Quotes & Sayings About Bad Neighbors

This may be illustrated by the Taoist story of a farmer whose horse ran away. That evening the neighbors gathered to commiserate with him since this was such bad luck. He said, "May be." The next day the horse returned, but brought with it six wild horses, and the neighbors came exclaiming at his good fortune. He said, "May be." And then, the following day, his son tried to saddle and ride one of the wild horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. Again the neighbors came to offer their sympathy for the misfortune. He said, "May be." The day after that, conscription officers came to the village to seize young men for the army, but because of the broken leg the farmer's son was rejected. When the neighbors came in to say how fortunately everything had turned out, he said, "May be."14 — Alan W. Watts

And suddenly I realized that this too was a message, a last wordless communication among neighbors. For I, too, had a hiding place when things were bad. Jesus was this place, the Rock cleft for me. I pressed a finger to the tiny crevice. — Corrie Ten Boom

The most basic principle to being a free American is the notion that we as individuals are responsible for our own lives and decisions. We do not have the right to rob our neighbors to make up for our mistakes, neither does our neighbor have any right to tell us how to live, so long as we aren't infringing on their rights. Freedom to make bad decisions is inherent in the freedom to make good ones. If we are only free to make good decisions, we are not really free. — Ron Paul

Broadly speaking, Protestants like to be good and have invented theology in order to keep themselves so, whereas Catholics like to be bad and have invented theology in order to keep their neighbors good. Hence, the social character of Catholicism and the individual character of Protestantism. — Bertrand Russell

Therefore the good man ought to be a lover of self, since he will then both benefit himself by acting nobly and aid his fellows; but the bad man ought not to be a lover of self, since he will follow his base passions, and so injure both himself and his neighbors. With the bad man therefore, what he does is not in accord with what he ought to do, but the good man does what he ought, since intelligence always chooses for itself that which is best, and the good man obeys his intelligence. — Aristotle.

Here's how to get started with the antipolitical politics of the Benedict Option. Secede culturally from the mainstream. Turn off the television. Put the smartphones away. Read books. Play games. Make music. Feast with your neighbors. It is not enough to avoid what is bad; you must also embrace what is good. Start a church, or a group within your church. Open a classical Christian school, or join and strengthen one that exists. Plant a garden, and participate in a local farmer's market. Teach kids how to play music, and start a band. Join the volunteer fire department. — Rod Dreher

We dedicate ourselves to working with our neighbors, near and far, day in and day out, to building that peaceful society in which the tragedies we have known are a bad memory and a continuing warning. — Betty Williams

At first glance, this seems an improbable scenario due to both the Martians' and Emily Dickinson's dispositions. Dickinson was a recluse who didn't meet anybody, preferring to hide upstairs when neighbors came to call and to float notes down on them.14 Various theories have been advanced for her self-imposed hermitude, including Bright's Disease, an unhappy love affair, eye trouble, and bad skin. T. L. Mensa suggests the simpler theory that all the rest of the Amherstonians were morons.15 None of these explanations would have made it likely that she would like Martians any better than Amherstates, and there is the added difficulty that, having died in 1886, she would also have been badly decomposed. — Connie Willis

How many neighbors ignoring Jolly for her ignorance and bad luck could go down on their knees and save their kid from choking to death this afternoon while the world was going on outside in the sunshine? — Virginia Euwer Wolff

It was in this man's class that I first began to wonder if people who wrote fiction were not suffering from some kind of disorder--from what I've since come to think of, remembering the wild nocturnal rocking of Albert Vetch, as the midnight disease. The midnight disease is a kind of emotional insomnia; at every conscious moment its victim--even if he or she writes at dawn, or in the middle of the afternoon--feels like a person lying in a sweltering bedroom, with the window thrown open, looking up at a sky filled with stars and airplanes, listening to the narrative of a rattling blind, an ambulance, a fly trapped in a Coke bottle, while all around him the neighbors soundly sleep. this is in my opinion why writers--like insomniacs--are so accident-prone, so obsessed with the calculus of bad luck and missed opportunities, so liable to rumination and a concomitant inability to let go of a subject, even when urged repeatedly to do so. — Michael Chabon

You were just a beautiful woman. Now you're my beautiful woman. What you got under your clothes is for me. No one else. They don't look. They don't touch. That's the deal. Yeah?"
I stared at him, speechless, which was a good thing because if I had words, I would have said them so loudly the neighbors would hear.
"Now," he went on, either not feeling or not caring about the badder than bad vibes emanating from me directly toward him, "go put on a tank."
That's when I found my words.
"Maybe I should go put on my ragged white dress and stone necklace and you can put on your leopard skin tunic and we can pedal in our stone car to the roadhouse before you go bowling with Barney and I go shopping with Betty, Fred. — Kristen Ashley

The maxim, as has been already said, is a general statement, and people love to hear stated in general terms what they already believe in some particular connexion: e.g. if a man happens to have bad neighbors or bad children, he will agree with any one who tells him 'Nothing is more annoying than having neighbors,' or, 'Nothing is more foolish than to be the parent of children.' The orator has therefore to guess the subjects on which his hearers really hold views already, and what those views are, and then must express, as general truths, these same views on these same subjects. This is one advantage of using maxims. — Aristotle.

In the older folklore, faeries were frightening beings. In fact, it was such a bad idea to get their attention that people would use flattering euphemisms for them, such as 'the people of peace,' 'the little people,' and 'the good neighbors.' — Holly Black

They suffered cold and heat, hard work and privation as did others of their time. When possible they turned bad into good. If not possible, they endured it. Neither they nor their neighbors begged for help. No other person, nor the government, owed them a living. They owed that to themselves and in some way they paid the debt. And they found their own way.
Their old fashioned character values are worth as much today as they ever were to help us over the rough places. We need today courage, self reliance and integrity. — Laura Ingalls Wilder

I've been pretty lucky with neighbors. But back in 1998, I lived, like, literally next door to Wrigley Field in Chicago. And I had, like, 50,000 bad neighbors spread out over the course of one summer. I'm a diehard Cubs fan, but living right next to the ballpark, it's just - as you're trying to go to sleep, you can just, like, hear urination. — Ike Barinholtz

A voluntary act to fill empty hours had become intensive labor streaked with the bad feelings that ride the skin like pollen when too much about one's neighbors is known. — Toni Morrison

In 1970, I wrote in the New York Times, of all uncongenial places, It is possible to stop most drug addiction in the United States within a very short time. Simply make all drugs available and sell them at cost. Label each drug with a precise description of what effect - good or bad - the drug will have on the taker. This will require heroic honesty. Don't say that marijuana is addictive or dangerous when it is neither, as millions of people know - unlike "speed," which kills most unpleasantly, or heroin, which can be addictive and difficult to kick. Along with exhortation and warning, it might be good for our citizens to recall (or learn for the first time) that the United States was the creation of men who believed that each person has the right to do what he wants with his own life as long as he does not interfere with his neighbors' pursuit of happiness (that his neighbor's idea of happiness is persecuting others does confuse matters a bit). — Gore Vidal

What Stieg Larsson was up to - it was the Swedish guilt over World War II. All of our neighbors had the most terrible experiences with the bad forces, but Sweden didn't. I think we use the thrillers in a different way. We never write a thriller like 'Who is the murderer?' The big question in most of our thrillers is ... 'Why?' — Michael Nyqvist

One is wearing a uniform of green-and-gray camouflage, as if he were hunting deer in the woods. The other is wearing a uniform of brown-and-beige camouflage, as if he were hunting insurgents in the desert. These two clowns are standing in the driveway of a suburban home, about fifteen minutes from downtown, in a well-developed city of a million people, and they're wearing camouflage. The sad and scary thing about this image is that these guys have no idea how stupid they look. Instead, they're proud, arrogant. They're on display, tough guys fighting bad guys. One of their brethren has been hit, wounded, fallen in the line of duty, and they're pissed about it. They scowl at the neighbors across the street. One wrong word, and they might start shooting. Their fingers are on the triggers. — John Grisham

Conscience represents a fetich to which good people sacrifice their own happiness, bad people their neighbors'. — Ellen Glasgow

Greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. — Henry David Thoreau

You need to be empathetic in your own personal life and we help our neighbors and our friends out who are struggling in our neighborhoods. But we don't make bad decisions based on empathy. — Thomas Sowell

The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man, - you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind, - I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that. — Henry David Thoreau

Even though peak experiences might show us the truth and inform us about why we are training, they are essentially no big deal. If we can't integrate them into the ups and downs of our lives, if we cling to them, they will hinder us. We can trust our experiences as valid, but then we have to move on and learn how to get along with our neighbors. Then even the most remarkable insights can begin to permeate our lives. As the twelfth-century Tibetian yogi Milarepa said when he heard of his student Gampopa's peak experiences, 'They are neither good not bad. Keep meditation.' — Pema Chodron

The substance of what I have to say to the disadvantage of the theory and practice of universal suffrage is that it tends to invert what I should have regarded as the true and natural relation between wisdom and folly. I think that wise and good men ought to rule those who are foolish and bad. To say that the sole function of the wise and good is to preach to their neighbors, and that everyone indiscriminately should be left to do what he likes, should be provided with a ratable share of the sovereign power in the shape of the vote, and that the result of this will be the direction of power by wisdom, seems to me the wildest romance that ever got possession of any considerable number of minds. — James Fitzjames Stephen

My elementary school days were miserable. After Star Search, the jealousy got really bad that our neighbors slashed our tires. — Christina Aguilera

First, whenever a man talks loudly against religion, always suspect that it is not his reason, but his passions, which have got the better of his creed. A bad life and a good belief are disagreeable and troublesome neighbors, and where they separate, depend upon it, 'Tis for no other cause but quietness sake. — Laurence Sterne

One day the farmer's horse ran away. His neighbors cried "such bad luck" to which he replied "maybe." His horse returned the next day with three wild horses. His neighbors shouted "that's wonderful" and the old farmer replied "maybe." The next day his son rode one of the wild horses, fell off, and broke his leg. The neighbors called it a "terrible misfortune." The old man replied "maybe." The day after, the army came to the village to draft young men, but the son was spared thanks to his broken leg. The neighbors said the farmer was lucky how things turned out, and the old man answered "maybe. — Peter Morville

No intermediaries, no bosses. But the big attraction to the site isn't just free ads. It's community. Virtually everyone we've talked to who has used craigslist refers to the site as a community, a place from another era when neighbors would help each other out. And craigslist does feel like a neighborhood. Like any neighborhood, it's home to all types - good and bad. People can post at will, but if something is offensive, for whatever reason, users themselves can take down the ad. It's a fully user-controlled democratic system. — Anonymous

Electronic books are a bad thing because they cannot be accumulated on shelves to remind you of your past, to impress your neighbors and colleagues, and to help prevent divorces thanks to the sheer bother of arguing over who owns what. — J.P. Donleavy

I'll
vacuum up my stale hair, I'll
pay all my neighbors' bad debts, I'll
write a poem called Yellow and put
my lips down to drink it up ... — Anne Sexton

The word thing is an interesting word. At first glance it looks like the front half of one word combined with the last half of another. It's a versatile word. It can be good, as in, "what a nice thing," or "she has a thing for you." Or it can be bad, like "the thing under the bed," or "here's the thing, you're fired and you smell bad." Add an "s" to the back end of it and it becomes something that most people in the world can't get enough of.
Things
People love things. They collect things. They store things. They cherish things and then move on and cherish other things. People also buy things. Some buy a lot of things simply because their neighbors have those same things
which is a weird thing if you really think about it.
It's remarkable what we'll do for the sake of things when in reality things couldn't care less about us. — Obert Skye

Better marry a maiden, so you can teach her good manners, and in particular marry one who lives close by you. Look her well over first. Don't marry what will make your neighbors laugh at you, for while there's nothing better a man can win him than a good wife, there's nothing more dismal than a bad one. — Hesiod

Doral asked if Coburn's neighbors had been interviewed.
"By me personally," Fred replied. "Everybody in the apartment complex knew him by sight. Women thought he was attractive in that certain kind of way."
"What certain kind of way?"
"Wished they could fuck him, but considered him bad news."
"That's a 'way'?"
"Of course that's a 'way.' — Sandra Brown

Eyes Fastened With Pins"

How much death works,
No one knows what a long
Day he puts in. The little
Wife always alone
Ironing death's laundry.
The beautiful daughters
Setting death's supper table.
The neighbors playing
Pinochle in the backyard
Or just sitting on the steps
Drinking beer. Death,
Meanwhile, in a strange
Part of town looking for
Someone with a bad cough,
But the address somehow wrong,
Even death can't figure it out
Among all the locked doors...
And the rain beginning to fall.
Long windy night ahead.
Death with not even a newspaper
To cover his head, not even
A dime to call the one pining away,
Undressing slowly, sleepily,
And stretching naked
On death's side of the bed. — Charles Simic