Bathos Quotes & Sayings

Every man's first declaration of love is bathos
the zenith of his passion connoting perhaps the nadir of his intelligence. — William John Locke

His three wives are huddled together on the bare mattress, one of them dying; when we're together, we form an alliance he can't touch. He's scared to even try. — Lauren DeStefano

There is a long time in me between knowing and telling. — Grace Paley

He pulls down one of my straps, slides his other hand in among the feathers, but it's no good, I lie there like a dead bird. He is not a monster, I think. I can't afford pride or aversion, there are all kinds of things that have to be discarded, under the circumstances. "Maybe I should turn the lights out," says the Commander, dismayed and no doubt disappointed. I see him for a moment before he does this. Without his uniform he looks smaller, older, like something being dried. The trouble is that I can't be, with him, any different from the way I usually am with him. Usually I'm inert. Surely there must be something here for us, other than this futility and bathos. — Margaret Atwood

I mention Jackie mostly because I want to be assured that I inhabit the same universe as other people; that I am not alone on a distant shore. Jackie glues me to this world - most effectively when I can find a way to mention her name or her attributes, when I can find a pretext, however frail, to introduce her into a conversation, even at the risk of non sequitur, bathos, or incoherence. — Wayne Koestenbaum

I should be impressed?' he commented finally. 'World renowned for foul works and mayhem, whether I practise such doctrine, or not? A shame. Shown such vulgar taste, what man with a mind would scarcely wallow to seek further clarity. Sweet faith, bliss, and bathos, it's an execrable drama. Never mind that the theological concepts are glorified platitudes sprung out of lies. — Janny Wurts

I was wondering if the scene in the drawing-room had been a triumph or a disaster or merely a chaotic piece of bad taste verging on bathos, but I reflected that the only important question was whether I had communicated my message to my parents. I continued to smoke my cigarette and occasionally I shuddered. I wondered dimly how anyone ever survived their families. — Susan Howatch

Everything teeters between pathos and bathos: here you are, violating society's most fundamental taboos and yet formaldehyde is a powerful appetite stimulant, so you also crave a burrito. — Paul Kalanithi

I love making people laugh. It's an addiction and it's probably dysfunctional, but I am addicted to it and there's no greater pleasure for me than sitting in a theater and feeling a lot of people losing control of themselves. — Jay Roach

Success, prosperity, well-being happens because you have made yourself capable of creating those things. — Jaggi Vasudev

High towers, and metaphysically-great men resembling them, round both of which there is commonly much wind, are not for me. My place is the fruitful bathos, the bottom-land, of experience; and the word transcendental, does not signify something passing beyond all experience, but something that indeed precedes it a priori, but that is intended simply to make cognition of experience possible. — Immanuel Kant

You may fume and fidget as you please: but this is the best plan to pursue with you, I am certain. I like you
more than I can say; but I'll not sink into a bathos of sentiment: and with this needle of repartee I'll keep you
from the edge of the gulf too; and, moreover, maintain by its pungent aid that distance between you and myself most conducive to our real mutual advantage. — Charlotte Bronte

One of the things that doesn't come up as much as it should, especially in literary fiction, is this idea of faith and God ... I feel like those are things that should be wrestled with ... because they are such an integral part of our community on every level. — Victor LaValle

I thought you were talking figuratively! I kept asking and you kept saying, "An entrance to Hell," so I thought, Very well, Cabal, have your moment of melodrama now and bathos later when it turns out your talking about Ipswitch or somewhere, but you meant it. You actually meant it literally. — Jonathan L. Howard

Well, Ms. Fontaine, you look damn good for a dead woman."
Her response was to narrow her eyes, arch a brow. "If that's some sort of cop humor, I'm afraid you'll have to translate. — Nora Roberts

That vervey spontaneity became encounter theater therapy under the direction of the Marquis de Paar, who was peerless at grittily vapid chatter, misty bathos, and scenery-chewing controversy. Dick Cavett, who wrote for Paar, said that working for him was like having an alcoholic in the family. — James Wolcott

He who loves others is constantly loved by them. He who respects others is constantly respected by them. — Mencius

We think it is really very simple: Jesus had to die because we needed and need to be forgiven. But, ironically, such a focus shifts attention from Jesus to us. This is a fatal turn, I fear, because as soon as we begin to think this is all about us, about our need for forgiveness, bathos drapes the cross, hiding from us the reality that here we first and foremost see God. Moreover, — Stanley Hauerwas

In the end, notwithstanding a surreal detour in the 1970s, Patricia led the life she for which she was destined back in Hillsborough. The story of Patricia Hearst, as extraordinary as it once was, had a familiar, even predictable ending. She did not turn into a revolutionary. She turned into her mother. — Jeffrey Toobin

The metaphysical image that a definite epoch forges of the world has the same structure as what the world immediately understands to be appropriate as a form of its political organization. — Carl Schmitt

But Zeus did not tell Aphrodite that age was catching up on him. And that Gods, just as Mortal men, suffered from Erectile Dysfunction. And that the daily harvesting of his sperm sacs by Hera & Themis in order to provide three amphoras full of seed had not helped.
And that thus, he, just as all those who suffered from Erectile Dysfunction, actually preferred catching oysters & eating them rather than deflowering the owners of the oysters. And thus, the Big Crunch that had been planned, now risked becoming the Big Bathos, the Big Let Down. — Nicholas Chong

I've missed you even more than I thought I would. And that's saying something, because I thought I'd miss you a lot — Michelle Dalton

After 1968 the restored communist regime required all Czech rock musicians to sit a written exam in Marxism Leninism — Niall Ferguson

I would like to draw three main conclusions. Number one, the earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements. Number two, the global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect. And number three, our computer climate simulations indicate that the greenhouse effect is already large enough to begin to effect the probability of extreme events such as summer heat waves. — Bill McKibben