Neither Nor Quotes & Sayings

Neither human applause nor human censure is to be taken as the best of truth; but either should set us upon testing ourselves. — Richard Whately

For me, dear reader, that place was purgatory incarnate; neither good nor bad, but a gateway to great rewards or even greater punishments. — Joss Sheldon

Peace is neither taken nor given, only recognized within. — Mahatma Gandhi

Posthumous fame is a plant of tardy growth, for our body must be the seed of it; or we may liken it to a torch, which nothing but the last spark of life can light up; or we may compare it to the trumpet of the archangel, for it is blown over the dead; but unlike that awful blast, it is of earth, not of heaven, and can neither rouse nor raise us. — Charles Caleb Colton

I pity, approve, respect, admire her, but I neither desire her company, nor am greatly concerned about her destiny, and she makes me impatient at moments when I doubt if she was meant to. — A. C. Bradley

Take a chance on your own abilities clearly, neither exaggerating them nor under-assessing them. — Seth

The glory of the disposition that stops to consider stimuli rather than rushing to engage with them is its long association with intellectual and artistic achievement. Neither E=mc2 nor Paradise Lost was dashed off by a party animal. — Susan Cain

We live in a world in which it is impossible to anticipate most of the contingencies that will arise. Neither the political context, nor the inventions, nor the fashions, nor the weather, nor the climate are precisely specifiable in advance. There is, in the real world, no possibility of working with an abstract space of all the contingencies that may evolve. To do real economics, without mythological elements, we need a theoretical framework in which time is real and the future is not specifiable in advance, even in principle. It is only in such a theoretical context that the full scope of our power to construct our future can make sense. — Lee Smolin

Because we lack a divine Center our need for security has led us into an insane attachment to things. We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is psychotic because it has completely lost touch with reality. We crave things we neither need nor enjoy. 'We buy things we do not want to impress people we do not like'. Where planned obsolescence leaves off, psychological obsolescence takes over. We are made to feel ashamed to wear clothes or drive cars until they are worn out. The mass media have convinced us that to be out of step with fashion is to be out of step with reality. It is time we awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick. Until we see how unbalanced our culture has become at this point, we will not be able to deal with the mammon spirit within ourselves nor will we desire Christian simplicity. — Richard J. Foster

The Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. — Voltaire

On a certain afternoon of July, at the tawniest hour, on Galvez Island, the earth -- the tilting spinning earth -- was unearthly. There is no accounting for this adequacy, this splendor that overtakes you. You lack neither flour nor oil while the famine lasts. On a certain afternoon, at a certain hour, the earth is earth no longer, but a fragment of eternity. And you, greenhorn jest of time, are a fragment of eternity too. — Benjamin Taylor

I hold that two principles are important; first that there should be a steady expansion of public services, not an irregular one related to revenue accruing in any particular year; the second that taxes should be constant over long periods (provided, that is, that they are neither burdensome nor inequitable). — John James Cowperthwaite

I could see neither fascination nor delight on their faces, and I wondered if it was possible to get so used to joy that you stopped noticing it? — Martin Pistorius

Yes, I am well aware that nature - or what we call nature: that totality of objects and processes that surrounds us and that alternately creates us and devours us - is neither our accomplice nor our confidant. — Octavio Paz

And that whole do-able/undo-able thing? Yeah. Need I point out that neither Ruth nor I have ever "done" anybody in our lives? — Meg Cabot

You never would get through to the end of being a father, no matter where you stored your mind or how many steps in the series you followed. Nit even if you died. Alive or dead a thousand miles distant, you were always going to be on the hook for work that was neither a procedure nor a series of steps but, rather, something that demanded your full, constant attention without necessarily calling you to do, perform, or say anything at all. — Michael Chabon

Unfortunately, this unexpected, internal condition has often been called "falling in love." This reaction to attraction, which we could also describe as a "chemically induced crush," is actually infatuation. Who among us has not walked into a room, made eye contact with a complete stranger, and felt an instant, unexpected rush of emotion and attraction? Who hasn't had that sudden impulse to look again? Why these moments happen and what exactly triggers them - who knows? But the feelings are definitely a temporary condition. The attraction is neither irresistible nor dependable. You can easily experience infatuation with people who would turn out to be relational nightmares. That's why it is so dangerous — Chip Ingram

The remarkable thing about the world of insects, however, is precisely that there is no veil cast over these horrors. These are mysteries performed in broad daylight before our very eyes; we can see every detail, and yet they are still mysteries. If, as Heraclitus suggests, god, like an oracle, neither "declares nor hides, but sets forth by signs," then clearly I had better be scrying the signs. The earth devotes an overwhelming proportion of its energy to these buzzings and leaps in the grass. Theirs is the biggest wedge of the pie: Why? I ought to keep a giant water bug in an aquarium on my dresser, so I can think about it. — Annie Dillard

The true beauty of nature is her amplitude; she exists neither for nor because of us, and possesses a staying power that all our nuclear arsenals cannot threaten (much as we can easily destroy our puny selves). — Stephen Jay Gould

Electronic equipment replaces neither Eyes, Hands, nor Heart. — Wolfgang Weingart

Man, as the minister and interpreter of nature, is limited in act and understanding by his observation of the order of nature; neither his understanding nor his power extends further. — Francis Bacon

It's funny the things people say when someone dies.
He's in a better place.
How do you know that?
Life goes on.
That's supposed to comfort me? I'm excruciatingly aware that life goes on. It hurts every damned second. How lovely to know it's going to continue like this. Thank you for reminding me.
Time heals.
No, it doesn't. At best, time is the great leveler, sweeping us all into coffins. We find ways to distract ourselves from the pain. Time is neither scalpel nor bandage. It is indifferent. Scar tissue isn't a good thing. It's merely the wound's other face. — Karen Marie Moning

Be careful, daughter ... You are a creature of the crossroads, neither here nor there. 'Tis a dangerous place to be. — Deborah Harkness

And indeed, it cannot be denied that the most successful practitioners of life, often unknown people by the way, somehow contrive to synchronize the sixty or seventy different times which beat simultaneously in every normal human system, so that when eleven strikes, all the rest chime in unison, and the present is neither a violent disruption nor completely forgotten in the past. — Virginia Woolf

I really did not expect any Grace to answer, for the laugh was as tragic, as preternatural a laugh as any I ever heard; and, but that it was high noon, and that no circumstances of ghostliness accompanied the curious cachination; but that neither scene nor season favoured fear, I should have been superstitiously afraid. However, the event showed me I was a fool for entertaining a sense even of surprise. — Charlotte Bronte

My mind is neither the master nor the slave...
It is me, and I coexist. — Karthikeyan KC

Business should be like religion and science; it should know neither love nor hate. — Samuel Butler

Perhaps, what I seek now is a friend like I have never had before. Someone to share a smoke and my thoughts with. Someone who will see life with the same eyes as I do; experience the same lift of spirit when mine soars. Someone whose destiny is woven with mine even though we are bound by neither blood nor any other tie. — Anita Nair

Don't get too excited. In the end, it's neither good nor bad. — Sogyal Rinpoche

This body is the boat which will carry us to the other shore of the ocean of life. It must be taken care of. Unhealthy persons cannot be Yogis. Mental laziness makes us lose all lively interest in the subject, without which there will neither be the will nor the energy to practise. Doubts will arise in the mind about the truth of the science, however strong one's intellectual conviction may be, until certain peculiar psychic experiences come, as hearing or seeing at a distance, etc. These glimpses strengthen the mind and make the student persevere. Falling away ... when obtained. Some days or weeks when you are practicing, the mind will be calm and easily concentrated, and you will find yourself progressing fast. All of a sudden the progress will stop one day, and you will find yourself, as it were, stranded. Persevere. All progress proceeds by such rise and fall. — Swami Vivekananda

[T]ea, that uniquely English meal, that unnecessary collation at which no stimulants
neither alcohol nor meat
are served, that comforting repast of which to partake is as good as second childhood. — Angela Carter

As he rose to his feet he noticed that he was neither dripping nor panting for breath as anyone would expect after being under water. His clothes were perfectly dry. He was standing by the edge of a small pool - not more than ten feet from side to side in a wood. The trees grew close together and were so leafy that he could get no glimpse of the sky. All the light was green light that came through the leaves: but there must have been a very strong sun overhead, for this green daylight was bright and warm. It was the quietest wood you could possibly imagine. There were no birds, no insects, no animals, and no wind. You could almost feel the trees growing. The pool he had just got out of was not the only pool. There were dozens of others - a pool every few yards as far as his eyes could reach. You could almost feel the trees drinking the water up with their roots. This wood was very much alive. — C.S. Lewis

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I am neither romantic nor a visionary, and that is my weakness and perhaps my power; at any rate it is one difference. In less romantic and visionary terms, I am a Jew, (with powers of introspection and eclecticism attendant, perhaps.) But I am alien to your natural grace, to the spirit which you would know as a participator in America. — Allen Ginsberg

The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death-wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene. — Hannah Arendt

On the path of Love we are neither masters nor the owners of our lives. We are only a brush in the hand of the Master Painter. — Rumi

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

Some aim to be deft, others to be laboriously careful. Neither dexterity nor conscientiousness is enough. — Chai Lu

The Southern man has a certain swagger about him that every woman craves in a man, whether she is willing to admit it or not. in this depressingly utilitarian age, when young lovers remove identical faded jeans and pea jackets before getting into bed together, the thought of a beau sabreur lover is not unappealing, Neither the overbearing male chauvinist nor the supportive gelding are capalbe of stirring the female blood, but a dashing cavalier is. — Florence King

For it is the business and duty of historians to be exact, truthful, and wholly free from passion, and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor love, should make them swerve from the path of truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, storehouse of deeds, witness for the past, example and counsel for the present, and warning for the future. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Neither objectivity nor subjectivity seem to make much sense. — Marty Rubin

In time, and as one comes to benefit from experience, one learns that things will turn out neither as well as one hoped nor as badly as one feared. — Jerome Bruner

Nature has neither core nor skin: she's both at once outside and in. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Food is neither your enemy nor your best friend. It won't mend your broken heart and it won't send you to hell. — Emme

Politicians neither love nor hate. Interest, not sentiment, directs them. — Lord Chesterfield

If what matters in a person's existence is to accept the inevitable consciously, to taste the good and bad to the full and to make for oneself a more individual, unaccidental and inward
destiny alongside one's external fate, then my life has been neither empty nor worthless. — Hermann Hesse

Since changes are going on anyway, the great thing is to learn enough about them so that we will be able to lay hold of them and turn them in the direction of our desires. Conditions and events are neither to be fled from nor passively acquiesced in; they are to be utilized and directed. — John Dewey

The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, I was wrong. — Sydney J. Harris

It never feels good if you don't reach all of your goals, neither in sport, nor in business nor in your personal life. But the key thing is to never give up, we have taken our learnings from 2014 and developed an exciting and promising strategy for the period up until 2020. — Herbert Hainer

Understand: your mind is weaker than your emotions. But you become aware of this weakness only in moments of adversity
precisely the time when
you need strength. What best equips you to cope with tthe heat of battle is neither more knowledge nor more intellect. What makes your mind stronger, and more able to control your emotions, is internal discipline and toughness.No one can teach you this skill; you cannot learn it by reading about it. Like any discipline, it can come only through practice, experience, even a little suffering. The first step in building up presence of mind is to see the need for ii
to want it badly enough to be willing to work for it. — Robert Greene

Thank God we in Iran have neither the desire nor the need to suffer from democracy. — Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

Is this true on smaller scales too? Apart from a visible fragment is everybody largely invisible - invisible like the magic part of magic mushrooms and the song part of songbirds? Maybe the balance between one's visibility and invisibility is like the balance between the salt and the water in the blood, delicate and critical, as becomes obvious when the balance deteriorates: people with an invisibility deficiency seem like paper dolls, subject to crumple. Other people have the opposite problem: they cannot be seen building a bicycle, nor making lentil soup, nor knitting a green wool sweater by candlelight; neither can you look down from your second-story window in the morning and see them tromping off through the snow — Amy Leach

The diamond absolutes.
I am neither internee nor informer;
An inner emigre, grown long-haired
And thoughtful; a wood-kerne
Escaped from the massacre,
Taking protective colouring
From bole and bark, feeling
Every wind that blows;
Who, blowing up these sparks
For their meagre heat, have missed
The once-in-a-lifetime portent,
The comet's pulsing tose. — Seamus Heaney

All I desire is, that my poverty may not be a burden to myself, or make me so to others; and that is the best state of fortune that is neither directly necessitous nor far from it. A mediocrity of fortune, with gentleness of mind, will preserve us from fear or envy; which is a desirable condition; for no man wants power to do mischief. — Seneca The Younger

They are THE OPPORTUNISTS, those souls who in life were neither for good nor evil but only for themselves. Mixed with them are those outcasts who took no sides in the Rebellion of the Angels. They are neither in Hell nor out of it. Eternally unclassified, they race round and round pursuing a wavering banner that runs forever before them through the dirty air; and as they run they are pursued by swarms of wasps and hornets, who sting them and produce a constant flow of blood and putrid matter which trickles down the bodies of the sinners and is feasted upon by loathsome worms and maggots who coat the ground. — Dante Alighieri

That is what Reason can neither grasp nor endure, and what has offended all these men of outstanding talent who have been so received for so many centuries. Here they demand that God should act according to human justice, and do what seems right to them or else cease to be God. — Martin Luther

He had been the recipient, he now gratefully acknowledged, of a rare and precious gift. In demanding the hand of a woman he neither understood nor was capable of knowing, he had instead received from her the chance to see himself and the opportunity to become a better man. And he had changed. He knew he had. He knew that he was not that man stalking angrily back to his chambers in Rosings Hall. What had happened to him in those intervening months? He was not sure; he could offer no complete explanation, but the man who had opened Rosings's doors, already prepared to write an angry letter, was a stranger, a man who had been walking through his entire life asleep. But now, he had awoken. — Pamela Aidan

her nose was not handsome - it was pretty; neither straight nor curved, neither Italian nor Greek; it was the Parisian nose, that is to say, spiritual, delicate, irregular, pure, - which drives painters to despair, and charms poets. — Victor Hugo

God has plans for you and His plans are for good because God Himself is good. He can neither think nor do evil. — Elizabeth George

Neither technology nor efficiency can acquire more time for you, because time is not a thing you have lost ... It is what you live in. — James Glieck

Through other people's bodies she felt neither love nor hate distinctly. Most consciously she felt - she had drunk sweet wine at luncheon - a desire for water. "A beaker of cold water, a beaker of cold water," she repeated, and saw water surrounded by walls of shining glass. — Virginia Woolf

Neither the fanatics nor the faint-hearted are needed. And our duty as a Party is not to our Party alone, but to the nation, and, indeed, to all mankind. Our duty is not merely the preservation of political power but the preservation of peace and freedom.
So let us not be petty when our cause is so great. Let us not quarrel amongst ourselves when our Nation's future is at stake.
Let us stand together with renewed confidence in our cause
united in our heritage of the past and our hopes for the future
and determined that this land we love shall lead all mankind into new frontiers of peace and abundance. — John F. Kennedy

Neither the heart cut by a sliver of glass in a wasteland of thorns, nor the atrocious waters seen in the corners of certain houses, waters like eyelids and eyes, could hold your waist in my hands when my heart lifts its oak trees toward your unbreakable thread of snow. Night sugar, spirit of crowns, redeemed human blood, your kisses banish me, and a surge of water with remnants of the sea strikes the silences that wait for you surrounding the worn-out chairs, wearing doors away. — Pablo Neruda

Love the art, poor as it may be, that you have learned, and be content with it; and pass through the rest of life like one who has entrusted to the gods with his whole soul all that he has, making yourself neither the tyrant nor the slave of any man. — Marcus Aurelius

IT has been observed by several gentlemen, in vindication of this motion, that if it should be carried, neither my life, liberty, nor estate will be affected. — Robert Walpole

Neither blindness nor ignorance corrupts people and governments. They soon realize where the path they have taken is leading them. But there is an impulse within them, favored by their natures and reinforced by their habits, which they do not resist; it continues to propel them forward as long as they have a remnant of strength. He who overcomes himself is divine. Most see their ruin before their eyes; but they go on into it.1 Leopold von Ranke — Joachim Fest

Dogs invite us not only to share their joy but also to live in the moment, where we are neither proceeding from nor moving toward, where the enchantment of the past and future cannot distract us, where a freedom from practical desire and a cessation of our usual ceaseless action allows us to recognize the truth of our existence, the reality of our world and purpose-if we dare. — Dean Koontz

Remember, that if thou marry for beauty, thou bindest thyself all thy life for that which perchance will neither last nor please thee one year; and when thou hast it, it will be to thee of no price at all; for the desire dieth when it is attained, and the affection perisheth when it is satisfied. — Walter Raleigh

The anything-goes passiveness of the religious and political Left is matched by the preachy moralism of the religious and political Right. The person who uncritically embraces any party line is guilty of an idolatrous surrender of her core identity as Abba's Child. Neither liberal fairy dust nor conservative hardball addresses our ragged human dignity. — Brennan Manning

The true opposite of depression is neither gaiety nor absence of pain, but vitality - the freedom to experience spontaneous feelings. It is part of the kaleidoscope of life that these feelings are not only happy, beautiful, or good but can reflect the entire range of human experience, including envy, jealousy, rage, disgust, greed, despair, and grief. But this freedom cannot be achieved if its childhood roots are cut off. Our access to the true self is possible only when we no longer have to be afraid of the intense emotional world of early childhood. Once we have experienced and become familiar with this world, it is no longer strange and threatening. — Alice Miller

Nature has neither love nor hate, and with indifference smiles upon the light at heart and to the heavy brings a deeper sorrow. — W. Somerset Maugham

I have neither curiosity, interest, pain nor pleasure, in anything, good or evil, they can say of me. I feel only a slight disgust, and a sort of wonder that they presume to write my name. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

In a manner of speaking, the poem is its own knower, neither poet nor reader knowing anything that the poem says apart from the words of the poem. — Allen Tate

Neither fate, nor history, nor the anger of the State, nor the glory or infamy of battle has any power to affect those who call themselves human beings. No, whatever life holds in store
hard-won glory, poverty and despair, or death in a labor camp
they will live as human beings and die as human beings, the same as those who have already perished; and in this alone lies man's eternal and bitter victory over all the grandiose and inhuman forces that ever have been or will be ... — Vasily Grossman

We are neither just brains floating around nor just hearts bouncing about. — Ravi Zacharias

For himself, he grew desperate; his sorrow was of the king that will not lament, he neither wept nor prayed - he cursed and defied - execrated God and man, and gave himself up to reckless dissipation. — Emily Bronte

The call to be an elder is neither a call to mediocrity nor taking a title of honor while sending others on ahead. — Jonah Books

I wonder," said Miss Oliver, "if humanity will be any happier because of aeroplanes. It seems to me that the sum of human happiness remains much the same from age to age, no matter how it may vary in distribution, and that all the 'many inventions' neither lessen nor increase it." "After — L.M. Montgomery

Not everyone can wait: neither the sated nor the satisfied nor those without respect can wait. The only ones who can wait are people who carry restlessness around with them. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The truth is women need men, we are neither superior nor inferior to men. We are better at some things and worse at other things. Mature people take the hard road and choose to delay quick gratification for true love. Mature people realize that the world does not revolve around them, and their desires, but around commitment. Mature people are committed to something beyond themselves; God, good, the good of society, family etc.
If men are the source of your problems, then you are doomed to wait for eternity for them to fix it. — Osayi Emokpae Lasisi

I lit a cigarette and began puffing on it as I drank one quick beer after another. I was neither a drinker nor a smoker nor a fighter, but I had planned to be all three on this day. — Pat Conroy

Neither love nor evil conquers all, but evil cheats more. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Whoever knows that the mind is a fiction and devoid of anything real knows that his own mind neither exists nor doesn't exist. — Bodhidharma

When a captive lion steps out of his cage, he comes into a wider world than the lion who has known only the wilds. While he was in captivity, there were only two worlds for him - the world of the cage, and the world outside the cage. Now he is free. He roars. He attacks people. He eats them. Yet he is not satisfied, for there is no third world that is neither the world of the cage nor the world outside the cage. — Yukio Mishima

Motherhood is neither a duty nor a privilege, but simply the way that humanity can satisfy the desire for physical immortality and triumph over the fear of death. — Rebecca West

Philosophy is not in a state of external reflection on other domains, but in a state of active and internal alliance with them, and it is neither more abstract nor more difficult. — Gilles Deleuze

Nature is neither pleasant nor painful. It is all intelligence and beauty. Pain and pleasure are in the mind. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

He with whom neither slander that gradually soaks into the mind, nor statements that startle like a wound in the flesh, are successful may be called intelligent indeed. — Confucius

Beyond the curve of the days he glimpsed neither superhuman happiness nor eternity - happiness was human, eternity ordinary. What mattered was to humble himself, to organize his heart to match the rhythm of the days instead of submitting their rhythm to the curve of human hopes. — Albert Camus

He took me in his strong white arms,
He bore me on his horse away
O'er crag, morass, and hairbreadth pass,
But never asked me yea or nay.

He held me fast with book and bell,
With links of love he makes me stay;
Till now I've neither heart nor power
Nor will nor wish to say him nay. — Christina Rossetti

Truth is simple, requiring neither study nor art. — Ammianus Marcellinus

Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. — T. S. Eliot

What good is a cow that neither gives milk nor conceives? Similarly, what is the value of the birth of a son if he becomes neither learned nor a pure devotee of the Lord? — Chanakya

There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right. — Martin Luther King Jr.

The greatest tragedy in the history of Christianity was neither the Crusades nor the Reformation nor the Inquisition, but rather the split that opened up between theology and spirituality at the end of the Middle Ages. — Hans Urs Von Balthasar

Oh, I thought that I was giving him so much!
And he to me - and the giving and the taking
Seemed so right: not in terms of calculation
Of what was good for the persons we had been
But for the new person, us. If I could feel
As I did then, even now it would seem right.
And then I found we were only strangers
And that there had been neither giving nor taking
But that we had merely made use of each other
Each for his purpose. That's horrible. Can we only love
Something created by our own imagination?
Are we all in fact unloving and unlovable?
The one is alone, and if one is alone
Then lover and beloved are equally unreal
And the dreamer is no more real than his dreams. — T. S. Eliot

As an exercise, can you recall the last time you saw someone whose gender was ambiguous? Was this person attractive to you? And if you knew they called themselves neither a man nor a woman, what would it make you if you're attracted to that person? And if you were to kiss? Make love? What would you be? — Kate Bornstein

Science has produced such powerful weapons that in a war between great powers there would be neither victor nor vanquished. Both would be overwhelmed in destruction. — John Boyd Orr

She knew neither that she was living in the first century BC nor in the Hellenistic Age, both of them later constructs. (The Hellenistic Age begins with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and ends in 30 BC, with the death of Cleopatra. — Stacy Schiff

I feel that I'm an essayist and that my best work gets done in that form. I wanted to do a book where the essays could exist on their own terms. A book that was neither a book of essays that were shoehorned into a memoir, nor [one where] the essays had been published elsewhere first, [because] then they would kind of bear the marks of those publications. — Meghan Daum