Harmless Man Quotes & Sayings

It's amazing what sometimes gets accomplished via an initially jarring but ultimately harmless shift in thinking. Is cutting the organs out of a dead man and stitching them into someone else barbaric and disrespectful, or is it a straightforward operation to save multiple lives? Does crapping into a Baggie while sitting 6 inches away from your crewmate represent a collapse of human dignity or a unique and comic form of intimacy? — Mary Roach

If you ask me the man's short a hat size or two but he's harmless. Not like the Texas Kid or the Tuscon Kid. Drat, he's not even like Billy the Kid. Now those are outlaws.
His assurances did little to calm her nerves. Apparently the only bandits he took seriously were the ones belonging to a society of human goats. — Margaret Brownley

Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions about himself. He is humiliated by his simian ancestry, and tries to deny his animal nature, to persuade himself that he is not limited by its weaknesses nor concerned in its fate. And this impulse may be harmless, when it is genuine. But what are we to say when we see the formulas of heroic self-deception made use of by unheroic self-indulgence? — Upton Sinclair

He's a gentle giant, harmless and soft, like a teddy bear.

Except deep down, I know he's not.

And when his eyes cut my way, and I see the darkness on the surface, I'm reminded that this man hangs out with monsters.

And one might even exist inside of him. — J.M. Darhower

Most of the vices and mortal sins condemned today correspond to inclinations that were purely adaptive or at least harmless in primitive man. — Konrad Lorenz

The words of the double-tongued are as if they were harmless, but they reach even to the inner part of the bowels. Praise be to the Lord, who distinguishes our cause and delivers us from the unjust and deceitful man. — Muriel Spark

Skepsis. I am a true skeptic, born under the noble sign of skepsis, the sign of the man who knows that all astrology is absolutely and without reservation the bullest of bullsh*t that ever there was. It is a senseless delusion that does not even have the benefit of being harmless fun. It is a harmful bore. Harmful to the human spirit, harmful to the dignity and wonder of the real universe and the real power of the mind to think for itself. I hate astrology with a fervor that is almost frightening. - Stephen Fry (when asked what sign he would be if he could create his own zodiac) — Stephen Fry

A man's behaviour may be quite harmless and even beneficial, when he ismorally behaving like a scoundrel. And he may do great harm when he is morally acting on the highest principles. — George Bernard Shaw

These wonderful narrations inspired me with strange feelings. Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle, and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike. To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. For a long time I could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why there were laws and governments; but when I heard details of vice and bloodshed, my wonder ceased, and I turned away with disgust and loathing. — Mary Shelley

His act was rather that of a harmless lunatic than an enemy. We were not so new to the country as not to know that the solitary life of many a plainsman had a tendency to develop eccentricities of conduct and character not always easily distinguishable from mental aberration. A man is like a tree: in a forest of his fellows he will grow as straight as his generic and individual nature permits; alone, in the open, he yields to the deforming stresses and tortions that environ him. — Ambrose Bierce

I don't have custody. Wayne is just - We're on good terms about our son. It's not an issue." "Got a number where we can reach him?" "Yes, but he's on a plane right now. He visited for the Fourth. He's headed back this evening." "You sure about that? How do you know he boarded the plane?" "I'm sure he had nothing to do with this, if that's what you're asking. We're not fighting over our son. My ex is the most harmless and easygoing man you've ever met." "Oh, I don't know. I've met some pretty easygoing fellas. I know a guy up in Maine who leads a Buddhist-themed therapy group, teaches people about managing their temper and addictions through Transcendental Meditation. The only time this guy ever lost his composure was the day his wife served him with a restraining order. First he lost his Zen, then he lost two bullets in the back of her head. But that Buddhist-themed therapy group he runs sure is popular on his cell block in Shawshank. Lotta guys with anger-management issues in there. — Joe Hill

There was I, devouring books and yet allowing a man who had never read a book to walk me home for a bit of harmless fumbling on the front steps. — Edna O'Brien

There are times when you almost tell the harmless old lady next door what you really think of her face - that it ought to be on a night-nurse in a house for the blind; when you'd like to ask the man you've been waiting ten minutes for if he isn't all overheated from racing the postman down the block; when you nearly say to the waiter that if they deducted a cent from the bill for every degree the soup was below tepid the hotel would owe you half a dollar; when - and this is the infallible earmark of true exasperation - a smile affects you as an oil-baron's undershirt affects a cow's husband.
But the moment passes. Scars may remain on your dog or your collar or your telephone receiver, but your soul has slid gently back into its place between the lower edge of your heart and the upper edge of your stomach, and all is at peace. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I find no fault in Him. ... You can find fault in anyone else, but you can find
no fault in Jesus. Holy, harmless, undefiled, sinless: there He is! Christ is God's way to man; Christ is man's way to God. Christ is the true Jacob's ladder. By Him the penitent sinner, the believing soul, the redeemed child of God may come unto the Father and enter into the house of many mansions. — George W Truett

To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

We teased each other all the time, so we were harmless, but I never missed the chance to tell her that her man was lucky. — G.L. Tomas

Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve? — Fyodor Dostoevsky

In this world are very few things made from logic alone. It is illogical for man to be too logical. Some things we must just let stand. The mystery is more important than any possible explanation. The searcher after truth must search with humanity. Ruthless logic is the sign of a limited mind. The truth can only add to the sum of what you know, while a harmless mystery left unexplored often adds to the meaning of life. When a truth is not so important, it is better left as a mystery. — Bryce Courtenay

The chaste severity of the fathers in whatever related to the commerce of the two sexes flowed from the same principle
their abhorrence of every enjoyment which might gratify the sensual and degrade the spiritual nature of man. It was their favourite opinion, that if Adam had preserved his obedience to the Creator, he would have lived for ever in a state of virgin purity, and that some harmless mode of vegetation might have peopled paradise with a race of innocent and immortal beings. — Edward Gibbon

Perhaps the image you have of the devil is a cartoon of a man in a red suit with horns a pointy tale and a pitch fork, Satan would love for you to think of him as a harmless cartoon character, but don't be fooled ... Satan is anything but harmless. — David Jeremiah

If one had to worry about one's actions in respect of other people's ideas, one might as well be buried alive in an antheap or married to an ambitious violinist. Whether that man is the prime minister, modifying his opinions to catch votes, or a bourgeois in terror lest some harmless act should be misunderstood and outrage some petty convention, that man is an inferior man and I do not want to have anything to do with him any more than I want to eat canned salmon. — Aleister Crowley

Dear, harmless age! the short, swift span Where weeping Virtue parts with man; Where love without lust dwells, and bends What way we please without self-ends. An age of mysteries! which he Must live that would God's face see Which angels guard, and with it play, Angels! which foul men drive away. — Henry Vaughan

Every limited mind demands a certain freedom of expression, and the man who cannot express himself satisfactorily without the stimulation derived from the spirited mode of two centuries ago should certainly be permitted to follow without undue restraint a practice so harmless, so free from essential error, and so sanctioned by precedent, as that of employing in his poetical compositions the smooth and inoffensive allowable rhyme. — H.P. Lovecraft

Oh, gentlemen, perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I've never been able to start or finish anything. Granted, granted I'm a babbler, a harmless, irksome babbler, as we all are. But what's to be done if the sole and express purpose of every intelligent man is babble
that is, a deliberate pouring from empty into void. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I quite understand you. You mean that an innocent lie for the sake of a good joke is harmless, and does not offend the human heart. Some people lie, if you like to put it so, out of pure friendship, in order to amuse their fellows; but when a man makes use of extravagance in order to show his disrespect and to make clear how the intimacy bores him, it is time for a man of honour to break off the said intimacy., and to teach the offender his place. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The reason why I consider myself a clever man is simply because I could never in my life finish anything I'd started. All right, I am a talker, a harmless, boring talker as we all are. But what can I do if the direct and sole purpose of every intelligent man is to talk, that is to say, to waste his time deliberately? — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

One of these days lightning is going to fill the sky from the
rising of the sun to its setting, and there is going to appear in the
clouds one like a son of man with his mighty angels in flaming
fire. And we will see him clearly. And whether from terror or
sheer excitement, we will tremble and we will wonder how, how
we ever lived so long with such a domesticated, harmless Christ. — John Piper

Beggin' your pardon, miss, but I was told you be the one to help me cross on to the next world."
"Who told you this?"
His eyes widen. "A fearsome creature with a head full of snakes!"
"You musn't fear her," I say, taking the man's hand and leading his toward the river. "She's as tame as a pussycat. She'd probably lick your hand given the chance."
"Didn't seem harmless," he whispers, shuddering.
"Yes, well, things are not always as they appear, sir, and we must learn to judge for ourselves. — Libba Bray

We may agree, for example, that our societies must provide greater security for the individual; yet if all we succeed in producing is a providing increased anonymity and ever increasing boredom, then we should not wonder if ingenious man turns to such amusements as drugs, housebreaking, vandalism, mayhem, riots, or - at the most harmless - strange haircuts, costumes, standards of cleanliness, and sexual experiments. — Robert Ardrey

If a man offend a harmless, pure, and innocent person, the evil falls back upon that fool, like light dust thrown up against the wind. — Gautama Buddha

It is a certain sign of an ill heart to be inclined to defamation. They who are harmless and innocent can have no gratification that way; but it ever arises from a neglect of what is laudable in a man's self. — Richard Steele

As one would expect, the Devil's tools are all ominous, but oddly, the highest-priced item in his arsenal is an extremely worn and harmless-looking wedge. When asked why it is so expensive, the Devil slowly smiles and replies, To be totally candid, this may be my most powerful weapon of all. I call it the wedge of doubt. When all my other tools fail me, I know I can always rely on doubt and discouragement to break the heart and shatter the will of man. — Gary Keller

Timing is everything. Tell me how a young man spends his evenings and I will tell you how far he is likely to go in the world. The popular notion is that a youth's progress depends upon how he acts during his working hours. It doesn't. It depends far more upon how he utilizes his leisure ... If he spends it in harmless idleness, he is likely to be kept on the payroll, but that will be about all. If he diligently utilizes his own time ... to fit himself for more responsible duties, then the greater responsibilities - and greater rewards - are almost certain to come to him ... — B.C. Forbes

Between a man and woman in love, no lie is small or harmless. — Dean Koontz

A full-dressed ecclesiastic is a sort of go-cart of divinity; an ethical automaton. A clerical prig is, in general, a very dangerous as well as contemptible character. The utmost that those who thus habitually confound their opinions and sentiments with the outside coverings of their bodies can aspire to, is a negative and neutral character, like wax-work figures, where the dress is done as much to the life as the man, and where both are respectable pieces of pasteboard, or harmless compositions of fleecy hosiery. — William Hazlitt

When I contemplate the accumulation of guilt and remorse which, like a garbage-can, I carry through life, and which is fed not only by the lightest action but by the most harmless pleasure, I feel Man to be of all living things the most biologically incompetent and ill-organized. Why has he acquired a seventy years life-span only to poison it incurably by the mere being of himself? Why has he thrown Conscience, like a dead rat, to putrefy in the well? — Cyril Connolly

There's an old Cheyenne saying about how, when a man is as wise as a serpent, he can afford to be as harmless as a dove. — Larissa Ione

It was common practice for me to take my children with me whenever I went shopping, out for a walk in a white neighborhood, or just felt like going about in a white world. The reason was simple enough: if a black man is alone or with other black men, he is a threat to whites. But if he is with children, then he is harmless, adorable. — Gerald Early

Rickie had a young man's reticence. He generally spoke of "a friend," "a person I know," "a place I was at." When the book of life is opening, our readings are secret, and we are unwilling to give chapter and verse. Mr. Pembroke, who was half way through the volume, and had skipped or forgotten the earlier pages, could not understand Rickie's hesitation, nor why with such awkwardness he should pronounce the harmless dissyllable "Ansell. — E. M. Forster

To free a man from error is not to deprive him of anything but to give him something: for the knowledge that a thing is false is a piece of truth. No error is harmless: sooner or later it will bring misfortune to him who harbours it. Therefore deceive no one, but rather confess ignorance of what you do not know, and leave each man to devise his own articles of faith for himself. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The narrator analyzes that the maturing, passing away boy within him, had issued me a challenge as he passed the baton to the man in me: He had challenged me to have the courage to become a gentle, harmless man. — Pat Conroy

I don't believe in man, God nor Devil. I hate the whole damned human race, including myself. I preyed upon the weak, the harmless and the unsuspecting. This lesson I was taught by others : Might makes right. — Carl Panzram

Maybe I had been making a greater monster of him than he really was, or maybe I was still under his influence, for I was certain that he wanted me to believe he was no more than a harmless man who happened to use vampirism to get what he desired. Some remnant of his mesmerism was still upon me. I had never been able to shake the feeling that he was tucked away in a corner of my mind, that he could read my thoughts, know what I was thinking. He had done something to me, but what that was, I had never been able to discover. All I knew was that the feeling had been with me since the morning I woke up and found myself in Venice. — Melika Dannese Lux

I never realized before there were so many ways to die. So many ways to kill people. Why are there so many deadly weapons?"

Clapp rubbed his lip and looked down at her. "Listen, Miss Gilbert. I've come to figure that man is the only deadly weapon. Take a gun. It's an absolutely harmless thing - even makes a good honest paperweight - until some man gets his hands around it. You can strip a gun down to its basic parts and it's lost its power. You can reduce a man to his chemical elements, but you've always got the spirit of whatever you call it left. And that spirit will find some damned way to do evil. — Wade Miller

Come work for me, and I'll tell you."
My eyes went to his. "You are a thief, a cheat, a murderer, and a not-nice man," I said calmly. "I don't like you."
He shrugged, the motion making him look utterly harmless. "I'm not a thief," he said. "And I don't mind manipulating you into working for me when I need it." He smiled, showing me perfect teeth. "I enjoy it, actually. — Kim Harrison

There is not one man in seventy-five hundred that can tell what a pictured face is intended to express. There is not one man in five hundred that can go into a court-room and be sure that he will not mistake some harmless innocent of a juryman for the black-hearted assassin on trial. Yet such people talk of "character" and presume to interpret "expression" in pictures. — Mark Twain

Prominent and influential editors, accustomed to deal with politicians, men of an infinitely lower grade, say, in their ignorance,that he acted "on the principle of revenge." They do not know the man. They must enlarge themselves to conceive of him ... They have got to conceive of a man of faith and of religious principle, and not a politician or an Indian; of a man who did not wait till he was personally interfered with or thwarted in some harmless business before he gave his life to the cause of the oppressed. — Henry David Thoreau

Another school of opinion followed Mr. Fearenside, and either accepted the piebald view or some modification of it; as, for instance, Silas Durgan, who was heard to assert that "if he chooses to show enself at fairs he'd make his fortune in no time," and being a bit of a theologian, compared the stranger to the man with the one talent. Yet another view explained the entire matter by regarding the stranger as a harmless lunatic. That had the advantage of accounting for everything straight away. Between — H.G.Wells

I have always been fond of Josh Billings's remark that "it is much easier to be a harmless dove than a wise serpent." There are plenty of decent legislators, and plenty of able legislators; but the blamelessness and the fighting edge are not always combined. Both qualities are necessary for the man who is to wage active battle against the powers that prey. — Theodore Roosevelt

Vegetarianism is harmless enough, though it is apt to fill a man with wind and self-righteousness. — Robert Hutchison

An Athenian citizen does not neglect his state because he takes care of his own household; even those of us who are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We do not regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs as harmless. We do not say that such a man 'minds his own business'. Rather we say he has no business here at all. — Pericles

Bathing is even more embarrassing, because I have to strip down to my birthday suit in front of a nurse. Now, there are some things that never die, so even though I'm in my nineties my sap sometimes rises. I can't help it. They always pretend not to notice. They're trained that way, I suppose, although pretending not to notice is almost worse than noticing. It means they consider me nothing more than a harmless old man sporting a harmless old penis that still gets uppity once in a while. Although if one of them took it seriously and tried to do something about it, the shock would probably kill me. — Sara Gruen

The God Wars had not been a pleasant time for Craftsmen and Craftswomen around the world. One day, you're a simple thaumaturge, idly meddling in matters man was not meant to comprehend. The next, a collection of beings as old as humanity, with legions of followers, declare war on your "kind", and neighbours who once thought you a harmless eccentric with a fondness for mystic sigils and foul unguents see you as an affront to Creation. — Max Gladstone

AS I EXPECTED, I was treated by Scipio's conquerors as a harmless old fool with wisdom. The criminals called me "The Preacher" or "The Professor," just as they had on the other side.
I saw that many of them had tied ribbons around their upper arms as a sort of uniform. So when I came across a man who wasn't wearing a ribbon, I asked him jokingly, "Where's your uniform, Soldier?"
"Preacher," he said, referring to his skin, "I was born in a uniform. — Kurt Vonnegut

A man sits in some museum somewhere and writes a harmless book about political economy and suddenly thousands of people who haven't even read it are dying because the ones who did haven't got the joke. — Terry Pratchett

Your uncle Howard is one of the most harmless of men - much nicer than most professional people. Of course he does dreadful things as a judge; but then if you take a man and pay him 5,000 pounds a year to be wicked, and praise him for it, and have policemen and courts and laws and juries to drive him into it so that he can't help doing it, what can you expect? — George Bernard Shaw

The man whose silent daysIn harmless joys are spent,Whom hopes cannot delude,Nor sorrow discontent:That man needs neither towersNor armour for defence,Nor secret vaults to flyFrom thunder's violence. — Thomas Campion

What she did was harmless. What you did, man, was begging to get laid. — Piper Shelly

How long in that same fit I lay, I have not to declare; But ere my living life returned, I heard and in my soul discerned Two VOICES in the air. "Is it he?" quoth one, "Is this the man? By him who died on cross, With his cruel bow he laid full low, The harmless Albatross. "The spirit who bideth by himself In the land of mist and snow, He loved the bird that loved the man Who shot him with his bow." The other was a softer voice, As soft as honey-dew: Quoth he, "The man hath penance done, And penance more will do. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge