Prate Quotes & Sayings

If we have a correct theory but merely prate about it, pigeonhole it and do not put it into practice, then that theory, however good, is of no significance. — Mao Zedong

Our sainted aunts prate of living for others while our rich uncles call us mollycoddles for not fighting for what we want. Murder is a patriotic act if you commit it in a uniform; it is the blackest sin if you kill someone while wearing a gray flannel suit. — Nicholas Samstag

Yes, I laugh at all mankind, and the imposition that they dare to practice when they talk of hearts. I laugh at human passions and human cares, vice and virtue, religion and impiety; they are all the result of petty localities, and artificial situation. One physical want, one severe and abrupt lesson from the colorless and shriveled lip of necessity, is worth all the logic of the empty wretches who have presumed to prate it, from Zeno down to Burgersdicius. It silences in a second all the feeble sophistry of conventional life, and ascetical passion. — Charles Robert Maturin

Prate not to me of suicide, Faint heart in battle, not for pride I say Endure, but that such end denied Makes welcomer yet the death that's to be died. — Stevie Smith

Ability to see the cultural value of wilderness boils down, in the last analysis, to a question of intellectual humility. The shallow-minded modern who has lost his rootage in the land assumes that he has already discovered what is important; it is such who prate of empires, political or economic, that will last a thousand years. It is only the scholar who appreciates that all history consists of successive excursions from a single starting-point, to which man returns again and again to organize yet another search for a durable scale of values. It is only the scholar who understands why the raw wilderness gives definition and meaning to the human enterprise. — Aldo Leopold

Molly! I've got to ask you your question first!" "Arthur, really, this is just silly. . ." "What do you like me to call you when we're alone together?" Even by the dim light of the lantern Harry could tell that Mrs. Weasley had turned bright red; he himself felt suddenly warm around the ears and neck, and hastily gulped soup, clattering his spoon as loudly as he could against the bowl. "Mollywobbles," whispered a mortified Mrs. Weasley into the crack at the edge of the door. "Correct," said Mr. Weasley. "Now you can let me in. — J.K. Rowling

A fool is he that comes to preach or prate,
When men with swords their right and wrong debate.
[It., Chi conta i colpi e la dovuta offesa,
Mentr' arde la tenzon, misura e pesa?] — Torquato Tasso

Love!" She threw the pillow aside and sat up, pulling the be clothes around her. "You hypocrite. 'Tis nothing to you to say that, is it? You prate about love and roses and devotion, but you don't know the meaning of the word. You never have, and I doubt you ever will."
He let out a harsh breath. "I don't understand you. How you can say that, after - " He spread his hands and made a baffled sound. "After this."
"This! This is fancy, 'tis infatuation, 'tis a dream. Maybe you love your horses, maybe you love Nemo - all you require of me is a reflection of yourself. You and your bloody mask!" She was crying openly now, her head tilted back, her eyes shut against the tears. "Don't keep trying to dress it up as love, because I know what love is, and it hurts, it hurts, it hurts. — Laura Kinsale

Along a stream that raced and ran
Through tangled trees and over stones,
That long had heard the pipes o' Pan
And shared the joys that nature owns,
I met a fellow fisherman,
Who greeted me in cheerful tones.
...
Foes think the bad in him they've guessed
And prate about the wrong they scan;
Friends that have seen him at his best
Believe they know his every plan;
I know him better than the rest,
I know him as a fisherman. — Edgar Guest

We prate of freedom; we are in deadly fear of life, as much of our own American scene betrays. — Learned Hand

I prate of ancient poets' monstrous lies,
Ne'er seen or now or then by human eyes. — Ovid

Achilles glared at him and answered, Fool, prate not to me about covenants. There can be no covenants between men and lions, wolves and lambs can never be of one mind, but hate each other out and out an through. Therefore there can be no understanding between you and me, nor may there be any covenants between us, till one or other shall fall — Homer

Fools and young men prate about everything being possible for a man. That, however, is a great error. Spiritually speaking, everything is possible, but in the world of the finite there is much which is not possible. — Soren Kierkegaard

So oft in theologic wars, The disputants, I ween, Rail on in utter ignorance Of what each other mean, And prate about an Elephant Not one of them has seen! — John Godfrey Saxe

This is the Bond of the new millennium. Everything is updated, from the action sequences to the interaction between the characters. All the elements reflect changes that have occurred in the world in recent years. — Rick Yune

But we love the Old Travelers. We love to hear them prate and drivel and lie. — Mark Twain

Why do we continue to breed little minds who can find no recompense for their own failures other than to belittle and mock the talents, even the dress, of others? When will everyone realize that we are all equal in the eyes of God? — Og Mandino

Last call. It was about that time. He'd probably been drinking liquid courage all night, waiting for his chance to hit on her. I had little choice in assuming he was a three-time loser with a wad-of-cash to wave around and a bozo smile to boot. About to prate his many accomplishments as a man of the world and his travels among the world's top markets. — Bruce Crown

In the beginning - and neither can this be overstated - a Negro just cannot believe that white people are treating him as they do; he does not know what he has done to merit it. And when he realizes that the treatment accorded him has nothing to do with anything he has done, that the attempt of white people to destroy him - for that is what it is - is utterly gratuitous, it is not hard for him to think of white people as devils. — James Baldwin

You think I lead these people for my own whim? I lead these people, honorable knight, because they have no one but me. Because they came to me when the humans slaughtered their families and drove them out. And I'll keep this place safe for them no matter how much spying and lying and killing it takes. You've never been a commander, lordling, or you'd know that it's easy to prate about honor when you're not responsible for others' lives. But let me tell you a bit of truth
sometimes honor doesn't get it done. — Hilari Bell

It's only and always the two of us who are involved, she who wants me to give her what nature and circumstances kept, I who can't give what she demands; she who gets angry at my inadequacy and out of spite wants to reduce me to nothing, as she has done with herself, I who have written for months and months to give her a form whose boundaries won't dissolve, and defeat her, and calm her, and so in turn, calm myself. — Elena Ferrante

I find it next to impossible to remain politely silent when people prate to me about the glory of being given another chance to live happily ever after! — Mercedes McCambridge

Books were heavy shit. Next time he offered to move someone, he'd make sure the person was less of an intellectual. — Cat Johnson

A woman cannot do the thing she ought, which means whatever perfect thing she can, in life, in art, in science, but she fears to let the perfect action take her part and rest there: she must prove what she can do before she does it,
prate of woman's rights, of woman's mission, woman's function, till the men (who are prating, too, on their side) cry, A woman's function plainly is ... to talk. Poor souls, they are very reasonably vexed! — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife! To all the sensual world proclaim, One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name". Do not then (concludes the Stoic) take good words in your mouth, and prate before applauding citizens of honour, duty, and so forth, while you make your private lives a mere selfish calculation of expediency. We were surely born for nobler ends than this, and none who is worthy the name of a man would subscribe to doctrines which destroy all honour and all chivalry. The heroes of old time won their immortality not by weighing pleasures and pains in the balance, but by being prodigal of their lives, doing and enduring all things for the sake of their fellow-men. — W. Lucas Collins

I grieve and dare not show my discontent,
I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,
I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.
I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned,
Since from myself another self I turned.
My care is like my shadow in the sun,
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done. — Elizabeth I

We must face the fact that society is founded on intolerance. [ ... ] We may prate of toleration as we will; but society must always draw a line somewhere between allowable conduct and insanity or crime, in spite of the risk of mistaking sages for lunatics and saviours for blasphemers. We must persecute, even to the death; and all we can do to mitigate the danger of persecution is, first, to be very careful what we persecute, and second, to bear in mind that unless there is a large liberty to shock conventional people, and a well informed sense of the value of originality, individuality, and eccentricity, the result will be apparent stagnation covering a repression of evolutionary forces which will eventually explode with extravagant and probably destructive violence. — George Bernard Shaw

And you prate of the wealth of nations, as if it were bought and sold, The wealth of nations is men, not silk and cotton and gold. — Richard Hovey

We were never meant to be baby, we just happened — Keri Hilson

My crime is that I will not go with the multitude to do evil. My singularity is that when I say that freedom is of God and slavery is of the devil, I mean just what I say. My fanaticism is that I insist on the American people abolishing slavery, or ceasing to prate on the rights of man. — William Lloyd Garrison

However gnawing a deficiency, satiety is worse ... We are meant to be hungry. — Lionel Shriver

Aristocrats need not be rich, but they must be free, and in the modern world freedom grows rarer the more we prate about it. — Robertson Davies

We love old travelers: we love to hear them prate, drivel and lie; we love them for their asinine vanity, their ability to bore, their luxuriant fertility of imagination, their startling, brilliant, overwhelming mendacity. — Mark Twain

People need to worry more about themselves and their fuckin' kids, and stop worrying about what everyone else is doing or not doing. — Scott Hildreth

Tush!
Fear not, my lord, we will not stand to prate;
Talkers are no good doers: be assured
We come to use our hands and not our tongues. — William Shakespeare