Misbegotten Quotes & Sayings

A misbegotten hatchling of consciousness, a birth defect of our species, imagination is often revered as a sign of vigor in our make-up. But it is really just a psychic overcompensation for our impotence as beings. Denied nature's exemption from creativity, we are indentured servants of the imaginary until the hour of our death, when the final harassments of imagination will beset us. — Thomas Ligotti

Druids were supposed to be forces of preservation, not destruction, and I could not dance around the fact that my stupid pride had turned me into a misbegotten cockwaffle. — Kevin Hearne

This is my fear, of a life wasted, of a cause misbegotten, of a belief that is, in the end, an empty and unattainable ideal, the foolish designs of an innocent child who believed there could be more. — R.A. Salvatore

misbegotten cockwaffle. — Kevin Hearne

To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It's irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober. — Eugene O'Neill

The misbegotten town of Whistlebrass is hidden away in a forgotten corner of northern Vermont like a guilty secret or a bloody knife buried under the floorboards. — Jack Keely

The weak and misbegotten shall perish: first principle of our brotherly love. And they shall be given every assistance. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was right when he claimed, 'In politics, what begins in fear usually ends up in folly.' Political activists are more inclined, though, to heed an observation from Richard Nixon: 'People react to fear, not love. They don't teach that in Sunday school, but it's true.' That principle, which guided the late president's political strategy throughout his career, is the sine qua non of contemporary political campaigning. Marketers of products and services ranging from car alarms to TV news programs have taken it to heart as well.

The short answer to why Americans harbor so many misbegotten fears is that immense power and money await those who tap into our moral insecurities and supply us with symbolic substitutes. — Barry Glassner

The costs of an ignorance of science are nor just practical ones like misbegotten policies, forgone cures, and a unilateral disarmament in national competitiveness. There is a moral cost as well. It is an astonishing fact about our species that we understand so much about the history of the universe. the forces that make it tick, the stuff it's made of; the origin of living things, and the machinery of life. A failure to nurture this knowledge shows a philistine indifference to the magnificent achievements humanity is capable of; like allowing a great work of art to molder in a warehouse. — Steven Pinker

Woman is a misbegotten man and has a faulty and defective nature in comparison to his. Therefore she is unsure in herself. What she cannot get, she seeks to obtain through lying and diabolical deceptions. And so, to put it briefly, one must be on one's guard with every woman, as if she were a poisonous snake and the horned devil ... Thus in evil and perverse doings woman is cleverer, that is, slyer, than man. Her feelings drive woman toward every evil, just as reason impels man toward all good. — Albertus Magnus

You idiot! You misbegotten son of a jinn's meeting with a jackass, may the grave of your maternal grandmother be defiled by the dung of ten thousand syphilitic she-camels! — Anne McCaffrey

I remember seeing 'A Moon for the Misbegotten' with Colleen Dewhurst, and that made a really big impression on me, and I remember wanting to be like her and I still want to be like Colleen Dewhurst! My mom took me to a lot of theatre growing up, and I also remember seeing Pippin and being like, 'Wow! — Brooke Smith

And now, what has Anarchism to say to all this, this bankruptcy of republicanism, this modern empire that has grown up on the ruins of our early freedom? We say this, that the sin our fathers sinned was that they did not trust liberty wholly. They thought it possible to compromise between liberty and government, believing the latter to be 'a necessary evil,' and the moment the compromise was made, the whole misbegotten monster of our present tyranny began to grow. Instruments which are set up to safeguard rights become the very whip with which the free are struck. — Voltairine De Cleyre

a misbegotten cockwaffle. — Kevin Hearne

From doing A Moon for the Misbegotten, I've learned that nobody's love can save anybody else. There are people who want to die, and nothing or nobody will stop them. The only one who can save you is yourself. — Gabriel Byrne

The Misbegotten had, in the last year, been pared to a sliver of itself. They had lost so many brothers and sisters that those who remained could have drowned in the ashes of those who had died. — Laini Taylor

Those who fear the imagination condemn it: something childish, they say, something monsterish, misbegotten. Not all of us dream awake. But those of us who do have no choice. — Patricia A. McKillip

These dogs are not machines, Goddammit. They are alive! They are living, feeling, warm-blooded creatures of God, and they will love you with all their hearts! They will love you when your wives and husbands sneak behind your backs. They will love you when your ungrateful misbegotten children piss on your graves! They will see and witness your greatest shame, and will not judge you! These dogs will be the truest and best partners you can ever hope to have, and they will give their lives for you. And all they ask, all they want or need, all it costs YOU to get ALL of that, is a simple word of kindness. Goddammit to hell, the ten best men I know aren't worth the worst dog here, and neither are any of you, and I am Dominick Goddamned Leland, and I am never wrong! — Robert Crais

Whatever may be the sociological value of the legal fiction that 'all men are born free and equal,' there can be no doubt that ... in its biological application, at any rate, this statement is one of the most stupendous falsehoods ever uttered by man through his misbegotten gift of articulate speech. — Earnest Hooton

One might well wonder how much more unanimously opposed to terror the Muslim world might have become, but for the course the United States and its allies took in the wake of 9/11. At a time when even in Tehran there were demonstrations of solidarity with America, the Bush and Blair coalition lashed out with its own violent rejoinder, a drive that would culminate in the tragically misbegotten Iraq invasion of 2003. Its — Karen Armstrong

I ... I sang," she whispered, "if that matters," and Karou felt her heart pulled to pieces. This Misbegotten warrior, fiercest of them all, had crouched in an icy stream bed to sing a chimera soul into her canteen, because she hadn't known what else to do.
The singing wouldn't have mattered, but she wasn't going to tell Liraz that. If Ziri's soul was in that canteen, Karou would happily learn whatever song Liraz had sung and make it part of her resurrection ritual forever, just so that the angel would never feel that she'd been foolish. — Laini Taylor

You're two of a kind, and a bad kind. — Eugene O'Neill

There is a corner of every man's soul that would prefer him dead. That whispers poison in his ear in the still hours of the evening, puts spurs to his side when he stands atop a ledge. For the weak and the misbegotten, the suggestion alone proves sufficient, and the unfortunate runs himself a hot bath and adds his life-blood to it, or drinks a few pints of backyard whiskey and goes swimming in the canal. But most of us are too stubborn or cowardly to make a clean go of it, and this bit that hates us has to start thinking sly. — Daniel Polansky

Only now, when it is too late, do I long for Dearth. I was a misbegotten child of bad blood and bile, and I mistook my own orneriness for cleverness. I presumed to know what happiness was - something I could possess, like a marble, or a man. Something I could only find elsewhere. But just when I started to find it at home, I outfoxed myself and lost it forever. — Jane Avrich

But Hazael only said, "I brought you a present."
Liraz took the flower, looked at it, and then a Hazael, expressionless. And then she ate it. She chewed the flower and swallowed it.
"Hmm," said Hazael. "Not the usual response."
"Oh, do you give flowers often?"
"Yes," he said. He probably did. Hazael had a way of enjoying life in spite of the many restrictions they lived under, being soldiers, and worse, being Misbegotten. "I hope it wasn't poisonous," he said lightly.
Liraz just shrugged. "There are worse ways to die. — Laini Taylor

Firework test fizzled past like a misbegotten angel — Laini Taylor

As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active power. — Thomas Aquinas

These dogs are not machines, goddamnit. They are alive! They are living, feeling, warm-blooded creatures of God, and they will love you with all their hearts! They will love you when your wives and husbands sneak behind your backs. They will love you when your ungrateful misbegotten children piss on your graves! They will see and witness your greatest shame, and will not judge you! These dogs will be the truest and best partners you can ever hope to have, and they will give their lives for you. And all they ask, all they want or need, all it costs YOU to get ALL of that, is a simple word of kindness. — Robert Crais

This was all strictly run-of-the-mill Victorian patter, striking only for the fact that a man who had so exerted himself to see the world afresh had returned with such stock observations. (And, really, very little has changed; one need only lightly edit the foregoing passages - the crude caricatures, the question of human inferiority, and the bit about the baboon - to produce the sort of profile of misbegotten Africa that remains standard to this day in the American and European press, and in the appeals for charity donations put out by humanitarian aid organizations.) — Philip Gourevitch

I'm not blind,you know." His gaze flicked down to her breasts, interestingly encased in her tight riding habit. "I can see very well."
Her cheeks flushed, and she tried to pull away again.
Behind Dougal came a bang, like the sound of a large door slamming, and Sophia's eyes widened. "Angus, no!" she cried.
"Ye misbegotten bounder!" Angus roared.
Dougal turned just in time to see a huge fist hit him squarely in the eye.
Thanks to Sophia, who'd jumped up and clung tightly to Angus's huge arm, the punch was softened. Otherwise, not only would it have knocked Dougal down (which it did), and not only would it have sent the world dark (which it did), and not only would it have blackened his eye (which it did), but it also might have killed him. Instead, Angus's slowed fist merely smashed into Dougal's face, spun him around, and laid him out as neatly as a piece of firewood. — Karen Hawkins

Foul, misbegotten mound of walking donkey dung! — Werner A. Lind

The last time Ranulf had run into Sulien, the older man had called him a misbegotten English Judas and spat onto the ground at his feet. Yet now that same man was approaching the bed with a jovial smile, so apparently pleased to see the Judas again that Ranulf half-expected him to announce that a fatted calf had been killed in his honor. — Sharon Kay Penman

What were the living dead, Wolgast thought, but a metaphor for the misbegotten march of middle age? — Justin Cronin

Seventh bearer of the cursed name Akiva." Here he paused, speculative. "No Misbegotten ever bore that name to manhood before you. Did you know that? Old Byon the steward, he gave it out of spite. Wanted your mother to beg him not to. Any other woman in the harem would have, but not Festival. 'Scribble whatever you like on your list, old man,' she told him. 'My son will not be tangled in your feeble fates.' — Laini Taylor

Libertarianism is neither of the left nor of the right. It is unique. It is sui generis. It is apart from left and right. The left right political spectrum simply has no room for libertarianism. Think of an equilateral triangle, with libertarianism at one corner, the left at a second corner and the right at the third corner. We are equally distant from both of those misbegotten political economic philosophies. No, better yet, think in terms of an isosceles triangle, with us at the top and the two of them at the bottom, indicating they have more in common with each other than with us. — Walter Block

Regrets are like molecules. We're all made up of a lot of them. They are elemental. Building blocks. The foundations of memory. You can dawdle in the past, allow it to shadow you, or you can walk forward into the light of tomorrow.But you can't altogether disregard what has already been- byways chosen, detours taken. The misbegotten decisions you can never reverse, but only by sorting through them can you find where you took the wrong turns and gain proper perspective. Time is a parabolic lens, bringing hindsight into focus. — Ellen Hopkins

I don't like work like that. I am the silent partner. I work through events, I live on the sidelines, I dabble in causes and effects, I watch how the misbegotten creatures of this world live their lives. — Gregory Maguire