Quotes & Sayings About Aloofness

Mammy had a point.
What rankled Laila was that Mammy hadn't earned the right to make it. It would have been one thing if Babi had raised this issue. But Mammy? All those years of aloofness, of cooping herself up and not caring where Laila went and whom she saw and what she thought ... It was unfair. Laila felt like she was no better than these pots and pans, something that could go neglected, then laid claim to, at will, whenever the mood struck. — Khaled Hosseini

Stop it, Barry," Joanie said. "Get ahold of yourself. This is just how we work."
I agreed. When she told Shelley I was useless, I heard the smile in her voice and knew she was pretending to be irritated. Really, she wouldn't know what to do without my uselessness, just as I wouldn't know what to do without her complaints. I take it back. It's not that we don't treat each other well; it's just that we're comfortable enough to know that sarcasm and aloofness keep us afloat, and we never have to watch where we step.
"You are both so cold," Barry said that night. — Kaui Hart Hemmings

At times she's thought of as an ice princess but ice, when exposed to warmth, melts. — Donna Lynn Hope

I was drawn to his aloofness, the way cats gravitate toward people who'd rather avoid them. — Rachel Hartman

Two widely dissimilar races, whether equal or not, cannot peaceably coexist in the same territory until they are either uniformly mongrelised or cast in folkways of permanent and traditional personal aloofness. — H.P. Lovecraft

Gabriel discourages emotional attachments the way most of us discourage door-to-door salesmen. They're inconvenient, intrusive, and liable to end up saddling you with something you never wanted in the first place, at a cost far higher than you wish to pay. — Kelley Armstrong

When we drift from a deep, intimate companionship with God, we become negative, critical, judgmental and recalcitrant. We resist the repeated overtures of God's love. Neutrality and detached aloofness eventually result. We become respectably unresponsive. It happens to all of us at times. The telltale signs are equivocation, vacillation and pretense. — Lloyd John Ogilvie

How does the soul enter the body from the aloofness of the intellectual world? The answer is, through appetite. But appetite, though sometimes ignoble, may be comparatively noble. At best, the soul "has the desire of elaborating order on the model of what it has seen in the IntellectualPrinciple (nous)." That is to say, soul contemplates the inward realm of essence, and wishes to produce something, as like it as possible, — Bertrand Russell

God withholds blessing only in wisdom, never in spite or aloofness. — Elisabeth Elliot

No guy is ever gonna be like, 'Well, I'm not into her because she just doesn't seem into me!' That's never been a complaint for why a guy doesn't like a girl. Ever! That's an attractive thing, so always err on the side of aloofness. — Nikki Glaser

. . . what matters in combat is adaptability, boldness and maintaining A cool exterior, whilst penetrating your enemy's soul with An icy cold stare
- Diary of A Combat Fiend — Soke Behzad Ahmadi

The largest and most influential houses chiefly demonstrate the aloofness of the French approach. — Stephen Gardiner

A thousand pieces of gold may hardly bring a moment's happiness, but a small favor can cause a lifetime's gratitude. Too much love can turn to enmity, while aloofness can produce joy. — Zicheng Hong

It is not aloofness, superiority. It's a protection. Who in this ravaged battlefield doesn't want to gather close her comrades? — Megan Abbott

Every virtue can come with its own accompanying vice. The virtue of reticence can yield the vice of aloofness. — David Brooks

We talk of civilizing the Indian, but that is not the name for his improvement. By the wary independence and aloofness of his dim forest life he preserves his intercourse with his native gods, and is admitted from time to time to a rare and peculiar society with Nature. He has glances of starry recognition to which our saloons are strangers. The steady illumination of his genius, dim only because distant, is like the faint but satisfying light of the stars compared with the dazzling but ineffectual and short-lived blaze of candles. — Henry David Thoreau

It was altogether a different story now. Abhilasha started coming out of the cold aloofness which had become her second nature, while for Arvind, it was like 'fiddle found a melody'. He was in love with his life again. With their growing intimacy, came the desire to meet each other. And at last it materialised when they fixed a date for meeting. The long awaited day came. A sleepless night of nervous apprehension, culminated at dawn, as Abhilasha could no longer lie down. While there was much excitement at the prospect of meeting him but the possibility of a probable mismatch between the real Arvind and the virtual one, loomed large on her mind, making her feel nervous. — Chitralekha Paul

She had sought me out. I knew it would happen. Even if I had switched to a different section, she would have sought me out all the same. She, who hid in the crowd, who didn't want anyone to see her behind her veil of averted eyes and aloofness. When I stepped forward, she came out, too. And she pointed and said, revealing a child's wanton smile: "That's the one I want." And like a potted sunflower that had just been sold to a customer, I was taken away. There was no way to refuse. This, from a beautiful girl that I was already deeply, viscerally attracted to. Things were getting good. — Qiu Miaojin

It can be difficult to be an introvert in church, especially if you happen to be the pastor. Liking to be alone can be interpreted as a judgment on other people's company. Liking to be quiet can be construed as aloofness. There is so much emphasis on community in most congregations that anyone who does not participate risks being labeled a loner. — Barbara Brown Taylor

The greatest dread of ordinary man is death, with its rude imposition interrupting fortuitous plans and fondest attachments with an unknown and unwelcome change. The yogi is a conqueror of the grief associated with death. By control of mind and life force and the development of wisdom, he makes friends with the change of consciousness called death-he becomes familiar with the state of inner calmness and aloofness from identification with the mortal body. — Paramahansa Yogananda

[Kierkegaard] did not care for large public events because every crowd is in itself an untruth. The only way out is isolation, aloofness. Only the individual is a reality and only the individual is true. Maybe the process of isolation in an individual is one of the most important matters that exists. Is not the whole point of this world for people to separate and become individuals? — Mati Unt

Neither a thought nor an emotion, it is rather the steady conscious realization of reality's transience. It is the ground for wisdom and freedom and the protector of compassion and love. While some may think of equanimity as dry neutrality or cool aloofness, mature equanimity produces a radiance and warmth of being. The Buddha described a mind filled with equanimity as "abundant, exalted, immeasurable, without hostility and without ill-will. — Unknown

Even exploitation and oppression still make society work and establish some kind of order. Only wealth without power or aloofness without a policy are felt to be parasitical, useless, revolting, because such conditions cut all the threads which tie men together. Wealth which does not exploit lacks even the relationship which exists between exploiter and exploited; aloofness without policy does not imply even the minimum concern of the oppressor for the oppressed. — Hannah Arendt

Our disenchantment of the night through artificial lighting may appear, if it is noticed at all, as a regrettable but eventually trivial side effect of contemporary life. That winter hour, though, up on the summit ridge with the stars falling plainly far above, it seemed to me that our estrangement from the dark was a great and serious loss. We are, as a species, finding it increasingly hard to imagine that we are part of something which is larger than our own capacity. We have come to accept a heresy of aloofness, a humanist belief in human difference, and we suppress wherever possible the checks and balances on us - the reminders that the world is greater than us or that we are contained within it. — Robert Macfarlane

If, in any individual, university training produces a taste for refined idleness, a distaste for sustained effort, a barren intellectual arrogance, or a sense of superfluous aloofness from the world of real men who do the world's real work, then it has harmed that individual. — Theodore Roosevelt

Keenan. Keenan. Keenan. My mind is filled with him. He has guided me, fought for me, stayed with me. And in doing so, his aloofness has given way to a potent, unspoken love I feel whenever he looks at me. I silence the voice within and take his hand. Every other thought grows distant as calm settles over me, a peace I haven't felt in months. Without looking away from him, I guide his fingers to the buttons of my shirt, pulling open one, then another, leaning forward as I do so. "No," I whisper against his ear. "I don't want you to stop. — Sabaa Tahir

To view an object in the proper light we must stand away from it. The study of the classical literatures gives the aloofness which cultivates insight. In learning to live with peoples and civilizations that have long ceased to be alive, we gain a vantage point, acquire an enlargement and elevation of thought, which enable us to study with a more impartial and liberal mind the condition of the society around us. — John Lancaster Spalding

But had it been the wine? Maybe it was something else. I was no math expert, but this was an intoxicating equation: Hot Guy with Mysterious Past + Way With Pretty Words x Chivalry at Beach / His Aloofness at Coffee Shop (Immunity to My Face & Flirty Efforts) + Innuendo at Hardware Store x Honest Confession about OCD Struggles - Curiosity + Arousal (Belly Flutters + Pulse Quickening)=ATTACKISS. — Melanie Harlow

or perhaps because of, her natural aloofness and her ability to withdraw and view things without emotion. The fact that this extended to her own life, leaving her appearing cold and distant, was beside the point. — Rachel Abbott

An essential quality of beauty is aloofness. — Austin O'Malley

And I imagine that, though cold and haughty in her general demeanor, and even exacting in her requirements, she has strong affections for those who can reach them ... — Anne Bronte

The very problem of mind and body suggests division; I do not know of anything so disastrously affected by the habit of division as this particular theme. In its discussion are reflected the splitting off from each other of religion, morals and science; the divorce of philosophy from science and of both from the arts of conduct. The evils which we suffer in education, in religion, in the materialism of business and the aloofness of "intellectuals" from life, in the whole separation of knowledge and practice
all testify to the necessity of seeing mind-body as an integral whole. — John Dewey

There remained only those rare periods of amorousness which still came to them at times but did not last long. These were islets at which they anchored for a while and then again set out upon that ocean of veiled hostility which showed itself in their aloofness from one another. This aloofness might have grieved Ivan Ilych had he considered that it ought not to exist, but he now regarded the position as normal, and even made it the goal at which he aimed in family life. His — Leo Tolstoy

Without knowing it, I was acquiring that haughty bearing which is characteristic of so many eccentrics. What other expression would you expect to find on the face of anyone who knows that if he turns his head too quickly, he will see on the faces of others glares of stark terror or grimaces of hatred? Aloofness is the posture of self-defense. — Quentin Crisp

While aloofness might fascinate others and makes them respect you, it will never allow for intimacy and profound relationships. — John Duover

But although she interacted with so many people during the day, no one could actually say that they were close to her. There is an aloofness to the permanently heartbroken, a secrecy. There was something impenetrable about her. There was a door that she had closed, which no one could get in. — Heather O'Neill

It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds. — Viktor E. Frankl

A wounded heart needs aloof. — Toba Beta

He had the aloofness of manner you often find in those who have lived much alone in unfrequented places ... they seem always to hold something back. They have a life in themselves that they keep apart ... this hidden life is the only one that signifies to them. And no and then their eyes betray the weariness with the social round into which hazard or the fear of seeming odd has for a moment forced them. They seem then to long for the monotonous solitude of some place of their predilection where they can be once more alone with the reality they have found. — W. Somerset Maugham

The worst danger of the mystic is as always a quest of spiritual privilege leading to aloofness from the common lot. — Vida Dutton Scudder

Mediocrity requires aloofness to preserve its dignity. — Charles G. Dawes

Unattached to man or matter,
You remain aloof and cold. — Mihai Eminescu

Stories that pander to your every readerly desire and whim are like overly loyal dogs that live for the simple glow of your approval. I'm a cat person. I like a little aloofness in my pets and my writing. — Alden Bell

What sort of diary should I like mine to be? Something loose-knit and yet not slovenly, so elastic that it will embrace anything, solemn, slight or beautiful, that comes into my mind. I should like it to resemble some deep old desk or capacious hold-all, in which one flings a mass of odds and ends without looking them through. I should like to come back, after a year or two, and find that the collection had sorted itself and refined itself and coalesced, as such deposits so mysteriously do, into a mould, transparent enough to reflect the light of our life, and yet steady, tranquil compounds with the aloofness of a work of art. The main requisite, I think, on reading my old volumes, is not to play the part of a censor, but to write as the mood comes or of anything whatever; since I was curious to find how I went for things put in haphazard, and found the significance to lie where I never saw it at the time. — Virginia Woolf

To say I removes a false impression of a Jovian aloofness. — Jerome Frank

Your answer is the logical, coherent answer an absolutely normal person would give: It's a tie! A lunatic, however, would say that what I have around my neck is a ridiculous, useless bit of colored cloth tied in a very complicated way, which makes it harder to get air into your lungs and difficult to turn your neck. I have to be careful when I'm anywhere near a fan, or I could be strangled by this bit of cloth.
If a lunatic were to ask me what this tie is for, I would have to say, absolutely nothing. It's not even purely decorative, since nowadays it's become a symbol of slavery, power, aloofness. The only really useful function a tie serves is the sense of relief when you get home and take it off; you feel as if you've freed yourself from something, though quite what you don't know. — Paulo Coelho

Fame, or notoriety, whichever that special noise may be called when the world like a hound 'gives tongue' and announces that the quarry in some form of genius is at bay, is apt to increase its clamor in proportion to the aloofness of the pursued animal ... — Marie Corelli

But one of the saddest, most deprecating misuses of power is the withholding of love, affirmation, and delight from other people. Few things keep people in line with our wishes more than an attitude of reserve or aloofness. It is paradoxical that in the power struggle of relationships, the one who loves and encourages the least, gains the most power. This puts people on edge, keeps them guessing, and plays on their need for assurance about their worth. — Lloyd John Ogilvie

Let us disperse from our aloofness and serve the weak who made us strong, and cleanse the country in which we live. Let us teach this miserable nation to smile and rejoice with heaven's bounty and glory of life and freedom. — Kahlil Gibran

Rottcodd was unmarried. An aloofness and even a nervousness was apparent on first acquaintance and the ladies held a peculiar horror for him. His, then, was an ideal existence, living alone day and night in a long loft. Yet
occasionally, for one reason or another, a servant or a member of the household would make an unexpected appearance and startle him with some question appertaining to ritual, and then the dust would settle once more in the hall and on the soul of Mr.
Rottcodd. — Mervyn Peake

There is something sublime about its aloofness from and its indifference to its external environment. — Frederick Soddy