Quotes & Sayings About Nastiness

In my opinion, if you really want to know, half of the nastiness in the world is stirred up by people who aren't using their true egos. — J.D. Salinger

One of the key things about the entitlement and power of patriarchy, but also within feminism, is not that it's wilful nastiness. But you can't ask for permission. You can negotiate and you can bring people on board and you can build a base but you can't expect for it to be given. — Rachel Holmes

But re-reading Voss also demonstrates again that although White wasn't 'a nice man', and indeed was - perhaps rightly - scathingly dismissive of my and other Australian writers' work and origins unless they were his friends, he was a genius, and Voss one of the finest works of the modernist era and of the past century. — Thomas Keneally

I think most of us are fascinated by the macabre and by the weird and even the nastiness that comes along. — Stephen King

There were large and small ones too. And some quite in-between. But all of equal nastiness.
And smelliness and ghastliness.
For they would eat a fellow up, as one might fish and chips — Robert Rankin

Jem: I know what you're thinking.
Tessa:I don't think you do.
You're think, If they call this damp nastiness summer, what must winter be like? You'd be surprised. Winter's actually much the same. It's spring that's really lovely.
Tessa:Is it?
Jem:No. It's actually quite foggy and wet as well. — Cassandra Clare

I always exposed the weakness rather than the nastiness. — Michael Caine

He started to curse but cut himself off. She wanted him to curse. She wanted him to be bad, as bad as her. She wanted to corrupt him, stain his pure soul, stamp the imprint of her nastiness on him. — Alisha Rai

Look, cat, you and I are never going to be friends. She's going to
call you Max, but I'm going to call you Shit Head. And if you think for
one second - " The cat lies down in a tight little ball of nastiness and
falls asleep. "Oh, please. Make yourself at home by sleeping on my
scrotum." I peek out into the sitting room area that connects to the
four bedrooms, and then glance back at the kitten. Releasing a sigh of
discontent, I pet Shit Head with one finger. He purrs extra hard, and
I find myself wondering if I could train him to do things. Every hero
needs a sidekick, and I'm nothing if not a Grade-A Hero.
- Dante Walker — Victoria Scott

Words can be said in bitterness and anger, and often there seems to be an element of truth in the nastiness. And words don't go away, they just echo around. — Jane Goodall

So society has strangled in its asylums all those it wanted to get rid of or protect itself from, because they refused to become its accomplices in certain great nastiness. — Antonin Artaud

On one level, I am a total softie, sort of depressed and afraid of losing the people I love or failing them. To disguise that, there's all this harsh, poop-centric, external swagger, full of nastiness. I'm a cloaking device. — George Saunders

There's the mackerel of the cornflake for you, you dirty reader of filth and nastiness. — Anthony Burgess

Suspended between the nastiness of life and the meanness of the dead, she couldn't get interested in leaving life or living it, let alone the fright of two creeping-off boys. Her past had been like her present - intolerable - and since she knew death was anything but forgetfulness, she used the little energy left her for pondering color. — Toni Morrison

We will martyr ourselves, suffering under the weight of a non-reciprocal relationship until some part of us bursts in protest. Suddenly, we lose our mind, and allowing ourselves to heap all manner of nastiness, name calling, patronizing, death threats on the "deserving" jerk who has it coming after all we do for him/her! As the final insult rings across the room and we regain consciousness, we are horrified by what has come out of our mouth. After all, we LOVE these people, and we quickly move into anxious terror that this time we have gone too far . . . this time we crossed the line and they will leave us. So, we hunker back down and the martyrdom begins again. It's a terrible cycle. — Mary Crocker Cook

Do you think there'll be someone in the Xanti who'll remember your mother?"
Finn blew on the embers. "I don't know. We may not find the Xanti," he warned her.
Maia shrugged. "It doesn't matter. But if we do, will they accept me? I don't have any Indian blood."
"If they don't, we won't stay. I wouldn't let anything happen to you. I've got my gun."
"I'm not scared," said Maia. And she wasn't. She'd been scared of the nastiness of the twins and of being shut up in the Carters' bungalow, but she wasn't scared of traveling through unknown lands with a boy hardly older than she was herself. She thought perhaps she wouldn't be scared of anything ever again if she was with Finn. — Eva Ibbotson

If you dare try to leave me behind, I'll follow on foot, and when I die in the snow, Ill come back and haunt you. I'll make your life a complete misery. No ghost will ever have been as inventive in its nastiness as I'll be: I'll turn your food rancid; I'll transform your drink into blood; I'll howl and moan throughout the night; there'll be no place safe from me. And don't think I couldn't do it, Thirrin, Queen of Icemark, because I can assure you, I could. — Stuart Hill

I don't like any nastiness on tv unless it's coming from me. — Andy Kindler

The Doctor: I just don't like nastiness, and people getting away with it.
Churchwell: That sounds a rather, if you forgive me, innocent view.
The Doctor: That's as may be, but I'm sticking to it. — Paul Magrs

And could a man sink to such triviality, such meanness, such nastiness? Could he change so much? And is it true to life? Yes, it is all true to life. All this can happen to a man. The ardent youth of today would start back in horror if you could show him his portrait in old age. As you pass from the soft years of youth into harsh, hardening manhood, be sure you take with you on the way all the humane emotions, do not leave them on the road: you will not pick them up again afterwards! — Nikolai Gogol

I love playing characters that go to extreme places, and I love to explore different kinds of psychological landscapes, so it is ultimately a kind of fun, but it's also complicated and colored by the depth of the nastiness of it, at certain times, as well. — Zachary Quinto

Why should our nastiness be the baggage of an apish past and our kindness uniquely human? Why should we not seek continuity with other animals for our 'noble' traits as well? — Stephen Jay Gould

They seemed to have a talent for it. It was built into the design, somehow. They were born into a world that was against them in a thousand little ways, and then devoted most of their energies to making it worse. Over the years Crowley had found it increasingly difficult to find anything demonic to do which showed up against the natural background of generalized nastiness. — Neil Gaiman

The shortest day has passed, and whatever nastiness of weather we may look forward to in January and February, at least we notice that the days are getting longer. Minute by minute they lengthen out. It takes some weeks before we become aware of the change. It is imperceptible even as the growth of a child, as you watch it day by day, until the moment comes when with a start of delighted surprise we realize that we can stay out of doors in a
twilight lasting for another quarter of a precious hour. — Vita Sackville-West

... the gaps
in sensitivity displayed are vast.
Concepts that have not often been surpassed
For ignorance or downright nastiness -
That the habit of indifference is less
Destructive than the embrace of love, that crimes
Are paid for never or a thousand times,
That the gentle come to grief - all these are forced
Into scenes, dialogue, comments, and endorsed
By the main action, manifesting there
An inhumanity beyond despair. — Kingsley Amis

The lion's share of the bear market is over, ... It's a two-part issue. Yes, the marketplace could be nasty. But there's a great deal of nastiness that's already happened in the bond market. — Paul McCulley

He's nice enough not to want to be associated with a nasty remark but not nice enough not to make it. Lacking the courage of one's nastiness does not make one nice. — Michael Kinsley

What she called the nastiness of life was the shock she received upon learning that nobody stopped playing checkers just because the pieces included her children. — Toni Morrison

Some medical beast had revived tar-water in those days as a fine medicine, and Mrs. Joe always kept a supply of it in the cupboard; having a belief in its virtues correspondent to its nastiness. At the best of times, so much of this elixir was administered to me as a choice restorative, that I was conscious of going about, smelling like a new fence. — Charles Dickens

Up until about 12 years ago we never, ever, wore flak jacket or helmets but now the nastiness has got worse. — Kate Adie

You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that, oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. — Raymond Chandler

I've always been interested in a certain kind of sophistication in children's literature. I loved Roald Dahl; I loved the underlying nastiness of some of his - darkness of his tales. — David Small

Man, I can assure you, is a nasty creature. — Moliere

As the issue of security becomes more important in people's midst, the party and leader that offer the deepest sense of understanding and competence will win support. At the same time there is always the risk that negativity, fear, and nastiness may become issues in their own right. People may tire of it, wanting more optimism and more hope. — Bob Rae

The only thing particularly new about the "new atheism" is its nastiness. — Robert Barron

We are trying to change the tones in the state capitals - and turn them toward bitter nastiness and partisanship. — Grover Norquist

It's important for me to fight for principles. But I am not willing to cope with the nastiness of politics anymore and the endless destructive confrontations that it leads to. — Ingrid Betancourt

When you lose velocity off of your fastball, one thing that suffers is your off-speed pitches - the action on your off-speed pitches. Once you lose arm speed, it takes away rotation from your off-speed pitches. The rotation is what gives them the sharpness and the nastiness. — Tim Hudson

Past misdeeds must only serve as a reference point in calm conversation about lessons learned or actions that taught us to behave better. They should never be bantered about with sarcasm, anger, or nastiness. — Cathy Burnham Martin

Politics is rough and tumble everywhere, and many women recoil from that negative aspect of it - the nastiness, the charges and counter-charges. — Melanne Verveer

Dear Girls Across the Globe,
Let's stop body-shaming each other with hurtful comments about how another girl looks or doesn't look. We are all beautiful in our own unique way; so let's speak about each other with the dignity that we would want others to have when they speak about us. — Miya Yamanouchi

Von Schnitzler's job was to show extracts from western television broadcast into the GDR - anything from news items to game shows to 'Dallas' - and rip it to shreds. 'That man radiated so much nastiness he simply wasn't credible. You'd come away feeling sullied, as if you'd spent half an hour atrociously badmouthing someone. — Anna Funder

There are far too many screenwriters who have made themselves honorary "secret" members of the Audience Protection Society (APS). Of course, they're easy to spot, which makes their membership in this group anything but secret. They write as if they are duty bound to protect their readers from the nastiness of ruthless drama. The way they see it, if they're going to go to the trouble of creating loveable and attractive characters why throw them to blood-thirsty apes, or have them face a fate worse than death? They tell themselves that such actions would offend their audience's sensibilities, but really it's their own fears and prejudices they can't cope with, not to mention those nagging insecurities concerning their ability to write credible characters in the grip of extreme emotion. They'd rather be dead than write cheese. — Billy Marshall Stoneking

The Guardian's headline is 'How Going Green May Make You Mean.' We're inclined to think the chain of causation runs the other way - that people who are jerks to begin with gravitate toward verdant sanctimony. — James Taranto

Despite our tiffs, despite her nastiness, despite all the fuss and faces she made, and the vulgarity, and the danger, and the horrible hopelessness of it all, I still dwelled deep in my elected paradise - a paradise whose skies were the color of hell-flames - but still a paradise. — Vladimir Nabokov

The profoundly cynical premise of all religionists is that people are not capable of behaving decently toward one another unless they are lured with promises of pie in the sky and simultaneously terrorized by the threats of extreme nastiness in the eternal afterlife in hell. — Barbara G. Walker

There's a nastiness out there that wants to harm me with words. These are my enemies - the ideologues, the populists, the columnists who don't like the fact that I take them on toe-to-toe. What I try to do is tell the truth. It's not the coin of the realm in politics. — Ed Koch

If you want to have peace of soul, learn to forgive. Jesus' secret was His ability to see into people's hearts. Seeing their anguish and pain helped Him to understand their nastiness. So He could pity them rather than become angry with them. That is what we have to do: try to understand the pain in people's lives ... and not take personally what they do to us. — Joseph F. Girzone

Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nastiness, and fabulous flashes of glory in the conjugal conspiracy. It was time when they both loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity. Life would still present them with other moral trials, of course, but that no longer mattered: they were on the other shore. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The nastiness of women [in the 14th century] was generally perceived at the close of life when a man began to worry about hell, and his sexual desire in any case fading. — Barbara Tuchman

A piratical ghost story in thirteen ingenious but potentially disturbing rhyming couplets, originally conceived as a confection both to amuse and to entertain by Mr. Neil Gaiman, scrivener, and then doodled, elaborated upon, illustrated, and beaten soundly by Mr. Cris Grimly, etcher and illuminator, featuring two brave children, their diminutive but no less courageous gazelle, and a large number of extremely dangerous trolls, monsters, bugbears, creatures, and other such nastiness, many of which have perfectly disgusting eating habits and ought not, under any circumstances, to be encouraged. — Neil Gaiman

Survival in scarcity dictates nastiness with a rival clan, but also dictates goodness towards our own clan whose support is vital to acquire or defend the necessary scarcities.

Man's nastiness or goodness is not his fault or merit;
They both create the vital coping mechanism to his environment of scarcity. — Haroutioun Bochnakian

Life is, you know, but an idea. You can fill it up with anything really and deceive yourself into believing that is what you need. You can be happy, sad, benevolent, crafty, unpleasant. That man filled it up with nastiness and it destroyed him in the end. I wonder what could have made him that way. Cruelty on the part of others or cruelty in his heart?" - Lady Cavendish — Noorilhuda

You've got to know what your 'thing' is, and you've got to call it a 'thing,' whether it's meanness, nastiness, un-forgiveness, arrogance, ego, resistance, rebelliousness or defiance. Everybody's got a 'thing,' and once you call your 'thing' a 'thing,' we can give it a place to be or dismiss it. — Iyanla Vanzant

I will find your books and review with nastiness. — Andy Warhol

You keep talking about ego, my God, it would take Christ himself to decide what's ego and what isn't. This is God's universe, buddy, not yours, and he has the final say about what's ego and what isn't. What about your beloved Epictetus? Or your beloved Emily Dickinson? You want your Emily, every time she has an urge to write a poem, to just sit down and say a prayer till her nasty, egotistical urge goes away? No, of course you don't! But you'd like your friend Professor Tupper's ego taken away from him. That's different. And maybe it is. Maybe it is. But don't go screaming about egos in general. In my opinion, if you really want to know, half the nastiness in the world is stirred up by people who aren't using their true egos. Take your Professor Tupper. From what you say about him, anyway, I'd lay almost any odds that the thing he's using, the thing you think is his ego, isn't his ego at all but some other, much dirtier, much less basic faculty. — J.D. Salinger

The basic project of art is always to make the world whole and comprehensible, to restore it to us in all its glory and its occasional nastiness, not through argument but through feeling, and then to close the gap between you and everything that is not you, and in this way pass from feeling to meaning. It's not something that committees can do. It's not a task achieved by groups or by movements. It's done by individuals, each person mediating in some way between a sense of history and an experience of the world. — Robert Hughes

I don't think they're more temperamental people now. With social media we hear a lot more about it. The nastiness you get online, there were always mean girls - always - they didn't have such a big forum as they do now. Mean girls ought to get a life, I think. — Jacki Weaver

I don't think [Parkinson's] is Gothic nastiness. There's nothing on the surface that's horrible about someone with a shaky hand. There's nothing horrible about someone in their life saying, "God, I'm really tired of this shaky hand thing" and me saying, "Me, too." That's our reality. We have no control over it. — Michael J. Fox

But people try love and because they are unconscious ... their longing is good, but their love is full of jealousy, full of possessiveness, full of anger, full of nastiness. Soon they destroy it. Hence for centuries they have depended on marriage. Better to start by marriage so that the law can protect you from destroying it. The society, the government, the court, the policeman, the priest, they will all force you to live in the institution of marriage, and you will be just a slave. If marriage is an institution, you are going to be a slave in it. Only slaves want to live in institutions. — Rajneesh

I am a wicked man ... But do you know, gentlemen, what was the main point about my wickedness? The whole thing, precisely was, the greatest nastiness precisely lay in my being shamefully conscious every moment, even in moments of the greatest bile, that I was not only not a wicked man but was not even an embittered man, that I was simply frightening sparrows in vain, and pleasing myself with it. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on the top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. — Raymond Chandler