Quotes & Sayings About Carelessness

Repetition for no reason is a sign of carelessness or pretentiousness, but there are plenty of good reasons to repeat words and phrases. — Steven Millhauser

There are both dull correctness and piquant carelessness; it is needless to say which will command the most readers and have the most influence. — Charles Caleb Colton

It matters whether you see yourself as someone who is capable of effecting change or whether you see yourself as someone whose voice does not count. It matters whether you treat yourself with reverence or with carelessness. Every bit of work you do on yourself matters. Every time you choose love, it matters. — Geneen Roth

But sometimes when you're too careful it just turns into a different kind of carelessness. — Marlon James

I haven't been sorting through each and every aspect of this. Here's what I know: Hillary Clinton was an outstanding Secretary of State. She would never intentionally put America in any kind of jeopardy.' Mr. Wallace pressed further on the jeopardy angle, and Mr. Obama responded again: 'I continue to believe that she has not jeopardized America's national security. Now what I've also said is that - and she has acknowledged - that there's a carelessness, in terms of managing emails ... ' — Barack Obama

No carelessness in your actions. No confusion in your words. No imprecision in your thoughts. No retreating into your own soul, or trying to escape it. No overactivity. They kill you, cut you with knives, shower you with curses. And that somehow cuts your mind off from clearness, and sanity, and self-control, and justice? A man standing by a spring of clear, sweet water and cursing it. While the fresh water keeps on bubbling up. He can shovel mud into it, or dung, and the stream will carry it away, wash itself clean, remain unstained. To have that. Not a cistern but a perpetual spring. How? By working to win your freedom. Hour by hour. Through patience, honesty, humility. — Marcus Aurelius

The other producer of old age is habit: the deathly process of doing the same thing in the same way at the same hour day after day, first from carelessness, then from inclination, at last from cowardice or inertia. Luckily the inconsequent life is not the only alternative; for caprice is as ruinous as routine. Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive. — Edith Wharton

The forces of blind life that work across this hilltop are as irresistible as she said they were, they work by a principle more potent than fission. But I can't look upon them as just life, impartial and eternal and in flux, an unceasing interchange of protein. And I can't find proofs of the crawl toward perfection that she believed in. Maybe what we call evil is only as she told me that first day we met, what conflicts with our interests; but maybe there are such realities as ignorance, selfishness, jealousy, malice, criminal carelessness, and maybe these things are evil no mater whose interests they serve or conflict with. — Wallace Stegner

It is a disgrace to grow old through sheer carelessness before seeing what manner of man you may become by developing your bodily strength and beauty to their highest limit. — Socrates

No; they nearly drowned you, and not even on purpose but only through carelessness. I am not letting them have you back, Temeraire said. — Naomi Novik

How can I describe Peter's face, the pieces of him that stick to my heart? Peter sometimes looked aloof and distant; sometimes his face was open and soft as a bruise. Sometimes he looked completely at Tiger Lily, as if she were the point on which all the universe revolved, as if she were the biggest mystery of life, or as if she were a flame and he couldn't not look even though he was scared. And sometimes it would all disappear into carelessness, confidence, amusement, as if he didn't need anyone or anything on this earth to feel happy and alive. — Jodi Lynn Anderson

There are very few men and women, I suspect, who cooked and marketed their way through the past war without losing forever some of the nonchalant extravagance of the Twenties. They will feel, until their final days on earth, a kind of culinary caution: butter, no matter how unlimited, is a precious substance not lightly to be wasted; meats, too, and eggs, and all the far-brought spices of the world, take on a new significance, having once been so rare. And that is good, for there can be no more shameful carelessness than with the food we eat for life itself When we exist without thought or thanksgiving we are not men, but beasts. — Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

Carelessness is inexcusable, and merits the inevitable sequence. — James Anthony Froude

Many displayed in their nudity traces of their past: scars of knife thrusts in the belly, starbursts of guns hot wounds, ridges of the razor cuts of love, Caesarean sections sewn up by butchers. Some of them had their young children with them during the day, those unfortunate fruits of youthful defiance or carelessness, and they took off their children's clothes as soon as they were brought in so they would not feel different in that paradise of nudity. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

It can happen that if anyone is talking to a person they know cannot see well, they are careless. They permit themselves an expression of face that on other occasions they would not allow. — Agatha Christie

Cheapness and ignorance are mutually reinforcing. And it's a short way from not knowing who's at the other end of your food chain to not caring - to the carelessness of both producers and consumers. — Michael Pollan

That's how myths are born. Out of our carelessness, out of our tattered nerves, out of jokes that go wrong and flashy gestures. — Sergei Lukyanenko

While sincerity and over-anxiety can spoil a picture, through superfluous elaboration and unnecessary correction, the carelessness that would leave it in an unfinished state is even more reprehensible. — Walter J. Phillips

O Jesus, if I but considered attentively your immense solicitude for me, how greatly should I not excel in every virtue? Pardon me, O Jesus, so much carelessness, pardon such great ignorance. My God, Jesus my Love, Increated Goodness, what would have become of me if you had not drawn me to yourself? Open your heart to me, open to me your sacramental breast; I open mine to you. — Gemma Galgani

By all odds, earliest man, so naked to the elements and to deadly enemies, should have existed in a state of constant shock. We find him instead the only lighthearted being in a deadly serious universe ... He alone, with childish carelessness, tinkered and played, and exerted himself more in the pursuit of superfluities than of necessities. Yet the tinkering and playing, and the fascination with the nonessential, were a chief source of the inventiveness which enabled man to prevail over better-equipped and more-purposeful animals. — Eric Hoffer

Whoever moves from carelessness to vigilance, whoever overcomes his unwholesome deeds with wholesome actions, lights up the world, like the moon that merges from a cloud. — Thich Nhat Hanh

A people may prefer a free government, but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it. They are more or less unfit for liberty; and although it may be for their good to have had it even for a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it — John Stuart Mill

That strange feeling we had in the war. Have you found anything in your lives since to equal it in strength? A sort of splendid carelessness it was, holding us together. — Noel Coward

Only the dead are truly smart, truly cool. Nothing touches them. While I live, however, I side with bumbling suffering crooked life, with anger rather than boredom, with sweet lust, hunger & carelessness ... against the icy avant-guard & its fashionable premonitions of the sepulcher. — Hakim Bey

It's wrong to take even those occasional long sentences in the Quixote with loose structures, and subdivide, tighten and correct them because they are not instances of stylistic carelessness but examples of Cervantes's masterly creation of realistic dialogue: His amused observation of the deleterious effects of natural verbosity, or of passionate interest in the subject under discussion, on the speaker's grammar. — John Rutherford

Childhood has been idealised as a lost garden paradise to which we can never return. We are excluded from this world of carelessness, innocence and unity. But the imaginary kingdom is nothing more than a projection of adult ideas and concerns onto the image, an expression of our own yearnings. By photographing children alone, divorced from any social setting, I allow them to exist on their own ... I am exploring the equivocal connection between self and world. — Loretta Lux

I'm not saying he's stingy. But sometimes when you're too careful it just turns into a different kind of carelessness. It's not that either. He's from a generation that never expected to get midway up the ladder so when he got there he was too stunned to dare to climb higher. — Marlon James

Losing one pint of blood's an accident. Losing two is carelessness. — Rachel Caine

What happens is never unpredictable: there are always breaches, carelessness, incompetence, omissions, which have not prevented the occurrence. — Zygmunt Bauman

Our superintendence in instruction and discipline is the office of the Word, from whom we learn frugality and humility, and all that pertains to love of truth, love of humanity, and love of excellence. And so, in a word, being assimilated to God by participation in moral excellence, we must not retrograde into carelessness and sloth. But labor, and faint not. — Clement Of Alexandria

Many of us think in terms in parental determinism: 'If I push all the right buttons my kids are going to turn out OK.' I want to instill in myself and my people a wonderful dose, not of carelessness, but of God's sovereignty. He knows the hairs on your kids' heads. — Kevin DeYoung

He was right: not about her playing him, or about her laughing at him, but certainly about her carelessness, about her casual disregard for how he would feel if he found out, and about the stunning lack of depth it exposed in her character. — Michael Callahan

The most that can be said of flattery is that it is sometimes a cheap psychological trick with which charlatans and dishonest people lull others into a state of carelessness while they pick their pockets. — Napoleon Hill

The greatest sin is carelessness. — Linda Ronstadt

I continue to believe that she has not jeopardized America's national security. Now, what I've also said is that, and she's acknowledged, that there's a carelessness in terms of managing emails that she has owned and she recognizes. But I also think it is important to keep this in perspective. This is somebody who has served her country for four years as secretary of state and did an outstanding job, and no one has suggested that in some ways, as a consequence of how she handled emails, that that detracted from her excellent ability to carry out her duties. — Barack Obama

All the world's misfortunes stemmed from the countless untruths, both deliberate and unintentional, which people told because of haste or carelessness. — Michael Ende

He wore a tweed suit, of all horrible things, and a cravat tied with such carelessness it was almost as much a sin as his actions. — Gail Carriger

The girl with dark hair was coming towards them across the field. With what seemed a single movement she tore off her clothes and flung them disdainfully aside. Her body was white and smooth, but it aroused no desire in him, indeed he barely looked at it. What overwhelmed him in that instant was admiration for the gesture with which she had thrown her clothes aside. With its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though Big Brother and the Party and the Thought Police could all be swept into nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm. That too was a gesture belonging to the ancient time. Winston woke up with the word 'Shakespeare' on his lips. — George Orwell

Smart people admit unarmed helplessness is not only irresponsible, but, statistically, such carelessness is asking for trouble. — Mark Walters

To lose one parent is a tragedy, to lose both is utter carelessness. — Malachy McCourt

Everywhere you are a stranger.' Finished Iskra with seeming carelessness, and quickly and unceremoniously placed a beret with turkey feathers on her head. 'An Outsider everywhere and always different. How shall we call you, little hawk?' Ciri looked into her eyes. 'Gvalch'ca.' The elf laughed. 'Once you start to speak, you speak in multiple languages, little hawk! Very good. You will carry the name from the Elder People, a name that you yourself have chosen. You will be called Falka. — Andrzej Sapkowski

All deaths before the age of 100 are accidental, caused by carelessness or thoughtlessness. — Chiyo Uno

Carelessness does more harm than a want of knowledge. — Benjamin Franklin

I wept for my family, all if us, my beautiful, idyllic, lost family. I wept for our excesses, our delusions and inconsistencies; not that we had cared too much or too little, although both were true, but that we had let such extraordinary care be subverted into extraordinary carelessness. We'd been careless with the best of our many resources: each other. It was as though we had taken for granted the fact that there would be more where we had come from too; another chance, another summer, another Brooke, Bridget or Bill. — Brooke Hayward

when someone says "I don't care" it's because he cares, strongly so — Bangambiki Habyarimana

There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence.
I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. — Daniel Webster

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy-they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they made.... — F Scott Fitzgerald

I couldn't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Carelessness makes me cross. And unkindness. — Tamsin Greig

And thou wilt give thyself relief if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last, laying aside all carelessness and passionate aversion from the commands of reason, and all hypocrisy, and self-love, and discontent with the portion which has been given to thee. — Marcus Aurelius

They might be talking in perfect latin tongue and without warning begin to talk in perfect anglo tongue and keep it up like that, alternating between a thing that believes itself to be perfect and a thing that believes itself to be perfect, morphing back and forth between two beasts until out of carelessness or clear intent they suddenly stop switching tongues and start speaking that other one. In it brims nostalgia for the land they left or never knew when they use the words with which they name objects; while actions are alluded to with an anglo verb conjugated latin-style, pinning on a sonorous tail from back there. Using in one tongue the word for a thing in the other makes the attributes of both resound: if you say Give me fire when they say Give me a light, what is not to be learned about fire, light and the act of giving? It's not another way of saying things: these are new things — Yuri Herrera

I get up and pace the room, as if I can leave my guilt behind me. But it tracks me as I walk, an ugly shadow made by myself. — Rosamund Lupton

I could not unlove him, because I felt sure he would soon marry this very lady-because I read daily in her a proud security in his intentions respecting her-because I witnessed hourly in him a style of courtship which, if careless and choosing rather to be sought than to seek, was yet, in its very carelessness, captivating, and in its very pride, irresistible. — Charlotte Bronte

The recognition of his carelessness filled Mr. Lecky with fear and anger. In the dusk his eerie heart could anticipate the hours of terror which he had laid up for himself. Sounds, real or imaginary, the silences and secrets of the night, the working of his own mind, skilled in cruel illusion and rich in evil fancy, would find him without recourse. — James Gould Cozzens

I am talking about something more than just the gauzy circle of life. Sure, you're older now and one day you're going to die, but before that, you have to *die*. Your child has arrived and the battle has been joined. It is the battle to the death of your ego. The demise of your selfishness and impatience. The end of your idle distractions and carelessness. The decline and fall of Numero Uno. Or so you must pray, because in this contest, you must lose or lose quickly. Pray that you will never bear the shattered consequences of winning when your child's safety, trust, and happiness are the casualties. — Karen Maezen Miller

The working of great institutions is mainly the result of a vast mass of routine, petty malice, self interest, carelessness and sheer mistake. Only a residual fraction is thought. — George Santayana

During the Cold War, workers proudly contributed to national defense, but the carelessness and haste in handling toxic waste created a nightmare of pollution for subsequent generations. — Bobbie Ann Mason

When they become slaves to thoughts that pull them down they fall into another kind of slavery and no one can emancipate them from such bondage as that except themselves - not even a Lincoln.
I say this because there is an increasing tendency among the youth of both races to assume that a system of government will unload them of all responsibilities for the care of aged parents, for sicknesses and accidents - often due to their own carelessness and neglect - and for their periods of unemployment, no matter how much their condition is due to laziness or failure to co-operate with others. I see this every day. 'Let the government do it,' they say, ignoring the fact that, in a democracy, they themselves help pay for the government's disbursements. It looks to me at this time as if they wish to declare not their independence, but their dependence upon the government from the cradle to the grave. — Thomas Calhoun Walker

in acting according to the will of God revealed in his word, and in the whole worship of him, both internal and external: and this is to be done "with fear", not with fear of man, nor with servile fear of God, but with a godly and filial fear, with a reverential affection for him, and in a way agreeable to his mind and will; with reverence and awe of him, without levity, carelessness, and negligence; — John Gill

None of us lives to himself . . . ." Romans 14:7 Has it ever dawned on you that you are responsible spiritually to God for other people? For instance, if I allow any turning away from God in my private life, everyone around me suffers. We "sit together in the heavenly places . . ." (Ephesians 2:6). "If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it . . ." (1 Corinthians 12:26). If you allow physical selfishness, mental carelessness, moral insensitivity, or spiritual weakness, everyone in contact with you will suffer. — Oswald Chambers

Loving is like any other art-craft where the masters have carefully practiced and where the novices have languished in their carelessness. — Bryant McGill

The ladies looked one another over with microscopic carelessness. — Arthur Baer

It was [John Gardner's] conviction that if the words in the story were blurred because of the author's insensitivity, carelessness, or sentimentality, then the story suffered from a tremendous handicap. But there was something even worse and something that must be avoided at all costs: if the words and the sentiments were dishonest, the author was faking it, writing about things he didn't care about or believe in, then nobody could ever care anything about it. — Raymond Carver

Poverty is dishonorable, not in itself, but when it is a proof of laziness, intemperance, luxury, and carelessness; whereas in a person that is temperate, industrious, just and valiant, and who uses all his virtues for the public good, it shows a great and lofty mind. — Plutarch

Although it pains me to admit it, I am quite familiar with the holes in life. And this familiarity is due to the fact that I spend far more time in these holes than I spend on the paths that brought me to them. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Carelessness with details sinks more careers than anyone will admit. — Lois Wyse

We still think of air as free. But clean air is not free, and neither is clean water. The price tag on pollution control is high. Through our years of past carelessness we incurred a debt to nature, and now that debt is being called. — Richard M. Nixon

Was Adam safe? Was any child, even his own dearest Anna, ever free from danger? As soon as a son or daughter was placed in the care of others a parent had made an act of trust. If that was misplaced or mistaken, it could soon come to be seen as carelessness or neglect. Perhaps being a parent was to live in a state of constant fear, where the cost of the freedom of youth lay in the anxiety of those who protected it? Because — James Runcie

When you face the perils of weariness, carelessness, and confusion, don't pray for an easier life. Pray instead to be a stronger man or woman of God. — Luis Palau

With young people, there's often that carelessness, allowing yourself to get into danger - recklessness, I suppose. — Emily Browning

Panic leads to carelessness, and carelessness creates accidents. — Maggie Stiefvater

As a writer I care about America, and care about its carelessness. — Andrew O'Hagan

We might compare each day's decisions with the work of steering a boat. Our efforts will result in nebulous confusion if we make a wrong move at any point, even if it's only a small tack to the side. We absolutely cannot afford carelessness, lest we risk becoming lost ourselves. — Hideo Kojima

Why are so many people struggling with depression and discouragement? They've lost heart. Why can't we seem able to break free of our addictions? Because somewhere along the way, in a moment of carelessness or desperation, we gave our heart away, and now we can't get it back. — John Eldredge

Carelessness on the part of revolutionaries has always been the best aid the police have. — Victor Serge

To Konstantin the peasant was simply the chief partner in their common labor, and in spite of all the respect and the love, almost like that of kinship, he had for the peasant - sucked in probably, as he said himself, with the milk of his peasant nurse - still as a fellow-worker with him, while sometimes enthusiastic over the vigor, gentleness, and justice of these men, he was very often, when their common labors called for other qualities, exasperated with the peasant for his carelessness, lack of method, drunkenness, and lying. — Leo Tolstoy

When is a revival needed? When carelessness and unconcern keep the people asleep. — Billy Sunday

Carelessness is not fatal to journalism, nor are cliches, for the eye rests lightly on them. But what is intended to be read once can seldom be read more than once; a journalist has to accept the fact that his work, by its very todayness, is excluded from any share in tomorrow. — Cyril Connolly

To lose one child, Mr. DeTamble, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose three looks like carelessness. — Audrey Niffenegger

It is said in the desert that possession of water in great amount can inflict a man with fatal carelessness. — Frank Herbert

I go out of my way, but rather by license than carelessness ... It is the inattentive reader
who loses my subject, not I. Some word about it will always be found off in a corner, which will not fail to be sufficient, though it takes little room. — Michel De Montaigne

We now have a strong desire for living combined with a strange carelessness about dying. We desire life like water and yet are ready to drink death like wine. — G.K. Chesterton

With its grace and carelessness, it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though [all] could be swept into a nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm. — George Orwell

Carelessness is the handmaiden to tragedy. — Charles Bukowski

The immersive ugliness of the built environment in the USA is entropy made visible. It indicates not simple carelessness but a vivid drive toward destruction, decay and death: the stage-set of a literal "death trip," of a society determined to commit suicide. Far from being a mere matter of aesthetics, suburbia represents a compound economic catastrophe, ecological debacle, political nightmare, and spiritual crisis - for a nation of people conditioned to spend their lives in places not worth caring about. — James Howard Kunstler

Was he a pleasant man hiding behind a mask of seeming carelessness or an unpleasant man hiding behind a mask of charm & smiles? Or like most humans, was he a dizzying mix of contradictory charactersticks? — Mary Balogh

And the boys were all clean, their faces freshly and brutally shaved, their hair painstakingly gelled into exquisite apparent carelessness, with this electric feeling inside of them, which matched the feelings in the girls, that they were all ascending, moving into a future that could only improve them, and I wondered what it was like - the miracle, the stupidity of feeling that. — Peter Cameron

As he clambered back and picked up the paddle, he was still muttering furiously in his own language and glaring at her. Without deciphering a single word, she knew he was scolding her for her carelessness, trying to explain that one had to be alert the whole time in the jungle.
"Idiota!" he said finally, and though Senhor and Senhora Olvidares in the phrase book had not used the word, Maia understood it well enough. — Eva Ibbotson

Nothing can preserve you from carelessness or make it possible for you to persevere in living, powerful prayer, except daily close fellowship with Jesus our Lord. — Andrew Murray

There is a down side to everything if you don't understand what the consequences of what you are saying in your music you could possibly end up getting yourself killed or hurting other people because of your carelessness. — Assata Shakur

Khaldoun believed that the great curse of civilization is not war or famine but humidity: "When the moisture, with its evil vapors ascends to the brain, the mind and body and the ability to think are dulled. The result is stupidity, carelessness and a general intemperance. — Eric Weiner

Many a good intention dies from inattention. If, through carelessness or indolence, or selfishness, a good intention is not put into effect, we have lost an opportunity, demoralized ourselves, and stolen from the pile of possible good. To be born and not fed, is to perish. To launch a ship and neglect it is to lose it. To have a talent and bury it, is to be a "wicked and slothful servant." For in the end we shall be judged, not alone by what we have done, but by what we could have done. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Better poverty without a care than wealth with its many obligations. — Aesop

Focus.
Such a little word for such a hard thing and yet it can make things so simple, unless you break it. Like glass.
Fragile on certain points with enough pressure ore carelessness, but if handled correctly, it's useful, clear, sharp, and perfect.
That's what I will try to think about, whenever the Beast in me is not in agreement with what I am doing, or how I am behaving, when it threatens to break free, through that very same glass that separates us.
I need to be exactly like this window: smooth, cool, strong, and impenetrable.
Focus. — D.S. Wrights

Those obsessed with health are not healthy; the first requisite of good health is a certain calculated carelessness about oneself. — Sydney J. Harris

Nothing is more deceitful,' said Darcy, 'than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, — Jane Austen

[H]e was one of those people who got to the top of an organisation through luck, connections, the indulgence of superiors and that sort of carelessness towards others that the easily impressed termed ruthlessness and those of a less gullible nature called sociopathy. But sometimes, just through his sheer unthinking brusqueness and inability to think through the consequences of a remark, he said what everybody else was only thinking. A comic poet working in obscene doggerel. — Iain M. Banks

I would be the unhappiest person imaginable, confronted daily with disastrous works crying out with errors, imprecision, carelessness, amateurishness. I avoided this punishment by destroying them, I thought, and suddenly I took great pleasure in the word destroying. — Thomas Bernhard

This book is a personal memoir; but it is also a larger story-about carelessness and guilt, and the wreckage they can make of lives. — Brooke Hayward

Too great carelessness, equally with excess in dress, multiplies the wrinkles of old age, and makes its decay still more conspicuous. — Jean De La Bruyere