Piffle Quotes & Sayings

She made me a stranger unto myself, she was all of those calm nights and tall eucalyptus trees, the desert stars, that land and sky, that fog outside, and I had come there with no purpose save to be a mere writer, to get money, to make a name for myself and all that piffle. She was so much finer than I, so much more honest, that I was sick of myself and I could not look at her warm eyes, I suppressed the shiver brought on by her brown arms around my neck and the long fingers in my hair. I did not kiss her. She kissed me, author of The Little Dog Laughed. — John Fante

I always make it a rule never to look back. Otherwise, I'd ask myself how I could write such piffle and live with myself, day after day. — Ian Fleming

It's very difficult to liberate yourself from what you've learned. You know it's almost impossible because you learn in order to survive. — Anthony Hopkins

You must ask yourself this: Will you decide when love's going to work and when it isn't? You have been pronouncing too much and feeling too little. — David Levithan

The only systems we can afford to employ are those that rationally serve the planet first, then all humanity. Not out of some woolly, bullshit tree-hugging piffle but because we live on it, currently without alternatives. — Russell Brand

I did a school play when I was 10 where I played a cold germ infecting a whole classroom of kids. The play was called 'Piffle It's Only a Sniffle.' I'd never had so much fun. It was a thrill. — Kim Cattrall

Atomism was viciously persecuted as heresy throughout the early Christian era, and only one printed manuscript of De Rerum Naturum survived the flames. There are several translations; I have chosen the one translated by my fellow Devonian and Oxonian, W. Hannaford Brown. Brown's own manuscript was almost destroyed during the Nazi bombardment of England in 1943: if a religious book had survived so many vicissitudes we can easily imagine what the faithful would say. But Lucretius teaches us to live without such piffle. — Christopher Hitchens

If anybody ever marries you, it will be for the pleasure of hearing you talk piffle — Dorothy L. Sayers

I'm used to traveling. I'm used to being in different areas of the world. Home is where my suitcase lands. — Estelle

electrical wires the night before our presentation. So just as Sharon Sheldon was starting to give her introduction and Lance started to make low, rumbling noises with his armpit, my volcano's battery somehow melted, burst into flames, and burned a big, black, stinky hole straight through Miss Piffle's desk. I didn't think it was such — Dave Keane

My own idea is that these things are as piffle before the wind. — Daisy Ashford

[O]nly Colonel Lanser knew what war really is in the long run . . . and he tried not to think what he knew--that war is treachery and hatred, the muddling of incompetent generals, the torture and killing and sickness and tiredness, until at last it is over and nothing has changed except for a new weariness and new hatreds. — John Steinbeck

A good book is like an unreachable itch. You just can't leave it alone. — Laura Bush

You're discussing recreational drugs?" He stood and shut the door and came back looking very serious indeed. I was chastened, as I should have been. "Sorry. What have I never minded about?" "Well, I have truthfully always imagined it was my talent, my gift to introduce my friends to each other. Not one I could ever use for my own happiness, I must say. — Peter Carey

What Americans don't care much about is the piffle we put on TV these days, what they don't care about is boring, irrelevant, badly told stories, and what they really hate is the presumption that they're too stupid to know the difference. — Christiane Amanpour

Most moral philosophers consciously or unconsciously assume the essential correctness of our cultural sexual code - family, monogamy, continence, the postulate of privacy, ... restriction of intercourse to the marriage bed, etcetera. Having stipulated our cultural code as a whole, they fiddle with details - even such piffle as solemnly discussing whether or not the female breast is an "obscene" sight! But mostly they debate how the human animal can be induced or forced to obey this code, blandly ignoring the high probability that the heartaches and tragedies they see all around them originate in the code itself rather than the failure to abide by the code. — Robert A. Heinlein

We have only faith to guide us, say the theologians. Which faith? It is my acceptance that what we call evidence, and whatever we think we mean by intuition and faith are the phenomena of eras, and that the best of minds, or minds best in rapport with the dominant motif of an era, have intuition and faith and belief that depend upon what is called evidence, relatively to pagan gods, then to the god of the christians, and then to godlessness - and then to whatever is coming next. . . . . If now, affairs upon this earth be fluttering upon the edge of a new era, and I give expression to coming thoughts of that era, thousands of other minds are changing, and all of us will take on new thoughts concordantly, and see, as important evidence, piffle of the past. CHARLES FORT, LO! — Whitley Strieber

There is a saying about surgeons, meant as a reproof: "Sometimes wrong; never in doubt." But this seemed to me their strength. Each day surgeons are faced with uncertainties. Information is inadequate; the science is ambiguous; one's knowledge and abilities are never perfect. Even with the simplest operation, it cannot be taken for granted that a patient will come through better off - or even alive. Standing at the table my first time, I wondered how the surgeon knew that he would do this patient good, that all the steps would go as planned, that the bleeding would be controlled and infection would not take hold and organs would not be injured. He didn't, of course. But still he cut. — Atul Gawande

I WILL SKULL-FUCK EVERY ONE OF YOU CANNIBAL-COCKSUCKERS!!! I WILL RIP EVERY STINKING HEAD OFF EVERY FUCKING ONE OF YOU AND SHIT DOWN YOUR ROTTEN FUCKING NECKS — Robert Kirkman

I see said the duke but my own idear is that these things are as piffle before the wind [from memory ... ] — Daisy Ashford

What's the book like?"
"Well, some of it's twaddle, but mostly it's just piffle. Cheers! — David Mitchell

I see the beauty of Mike's attempt to devise an ideal ethic and applaud his recognition that such must start by junking the present sexual code and starting fresh. Most philosophers haven't the courage for this; they swallow the basics of the present code
monogamy, family pattern, continence, body taboos, conventional restrictions on intercourse, and so forth
then fiddle with details ... even such piffle as discussing whether the female breast is an obscene sight! (p.365) — Robert A. Heinlein

Love is 'evil' spelled backward
with an i instead of an o. — Avi

He who bestows something great receives no gratitude; for in accepting it the recipient has already been weighed down too much. — Friedrich Nietzsche

To have you in my life is wondrous
Yet all good things, allegedly, come to an end,
Piffle, says I, for you, undoubtedly,
Will forever be my lover and best friend. — John Walter Bratton