Quotes & Sayings About Caustic

A raised eyebrow, an inflection of the voice, a caustic remark dropped in the middle of a broadcast can raise doubts in a million minds about the veracity of a public official or the wisdom of a governmental policy. — Spiro T. Agnew

There was once a caustic comment from someone suggesting I was breeding a new race. Fans from different countries have married, amazing things like that. I've been to some of the weddings. I went to one here the other day, a pagan ceremony. — Terry Pratchett

I'm over a thousand years old. I've seen it all. You, sweetcheeks, are nothing new." At what must have been an outraged expression on her face, he laughed again. "Come on. Surely you can't think you are the only female out there who's had a rough life, had her heart walked on, been kept in a dungeon for three centuries, blah, blah, pick your trauma, and are now stomping around with all this pent-up anger you spill like acid on everyone who gets to know you." He narrowed his gaze at her. "How close am I?"
Sin's mouth worked, but nothing came out. She finally snapped it shut to avoid looking like a fish gasping on the bank of a river.
"That's what I thought." He made a shooing gesture with his hand. "No, run along and go be caustic with someone who cares. Oh, wait, no one cares, do they? Because you won't let them
— Larissa Ione

English audiences of working people are like an instrument that responds to the player. Thought ripples up and down them, and if in some heart the speaker strikes a dissonance there is a swift answer. Always the voice speaks from gallery or pit, the terrible voice which detaches itself in every English crowd, full of caustic wit, full of irony or, maybe, approval. — Mary Heaton Vorse

Taxonomy, also called systematics, is the science-based hierarchical classification of the world's species. The area had traditionally been an obscure academic discipline dominated by erudite and professional dons who would memorize and interpret thousands of Latin species names. Advances seldom made the newspapers and caustic disputes lingered in the dust scientific literature for generations. That academic innocence would be lost forever when precise taxonomic recognition of species and subspecies came to be the basis for protection under the Endangered Species Act. — Stephen J. O'Brien

The bitter attacks I faced were far worse than any fighter I ever faced in the ring. The caustic remarks, the threats to injure me, the shots at my character-fighting those were my toughest battle. — Jack Johnson

Expressions of sharp and even violent criticism of religion and the church have been welcomed, for they usually imply sincerity of thought. If caustic criticism of religious institutions and practices is irreligious, then Amos, Isaiah, and Jesus were very irreligious men. In fact, that is exactly what many of their contemporaries took them to be. — Halford Luccock

A wise person strives to reach self-transcendence by engaging in delicate contemplation, while avoiding the snare of self-denigration's negative invocation. An overshadowing sense of a caustic self can be destructive, whereas an encircling sense of a kindhearted self allows a person to express the profundity and elation of a feral creature curiously exploring nature's glorious playground. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Maybe innocence is a skin you must shed to build layers more resistant to the caustic truths of the world. — Hector Tobar

I don't have a caustic sense of humor. What I find funny, that humor comes from a much gentler place. — Vera Farmiga

I always thought that Seth [Rogen] was a fun, caustic, bombastic, sweet, underdog-type of person that I would root for the way you used to root for Bill Murray or John Candy in "Stripes." Seth had something that very few people you encounter have: he had a writer's mind and he had his own comic point of view. — Judd Apatow

If the fucking Scar exists," whispered the Brucolac, still without turning, "and if they get us there and by some gods-fucked miracle we survive, then they'll still destroy us. We are not an expeditionary force; we are not on some fucking quest. This is a city, Uther. We live; we buy; we sell; we steal; we trade. We are a port. This is not about adventures." He turned and faced Uther Doul with his eyes caustic. "You know that. That's why you came here, dammit, Uther. Because you were sick of adventures. — China Mieville

My thoughts are crabbed and sallow,
My tears like vinegar,
Or the bitter blinking yellow
Of an acetic star.
Tonight the caustic wind, love,
Gossips late and soon,
And I wear the wry-faced pucker of
The sour lemon moon.
While like an early summer plum,
Puny, green, and tart,
Droops upon its wizened stem
My lean, unripened heart. — Sylvia Plath

Learning "PEACE" is a condition of the heart. Peace is not possible without forgiveness. Un-forgiveness destroys, forgiveness heals. The privilege to be at harmony in our skins - that's what forgiveness permits. We surrender this "right" when we hold onto resentment and animosity. A tremendous amount of energy is dissipated when we hold back our compassion, our love, hold onto hostility, and entertain caustic feelings. — Henry Johnson Jr

All right. Tell me what I'm looking at." From the improvised Rolling Stones T-shirt bag tied to my sash, Bob the Skull said, in his most caustic voice, "A giant pair of cartoon lips." I muttered a curse and fumbled with the shirt until one of the skull's glowing orange eye sockets was visible. A big goofy magic nerd!" Bob said. — Jim Butcher

The Clean Oven Domestic Ltd is Family rum company and uses the non-caustic and environment friendly material for cleaning services. — Clean Eating

When I turned thirty, I briefly flirted with the notion of undergoing sexual reassignment surgery. Once again, I was ready for a big change in my life. Plus, I was having a really difficult time meeting gay guys who didn't seem gay yet were still caustic. So I figured, as a woman I would have a whole new pool of men from which to fish.
I decided that I would probably opt for the self-lubricating vagioplasty option. ... the plus side of this vagina was that it was, like the name implies, self-lubricating. So I wouldn't need to give myself away and reach for the K-Y. On the downside, it was always self-lubricating, so you had to wear a maxipad at all times, even at funerals. — Augusten Burroughs

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things. — George Eliot

After my baccalaureate, I signed up for acting lessons; there followed some inglorious years, during which I grew nastier and nastier and, as a consequence, more and more caustic; thanks to this, success finally arrived - on a scale that surprised me. — Michel Houellebecq

An incomplete fulfillment of a sweet dream can slowly turn it caustic. — Anuradha Bhattacharyya

We've gotten to the point now where Republicans and Democrats have nothing in common besides being members of the 'caustic caucus,' and we can't get anything done. — Emanuel Cleaver

I am acquainted with a wife and mother who is chained securely at the present time to a life-style of murmuring and criticism. She is the first to point out faults in her husband or to repeat neighborhood gossip. How damaging is a habit that permits fault-finding, character assassination, and the sharing of malicious rumors! Gossip and caustic comments often create chains of contention. These chains may appear to be very small, but what misery and woe they can cause! — Marvin J. Ashton

Song being born of quest he knows this: he must turn silent were he suddenly assaulted with answers. Instead oh hear his wild, caustic, tender warbling ceaselessly unanswered. — Mary Oliver

Despite trials, worldly confusion, and caustic voices, we can trust in the Lord and go forward with happy hearts, knowing that with every challenge or problem, there's the strength to go on. Why? Because we know His promises are real, that He does know us by name and has a plan for each of us. He will help us learn what it is and give us joy in doing it. — Elaine L. Jack

Nothing revives the cup of life more than a caustic splash of death. — Leylah Attar

Neighbors whose jealousy of such a triumph exceeded any satisfaction in the prospect of the union were able to console themselves by averring that Mr Darcy's pride and his wife's caustic wit would ensure that they lived together in the utmost misery for which even Pemberley and ten thousand a year could offer no consolation. — P.D. James

Memories

Memories are real life experiences distilled over time into a palatable elixir that one can selectively choose to indulge.

Heartbreak and misfortune are most often entombed in cerebral mausoleums. Due to their caustic essence they are prohibitive to access and are accompanied by a lingering bitter aftertaste.

Pleasant recollections may be retrieved at will as if tethered to the end of a string on a reel. They are often seasoned to taste and bursting with flavor and pungent aromas. — Rob Wood

Too caustic? To hell with the costs, we'll make the picture anyway. — Samuel Goldwyn

It was an axiom of "containment" that no part of the known world could be considered neutral. "Neutralism" was among the Cold Warriors' gravest curse words, applied with caustic hostility to India and even France. Those who were not with were against, subjected to intense economic and ideological and sometimes military pressure to fall into line. — Christopher Hitchens

Debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide-open and that ... may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials. — William J. Brennan

She was Remade she was (Remade scum), he knew it, he saw it, and still he felt incessantly what was inside him, and he felt a great scab of habit and prejudice split from him, part from his skin where his homeland had inscribed him deep. [ ... ]There was a caustic pain as he peeled off a clot of old life and exposed himself open and unsure to her, to new air. [ ... ] His feelings welled out and bled together (their festering ceased) and they began to resolve, to heal in a new form, to scar. — China Mieville

What is remarkable in Burke's first performance," wrote his great nineteenth-century biographer John Morley, "is his discernment of the important fact that behind the intellectual disturbances in the sphere of philosophy, and the noisier agitations in the sphere of theology, there silently stalked a force that might shake the whole fabric of civil society itself."4 A caustic and simplistic skepticism of all traditional institutions, supposedly grounded in a scientific rationality that took nothing for granted but in fact willfully ignored the true complexity of social life, seemed to Burke poorly suited for the study of society, and even dangerous when applied to it. Burke would warn of, and contend with, this force for the rest of his life. — Yuval Levin

I was kind of a Rickles comic to begin with. I was caustic, and I was abusive and mean to the audience. — Louie Anderson

Each person entering our world brings either a contribution or destruction. Trying to be "always nice" is to invite certain disaster. Those with poisonous attitudes, strange opinions, and caustic conversations love to look for someone nice who will listen to them. They love to dump their verbal garbage into the mental factory of anyone willing to listen. A major challenge in life is for each person to learn the art of standing guard at the doorway of their mind. Carefully examine the credentials and authority of those seeking to enter within that place where your attitudes are formed. — Jim Rohn

After 1656 the Dutch, who had gained control over the Moluccas, chose the islands that could be most easily defended. They then burned all the nutmeg trees on the other islands to make sure no one else could profit from the trees. Anyone caught trying to smuggle nutmeg out of the Moluccas was put to death. The Dutch also dipped all their nutmegs in lime (a caustic substance) to stop the seed from sprouting and to prevent people from planting their own trees. Pigeons, however, defied these Dutch precautions. Birds could eat nutmeg fruits, fly to another island and leave the seeds behind in their droppings. — Meredith Sayles Hughes

The Ladies Buddenbrook from Breite Strasse did not weep, however - it was not their custom. Their faces, a little less caustic than usual at least, expressed a gentle satisfaction at death's impartiality. — Thomas Mann

I'm very antischedule. Except for board meetings, I don't really schedule things or keep a calendar. I think appointments are caustic to creativity. — David Karp

The cynical, caustic, acid-tongued New York drama critic Addison De Witt introduces his protege/date of the moment, a bimbo date and so-called actress named Miss Casswell (Marilyn Monroe) in another very famous line: "Miss Casswell is an actress, a graduate of the Copacabana School of Dramatic Art." — George Sanders

Is that your professional take on the situation? I kept my voice dry and caustic. This wasn't worth yelling over. It wasn't even worth a heated whisper. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

You can do all manner of underhanded nice things when you have a caustic reputation. — Markus Zusak

You used to say. "Desire doubled is love and love doubled is madness."
Madness doubled is marriage
I added
when the caustic was cool, not intending to produce
a golden rule. — Anne Carson

You say marriage," she muttered. "I say prison sentence." He pursed his lips. "So, instead of the fairy-tale existence every woman dreams of as a child, you're forced to live in a physically cold relationship with an abusive philanderer for at least another year?" "Way to sum it up." Maritza sent out a caustic laugh. "Do me a favor. Kill me now." The — John Tucker

Philosophy exists in profoundest opposition to rhetoric, which is speaking for the sake of producing or controlling some effect in others' perceptions. Philosophy is about the caustic or cauterizing effect of the truth, not the currying of sensibilities. — Kenny Smith

Even in the investigations into direct production of calcium peroxide in an alkali melt with highly compressed oxygen, it was found to be necessary to bring the high-pressure gas into contact with the suspension of lime in caustic alkali melt by agitation or some other means of mixing. — Friedrich Bergius

Never mind,' she said, 'I don't see the point of a God.'
'And I don't see much point in a cat.' the Kami replied. — Kij Johnson

Linc had always been a leg man. Thankfully hers made up for her caustic tongue and armour plated panties — Amy Andrews

Cinderella
The prince leans to the girl in scarlet heels,
Her green eyes slant, hair flaring in a fan
Of silver as the rondo slows; now reels
Begin on tilted violins to span
The whole revolving tall glass palace hall
Where guests slide gliding into light like wine;
Rose candles flicker on the lilac wall
Reflecting in a million flagons' shine,
And glided couples all in whirling trance
Follow holiday revel begun long since,
Until near twelve the strange girl all at once
Guilt-stricken halts, pales, clings to the prince
As amid the hectic music and cocktail talk
She hears the caustic ticking of the clock. — Sylvia Plath

Village life gently swirled around them, with the perpetual ebb and flow of people, scurrying in every direction. The village was a living, organic entity, with blood flowing through its veins, and with a definite pulse and heartbeat. It had its own distinct personality and its own dark caustic humour, and was constantly processing and regurgitating information through its winding, meandering streets. — Leonardo Donofrio

I found my friends very amusing the first time because they are funny and amusing. They really are because they're people who've got everything. They're sort of like camp caricatures of what you expect an aristocrat should be: vicious, rude, caustic unpleasantries. — Duncan Roy

While there was a playfulness to their caustic bards, there was also an aura of "I'll kick your ass back to the Steel Age if you so much as breathe my air the wrong way."' (Alix) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

There is a duality to darkness known only to those who've been infected by its touch. Everyone knows the shadows: shallow, comfortable, mostly harmless places where one might nest for a night. But the depths of living pitch only visit the aristocracy of madmen and women who've unwittingly pledged fealty to the curse. For some, it outright ruins minds like a hound to fresh meat; for others, it wanes into the deepest parts of its less caustic sibling and waits for the time to strike, returning periodically through life like an incurable disease. — Darrell Drake

My childhood memories seem to be wreathed in the twin and far from harmonious olfactory sensations of patchouli oil and caustic soda. — Hamish Bowles

Occasionally, in the stillness of a taxi or an airplane, she would catalog the pleasures she had lost. Cigarettes. Chewing gum. Strong mint toothpaste. Any food with hard edges or sharp corners that could pierce or abrade the inside of her mouth: potato chips, croutons, crunchy peanut butter. Any food that was more than infinitesimally, protozoically, spicy or tangy or salty or acidic: pesto or Worcestershire sauce, wasabi or anchovies, tomato juice or movie-theater popcorn. Certain pamphlets and magazines whose paper carried a caustic wafting chemical scent she could taste as she turned the pages. Perfume. Incense. Library books. Long hours of easy conversation. The ability to lick an envelope without worrying that the glue had irritated her mouth. The knowledge that if she heard a song she liked, she could sing along to it in all her dreadful jubilant tunelessness. The faith that if she bit her tongue, she would soon feel better rather than worse. — Kevin Brockmeier

When that man left her, and then the barber ran off with all the money and the few valuables she had saved up over the years, she didn't swallow caustic soda. She shook herself down as if nothing had happened — Magda Szabo

Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first - the story of our quest for sexual love - is well known and well charted, its vagaries form the staple of music and literature, it is socially accepted and celebrated. The second - the story of our quest for love from the world - is a more secret and shameful tale. If mentioned, it tends to be in caustic, mocking terms, as something of interest chiefly to envious or deficient souls, or else the drive for status is interpreted in an economic sense alone. And yet this second love story is no less intense than the first, it is no less complicated, important or universal, and its setbacks are no less painful. There is heartbreak here too. — Alain De Botton

The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little - or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives. — Anthony Trollope