring for AIDS patients though many think us fools. It means respecting the rule of law though our culture is increasingly lawless. It means visiting the prisoners who offend that law though our culture would prefer to forget them. In every way that matters, Christianity is an affront to the world; it is countercultural.43 — D. A. Carson

It is necessary, for the sake of the forward march of the human race, that there should be proud lessons of courage permanently on the heights. Daring deeds dazzle history and are one of man's great sources of light. The dawn dares when it rises. To attempt, to brave, to persist, to persevere, to be faithful to one's self, to grasp fate bodily, to astound catastrophe by the small amount of fear that it occasions us, now to affront unjust power, again to insult drunken victory, to hold one's position, to stand one's ground; that is the example which nations need, that is the light which electrifies them. — Victor Hugo

Because the other way wasn't working. The waking up just to get the day over with until it was time for bed. The grinding it out was a disgrace, an affront to the honor and long shot of being alive at all. — Maria Semple

Tolerance should, strictly speaking, be only a passing mood; it ought to lead to acknowledgment and appreciation. To tolerate a person is to affront him. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

A government run by billionaires for billionaires is an affront to freedom, morality, and humanity. — Michael Moore

Any conscious, wilful impairment of the body is an affront to God. — Stephen L. Richards

Pashtuns are famously independent, primed to exchange their hoes for weapons at the first sign of an affront or invader. — Douglas Wissing

Ashamed their civilisation had a Diplomatic service at all and so tried to compensate for what they were worried might look to other species suspiciously like a symptom of weakness by ensuring that only the most aggressive and xenophobic Affronters became diplomats, to forestall anybody forming the dangerously preposterous idea the Affront were going soft. — Anonymous

The hijab, or sikh turban, or Jewish skullcap are all explicit symbols, but they do not represent a threat or affront to others, and have no bearing on the competence, skills and intelligence of a person. — Randa Abdel-Fattah

Old, that's an affront no woman can well bear. — Miguel De Cervantes

A habit that had become one of those necessary things for the night ... surely a body-friendly if not familiar-lying next to you. Someone whose touch is a reassurance, not an affront or a nuissance. Whose heavy breathing neither enrages nor discusts you, but amuses you like that of a cherished pet. — Toni Morrison

There are men whose sense of humour is so ill developed that they still bear a grudge against Copernicus because he dethroned them from the central position in the universe. They feel it a personal affront that they can no longer consider themselves the pivot upon which turns the whole of created things. — W. Somerset Maugham

Every aspect of Obamacare is an affront to the very founding of this country. — Rush Limbaugh

Yesterday was a dark day in the history of humanity, a terrible affront to human dignity. After receiving the news, I followed with intense concern the developing situation, with heartfelt prayers to the Lord. How is it possible to commit acts of such savage cruelty? The human heart has depths from which schemes of unheard-of ferocity sometimes emerge, capable of destroying in a moment the normal daily life of a people. But faith comes to our aid at these times when words seem to fail. Christ's word is the only one that can give a response to the questions which trouble our spirit. Even if the forces of darkness appear to prevail, those who believe in God know that evil and death do not have the final say. Christian hope is based on this truth; at this time our prayerful trust draws strength from it.

~General Audience, September 12, 2001. — Pope John Paul II