Obliviousness Quotes & Sayings

The hallucinations are innumerable. That's what has always been the matter with me, in fact: no belief in history, obliviousness of principles. I shall say no more about this: poets and visionaries would be jealous. I am a thousand times the richest, let's be as miserly as the sea. — Arthur Rimbaud

An exaggerated sense of occasion, or any sense of occasion, for that matter, will automatically impede your ability to have fun. Conversely, a well-cultivated obliviousness to the conventions of any occasion is guaranteed to up the fun quotient. When people ask me, "What are you wearing to [such and such event]? I'm not sure what to wear...," I experience a strong desire to kill them. These whiny people, with their obsolete sense of appropriateness, are the Antichrist. — Simon Doonan

Ansel sighed. You know, this is the problem with you alphas, you're so concerned about taking over the new pack that you don't notice what's happening right in front of your face. — Andrea Cremer

These thoughts are depressing I know. They are depressing,
I wish I was more cheerful, it is more pleasant,
Also it is a duty, we should smile as well as submitting
To the purpose of One Above who is experimenting
With various mixtures of human character which goes best,
All is interesting for him it is exciting, but not for us.
There I go again. Smile, smile, and get some work to do
Then you will be practically unconscious without positively having to go. — Stevie Smith

The pain she experienced from the almost absolute obliviousness to her existence that was shown by the pair of them became at times half dissipated by her sense of its humourousness. — Thomas Hardy

True insanity, as frightening as it might be, gives a sort of obliviousness to the chaos in a life. People who commit suicide are struggling to order their existence, and when they see it's a losing battle, they will finalize it rather than have it wrenched from them. Insanity wouldn't permit that type of clarity. — Gloria Naylor

this particular category of asshole compounds temerity with obliviousness. — Eduardo Sacheri

If my sons are to become the kind of men our daughters would be pleased to live among, attention to domestic details is critical.The hostilities that arise over housework ... are crushing the daughters of my generation ... Change takes time, but men's continued obliviousness to home responsibilities is causing women everywhere to expire of trivialities. — Mary Blakely

She was wearing her fuzzy pink hat and she was happy, which was so obnoxious. She'd become one of those people who waltzed through life without so much as a split end, and I was still one of those people who changed diapers for free but still got treated like a rented mule. — Lorraine Zago Rosenthal

I seem to suffer from a very serious condition called obliviousness by proximity. It causes screaming and the occasional uncontrollable need to stomp stupid wizards for being stupid. — T.J. Klune

His point is that when the two seem incompatible we often hang onto the plan, ignore the warnings reality offers us, and so plunge into trouble. Afraid of the darkness of the unknown, the spaces in which we see only dimly, we often choose the darkness of closed eyes, of obliviousness. Gonzalez adds, "Researchers point out that people tend to take any information as confirmation of their mental models. We are by nature optimists, if optimism means that we believe we see the world as it is. And under the influence of a plan, it's easy to see what we want to see." It's the job of writers and explorers to see more, to travel light when it comes to preconception, — Rebecca Solnit

the three of us in that state where the very bones and muscles are too tired to rest, when the attenuated and invincible spirit has changed and shaped even hopelessness into the easy obliviousness of a worn garment — William Faulkner

Evangeline's obliviousness was a reason to like her rather than not: I liked least those schoolfellows whose awareness of me invariably caused misery. — Sonya Hartnett

The mind unlearned in reverence, says Bonaventure (1221-1274), is in danger of becoming so captivated by the spectacle of beings as to be altogether forgetful of being in itself; and our mechanistic approach to the world is nothing but ontological obliviousness translated into a living tradition. — David Bentley

Nefret was still pouting when Emerson helped her into the carriage. Emerson did not observe the pout. He would not have observed it (men being what they are) even if something had not distracted him. — Elizabeth Peters

To eat or be eaten, to escape or be taken ... a matter of utmost importance to the one concerned, yet it happens all the time and we don't even notice. — Nahoko Uehashi

[Man] literally drives himself into a blind obliviousness with social games, psychological tricks, personal preoccupations so far removed from the reality of his situation that they are forms of madness, but madness all the same. — Ernest Becker

I picked up a book on wilderness survival by Laurence Gonzalez and found in it this telling sentence: "The plan, a memory of the future, tries on reality to see if it fits." His point is that when the two seem incompatible, we often hang onto the plan, ignore the warnings reality offers us and plunge into trouble. Afraid of the darkness of the unknown, the spaces in which we see only dimly, we often choose the darkness of closed eyes, of obliviousness. (Woolf's Darkness) — Rebecca Solnit

We have gone from holding the door out of courtesy to standing before it out of obliviousness. — John Dickerson

Here comes Mamma Vauquerr, fair as a starrr; and strung up like a bunch of carrots. Aren't we suffocating ourselves a wee bit?' he asked, placing a hand on the top of her corset. 'A bit of a crush in the vestibule, here, Mamma! If we start crying, there'll be an explosion. Never mind, I'll be there to collect the bits
just like an antiquary.'
'Now, there's the language of true French gallantry,' murmured Madame Vauquer in an aside to Madame Couture. — Honore De Balzac

To tell you the truth, I prefer just your average, run-of-the-mill, everyday jackass with his glass-eyed, slack-jawed obliviousness to the guys who try to hijack my cool by reading poetry and listening to halfway-good music. I worked hard for my cool. I got my ass kicked in middle school for my cool. I came by this shit honestly. — John Green

Movie acting, I later realized, reminds me of contract bridge. Each requires the same concentration, intense short-term memory, and obliviousness to everything else until the last trump is called - or whatever it is they do. — Gore Vidal

Never had I felt so much the slave as when I scoured those stone steps each afternoon. Working against time, I would wet five steps, sprinkle soap powder, then a white doctor or a nurse would come and, instead of avoiding the soppy steps, walk on them and track the dirty water onto the steps that I had already cleaned. To obviate this, I cleaned but two steps at a time, a distance over which a ten-year-old child could step. But it did no good. The white people still plopped their feet down into the dirty water and muddled the other clean steps. If I ever really hotly hated unthinking whites, it was then. Not once during my entire stay at the institute did a single white person show enough courtesy to avoid a wet step. — Richard Wright

The little man's total obliviousness to all forms of danger somehow made danger so discouraged that it gave up and went away. — Terry Pratchett

Afraid of the darkness of the unknown, the spaces in which we see only dimly, we often choose the darkness of closed eyes, of obliviousness. — Rebecca Solnit

I go into the locker room and find a corner and just sit there. I try to achieve a peaceful state of nothingness that will carry over onto the golf course. If I can get that feeling of quiet and obliviousness within myself, I feel I can't lose. — Jane Blalock

It occurred to Graham that here, finally, was the similarity between the two women he'd chosen to marry: they were both totally unrufflable, one out of iciness, the other out of obliviousness. — Katherine Heiny

The American obliviousness towards the suffering of Palestinians refugees plays a major part in radicalizing people. And we are fanning the flames of puritanism. — Khaled Abou El Fadl

A key component of high-level learning is cultivating a resilient awareness that is the older, conscious embodiment of a child's playful obliviousness. — Josh Waitzkin

When George W. Bush hit the campaign trail in 2000, the precious possession he brought with him from home was his personal feather pillow. The theme of the Bush years was obliviousness. He was famously unavailable for debate and dialogue. He was deaf to countervailing voices. He hit the sack early and always got a good night's sleep. — Tina Brown

Whoosh! went the bluebird of sarcasm, zooming miles above Dale's head. — Sarah Rees Brennan

It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already. — Peggy McIntosh

The classical heritage as shaped by and filtered through Roman culture had two great flaws. First, it prevented the very rich oral cultures of the ancient Mediterranean from surviving from antiquity into later times. All that was left as creative forces were Greek philosophy and Roman law. These were very substantial cultures but they represented a great narrowing of what could be passed on from antiquity to later centuries...
"Second, another deficiency of classical culture was its lack of social conscience, its obliviousness to the slavery, poverty, disease, and everyday cruelty endured by more than half of the fifty million people who inhabited the empire. The classical heritage represented a narrow and insensitive social and political theory reinforcing a miserably class-ridden and technologically stagnant society. — Norman F. Cantor

I guess that's the secret. It would never have occurred to Lia to want to escape
but then she gets kicked out. Best thing that ever happened to her? I'm not sure she would say yes, because obliviousness tends to be rather pleasant, but once you realized you've been bolivious, there's no turning back. You can't un-know what you know.
You know? — Robin Wasserman

People never notice anything. — J.D. Salinger

Free of all responsibility or restraint, in the sheer obliviousness of dreams, he had lived like a happy pagan; and now he must go back to the drear existence of a mediaeval monk, beneath the prompting of an obscure sense of duty. — H.P. Lovecraft

Evil became invisible when it was everywhere. Like air, everyone forgot it was there until it was blowing hard enough to knock off their hat or muss up their hair. — Sean DeLauder