Shabbiness Quotes & Sayings

I suppose there's a time in life when a garden of roses and lavender fails to blind a girl to the true shabbiness of a place. I myself had not reached that moment of clarity. — Katie Crouch

He was like a worn small rock whelmed by the successive waves of his voice. With his body he seemed to feed that voice that, succubus like, had fleshed its teeth in him. And the congregation seemed to watch with its own eyes while the voice consumed him, until he was nothing and they were nothing and there was not even a voice but instead their hearts were speaking to one another in chanting measures beyond the need for words, so that when he came to rest again against the reading desk, his monkey face lifted and his whole attitude that of a serene, tortured crucifix that transcended its shabbiness and insignificance and made it of no moment, a long moaning expulsion of breath rose from them, and a woman's - woman's single soprano: Yes, Jesus! — William Faulkner

Finally, let's keep well in mind the most important lesson of the auto rescue: While government should stay away from the private sector as much as possible, markets do occasionally fail, and when they do government can play a constructive role, as it did in the case of the auto rescue. — Steven Rattner

Grass is always greener on your side, just switch places with your neighbor. — Saru Singhal

She did not understand grunge, the idea of looking shabby because you could afford not to be shabby; it mocked true shabbiness. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Not everybody has a talent for painting, or for the piano, or for dance. But we can write our way into the artist's head and into his problems and solutions. Or we can go there with another writer. — William Zinsser

Familiarity is the thing-the sense of belonging. It grants exemption from all evil, all shabbiness. — E.B. White

There is no vice, of which a man can be guilty, no meanness, no shabbiness, no unkindness, which excited so much indignation among his contemporaries, friends and neighbors, as his success. This is the one unpardonable crime, which reason cannot defend, nor [can] humility mitigate. — Arthur Schopenhauer

A great novelist must open the reader's heart, allow the reader to remember the vastness and glory
and shame and shabbiness
of what it is to be human. — Carolyn See

A commission of haberdashers could alone have reported what
the rest of her poor dress was made of, but it had a strong general
resemblance to seaweed, with here and there a gigantic tea-leaf.
Her shawl looked particularly like a tea-leaf after long infusion. — Charles Dickens

God is known by nature in his works, and by doctrine in his revealed word. — Galileo Galilei

An inebriated elderly gentleman in the last depths of shabbiness ... played the calm and virtuous old men. — Charles Dickens

In dress, seek the middle between foppery and shabbiness. — Horace Mann

The avoidance of little evils, little sins, little inconsistencies, little weaknesses, little follies, little indiscretions and imprudences, little foibles, little indulgences of self and of the flesh, little acts of indolence or indecision, or slovenliness or cowardice, little equivocations or aberrations from high integrity, little touches of shabbiness or meanness ... little indifferences to the feelings or wishes of others, little outbreaks of temper, or crossness, or selfishness, or vanity - the avoidance of such little things as these goes far to make up at least the negative beauty of a holy life. — Horatius Bonar

Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone. No man will admire her the more, no woman will like her the better for it. Neatness and fashion are enough for the former, and a something of shabbiness or impropriety will be most endearing to the latter. — Jane Austen

This is my costume. I'm a homicidal maniac. They look just like everyone else. — Christina Ricci

He didn't mind how he looked to other people, because the nursery magic had made him Real, and when you are Real shabbiness doesn't matter. — Margery Williams

I ... allowed my memory to journey back to the days when I was a boy of ten, full of health and optimism, when my wonder at the great game of living had yet to give way to disillusionment at its shabbiness. — Ruskin Bond

In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present, there is an affirmation of life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. This affirmation lies in the way the author takes control of reality by retelling it in his own way, thus creating a new world. Every great work of art, I would declare pompously, is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors and infidelities of life. The perfection and beauty of form rebels against the ugliness and shabbiness of the subject matter. — Azar Nafisi

When love chooses, it chooses with a perfect sensitivity for the unique beauty of the chosen one, and it chooses without making anyone else feel excluded. — Henri J.M. Nouwen