Onerous Quotes & Sayings

Air travel survived decades of terrorism, including attacks which resulted in the deaths of everyone on the plane. It survived 9/11. It'll survive the next successful attack. The only real worry is that we'll scare ourselves into making air travel so onerous that we won't fly anymore. — Bruce Schneier

As a man, this child would be one's offering to the future races of men. The burden of his upbringing, wherever it fell: however tiresome or onerous, was of no importance compared with his living grasp of the future. — Dorothy Dunnett

What Friedan gave to the world was, "the problem that has no name." She not only named it but dissected it. The advances of science, the development of labor-saving appliances, the development of the suburbs: all had come together to offer women in the 1950s a life their mothers had scarcely dreamed of, free from rampant disease, onerous drudgery, noxious city streets. But the green lawns and big corner lots were isolating, the housework seemed to expand to fill the time available, and polio and smallpox were replaced by depression and alcoholism. All that was covered up in a kitchen conspiracy of denial ...
[i]nstead the problem was with the mystique of waxed floors and perfectly applied lipstick. — Betty Friedan

When you're making a TV drama, the showrunner is God, and so however onerous and difficult and consuming that responsibility is, you're being treated with respect, so it changes your whole outlook to the production. You're being asked about costumes, set design, music, every aspect of the show. — Michael Hirst

The exercise of powerful 'charm' is, in any case, more appreciated in public than in private life, exacting, as it does, almost as heavy demands on the receiver as the transmitter, demands often too onerous to be weighed satisfactorily against the many other, all too delicate, requirements of married life. — Anthony Powell

Holy Mary Mother of God, what am I to do? There is always the easy way out, although I am loath to use it. I have no children, I do not watch television and I do not believe in God - all paths taken by mortals to make their lives easier. Children help us to defer the painful task of confronting ourselves, and grandchildren take over from them. Television distracts us from the onerous necessity of finding projects to construct in the vacuity of our frivolous lives: by beguiling our eyes, television releases our mind from the great work of making meaning. — Muriel Barbery

Isolation in creative work is an onerous thing. Better to have negative criticism than nothing at all. — Anton Chekhov

Spontaneously, without any theological training, I, a child, grasped the incompatibility of God and shit and thus came to question the basic thesis of Christian anthropology, namely that man was created in God's image. Either/or: either man was created in God's image - and has intestines! - or God lacks intestines and man is not like him.
The ancient Gnostics felt as I did at the age of five. In the second century, the Great Gnostic master Valentinus resolved the damnable dilemma by claiming that Jesus "ate and drank, but did not defecate."
Shit is a more onerous theological problem than is evil. Since God gave man freedom, we can, if need be, accept the idea that He is not responsible for man's crimes. The responsibility for shit, however, rests entirely with Him, the creator of man. — Milan Kundera

What a sweet and succulent morsel: so soft, so salty, so deliciously delectable, it makes me want to wiggle with delight. You should cook for me more often, Roran Stronghammer. Only next time, I think you should prepare several deer at once. Otherwise, I won't get a proper meal.' Roran hesitated, as if unable to decide whether her request was serious and, if so, how he could politely extricate himself froim such an unlooked -for and rather onerous obligation. — Christopher Paolini

It was through reading that I discovered the crucial, even sacrosanct place the rituals of drinking held in the American imagination - the ingenious way alcohol seemed to lubricate everything from onerous chitchat to self-conscious sexual advances. — Daphne Merkin

I am not, for all my frustration, opposed to capitalism. Most Americans, poor ones included, aren't. We like the idea that anyone can succeed. What I am opposed to is the sort of capitalism that sucks the life out of a whole bunch of the citizenry and then demands that they do better with whatever they have left. If we could just agree that poor people are doing the necessary grunt work and that there is dignity in that too, we'd be able to make it less onerous. — Linda Tirado

I discovered what a mental stimulant physical labor could be; not mere physical labor, I should add, but absolutely spine-bending, lung-racking, gut-ripping, ligament-tearing, and ball-breaking physical labor. But as long as the task is both onerous and repetitive, I discovered, the mind is not only free to wander to more imaginative climes, it actually flees to higher planes. — Dan Simmons

When accepting a responsibility, imagine that it's something that you'll have to do next week. That way you don't agree to something just because it seems so far off that it doesn't seem onerous. — Gretchen Rubin

Some realities are too onerous to be borne by nations, let alone by children. — Gregory Maguire

Being a witch was indeed an onerous task. If people accepted us, they wanted the impossible. If they didn't, they wanted to burn us at the stake. — Maria E. Schneider

The federal government needs to get off the backs of small businesses and let the private sector grow and create jobs instead of harnessing it with onerous regulations and a repressive tax code. — Matt Salmon

The most onerous slavery is to be a slave to oneself. — Seneca The Younger

Onerous moral strictures weed out the uncommitted and guarantee a minimum level of solidarity and trust within the group. — Eduardo Porter

My kids say if there's any family dinner that doesn't result in somebody crying, it's not a good dinner. They cry because it helps relieve them of a guilt or some onerous emotional burden. It's like a family tradition. — William Shatner

He lost his Self a thousand times and for days on end he dwelt in non-being. But although the paths took him away from Self, in the end they always led back to it. Although Siddhartha fled from the Self a thousand times, dwelt in nothing, dwelt in animal and stone, the return was inevitable; the hour was inevitable when he would again find himself in sunshine or in moonlight, in shadow or in rain, and was again Self and Siddhartha, again felt the torment of the onerous life cycle. — Hermann Hesse

competition could turn the most mundane task into a thrill, and that successfully completing a job - no matter how onerous - made me feel unaccountably happy. — Scott Jurek

Although one may direct the future or past through the onerous linkages of temporal cause and effect, riding the breaking waves of the present and never once overstepping it, the better way is to go there and do it yourself. — Mary-Jean Harris

You," I surmised, and gestured round. "Thank you."
"No," he denied. His pale hair floated out from beneath his cap in a halo as he shook his head. "But I assisted. Thank you for bathing. It makes my task of checking on you less onerous. I'm glad you're awake. You snore abominably."
I let this comment pass. "You've grown." I observed.
"Yes. So have you. And you've been sick. And you slept quite a long time. And now you're awake and bathed and fed. You still look terrible. But you no longer smell. It's late afternoon now. Are there any other obvious facts you'd like to review? — Robin Hobb

The male has been persuaded to assume a certain onerous and disagreeable role with the promise of rewards
material and psychological. Women may in the first place even have put it into his head. BE A MAN! may have been, metaphorically, what Eve uttered at the critical moment in the garden of Eden. — Wyndham Lewis

Cooking can be rewarding when it is a choice and no longer the onerous duty of the housewife, and when a dishwasher can lighten the load at the other end of the process. — Julian Baggini

We have the means to change the laws we find unjust or onerous. We cannot, as citizens, pick and choose the laws we will or will not obey. — Ronald Reagan

The crowning insult [of abortion] is that this ordeal is represented to her as some kind of a privilege.Her sad and onerous duty is garbed in the rhetoric of a civil right. — Germaine Greer

The inflow of capital from the developed countries is the prerequisite for the establishment of economic dependence. This inflow takes various forms: loans granted on onerous terms; investments that place a given country in the power of the investors; almost total technological subordination of the dependent country to the developed country; control of a country's foreign trade by the big international monopolies; and in extreme cases, the use of force as an economic weapon in support of the other forms of exploitation. — Che Guevara

I awaken in the morning with confidence, rejoicing in whatever work is given to me to do. Whatever that work is, I do it, not in order to earn a living or in a sense of performing an onerous duty; but, with joy and gladness, I let it unfold as the activity of God's expression through me. — Joel S. Goldsmith

A harmony established contrary to sense is often more onerous than a war. — Victor Hugo

Our Founding Fathers never meant for Washington, D.C. to be the fount of all wisdom. As a matter of fact they were very much afraid if that because they'd just had this experience with this far-away government that had centralized thought process and planning and what have you, and then it was actually the reason that we fought the revolution in the 16th century was to get away from that kind of onerous crown if you will. — Rick Perry

Never tell your resolution beforehand, or it's twice as onerous a duty. — John Selden

There is nothing more onerous than enforced gratitude. — Margaret Atwood

It seemed just as clear to me that I would never pick up a pen again, fill a page with writing. The profession seemed too onerous, a perpetual mirror of our unredeemed existence, which I was also so loath to accept and endure. Over and over again to meet the morning hour anew, the day, the ever-estranged world, to touch them and wring one word from your stricken heart - and know this: this will not last, this is the moment of parting, already forgotten. But, still exhausted and blinded by pain, you must set off again, and who will make it worth your while? Is it worth the effort? — Annemarie Schwarzenbach

Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place. — Susan Sontag

Now see the nasturtiums. The leaves are like tiny green parasols blown inside-out and the flowers are terrifically garish. In every village we pass through, see how they are everywhere, how they fill every gap in every wall, every crack in every path.
The nasturtiums have it figured out, how survival's just a matter of filling in the gaps between sun up and sun down. Boiling kettles, peeling potatoes, laundering towels, buying milk, changing light-bulbs, rooting wet mats of pubic hair out of the shower's plughole. This is the way people survive, by filling one hole at a time for the flightiest of temporary gratifications, over and over and over, until the season's out and they die off anyway, wither back into the wall or path, into their dark crevasse. This is the way life's eaten away, expended by the onerous effort of living itself. — Sara Baume

The situation of having to belong to a state to which one does not wish is no less onerous if it is the result of an election than if one must endure it as the consequence of a military conquest. — Ludwig Von Mises

I was living in a terrible time when people were being accused of being communists, and they attacked the movie industry, especially the writers. People couldn't work if they were on the blacklist. The studios banned them. It was the most onerous period in movie history. I don't think we have ever had a period so dark as that. — Kirk Douglas

The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe. Unfortunately — Douglas Adams

Shit is a more onerous theological problem than is evil. — Milan Kundera

Placing on writers the responsibility to represent a culture is an onerous burden. — Amy Tan

On this morning his first waking moments were filled with the audible lamenting breath of having survived another winter night on the streets of St. Louis, those onerous recurring sighs that had become his respiration. — Dan Groat

It is preferable to incur a mild punishment than to perform an onerous task. — Roald Dahl

Taxation according to income is the most effective instrument yet devised to obtain just contribution from those best able to bear it and to avoid placing onerous burdens upon the mass of our people. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

For a novelist, it's kind of an onerous burden to represent an entire culture. — Khaled Hosseini

The EPA's greenhouse gas regulations, along with a host of other onerous regulations, are unnecessarily driving out conventional fuels as part of America's energy mix. The consequences are higher energy prices for families and a contraction of our nation's economic growth. — Gina McCarthy

Without true medical liability reform, our doctors will continue to leave, and young doctors coming out of medical school $100,000 to $200,000 in debt will not be able to afford such onerous costs. — Jim Gerlach

Winning control of the Senate would allow Republicans to pass a whole range of measures now being held up by Reid, often at the behest of the White House. Make it a major reform agenda. The centerpiece might be tax reform, both corporate and individual. It is needed, popular and doable. Then go for the low-hanging fruit enjoying wide bipartisan support, such as the Keystone XL pipeline and natural gas exports, most especially to Eastern Europe. One could then add border security, energy deregulation and health-care reform that repeals the more onerous Obamacare mandates. — Charles Krauthammer

Woman, no less than man, can qualify herself for the more onerous occupations of life. — Victoria Woodhull

We just simply want to get back to basics, get - restore essentially the constitutional foundation of the country, and that means the federal government becoming less onerous, less involved in every - basically every item of our lives. And what that means is there does have to be some transition. — Joe Miller

Throwing money at something doesn't really create - forgive me that onerous word - art. — Harold Prince

In a free country, government is a dull and onerous responsibility. It is a parent-teacher conference. — P. J. O'Rourke

The Electric Monk was a labor-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe. — Douglas Adams

The responsibilities which are imposed by rank and privilege and good fortune can ... become very onerous indeed. — Robert W. Welch Jr.

Since Betty was on the pill or took precautions of her own which Graham did not choose to enquire into, the marital bed was untrammelled by tedious prophylaxis so that what Graham had been expecting to find an onerous and even distasteful duty unexpectedly partook of a freedom and absence of restraint that he found exhilerating. — Alan Bennett