Clownish Quotes & Sayings

Like all of my important memories, it has a potency that has influenced the pocket of time that holds it, so I can remember that particular Saturday afternoon, even though in many ways it was no different from any other. I can remember, for example, what van der Glick was wearing as she stepped out of the elevator, which was a dress covered with clownish polka dots. Rainie would make these heartbreaking stabs at femininity; indeed, she still does. It's not that she doesn't possess a woman's body now, and didn't posses a girl's body then. But clothes never seemed to fit her correctly, and the more girlish they were, the worse they would hang. — Paul Quarrington

Their demeanor is invariably morose, sullen, clownish and repulsive. I should think there is not, on the face of the earth, a people so entirely destitute of humor, vivacity, or the capacity for enjoyment. — Charles Dickens

He did not enjoy speaking about women with other men, a practice which, in his estimation, was always clownish and braying. — Eleanor Catton

[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out. — Michel De Montaigne

Handling a painful situation in a comedic way is truly the funniest. That is extremely real to me and not kind of clownish. There is a thin line though; you can't overdo it. — Will Ferrell

At least a circus performance does not last long, and the regime availing itself of the services of clownish journalists has the longevity of a mouldering mushroom. — Anna Politkovskaya

The faces of your young people in general are not interesting - I don't mean the children, but the young men and women - and they are awkward and clownish in their manners, without the quaintness of the elder generation, who are the funniest old dears in the world." "They will all be quaint enough as they get older. You must remember the sort of life they lead. They get their notions very slowly, and they must have notions in their heads before they can show them on their faces. — Thomas Hughes

Never get old. It's a ridiculously uncomfortable process Ath Creator should be made to find a cure for. — Janny Wurts

For those of you who don't know what cassettes are, well, never mind.) The — Sendhil Mullainathan

Nobody can be more clownish, more clumsy and sententiously in bad taste than Herman Melville. — D.H. Lawrence

A jerk stuck in a wheelchair, is still a jerk. — Michael Kroft

As the popularity of science-fiction increases, so inevitably does the volume of clownish imprecation against it. — Edmund Crispin

Pushing in among this mob of camp followers who identified political virtue with money for their rent came a flying squad who suffered not from hunger but from congested idealism: Intellectuals and Reformers and even Rugged Individualists, who saw in Windrip, for all his clownish swindlerism, a free vigor which promised a rejuvenation of the crippled and senile capitalistic system. Upton — Sinclair Lewis

These Macedonians are a rude and clownish people; they call a spade a spade. — Plutarch

Did you?' the producer said. 'He's so clownish on the surface, all joke and dazzle. How in the world could you have seen it?'
'But I did. The moment I met him," she said. "A fucking supernova. Every day since.' She thought, but did not say, almost. — Lauren Groff

He is no clown that drives the plow, but he that doth clownish things. — Benjamin Franklin

But I need to wake up somehow. Or maybe not. Maybe it's best to get through the day half-asleep. Maybe that's the only way to get through today. — Jay Asher

The United States is the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, yet its inhabitants are strikingly unhappy. Accordingly, we present to the rest of mankind, on a planet rife with suffering and tragedy, the spectacle of a clown civilization. Sustained on a clown diet rich in sugar and fat, we have developed a clown physiognomy. We dress like clowns. We move about a landscape filled with cartoon buildings in clownmobiles, absorbed in clownish activities. We fill our idle hours enjoying the canned antics of professional clowns ... Death, when we acknowledge it, is just another pratfall on the boob tube. Bang! You're dead! — James Howard Kunstler

[Do you know] how it feels to be a clownish character? It's always complicated to imagine conveying yourself outside of your body. Inside myself I feel like this rich, complicated thing, and then I see representations of myself, especially in the media - and I think this is why it's troubling for me, because I feel so caricatured and flattened. — Kalan Sherrard

Gore Vidal, Glenn Greenwald, Noam Chomsky, all these guys talk about how the United States became a national security state after World War II. I agree with that thesis. Essentially there's this bipartisan foreign policy elite who've been calling the shots for the last few decades and they're clearly still in control regardless of how clownish or absurd or stupid they demonstrate themselves to be. There's no shaking their orthodoxy. — Michael Hastings

To some education is just a bore; to most education is food for the brain and enrichment for the present and future. — Ana Monnar

Here are the bills again, I always dread them a little. They are familiar presences: first in the mail box, then in the bill drawer, now on the desk. Services Rendered. "My life is dependent on services rendered." — Gunilla Brodde Norris

shut the door behind u........... — Ashfaq Ahmed

I'm the girl who is lost in space, the girl who is disappearing always, forever fading away and receding farther and farther into the background. Just like the Cheshire cat, someday I will suddenly leave, but the artificial warmth of my smile, that phony, clownish curve, the kind you see on miserably sad people and villains in Disney movies, will remain behind as an ironic remnant. I am the girl you see in the photograph from some party someplace or some picnic in the park, the one who is in fact soon to be gone. When you look at the picture again, I want to assure you, I will no longer be there. I will be erased from history, like a traitor in the Soviet Union. Because with every day that goes by, I feel myself becoming more and more invisible ... — Elizabeth Wurtzel

Last chances in the Middle East have been two a dirham since the 1950s. Each year the enmities are more profound, the despots more bloodthirsty and clownish, the violence more extreme, and the conditions of ordinary existence more ghastly. — James Buchan

I'm not happy on vacation. In those rare times when I have three hours with no work I have to do, I'm terribly uncomfortable. — Scott Adams

The clown figure has had so many meanings in different times and cultures. The jolly, well-loved joker familiar to most people is actually but one aspect of this protean creature. Madmen, hunchbacks, amputees, and other abnormals were once considered natural clowns; they were elected to fulfill a comic role which could allow others to see them as ludicrous rather than as terrible reminders of the forces of disorder in the world. But sometimes a cheerless jester was required to draw attention to this same disorder, as in the case of King Lear's morbid and honest fool, who of course was eventually hanged, and so much for his clownish wisdom. Clowns have often had ambiguous and sometimes contradictory roles to play. ("The Last Feast Of The Harlequin") — Thomas Ligotti

How strange," she said, "not to recognize one's own face."
"You have no cause for complaint," Grant said huskily. Even bruised and pale and ravaged, her face was incomparable.
"Do you think so?" She stared into the looking glass without a trace of self-satisfactionshe had displayed at the ball. *That* Vivien had had no doubt of her many attractions. This woman was far less confident.
"Everyone thinks so. You're known as one of the great beauties of London."
"I don't see why." Catching his skeptical expression, she added, "Truly, I'm not fishing for compliments, it's just... seems a very ordinary face." She produced a comical, clownish expression, like a child experimenting with her reflection. A shaken laugh escaped her. "It doesn't seem to belong to me. — Lisa Kleypas

This perhaps is what is meant by hiraeth: a lifelong yearning for what is gona and out of reach. — Alice Thomas Ellis

I was only given this life because I'm strong enough to live it — Robert Pattinson