Quotes & Sayings About Unsatisfactory

As there are some flowers which you should smell but slightly to extract all that is pleasant in them ... so there are some men with whom a slight acquaintance is quite sufficient to draw out all that is agreeable; a more intimate one would be unsafe and unsatisfactory. — Walter Savage Landor

However, all the methods of interventionism are doomed to failure. This means: the interventionist measures must needs result in conditions which from the point of view of their own advocates are more unsatisfactory than the previous state of affairs they were designed to alter. These policies are therefore contrary to purpose. — Ludwig Von Mises

Dear me, what an unsatisfactory world it was! When one did find a nice kind of life something or somebody always seemed to shove you out of it just as you were beginning to enjoy it. — Hugh Lofting

Why was it that relations between different people were so unsatisfactory, so fragmentary, so hazardous, and words so dangerous ... What had Evelyn really wished to say to him? What was she feeling left alone in the empty hall? The mystery of life and the unreality even of one's own sensations overcame him as he walked down the corridor which led to his room. — Virginia Woolf

If we have learned nothing else from the 20th century, we should at least have grasped that the more perfect the answer, the more terrifying its consequences. Incremental improvements upon unsatisfactory circumstances are the best that we can hope for, and probably all we should seek. — Tony Judt

When I was 18, the vision was to make music that didn't exist, because everything else was so unsatisfactory. — Mark E. Smith

Success went fizzily to Bernard's head, and in the process completely reconciled him (as any good intoxicant should do) to a world which, up till then, he had found very unsatisfactory. In so far as it recognized him as important, the order of things was good. — Aldous Huxley

The words graphic designer, architect, or industrial designer stick in my throat, giving me a sense of limitation, of specialisation within the specialty, of a relationship to society and form itself that is unsatisfactory and incomplete. This inadequate set of terms to describe an active life reveals only partially the still undefined nature of the designer. — Alvin Lustig

To deny the truth of our own experience in the scientific study of ourselves is not only unsatisfactory; it is to render the scientific study of ourselves without a subject matter. But to suppose that science cannot contribute to an understanding of our experience may be to abandon, within the modern context, the task of self-understanding. Experience and scientific understanding are like two legs without which we cannot walk.

We can phrase this very same idea in positive terms: it is only by having a sense of common ground between cognitive science and human experience that our understanding of cognition can be more complete and reach a satisfying level. We thus propose a constructive task: to enlarge the horizon of cognitive science to include the broader panorama of human, lived experience in a disciplined, transformative analysis. — Evan Thompson

A disposition is an unsatisfactory thing unless we give it practical effect - deeds show dispositions. — Gregory Of Nazianzus

To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion ... It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could. — Walter Cronkite

It is our American habit if we find the foundations of our educational structure unsatisfactory to add another story or wing. — Albert Einstein

My mom quickly tired of having to hold the cake out of my reach. She tried to hide the cake, but I found it almost immediately. She tried putting the cake on top of the refrigerator, but my freakish climbing abilities soon proved it to be an unsatisfactory solution. — Allie Brosh

It is a mistake for anyone to think he has lived too long in his old, unsatisfactory ways to make the great change. If you switch on the light in a dark room, it makes no difference how long it was dark because the light will still shine. Be teachable. That is the whole secret.
— Vernon Howard

Like any true story, the end of the affair is messy and unsatisfactory: — Neil Gaiman

What happens when you let an unsatisfactory present go on long enough? It becomes your entire history. — Louise Erdrich

Most days, for the last dozen or so years, I attributed to Charlie, or at least to our breakup, most things that have gone wrong for me. Like: I wouldn't have packed in college; I wouldn't have gone to work in Record and Tape; I wouldn't have had an unsatisfactory personal life. This is the woman who broke my heart, who ruined my life, this woman is single-handedly responsible for my poverty and directionlessness and failure, the woman I dreamed about regularly for a good five years. — Nick Hornby

He felt himself to be one of them, who can live neither in the world nor out of it. They are a kind of sick people, whose desire for God makes them unsatisfactory citizens of an ordinary life, but whose strength or temperament fails them to surrender the world completely; and present-day society, with its hurried pace and its mechanical and technical structure, offers no home to these unhappy souls. — Iris Murdoch

When one is grateful for something too good for common thanks, writing is less unsatisfactory than speech-one does not, at least, hear how inadequate the words are. — George Eliot

Welfare policies never attain those - allegedly beneficial - ends which the government and the self-styled progressives who advocated them wanted to attain, but - on the contrary - bring about a state of affairs which - from the very point of view of the government and its supporters - is even more unsatisfactory than the previous state of affairs they wanted to 'improve.' — Ludwig Von Mises

It has to be admitted that we English have sex on the brain, which is a very unsatisfactory place to have it. — Malcolm Muggeridge

We'd have to devise a plan, probably a rather Pyrrhic and unsatisfactory one. — Donna Tartt

When you cannot measure, your knowledge is meager and unsatisfactory. — Lord Kelvin

Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory. — Tennessee Williams

Yet Anthony knew that there were days when they hurt each other purposely - taking almost a delight in the thrust. Incessantly she puzzled him: one hour so intimate and charming, striving desperately toward an unguessed, transcendent union; the next, silent and cold, apparently unmoved by any consideration of their love or anything he could say. Often he would eventually trace these portentous reticences to some physical discomfort - of these she never complained until they were over - or to some carelessness or presumption in him, or to an unsatisfactory dish at dinner, but even then the means by which she created the infinite distances she spread about herself were a mystery, buried somewhere back in those twenty-two years of unwavering pride. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Still, let us not disarm, even in unsatisfactory times. Social injustice still needs to be denounced and fought. The world will not get better on its own. — Eric Hobsbawm

I have been informed about the death of Slobodan Milosevic. It is unfortunate and in many aspects unsatisfactory, given the countless victims of the Balkan wars, that justice now will not be able to run its course. — Jaap De Hoop Scheffer

Next to selfishness the principal cause which makes life unsatisfactory is want of mental cultivation. — John Stuart Mill

We will also have a more rigorous approach to professional development and managing unsatisfactory performance. — Jay Weatherill

We were back at home, and I had returned to that reassuring but profoundly unsatisfactory state known as 'being in one's right mind. — Aldous Huxley

[Describing an unsatisfactory apartment for which an up-and-comer had to settle:] The flat crouched around him, watching like a depressed relation, waiting for him to take some action. — Rosamunde Pilcher

So eager were its officials that the German government had telegraphed its ambassador in St. Petersburg two declarations of war to be delivered to Russia's foreign minister: one if Russia did not reply to its ultimatum, the other rejecting the Russian reply as unsatisfactory. In his haste and confusion, the ambassador handed over both messages. — Adam Hochschild

... but her Letters were always unsatisfactory, and though she did not openly avow her feelings, yet every line proved her to be Unhappy. — Jane Austen

Real evidence is usually vague and unsatisfactory. It has to be examined
sifted. But here the whole thing is cut and dried. No, my friend, this evidence has been very cleverly manufactured
so cleverly that it has defeated its own ends. — Agatha Christie

Young adults love to play games and they're thirsty for social interaction, but a lot of bar and restaurant experiences are quite unsatisfactory on the social level. What young people need is a place that has the feel of an unhosted party where they find themselves interacting with like-minded strangers. — Nolan Bushnell

Desire is insatiable not because the goods of the world are too few, too uniform, or too bland. Desire burns through the goods of the world, even though these goods are not false or intrinsically unsatisfactory ... Desire shatters the economy of things; it disputes the tyranny of objects. IT longs for the great emptiness, which is beauty and love without limitation. — Wendy Farley

Rest and comfort are two different things. Rest is a planned temporary time to refresh and refocus the leader. Comfort is when you settle into unproductive routines and accept satisfactory or unsatisfactory results. — Gary Rohrmayer

... the day had been both unprofitable and unsatisfactory, and he was wishing he could live it over again. — Louisa May Alcott

There are several ways to apportion the family income, all of them unsatisfactory. — Robert Benchley

Maths was "the one true thing," according to Nancy.
"Not love?" Teddy said.
"Oh, love, of course," Nancy said, in an offhanded way. "Love is crucial, but it's an abstract and numbers are absolute. Numbers can't be manipulated." An unsatisfactory answer, surely, Teddy thought. It seemed to him that love should be the absolute, trumping everything. Did it? For him? — Kate Atkinson

Romance is unsatisfactory as a religion. It is no use looking for the infinite in the eyes of another. — Jennifer Stone

Do you know what I am going to tell you, he said with his wry mouth, a pint of plain is your only man.
Notwithstanding this eulogy, I soon found that the mass of plain porter bears an unsatisfactory relation to its toxic content and I subsequently became addicted to brown stout in bottle, a drink which still remains the one that I prefer the most despite the painful and blinding fits of vomiting which a plurality of bottles has often induced in me. — Flann O'Brien

A man you've had to conceal in some unsatisfactory hiding place, who then begins to snore. — Sei Shonagon

One [idea] was that the Universe started its life a finite time ago in a single huge explosion, and that the present expansion is a relic of the violence of this explosion. This big bang idea seemed to me to be unsatisfactory even before detailed examination showed that it leads to serious difficulties. — Fred Hoyle

But in the end, science does not provide the answers most of us require. Its story of our origins and of our end is, to say the least, unsatisfactory. To the question, "How did it all begin?", science answers, "Probably by an accident." To the question, "How will it all end?", science answers, "Probably by an accident." And to many people, the accidental life is not worth living. Moreover, the science-god has no answer to the question, "Why are we here?" and, to the question, "What moral instructions do you give us?", the science-god maintains silence. — Neil Postman

It is so unsatisfactory to read a noble passage and have no one you love at hand to share the happiness with you. And it is unsatisfactory to read to one's self anyhow - for the uttered voice so heightens the expression. — Mark Twain

The Buddhists say that wisdom may be attained by reaching the three marks. The first is an understanding of the absence of self. The second is an understanding of the impermanence of all things. The third is an understanding of the unsatisfactory nature of ordinary experience. — Jenny Offill

When man meets himself upon the reflexion of the mirror, it is always advisable to ask the question "Who are you?". If an unsatisfactory answer comes forth, then one must delve into the far reaches of Self and understand why he failed to answer this simple, yet transcending question. — P.A. Wunderlich

To be melancholy is to be self-haunted, and among the many reasons this is an unsatisfactory explanation for living inside a jam jar inside an aquarium, foremost among them is that there are no good stories to tell of your bleak time in a beautiful place, and no specter to blame for the fact that happiness, though it should have been inescapable, evaded you. — Heidi Julavits

Unsatisfactory answers do not become satisfactory by being tentative. — C.S. Lewis

My first restoration was on 'Napoleon,' trying to put the French version in with the English version, and it was most unsatisfactory. — Kevin Brownlow

What would you do?"
"Is this one of those morality questions? Cause I got Unsatisfactory on my last few official psych evals when I answered the so-called morality questions. — S.E. Jakes

Today alcohol and tobacco are available, and people spend considerably more on these very unsatisfactory euphorics, pseudo-stimulants and sedatives than they are ready to spend on the education of their children. — Aldous Huxley

In its fear of not being, the mind is attached to name, to furniture, to value; and it will drop these in order to be at a higher level, the higher being the more gratifying, the more permanent. The fear of uncertainty, of not being, makes for attachment, for possession. When the possession is unsatisfactory or painful, we renounce it for a more pleasurable attachment. The ultimate gratifying possession is the word God, or its substitute, the State. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

If the press was, as David Riesman called it, "the gunpowder of the mind," the computer, in its capacity to smooth over unsatisfactory institutions and ideas, is the talcum powder of the mind. — Neil Postman

The only satisfactory thing about death is that our knowledge about it is unsatisfactory. — Raheel Farooq

She was twenty-eight but already jaded. Twenty-eight seemed a particularly unsatisfactory age. She was no longer young and yet no one ever seemed to take her seriously as an adult. People still told her what to do all the time, it was infuriating. Her only power seemed to be over her own children and even that was limited by endless negotiation. — Kate Atkinson

Put crudely, one is left with a choice between two unsatisfactory combinations: artistic integrity married to spiritual compromise; and spiritual integrity married to artistic banality-or, worse, art compromised on both counts. Neither one will satisfy those who recognize the fundamental necessity of integrity in both faith and art. — John Walford

I write because, as wonderful as life is - and it is truly wonderful - it isn't enough. It does not, for example, contain dragons. I find this unsatisfactory. So I read. And I write. — Laini Taylor

One of the effects of cheap food is, we have food that is so unsatisfactory. We need to go back to flavor. — Ruth Reichl

For work: I bought some pens. Normally, I used makeshift pens, the kind of unsatisfactory implements that somehow materialized in my bag or in a drawer. But one day, when I was standing in line to buy envelopes, I caught sight of a box of my favorite kind of pen: the Deluxe Uniball Micro. "Two ninety-nine for one pen!" I thought. "That's ridiculous." But after a fairly lengthy internal debate, I bought four. It's such a joy to write with a good pen instead of making do with an underinked pharmaceutical promotional pen picked up from a doctor's office. My new pens weren't cheap, but when I think of all the time I spend using pens and how much I appreciate a good pen, I realize it was money well spent. Finely made tools help make work a pleasure. — Gretchen Rubin

The washing of dishes does seem to me the most absurd and unsatisfactory business that I ever undertook. If, when once washed, they would remain clean for ever and ever (which they ought in all reason to do, considering how much trouble it is), there would be less occasion to grumble; but no sooner is it done, than it requires to be done again. On the whole, I have come to the resolution not to use more than one dish at each meal. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Having to be somewhere at a specific time and performing according to others' expectations can put pressure on them and create a paralysis of will. Because many people with AS are highly intelligent, they may have a hard time with teachers that are not up to par in their eyes, and bosses that don't run things as well as they could. If they don't quit because of any of the above, the know-it-all nature of an intelligent Aspie has been known to upset a few bosses here and there, causing termination of employment. As a result, many have gone through a series of jobs and have had unsatisfactory experiences which get more discouraging as the years pass. — Rudy Simone

It was one of those times when the unsatisfactory complexity of the world fades far enough into the distance for the moment to become a thing in itself. — William Shaw

Taken altogether, Washington as a city is most unsatisfactory, and falls more grievously short of the thing attempted than any other of the great undertakings of which I have seen anything in the United States. — Anthony Trollope

The reader will probably think it very strange that Clare Arden should not have been utterly revolted by the thought that it was possible her kinsman could mean to make a speculation of her, and a mere stepping-stone to fortune. But she was not revolted. She had that personal objection to being married for her money which every woman has; but had not she herself been the heroine of the story, she would rather have felt approval than otherwise for Arthur Arden. What else could he do? she would have said to herself. He could not dig, and begging, even when one is little troubled with shame, is an unsatisfactory maintenance. And if everything could be put right by a suitable marriage, why should not he marry? It was the most natural, the most legitimate way of arranging everything. For the idea itself she had no horror. All she felt was a natural prejudice against being herself the subject of the transaction.{250} — Margaret Oliphant

How often we have had cause to regret that the histrionic art, of all the fine arts the most intense in its immediate effect, should be, of all others, the most transient in its result! - and the only memorials it can leave behind, at best, so imperfect and so unsatisfactory! — Anna Brownell Jameson

Whatever is original in my writing comes from my musical apprenticeship. I look for rhythm in words. I imagine words as if they were musical chords. Often I'll write something, read it, and find it musically unsatisfactory. There is a musical imperative in my choice of words. — Chico Buarque

As Neil Postman said about the scientific view: In the end, science does not provide the answers most of us require. Its story of our origins and our end is, to say the least, unsatisfactory. To the question, "How did it all begin?", science answers, "Probably by an accident." To the question, "How will it all end?", science answers, "Probably by an accident." And to many people, the accidental life is not worth living. (Science and the Story That We Need) — John Eldredge

The [travel] writer, looking back at the journey from a distance of a year or two (or three), is a different character from the hapless character who undertook the trip: wise after the event, with the leisure to tease out meanings from the experience that the distracted traveler never had, and often impatient with his alter ego's blinkered and unsatisfactory version of things. — Jonathan Raban

Formerly ... when he tried to do anything for the good of everybody, for humanity ... for the whole village, he had noticed that the thoughts of it were agreeable, but the activity itself was always unsatisfactory; there was no full assurance that the work was really necessary, and the activity itself, which at first seemed so great, ever lessened and lessened till it vanished. But now ... when he began to confine himself more and more to living for himself, though he no longer felt any joy at the thought of his activity, he felt confident that his work was necessary, saw that it progressed far better than formerly, and that it was always growing more and more. — Leo Tolstoy

You know, friend, this is a goddamn bitch of a unsatisfactory situation. — Annie Proulx

To leave the atom constituted as it was but to interfere with the probability of its undetermined behaviour, does not seem quite so drastic an interference with natural law as other modes of mental interference that have been suggested. (Perhaps that is only because we do not understand enough about these probabilities to realize the heinousness of our suggestion.) Unless it belies its name, probability can be modified in ways which ordinary physical entities would not admit of. There can be no unique probability attached to any event or behaviour; we can only speak of 'probability in the light of certain given information,' and the probability alters according to the extent of the information. It is, I think, one of the most unsatisfactory features of the new quantum theory in its present stage that it scarcely seems to recognize this fact, and leaves us to guess at the basis of information to which its probability theorems are supposed to refer. — Arthur Stanley Eddington

IF YOUR OVERALL SITUATION IS UNSATISFACTORY or unpleasant, separate out this instant and surrender to what is. That's the flashlight cutting through the fog. Your state of consciousness then ceases to be controlled by external conditions. You are no longer coming from reaction and resistance. Then look at the specifics of the situation. Ask yourself, "Is there anything I can do to change the situation, improve it, or remove myself from it?" If so, take appropriate action. Focus not on the hundred things that you will or may have to do at some future time but on the one thing that you can do now. This doesn't mean you should not do any planning. It may well be that planning is the one thing you can do now. But make sure you don't keep running "mental movies" that continually project yourself into the future, and so lose the Now. Any action you take may not bear fruit immediately. Until it does - do not resist what is. — Eckhart Tolle

Clarissa had a theory in those days - they had heaps of theories, always theories, as young people have. It was to explain the feeling they had of dissatisfaction; not knowing people; not being known. For how could they know each other? You met every day; then not for six months, or years. It was unsatisfactory, they agreed, how little one knew people. — Virginia Woolf

For paradise we long. For perfection we were made ... This longing is the source of the hunger and dissatisfaction that mark our lives ... This longing makes our loves and friendships possible, and so very unsatisfactory. The hunger is for ... nothing less than perfect communion with the ... one in whom all the fragments of our scattered existence come together ... we must not stifle this longing. It is a holy dissatisfaction. Such dissatisfaction is not a sickness to be healed, but the seed of a promise to be fulfilled ... The only death to fear is the death of settling for something less. — Richard John Neuhaus

Psychology is a very unsatisfactory science. — Wolfgang Kohler

The effect of emotional venting is to sustain an unsatisfactory status quo. Most people think the opposite, that complaining is part of an effort to change an unsatisfying situation. Nope. Complaining lets off pressure so that we neither explode with frustration nor feel compelled to take the often risky steps of openly opposing a difficult person or situation. Keeping emotional pressure tolerably low doesn't change problematic circumstances but rather perpetuates them. — Martha N. Beck

Not to be content with Life is the unsatisfactory state of those which destroy themselves; who being afraid to live, run blindly upon their own Death, which no Man fears by Experience. — Thomas Browne

Nothing is more dangerous that the politician who uses politics as a surrogate for an unsatisfactory personal life. — Denis Healey

I begin where most people end, with a full conviction of the emptiness of all sorts of ambition, and the unsatisfactory nature of all human pleasures. — Alexander Pope

In physical science a first essential step in the direction of learning any subject is to find principles of numerical reckoning and practicable methods for measuring some quality connected with it. I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be. — Lord Kelvin

I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression. — Edgar Allan Poe

Morse firmly believed that there was nothing so unsatisfactory as this kind of halfway house pornography; he liked it hot or not at all. — Colin Dexter

On scientific grounds this big bang assumption is much less the palatable of the two. For it is an irrational process that cannot be described in scientific terms ... On philosophical grounds too I cannot see any good reason for preferring the big bang idea. Indeed it seems to me in the philosophical sense to be a distinctly unsatisfactory notion, since it puts the basic assumption out of sight where it can never be challenged by a direct appeal to observation. — Fred Hoyle

PRE-ADAMITE, n. One of an experimental and apparently unsatisfactory race of antedated Creation ... Little its known of them beyond the fact that they supplied Cain with a wife and theologians with a controversy. — Ambrose Bierce

I am not very impressed with theological arguments whatever they may be used to support. Such arguments have often been found unsatisfactory in the past. In the time of Galileo it was argued that the texts, 'And the sun stood still ... and hasted not to go down about a whole day' (Joshua x. 13) and 'He laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not move at any time' (Psalm cv. 5) were an adequate refutation of the Copernican theory. — Alan Turing

We are born into a realm of constant change. Everything is decaying. We are continually losing all that we come in contact with. Our tendency to get attached to impermanent experiences causes sorrow, lamentation and grief, because eventually we are separated from everything and everyone we love. Our lack of acceptance and understanding of this fact makes life unsatisfactory. — Noah Levine

If you are in poor health, you can remedy it. If your personal relationships are unsatisfactory, you can change them for the better. If you are in poverty, you can find yourself surrounded by abundance ... Each of you, regardless of position, status, circumstances, or physical condition, is in control or your own experience. — Seth

In the past, [medicalization]has been portrayed as something that doctors inflict on a passive and un-suspecting world - an expansion of the Medical Empire. But in reality, it seems that these reductionist bio-medical stories can appeal to us all, because complex problems often have depressingly-complex causes, and the solutions can be taxing, and unsatisfactory. — Ben Goldacre

Unless an action is rightly thought out and its steps rightly planned, every stage of its performance will probably remain vague and therefore unsatisfactory for the doer and all those concerned. — Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

It is the lack of knowledge of, or the unwillingness to recognise, or the deliberate denial of the existence of the serial bully which is the most common reason for an unsatisfactory outcome for both employee and employer. — Tim Field

The argument had been in full swing when Matthew's father telephoned with the news that a funny turn Matthew's mother had suffered the previous week had been diagnosed as a mini-stroke. After this, she and Matthew felt that squabbling about Strike was in bad taste, so they went to bed in an unsatisfactory state of theoretical reconciliation, both, Robin knew, still seething. It was — Robert Galbraith

Locke had illegitimately selected those parts of man he needed for his social contract and suppressed all the rest, a theoretically unsatisfactory procedure and a practically costly one. The bourgeois is the measure of the price paid, he who most of all cannot afford to look to his real self, who denies the existence of the thinly boarded-over basement in him, who is most made over for the purposes of a society that does not even promise him perfection or salvation but merely buys him off. — Allan Bloom

To change your circumstances, first start thinking differently. Do not passively accept unsatisfactory circumstances, but form a picture in your mind of circumstances as they should be. Believe and succeed. — Norman Vincent Peale

To express dynamic motion through a static moment became for me limited and unsatisfactory. The basic idea was to liberate myself from this old concept and arrive at an image in which the spectator could feel the beauty of a fourth dimension, which lies much more between moments than within a moment. In music one remembers never one tone, but a melody, a theme, a movement. In dance, never a moment, but again the beauty of a movement in time and space. — Ernst Haas

Politics are a very unsatisfactory game. — Henry Adams

This word "description" may be disconcerting when used to refer to what is generally called a translation. But when one wishes to render a verbal creation (as opposed to a didactic statement) from one language to another, he is confronted with two equally unsatisfactory choices. He may, according to his talents, elaborate a similar, but never identical creation, or he may describe that creation as completely as possible in his own language. — Gaston Bachelard

What are called the middle schools is still very unsatisfactory. Few teachers realize that the purpose of teaching history is not the memorizing of some dates and facts, that the student is not interested in knowing the exact date of a battle or the birthday of some marshal or other, and not at all - or at least only very insignificantly - interested in knowing when the crown of his fathers was placed on the brow of some monarch. These are certainly not looked upon as important matters. — Adolf Hitler

Your machinery is beautiful. Your society people have apologized to me for the envious ridicule with which your newspapers have referred to me. Your newspapers are comic but never amusing. Your Water Tower is a castellated monstrosity with pepperboxes stuck all over it. I am amazed that any people could so abuse Gothic art and make a structure not like a water tower but like a tower of a medieval castle. It should be torn down. It is a shame to spend so much money on buildings with such an unsatisfactory result. Your city looks positively dreary. — Oscar Wilde