Quotes & Sayings About Being Conspicuous

Senators and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough, not because they think the place specially agreeable, but as an apology for real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in our eyes. This conspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being of a poor, cold, hard nature. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Like Adam, our first conspicuous ancestor, I must begin, and lay the blame upon a woman; I am glad to recognize that I differ from the father of my sex in no important particular, being as manlike as most of his sons. — Owen Wister

In some circles emptiness is even made a goal to be sought after, under the guise of being "adaptable." Nowhere is this illustrated more arrestingly than in an article in Life Magazine entitled "The Wife Problem."* Summarizing a series of researches which first appeared in Fortune about the role of the wives of corporation executives, this article points out that whether or not the husband is promoted depends a great deal on whether his wife fits the "pattern." Time was when only the minister's wife was looked over by the trustees of the church before her husband was hired; now the wife of the corporation executive is screened, covertly or overtly, by most companies like the steel or wool or any other commodity the company uses. She must be highly gregarious, not intellectual or conspicuous, and she must have very "sensitive antennae" (again that radar set!) so that she can be forever adapting. — Rollo May

Being fat is the absolute nadir of the misfit. You're a misfit because nothing fits. You don't fit in. You're not fit. You're fat. Fat doesn't have the poetic cachet of alcohol, the whiff of danger in the drug of choice. You're just fat. Being fat is so un-American, so unattractive, unerotic, unfashionable, undisciplined, unthinkable, uncool. It makes you invisible. It makes you conspicuous. — Claudia Shear

Bernard had become, not so much important to her as he was natural to her whole being. He was as much a part of her thoughts as breath, food, and sleep. At once present and not present, conspicuous with his absence and filling her with a sense of completion when he was there. — Jim Butcher

Be yourself-but don't be conspicuous. — Fred Astaire

For those, like me, who fastidiously kept track of each time the basketball was being passed among white shirts yet somehow managed to overlook the conspicuous presence of a Halloween gorilla that strutted dead center into the visual field, the study served as a vivid demonstration that the perceptual skills on which we so greatly rely are, to put it mildly, far from flawless.
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There are, however, multiple implications to the invisible gorilla experiment findings. Chabris and Simons point out that their research "reveals two things: that we are missing a lot of what goes on around us, and that we have no idea that we are missing so much." In other words, we cannot see it all and we are affected by the false assumption that we mostly can. — Bob Katz

This perplexing consequence came fully to light as soon as equality was no longer seen in terms of an omnipotent being like God or an unavoidable common destiny like death. Whenever equality becomes a mundane fact in itself, without any gauge by which it may be measured or explained, then there is one chance in a hundred that it will be recognized simply as a working principle of a political organization in which otherwise unequal people have equal rights; there are ninety-nine chances that it will be mistaken for an innate quality of every individual, who is "normal" if he is like everybody else and "abnormal" if he happens to be different. This perversion of equality from a political into a social concept is all the more dangerous when a society leaves but little space for special groups and individuals, for then their differences become all the more conspicuous. — Hannah Arendt

Equal rights should extend to everyone. Homosexuals cannot be excluded because their relationship is unavoidable conspicuous. Same-sex couples are entitled to the same discreet displays of intimacy that heterosexuals entertain. Handholding and kissing are not viewed as vulgar among masses and should not solely determine acceptance or rejection. People need to be viewed as human, sentient, and feeling creatures in their pursuit for love. Until we acknowledge that, no gay-straight alliance will succeed. Because it's not about being gay or straight, it's about being human. — Wade Kelly

Absence of social blame is the usual mark of goodness for it shows that evil has been avoided. Blame is most readily averted by being so much like everybody else that one passes unnoticed. Conventional morality is a drab morality, in which the only fatal thing is to be conspicuous. If there be flavor left in it, then some natural traits have somehow escaped being subdued. — John Dewey

...the quality of certain scraps of verse which take hold of us and stay in our memories, we do not understand why, at first: all the words being the right words, none of them is conspicuous, and so they all seem inconspicuous, therefore we wonder what it is about them that makes their message take hold. — Mark Twain

I did feel funny about being fair and having red hair and freckles. I did not like that because I grew up in a neighbourhood where no one had red hair. I felt very conspicuous but not in a nice way. — Patti Scialfa

Those without color - say, dressed in all black - can go about almost unnoticed. Where the rainbow is conspicuous, their darkness acts as a kind of camouflage, masculine by contrast, and allows them to watch without being watched. It's the choice of someone who needs not to attract. Someone self-sufficient. Someone more distant, less knowable, and ultimately, mysterious. Powerful. — Sam Wasson

When the sun is covered by clouds, objects are less conspicuous, because there is little difference between the light and shade of the trees and the buildings being illuminated by the brightness of the atmosphere which surrounds the objects in such a way that the shadows are few, and these few fade away so that their outline is lost in haze. — Leonardo Da Vinci

One difference is that individuals living in multilingual communities seem to settle on an optimal cognitive load. The hyperpolyglot possesses a similar patchwork of linguistic proficiencies. Yet he or she exceeds this optimum with a conspicuous consumption of brain power (...) For multilinguals, learning languages is an act of joining society. There's no motive, no separable 'will to plasticity' that's distinct from what it means to be a part of that society. Being a hyperpolyglot means exactly the opposite. The hyperpolyglot's pursuit of many languages may be a bridge to the rest of the world, but it walls him off from his immediate language community. — Michael Erard

Odd that a festival to celebrate the most austere of births should end up being all about conspicuous consumption. — Jeanette Winterson

Fame legitimizes. Being conspicuous gets confused with being illustrious. — Nina Easton

There are fashions in saying things just as there are fashions in clothes. You wear what other people are wearing not so much because it's attractive but so as not to be conspicuous; so you can go on bind yourself underneath without being noticed too much. — Christopher Morley

It was not her way to make a conspicuous entry into anyone's life, but towards the end of that week Sebastian said rather sourly: "You and mummy seem very thick," and I realized that in fact I was being drawn into intimacy by swift, imperceptible stages, for she was impatient of any human relationship that fell short of it. — Evelyn Waugh