Thoughtless Quotes & Sayings

You're beautiful," he said. "When was the last time I told you that you are beautiful?" "About two hours ago." "Two hours! How thoughtless of me!" "Don't let it happen again." He — John Grisham

He must have been one of those men who doesn't really notice such things and leaves it to others to sort out any awkwardness or imperfections. This is not because they are thoughtless or because they consider themselves too high and might, it's simply that their brains don't register these practicalities or the world around them. — Javier Marias

Over time events trickle out of the minds of forgetful, thoughtless people, and so, since they retain and conserve nothing, the empty space within them, that should be filled with good things, is filled instead with hopes, so that they neglect the present and look to the future, despite the fact that fortune may yet foil the future, whereas the present cannot be taken away. — Plutarch

Make excellent mistakes.
Too many people spend their time avoiding mistakes. They're so concerned about being wrong, about messing up, that they never try anything
which means they never do anything. Their focus is avoiding failure. But that's actually a crummy way to achieve success. The most successful people spectacular mistakes
huge, honking screwups! why? They're trying to do something big, but each time they make a mistake, they get a little better and move a little closer to excellence.
Making mistakes seems risky. It is/ But it's more risky not to.
I'm not talking about random, stupid, thoughtless blunders, though. I'm talking about good mistakes.
Mistakes come from having high aspirations, from trying to do something nobody else has done. — Daniel H. Pink

Do not be thoughtless, always be mindful, watch your thoughts! Draw yourself out of the path of evil, like an elephant sunk in mud. — Gautama Buddha

[Photography] remains servile to a thoughtless vision of the world ... As the term snapshot suggests, photography seizes the moment and exhibits it. — Claude Levi-Strauss

Darkness attracted him as much as light. He knew that these days turning out the light before making love was considered laughable, and so he always left a small lamp burning over the bed. At the momemnt he penetrated sabina, however, he closed his eyes. The pleasure suffusing his body called for darkness. The darkness was pure, perfect, thoughtless, vision less; that darkness was without end, without borders; that darkness was the infinite we each carry within us. — Milan Kundera

She wished Felix and Jay were babies again, though they were never babies at the same time, and she wished she could have been a baby with them, too, that they could all lie in a thoughtless baby lump, void of all responsibilities and knowledge, without history, just soft skin and fat, piled on each other like puppies, mother and children, impossibly all infants at the same time. She — Catherine Lacey

Man's task is simple. He should cease letting his existence be a thoughtless accident. — Friedrich Nietzsche

No one is more ingenious than the poor, wherever you find them. When you are poor every stage has to be thought through. Wealth is the opposite. With wealth you get to be thoughtless." "I — Zadie Smith

17. To pursue the unattainable is insanity, yet the thoughtless can never refrain from doing so. — Marcus Aurelius

The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices - to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own - for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to The Twilight Zone.
[closing narration: "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street", Twilight Zone episode aired March 4, 1960 — Rod Serling

Daja doesn't exactly need to be tested on whether she's honorable or not."
"Doesn't she? Don't all of you? This is your first taste of the things which may come from your being powerful mages. People will offer you gold, status, even love. I want to know how you will react. If want to know if your teachers will release greedy, thoughtless monsters into the world. — Tamora Pierce

Buffon found himself threatened with excommunication for expressing it. A practical man, he apologized at once for his thoughtless heresy, then cheerfully repeated the assertions throughout his subsequent writings. — Bill Bryson

There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause: - through infancy's unconscious spell, boyhood's thoughtless faith, adolescence' doubt (the common doom). and then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood's pondering repose of If. — Herman Melville

There are three stages: Thoughtless being. Thought. Return to thoughtless being. — Chad Harbach

Volunteer sentences are the relics of your education And the desire to emulate the grown-up, workaday prose that surrounds you, Which is made overwhelmingly of sentences that are banal and structurally thoughtless. A volunteer sentence is almost always a perfunctory sentence. That can change. But only after years of questioning the shapes of sentences you read, And every sentence you write. Don't let the word "years" alarm you. Think of it as months and months and months and months. You may think a volunteer sentence is an inspired one Simply because it volunteers. This is one reason to abandon the idea of inspiration. All the idea of inspiration will do Is stop you from revising a volunteer sentence. Only revision will tell you whether a sentence that offers itself is worth keeping. — Verlyn Klinkenborg

A wise man seeks by music to strengthen his soul: the thoughtless one uses it to stifle his fears. — Confucius

There was never much question as to what I was going to do in life, because working with clay was what I could do ... there are things I watch my hand do that are almost thoughtless. I can remember the moment of learning them. It is knowledge you have in the hand. — Charles Simonds

What is it about me and coffee that drives you over the edge? - Kellan Kyle — S.C. Stephens

Only an unimaginative man would think that mechanistic, command-and-control organizations could ever produce an equitable, enduring, free society. Only a thoughtless man would create them. Only an arrogant man would run them. Only a cruel man would perpetuate them. — Dee Hock

To be unkind because you are thoughtless is the worst kind of blindness. — Cameron Dokey

We think very little of time present; we anticipate the future, as being too slow, and with a view to hasten it onward, we recall the past to stay it as too swiftly gone. We are so thoughtless, that we thus wander through the hours which are not here, regardless only of the moment that is actually our own. — Blaise Pascal

The economy is a thoughtless weather system- and nothing more. Some joke on the people, to give them such a thing — Kurt Vonnegut

You'll forget it all: the cruel power of your superiors, the thoughtless things you wish you'd never said, the stupidities, the unfinished work, the lack of consideration, the betrayals, the injustices, the indifference, those who've blamed you, those who will blame you, your financial troubles, the rush of time, the endless waits, the things and people forever beyond your reach, your loneliness, your shame, your defeats, your wretchedness, your pain, and the catastrophes - all those catastrophes - in just a few minutes you'll forget them all. The prospect comforts you. Patiently you wait. — Orhan Pamuk

What kind of thoughtless creep would burn a book? — James Patterson

That was terribly thoughtless of you. What good is having friends if they don't put you in mortal peril every once in a while? — Brandon Sanderson

I read with keen interest the words of a bumper sticker readily visible on the highly polished chrome bumper of a car which was weaving in and out of the traffic stream. The words were these: "Honk if you love Jesus." No one honked. Perhaps each was disturbed by the thoughtless and rude actions of the offending driver. Then, again, would honking be an appropriate manner in which to show one's love for the Son of God, the Savior of the world, the Redeemer of all mankind? Such was not the pattern provided by Jesus of Nazareth. — Thomas S. Monson

When a man plays with your heart it is for one of two reasons: He knows he can or he is undecided. — Shannon L. Alder

When an important writer recommends a work to you -- whether by openly naming the title; or by shy=covert use of it (which perhaps is the greater praise) then go right ahead and follow his [sic!, etc] momentous hint ! A man with expertise and taste has done trusty spade-work for you : {pre=reading} and winnowing 1000 volumes of antiquated chaff for you. Not to make grateful use of such a hint would mean my thoughtless=arrogant shoving aside all the precious, irreplaceable hours that a venerable predecessor spent reading for me. — Arno Schmidt

Being is thoughtless-beyond and beneath all categories of thought. Expression is the realization of creative thought. Being is still; expression, moving. But then if I do not strive, who will? — Zhuangzi

His thoughtless expression was one of wonder or of pain; with Gansey, they were so often the same thing. — Maggie Stiefvater

Today it is considered as exaggeration to proclaim constant respect for every form of life as being the serious demand of a rational ethic. But the time is coming when people will be amazed that the human race existed so long before it recognized that thoughtless injury to life is incompatible with real ethics. Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility to everything that has life. — Albert Schweitzer

Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system — Bill Mollison

And am I answerable that thoughtless and unprincipled men exist whose shades of contenance may resemble mine? — James Fenimore Cooper

For if I do something, I never do it thoughtlessly. — Diane Ackerman

When we cuss each other out, call each other the vilest names on earth, and put each other down with thoughtless cruelty, it is the only way we know and the only language we have to express our ardent love for each other. — Pat Conroy

He looks like shit, by the way. Hot shit, but shit nonetheless. - Anna Allen — S.C. Stephens

function - thoughtless, careless, and liquorish, — H.P. Lovecraft

Whenever we say a person's name, notice whether we have stated more than a fact. For example, the judgment, 'She's thoughtless' goes beyond the facts 'She said she'd call me and she didn't.' — Joko Beck

Gaming is a vice the more dangerous as it is deceitful; and, contrary to every other species of luxury, flatters its votaries with the hopes of increasing their wealth; so that avarice itself is so far from securing us against its temptations that it often betrays the more thoughtless and giddy part of mankind into them. — Henry Fielding

Kindness and intelligence are the preoccupations of age. Being cruel and
thoughtless is far more fascinating when you're twenty. — Ray Bradbury

If you say that there was no first cause (a Creator), then you are stuck with the unscientific and thoughtless belief that nothing created everything. So, what is it that you believe? Is it that something created everything? Then you are not an atheist, because you believe in a Creator. — Ray Comfort

Only the thinking man lives his life, the thoughtless man's life passes him by. — Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach

A clever, thoughtless person is one of the most terrifying things there is. — Patrick Rothfuss

With whose imperfections will you bear, and what insult are you capable of enduring, if a thoughtless word from your own Superior is unbearable? — Vincent De Paul

People, even if they are so thoughtless as to be born black, do not come into this world merely to provide mink coats and diamonds for chattering, trivial, pale matrons, or genocidal opportunities for their unsexed, unloved, and, finally, despicable men - oh, pioneers!

There will be bloody holding actions all over the world, for years to come: but the Western party is over, and the white man's sun has set. Period. — James Baldwin

Intrusive, thoughtless people! said K. as he turned back into the room. The supervisor may have agreed with him, at least K. thought that was what he saw from the corner of his eye. But it was just as possible that he had not even been listening as he had his hand pressed firmly down on the table and seemed to be comparing the length of his fingers. — Franz Kafka

Among a man's many good possessions, A good command of speech has no equal. Prosperity and ruin issue from the power of the tongue. Therefore, guard yourself against thoughtless speech. — Thiruvalluvar

It was like we were both trying to hold onto something that was slipping through our fingers, and we didn't understand why. I understood more than him, of course, but just barely. I would never fully understand how I could have ever strayed from such a warm, sensitive and caring soul. — S.C. Stephens

With women, the great business of life is love; and they generally make a mistake in it. They consult neither the heart nor the head, but are led away by mere humour and fancy. If instead of a companion for life, they had to choose a partner in a country-dance or to trifle away an hour with, their mode of calculation would be right. They tie their true-lover's knot with idle, thoughtless haste, while the institutions of society render it indissoluble. — William Hazlitt

Garraty wondered how it would be, to lie in the biggest, dustiest library silence of all, dreaming endless, thoughtless dreams behind your gummed-down eyelids, dressed forever in your Sunday suit. No worries about money, success, fear, joy, pain, sorrow, sex, or love. Absolute zero. No father, mother, girlfriend, lover. The dead are orphans. No company but the silence like a moth's wing. An end to the agony of movement, to the long nightmare of going down the road. The body in peace, stillness, and order. The perfect darkness of death.
How would that be? Just how would that be? — Stephen King

Sometimes I am a cicada, hissing and singing in the leaves of a tree by the sunlit water, thoughtless and wordless, a voice that is all consonants and tribal clicks. Sometimes I rub my legs together like a string bass, and the lake quivers — Catherynne M Valente

Hey, gorgeous ... Guess where I woke up today?"
I smiled as Kellan's sultry voice met my ear.
"I have no idea." And I really didn't, I'd lost track of his exact location ages ago. Kellan chuckled , and I glanced over at Denny; his eyes were back on the road. It gave me a weird sort of guilt to be back in a situation that was eerily similar to last year. Different, though, since Denny and I weren't doing anything inappropriate.
"Kansas ... Know what's in Kansas?"
I leaned back in my seat and shook my head. "No."
"Nothing," he dryly said. "Miles and miles of nothing."
Stephens, S.C. (2012-08-16). Effortless (Thoughtless Book 2) (pp. 299-300). Gallery Books. Kindle Edition. — S.C. Stephens

There's one sad truth in life I've found
While journeying east and west -
The only folks we really wound
Are those we love the best.
We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest,
And deal full many a thoughtless blow
To those who love us best. — Ella Wheeler Wilcox

It's safe to tell a secret to one. Risky to tell it to two. To tell it to three is thoughtless folly, everyone else will know. — Catherine Fisher

Thoughtfulness is the way to deathlessness, thoughtlessness the way to death. The thoughtful do not die: the thoughtless are as if dead already. — Gautama Buddha

Mom, mom, mom, mom! A yowl rose from my gut, my bowels, my womb, raw as a birth cry but with no hope in it, a maddening howl, a roar, the water a wailing wall shattering around me. Unsyllabled, thoughtless, the cry rose from the oldest cells in my body. I hadn't known grief could be so primal, so crude. The violence shook me. When it stopped, I fell to my knees in the shower, and the water called to the water in me; I wanted to melt, to run down the drain and under the city to the creek and then to the river thirty miles away. Mom, mom, mom, mom! — Lorna Crozier

My great moment of triumph ... It's all turned to dust. I wasn't the heroine of the hour. I was the thoughtless, stupid villain. — Sophie Kinsella

Ah, how unjust to Nature and himself Is thoughtless, thankless, inconsistent man! — Edward Young

Creativity arises out of the state of thoughtless presence in which you are much more awake than when you are engrossed in thinking. — Eckhart Tolle

Are we, as we age, I wonder, repaid for all our thoughtless gestures — Anita Shreve

I am 100 percent in favor of the intelligent use of drugs, and 1,000 percent against the thoughtless use of them, whether caffeine or LSD. And drugs are not central to my life. — Timothy Leary

And the truth is, sometimes my sisters and I do get jealous, and sometimes we do say things to-and about-one another that are thoughtless and rude. We don't meant them, though. It's just whenever we're together, we slip into our old familiar roles. — Jillian Medoff

I cannot here withhold the statement that optimism, where it is not merely the thoughtless talk of those who harbor nothing but words under their shallow foreheads, seems to me to be not merely an absurd, but also a really wicked, way of thinking, a bitter mockery of the most unspeakable sufferings of mankind. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Ralston didn't care. He turned on his brother as the surgeon knelt next to him and inspected the wound. "She could have been killed!"
And what about you?" This time, it was Callie who spoke, her own pent-up energy releasing in anger, and the men turned as one to look at her, surprised that she and found her voice. "What about you and your idiotic pland to somehow restore my honor by playing guns out in the middle of nowhere with OXFORD?" She said the baron's name in disdain. "Like children? Of all the ridiculous, unnecessary, thoughtless, MALE things to do ... who even FIGHTS duels anymore?! — Sarah MacLean

If you are tossed about by doubts, full of strong thoughtless passions, and yearning only for that which is detrimental, your thirst will grow stronger and stronger, unquenched, and your pain will grow with your defilements. — Gautama Buddha

It is a sexual violation. It's disgusting. The law needs to be changed, and we need to change. That's why these Web sites are responsible. Just the fact that somebody can be sexually exploited and violated, and the first thought that crosses somebody's mind is to make a profit from it. It's so beyond me. I just can't imagine being that detached from humanity. I can't imagine being that thoughtless and careless and so empty inside. — Jennifer Lawrence

[I am not] one of those thoughtless people who always uncritically accept what is new as necessarily better. — Pope Benedict XVI

The thoughtless habit of using the words "existence" and "exist" as designations for being is one more indication of our estrangement both from being and from a radical, forceful, and definite exegesis of being. — Martin Heidegger

If your hunch proves a good one, you were inspired; if it proves bad, you are guilty of yielding to thoughtless impulse. — Beryl Markham

Happier of happy though I be, like them I cannot take possession of the sky, mount with a thoughtless impulse, and wheel there, one of a mighty multitude whose way and motion is a harmony and dance magnificent. — William Wordsworth

To fit in with the change of events, words, too, had to change their usual meanings. What used to be described as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member; to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one's unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action. Fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real man, and to plot against an enemy behind his back was perfectly legitimate self-defence. Anyone who held violent opinions could always be trusted, and anyone who objected to them became a suspect. — Thucydides

I just ... I can't share you. The thought of you with him, it kills me, now more than it ever did before. I need you. All of you. - Thoughtless — S.C. Stephens

From his companions, and set forth to walk, Perhaps grown wearied of their Corinth talk: Over the solitary hills he fared, Thoughtless at first, but ere eve's star appeared His phantasy was lost, where reason fades, In the calm'd twilight of Platonic shades. Lamia beheld him coming, near, more near - Close to her passing, in indifference drear, His silent sandals swept the mossy green; So neighbour'd to him, and yet so unseen — John Keats

Thoughtless people are not unusual," observed the Scarecrow, "but I consider them more fortunate than those who have useless or wicked thoughts and do not try to curb them. Your oil can, friend Woodman, is filled with oil, but you only apply the oil to your joints, drop by drop, as you need it, and do not keep spilling it where it will do no good. Thoughts should be restrained in the same way as your oil, and only applied when necessary, and for a good purpose. If used carefully, thoughts are good things to have. — L. Frank Baum

My brain has no heart, and my heart has no brain. That's why when I speak my mind, I appear heartless and when I do what's in my heart I seem thoughtless. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day. — Winston S. Churchill

What used to be described as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member; to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one's unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action. — Thucydides

So thoughtless awareness is the first beautiful state you have to achieve. That will give you peace and a witness state to enjoy the drama of life, to enjoy the different varieties of people, while you will be growing within yourself. — Nirmala Srivastava

Optimism, where it is not just the thoughtless talk of someone with only words in his flat head, strikes me as not only absurd, but even a truly wicked way of thinking, a bitter mockery of the unspeakable sufferings of humanity. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Yes! I know who the father is ... bitch.
Stephens, S.C. (2012-08-16). Effortless (Thoughtless Book 2) (p. 365). Gallery Books. Kindle Edition. — S.C. Stephens

Anyone must be mainly ignorant or thoughtless, who is surprised at everything he sees; or wonderfully conceited who expects everything to conform to his standard of propriety. — William Hazlitt

How many times in your life could you have abated conflicts if you had taken the time to deliberate on your problems in quiet contemplation - for example, taking a quiet walk - to think about your capabilities and limitations, and the likely gains and losses of taking action? By removing yourself from the immediate, stressful situation, you also take out the emotion that often prompts you to make rash, thoughtless decisions. The — Sun Tzu

It is an unimaginatively standardized background, a sluggishness, of speech and manners, a rigid ruling of the spirit by the desire to appear respectable. It is contentment ... the contentment of the quiet dead, who are scornful of the living for their restless walking. It is negation canonized as the one positive virtue. It is the prohibition of happiness. It is slavery self-sought and self-defended. It is dullness made God. A savorless people, gulping tasteless food, and sitting afterward, coatless and thoughtless, in rocking chairs prickly with inane decorations, listening to mechanical music, saying mechanical things about the excellence of Ford automobiles, and viewing themselves as the greatest race in the world. — Sinclair Lewis

With thoughtless and impatient hands We tangle up the plans The Lord hath wrought. And when we cry in pain He saith, "Be quiet, man, while I untie the knot." (Author unknown, in Jack M. Lyon et al., Best-Loved Poems of the LDS People [1996], 304) — Boyd K. Packer

My life for yours: it may mean three seconds of my time to redeem some thoughtless bit of self-indulgence on the part of someone else, or it may mean, or did mean, Golgotha, where My Life for Yours was supremely dramatized and entails our eternal joy. — Thomas Howard

Well in case you failed to notice, In case you failed to see, This is my heart bleeding before you, This is me down on my knees These foolish games are tearing me apart Your thoughtless words are breaking my heart You're breaking my heart — Jewel

But it was pointless, it was stupid; he thought about thoughtless things. If I were a seabird ... but how could you be a seabird? If you were a seabird your brain would be tiny and stupid and you would love half-rotted fish guts and tweaking the eyes out of little grazing animals; you would know no poetry and you could never appreciate flying as fully as the human on the ground yearning to be you.
If you wanted to be a seabird you deserved to be one. — Iain M. Banks

Because it was enough for one of those favorites of His Distinguished Highness to issue a thoughtless decree. These young smart alecks see it, and they immediately imagine some fatal result and come running to the rescue. They start trying to mend things, straighten things out, patch things up and untangle them. And so instead of using their energy to build their own vision of the future, instead of trying to put their irresponsible, destructive fantasies into action, our malcontents had to roll up their sleeves and start untangling what the minsters had knotted up. And there's always a lot of work to untangling! So they untangle and untangle, drenched in sweat, wearing their nerves to shreds, running around, patching things up here and there, and in all this rush and overwork, in this whirlwind, their fantasies slowly evaporate from their hot heads. — Ryszard Kapuscinski

To represent a bad thing in its least offensive light is, doubtless, the most agreeable course for a writer of fiction to pursue; but is it the most honest, or the safest? Is it better to reveal the snares and pitfalls of like to the young and thoughtless traveller, or to cover them with branches and flowers? Oh, reader! if there were less of this delicate concealment of facts
this whispering "Peace, peace," when there is no peace, there would be less of sin and misery to the young of both sexes who are left to wring their bitter knowledge from experience. — Anne Bronte

...the horse is by no means a 'wild beast' or a stupid animal as sometimes described by thoughtless persons. — Alois Podhajsky

The more ignorant, reckless and thoughtless a doctor is, the higher his reputation soars even amongst powerful princes. — Desiderius Erasmus

You've got to reach towards a better language, and you're not going to make it up from scratch; you've got to reach back into the tradition. Western tradition is not as impoverished as a lot of people would like to think, but you'd have to go back before the industrial revolution; you may have to go back farther than that. Of course, the Bible has a perfectly adequate language, but it's suffered a lot of thoughtless wear. — Wendell Berry

We cannot separate our lives from time. Why is it that we are so extravagant, so thoughtless, in our waste of time, especially in youth, when we cling so tenaciously to life? You cannot separate a wasted hour from the same duration of your life. If you waste your time, you must waste your life. If you improve your time, you cannot help improving your life. — Orison Swett Marden

A thoughtless citizen of a democracy is a delinquent citizen of a democracy, — Leon Wieseltier

Meditation is the only way you can grow. Because when you meditate, you are in silence, you are in thoughtless awareness. Then the growth of awareness takes place. — Nirmala Srivastava

Strange that one man's actions could touch so many other people, like a single, thoughtless breath of wind coming in an open window and blowing the playing cards every which way. — Karleen Koen

That was our mistake, I think. One of many mistakes. To believe that boys were acting with a logic that we could someday understand. To believe that their actions had any meaning beyond thoughtless impulse. We were like conspiracy theorists, seeing portent and intention in every detail, wishing desperately that we mattered enough to be the object of planning and speculation. But they were just boys. Silly and young and straightforward; they weren't hiding anything. — Emma Cline

Recently he has noticed idiocy creeping up on him. His resolve to keep his head on straight, his feet on the ground, is failing and he has observed, quite objectively, that he is becoming more thoughtless, selfish, making more and more stupid remarks. He has tried to do something about this but it almost feels out of his control now, like pattern baldness. Why not just give in and be an idiot? Stop caring. — David Nicholls