Deign Quotes & Sayings

My father was a Catholic, but my mother wasn't. She had to do that weird deal you do as a Catholic - they deign to sanction your marriage and you have to bring your children up as Catholics. — Jared Harris

Don't argue. Never deign to deny. Meet insults with laughter. — Leigh Bardugo

You say I haven't any orginality. But mark this, dear Prince, there's nothing more annoying for a man of our time and race than to tell him he's not original, a weak character with no special talents, ordinary in other words. You didn't even deign to regard me as a genuine rogue, I felt like killing you for that just now, you know that? — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Thus every writer's motto reads: mad I cannot be, sane I do not deign to be, neurotic I am. — Roland Barthes

May my life someday be so limpid that the Muses will deign to mirror themselves in it and that we can see the reflections of their smiles and their dances skimming across its surface. — Marcel Proust

Your friend Plato holds that commonwealths will only be happy when either philosophers rule or rulers philosophize: how remote happiness must appear when philosophers won't even deign to share their thoughts with kings. — Thomas More

But you never deign to look at yourself or listen to yourself. So you have no reason to claim credit from anyone for those attentions, since you showed them not because you wanted someone else's company but because you could not bearyour own. — Seneca.

I am tired of the superficial smiles that adorn the many ghouls among us. I am tired of the righteous indignation that hides beneath those visages that feign our best interest and deign to think we cannot and will not stand for ourselves. — Corey Taylor

As long as you are following God's will, friend Kline. But even God sometimes becomes impatient. You know the story of Jonah, friend Kline? How many whales do you suppose God will deign send to swallow you? When does God run out of whales? — Brian Evenson

So always risk your skin, she said, and never fear losing it, cause it always does some good one way or another when the powers that be deign to take it off us. — Ali Smith

A grand old odalisque should never deign to turn housewife. — Frederic Morton

I spent that many years thinking I was alone. Then you prance into my life, nearly giving me a paroxysm, and now you deign to tell me there are more. — Rachel Hartman

Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,-Wait and hope. — Alexandre Dumas

Ana had experienced reactions like Ramon's in the mirrored salons of Sevilla society, in the waxed halls of the Convento de las Buenas Madres, on the streets of Cadiz and San Juan. It was a look that said, "I see you, but I deign not to speak to you." It said, "I see you but I do not share the high opinion you have of yourself." It said, "I see you but you're not who I want to see." It said, "To me, you don't exist. — Esmeralda Santiago

I pray to God to give me perseverance and to deign that I be a faithful witness to Him to the end of my life for my God. — St Patrick

Follow what you love! ... Don't deign to ask what they are looking for out there. Ask what you have inside. Follow not your interests, which change, but what you are and what you love, which will and should not change. — Georgie Anne Geyer

A critical assumption is sometimes made that [Grisham, Clancey, Crichton & myself] have access to some mystical vulgate that other (and often better) writers cannot find or will not deign to use. I doubt if this is true. Nor do I believe the contention of some popular novelists ... that thier success is based on literary merit
that the public understands true greatness in ways the tight-a**ed, consumed-by-jealousy literary establishment cannot. This idea is ridiculous, a product of vanity and insecurity. — Stephen King

You can deny him, he thought, watching his father across the table. You can hate him, love him, pity him, never speak to or look at him in the eye again, never deign even to be in his crabbed and bitter presence, but you're still stuck with the son of a bitch. One way or another he'll always be your daddy, not even all-powerful death was going to change that. — Ben Fountain

For God will deign to visit oft the dwellings of just men
delighted, and with frequent intercourse
thither will send his winged messengers on errants of supernal grace. — John Milton

There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.
Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, 'Wait and Hope. — Alexandre Dumas

Our political system is now run by the Big People for their own interests. If they ever deign to notice the Little People, it is with disdain and contempt. — John Derbyshire

Barack is one of the smartest people you will ever encounter who will deign to enter this messy thing called politics. — Michelle Obama

So if you, O subsequent ones, ever deign to look down at us from your summit of effortless superiority, remember that you have only scaled it on the back of our efforts. For it is thankless to grope in the dark and tempting to rest until the light of understanding shines upon us. But if we are led into this temptation, your kingdom will never come. — Guy Deutscher

Wicked ecclesiastics who show the worst example to the people," and, above all, nobles who empty the purses of the poor by their extravagance, and disdain them for "lowness of blod or foulenesse of body," for deformed shape of body or limb, for dullness of wit and uncunning of craft, and deign not to speak to them, and who are themselves stuffed with pride - of ancestry, fortune, gentility, possessions, power, comeliness, strength, children, treasure - "prowde in lokynge, prowde in spekyng, ... prowde in goinge, standynge and sytting." All would be drawn by fiends to Hell on the Day of Judgment. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Pilate, as the histories reveal, was not one for trials. In his ten years as governor of Jerusalem, he had sent thousands upon thousands to the cross with a simple scratch of his reed pen on a slip of papyrus. The notion that he would even be in the same room as Jesus, let alone deign to grant him a "trial," beggars the imagination. Either the threat posed by Jesus to the stability of Jerusalem is so great that he is one of only a handful of Jews to have the opportunity to stand before Pilate and answer for his alleged crimes, or else the so-called trial before Pilate is pure legend. — Reza Aslan

Forsooth, I no longer toil in vain,
To prove that demon pox warps the brain.
So though 'ti pity, it's not in vain
That the pox-ridden worm was slain:
For to believe in me, you all must deign. — Cassandra Clare

Freedom in a democracy is the glory of the state, and, therefore, in a democracy only will the freeman of nature deign to dwell. — Plato

Eating be eating, b'ain't it, Birdie?'
'Nay, Uncle Bear: In Caermelor, at the Royal Court, they be so-oh, so much more advanced than anywhere else. 'Tis not done to wipe your fingers on your hair or the tablecloth, or belch, or speak with your mouth full of food, or scratch, or pick your teeth at table. Ye have to use little forks to pick up the food. Ye not allowed to pour wine for your betters or for yourself, but to wait for them to deign to pour it for ye, if they be feeling generous. And the carving of the meats must be done a certain way, and as for the toasts-it would take ye a whole day just to learn the complications.
'Takes the fun out of eating,' observed Sianadh. — Cecilia Dart-Thornton

A sensation must have fallen very low to deign to turn into an idea. — Emile M. Cioran

I try to deign golf courses that are individual in character and individual in their own standing. — Arnold Palmer

Thank you for explaining that my eye cancer isn't going to make me deaf. I feel so fortunate that an intellectual giant like yourself would deign to operate on me. — John Green

But what is truth? 'Twas Pilate's question put
To Truth itself, that deign'd him no reply. — William Cowper

Humans have a saying that "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder", which basically means that if you think it's beautiful, then it is beautiful. The elfin version of this saying was composed by the great poet B.O Selecta, who said "Even the plainest of the plain shall deign to reign", which critics have always thought was a bit rhymey. The dwarf version of this maxim is "If it don't stink, marry it", which is slightly less romantic, but the general gist is the same. — Eoin Colfer

The main characters for 'The Seer and the Sword' made an appearance one night and then haunted me for over five years before I began to write them down. Does that count as inspiration? For me, characters tend to show up, stay on to help with the work of writing their stories, and then occasionally deign to visit after a book is finished. — Victoria Hanley

But why should you wish to leave a state of society which you so politely allow to be more felicitous than your own?" "Oh, Aph-Lin! My answer is plain. Lest in naught, and unwittingly, I should betray your hospitality; lest, in the caprice of will which in our world is proverbial among the other sex, and from which even a Gy is not free, your adorable daughter should deign to regard me, though a Tish, as if I were a civilised An, and - and - and - -" "Court you as her spouse," put in Aph-Lin, gravely, and without any visible sign of surprise or displeasure. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Did the Almighty, holding in his right hand truth, and in his left hand search after truth, deign to proffer me the one I might prefer, in all humility, but without hesitation, I should request search after truth. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Diane St. John had once said he looked as if he would speak in poetry, should he ever deign to speak at all. — Madeline Hunter

Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause awhile from letters, to be wise. — Samuel Johnson

Oh! thou who are greatly mad, deign to spare me who am less mad. — Horace

Pity! Religion has so seldom found
A skilful guide into poetic ground!
The flowers would spring where'er she deign'd to stray
And every muse attend her in her way. — William Cowper