Whimsical Things Quotes & Sayings

She gave him a whimsical smile. "It was long ago, Your Grace. And I do not hold a grudge. Although I must admit that sometimes, I miss having someone to sleep with."
Reaching out, Sterling trailed his gloved finger along her bare arm. "We could remedy that. Tonight if you like. — Lorraine Heath

For millennia philosophers and saints have tried to reason out a logical scheme for the universe ... until Hilda came along and demonstrated that the universe is not logical but whimsical, its structure depending solely on the dreams and nightmares of non-logical dreamers. — Robert A. Heinlein

The fact that 'A Dirty Job' has comedy and supernatural horror in it, that both are woven in and out of it with a whimsical tone, despite the fact that it's about death, makes it hard to characterize with standard genre labels - but I have no problem with that. I'd call it a funny story about death, and leave it at that. — Christopher Moore

Do you ever think about him?" Elise asks. "The baby?"
I nod slowly. "I wonder how much would have been different, if he'd-"
"Don't say it." There are tears in her eyes. "Let's do it this way, Charlie, all right? Let's just pick one sentence out of all of the ones we should have said
the best, most important sentence
and let's say just that."
This is my old Elise
whimsical, loopy
the one I couldn't help but fall for. And because I know she is sinking in the quicksand of regret just like me, I nod. "Okay. But I go first." I try to remember what it was like to be loved by someone who did not know limits, and had not yet been ruined by that. "I forgive you," I whisper; a gift.
"Oh, Charlie," Elise says, and she gives me one right back. "She turned out absolutely perfect. — Jodi Picoult

Great literature remains great when it says new things to new generations, and the loops of a knot quite nicely parallel the contours and convolutions of Carroll's plot anyway.What's more, he probably would have been delighted at how this whimsical branch of math invaded the real world and became crucial to understanding our biology. — Sam Kean

I have only known two men's souls in my life, one the devil, the other the the bird's wings which picked me up and carried me back to the freedom of being. — Wendy Gibbins

New York remains what it has always been : a city of ebb and flow, a city of constant shifts of population and economics, a city of virtually no rest. It is harsh, dirty, and dangerous, it is whimsical and fanciful, it is beautiful and soaring - it is not one or another of these things but all of them, all at once, and to fail to accept this paradox is to deny the reality of city existence. — Paul Goldberger

It was a marvelous night, the sort of night one only experiences when one is young. The sky was so bright, and there were so many stars that, gazing upward, one couldn't help wondering how so many whimsical, wicked people could live under such a sky. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

I like that 'once upon a time' quality, where the telling of a tale has an elevated sense of story. There's a whimsical quality to it. Sometimes in fairy tales more things seem possible, even though often they're real world based. — Erin Morgenstern

... some of us had built whole careers - pointing out how unfair and whimsical and chaotic the entertainment business was, how it rarely rewarded the truly talented. None of us could see how it never rewarded the inert — Patton Oswalt

Adam had seen many of Ronan's dreams made real by now, and he knew how savage and lovely and terrifying and whimsical they could be. But this girl was the most Ronan of any of them that he's seen. What a frightened monster she was. — Maggie Stiefvater

In all small things be honest and the big ones will take care of themselves. — Rolf Margenau

All I'm saying is, technology can potentially do better than nature because of the very fact that it's not always a matter of life or death. If an organism has been fine-tuned to maximize its overall reproductive success, that's not the same thing as embodying the ideal solution to every individual problem it faces. Evolution appears inventive to us because it's had time to try so many possibilities, but it has no margin at all for real risks, let alone anything truly whimsical. We can celebrate our own beautiful mistakes. All evolution can do is murder them. — Greg Egan

But these people were judged very stupid by their friends. Was not Jonathan Strange known to be precisely the sort of whimsical, contradictory person who would publish against himself? — Susanna Clarke

Whimsical people were the type who got run over by cars without anybody really noticing or caring that much beyond the damage to the vehicle, which was usually minimal anyway, whimsical folk being kind — John Connolly

The times might be unpleasant, repulsive.
The ghastly chaos, the abhorrent uncivility might be intolerable, might force us into argument or leave us panic-stricken.
On such occasions people build within themselves a conviction, that the world outside is diabolical.
The whimsical insults test our level of endurance causing us to plead for mercy, wanting us to be pitied than exploited and victimized.
Often this grief and shame form a delusion within us that there no longer exists good in this world, that good people are fictitious and that goodness has lost its definition altogether.
But such is not true because there are still people who are virtuous, unselfish, willing to help and possessing the ability of restoring our faith in humanity, to disregard them, their presence would be as heinous as the deeds of the people who are unlike them.
The times might be unpleasant, repulsive but we'll come out it, unharmed and liberated. — Chirag Tulsiani

A dragon is a confusion at the heart of things, a law unto himself. He embraces good, evil, and indifference; in his own nature he makes them indivisible and absolute. He knows who he is. Surely you see that... Put it this way. Dragons all love life's finer things- music, art, treasure- the works of the spirit; yet in their personal habits they're foul and bestial- they burn down cathedrals, for instance, and eat maidens- and they see in their whimsical activities no faintest contradiction... Dragons never grow, never change... Believe me, nothing in this world is more despicable than a dragon. They're a walking- or flying- condemnation of all we stand for, all we pray for our children, nay, for ourselves. We struggle to improve ourselves, we tortuously balance on the delicate line between our duties to society and our duties within- our duties to God and our own nature. — John Gardner

I feel free. Like some whimsical child in an enchanted forest, I feel free.
Amazed at the power of the colors that surround me, I feel free. The cool water that quenches my thirst also warms my skin as I bathe, my pores opening to the pleasure of the clear pools embracing my soul. The colors reflect on the mirrored glass that supports me. I can see beauty all around. Here I float, effortlessly, and here I will remain.
I feel free. I make my commitments and my agreements in complete liberation. I love freely, openly, within the bounds of my own moral compass. I give, and I take, learning to do each with equal excitement, with equal vigor.
The odd thing about receiving is how hard it can be. Yet, we owe it to those we love, who love us back, to do just that. Then, we can explore the vibrant colors of our enchanted forests together, and bathe one another in the refreshing springs of nature's own charity.
I love, and therefore am safe in all things. — Tom Grasso

Caves are whimsical things, and geology on a local scale is random and unpredictable. — William Stone

The first books I remember having an impact on me when I was a kid were L. Frank Baum's 'Oz' books, which were much stranger than the movie: at once rather whimsical and really dark. — Steve Erickson

Everyone has stories of the small coincidence by which their parents met or their grandmother was saved from fire or their grandfather from the grenade, of the choice made by the most whimsical means that led to everything else, whether you're blessed or cursed or both. Trace it back far enough and this very moment in your life becomes a rare species, the result of a strange evolution, a butterfly that should already be extinct and survives by the inexplicabilities we call coincidence. The word is often used to mean the accidental but literally means to fall together. The patterns of our lives come from those things that do not drift apart but move together for a little while, like dancers. — Rebecca Solnit

Life is so whimsical, for some people better than others — Miguel El Portugues

(Uncle) would remark that it was impossible to get by without such a (portentous and whimsical) tone when speaking of many things of this world, and especially of the things not entirely of this world. — Vladimir Odoevsky

But I'd done what I could to warm the place up. I'd started with a welcome mat. It had a happy face on it and was bright and colorful. It didn't say "Welcome." It said "!!!WELCOME!!!"
I knew he wouldn't like it. I considered it more of an amusing test to see how open he was to change. He'd let me move in with him, but how flexible was he really willing to be?
It disappeared the day after I placed it by the front door. It was just
poof!
gone. When I imagined the shocked look on his face when he would have first seen it, a spot of wacky and whimsical color in his otherwise monochromatic world, I started to laugh hysterically. — Michelle Rowen

She knew how to hit to a hair's breadth that moment of evening when the light and the darkness are so evenly balanced that the constraint of day and the suspense of night neutralize each other, leaving absolute mental liberty ... At times her whimsical fancy would intensify natural processes around her till they seemed a part of her own story. Rather they became a part of it; for the world is only a psychological phenomenon, and what they seemed, they were. The midnight airs and gusts, moaning amongst the tightly wrapped buds and bark of the winter twigs, were formulae of bitter reproach. A wet day was the expression of irremediable grief at her weakness in the mind of some vague ethical being whom she could not class definitely as the God of her childhood, and could not comprehend as any other. — Thomas Hardy

she must, Anna thought, need to sleep with some kind of pads over them to keep her eyeballs moist. Whatever nose had once sat in the middle of her face had melted into a small, pug-like muzzle, while oversized cheek implants added an almost whimsical touch of chipmunk. Lips too lush for even a twenty-year-old were the finishing touch, ballooning out from her face, turning up at the ends, and making a normal chin look weak and recessive atop a tight, corded neck. The Joker, Anna thought. The thick curls of a platinum wig tumbled about this hodgepodge of readjusted features, undoubtedly hiding a hairline a good five — Suzanne Munshower

There was a time when our minds were always on a roll. We used boxes and sticks to become astronauts and artists. We created fantasy characters and outrageous worlds. We drew whimsical pictures and cooked up wild ideas. We were complete originals. — Tom Asacker

and were willing to suffer pain if necessary." A young woman in the spring and summer of 1967 was walking toward a door just as that door was springing open. A stage was set for her adulthood that was so accommodatingly extreme - so whimsical, sensual, and urgent - that behavior that in any other era would carry a penalty for the daring was shielded and encouraged. There was safety in numbers for every gorgeous madness; good girls wanting to be bad hadn't had so much cover since the Jazz Age. San Francisco - glowing with psychedelic mystique, the whole city plastered with Fillmore and Avalon posters of tangle-haired goddess girls - was preparing for a convocation (of hapless runaways from provincial suburbs, it would turn out), the Summer of Love, through which the term "flower children" would be coined, while in harsh, emotion-sparking contrast, helicopters were dropping thousands of U.S. boys into the swamps of Vietnam. — Sheila Weller

I still like to live in a whimsical world that seems more romantic and fantasy-related because real life seems so hard — Taylor Swift

Treatment of the apparently whimsical fluctuations of the stock quotations as truly non stationary processes requires a model of such complexity that its practical value is likely to be limited. An additional complication, not encompassed by most stock market models, arises from the manifestation of the market as a nonzero sum game. — Richard Arnold Epstein

Today it's economically crucial and personally rewarding to create something that is also beautiful, whimsical, or emotionally engaging. — Daniel H. Pink

Daisy Bowman, Lillian's young sister, had an out-sized personality that belied her small, slight frame. Idealistic and possessed of a decidedly whimsical bent, she devoured romantic novels populated with rogues and villains. However, Daisy's elfin facade concealed a shrewd intelligence that most people tended to overlook. She was fair-skinned and dark-haired, with eyes the color of spiced gingerbread... mischievous eyes with long, spiky lashes. — Lisa Kleypas

There is indeed a great deal of futility amongst the human race which we do not commonly see, for it all forms part of our illusion; but let a man be much annoyed by something that others do, so that he is separated from them and has to leave them, and looks back at what they are doing, and he'll see at once all manner of whimsical absurdities that he had not noticed before; and Ramon Alonzo in the shade of his oak, waiting for the noon to go by, grew very contemptuous of the attitude that the world took up towards shadows. — Lord Dunsany

The rugs that I picked out and the pillows with the little owls, sort of like whimsical throw pillows - I feel like you can never enough whimsical throw pillows in your house, in your life. My husband probably disagrees. — Busy Philipps

Ahhhh ... I see. I think. Perhaps I don't. It may be easier to grasp if you presented it in a musical format. A lyrical song or two, accompanied by a whimsical dance to interpret the words. — Nicole Sager

Richard Rohr says the skills that take you through the first half of your life are entirely unhelpful for the second half. To press the point a little bit: those skills I developed that supposedly served me well for the first half, as I inspect them a little more closely, didn't actually serve me at all. They made me responsible and capable and really, really tired. They made me productive and practical, and inch by inch, year by year, they moved me further and further from the warm, whimsical person I used to be . . . and I missed her. The — Shauna Niequist

There is only one way to be relieved from her service: death. I would like to avoid it." "I see. You wouldn't happen to have some wildly irrational reason for doing all this, would you? I love acts of futile insolence. They're so whimsical!" Trying not to sound like a pansy, he admitted, "I no longer wish to kill for her." "A vampire who doesn't want to ... kill? You don't want to - " Cimil broke off, laughing hysterically. "That totally qualifies! — Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

At times her whimsical fancy would intensify natural processes around her till they seemed a part of her own story. Rather they became a part of it; for the world is only a psychological phenomenon, and what they seemed they were. — Thomas Hardy

From all we have said about plotting in general it should be evident that even in those modern plots in which events happen by laws not immediately visible, as when, for instance, the tattooed man in the circus reveals in the course of a whimsical conversation that he has on his chest a tattoo of the little girl now looking at him, a child he has never before seen, or as when, in Isak Dinesen, a decorous old nun turns abruptly into a monkey
there must be some rational or poetically persuasive basis. — John Gardner

All the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal ... But with each passing year, and with each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more and more able to articulate who we are, whether we read the books or not. — Nick Hornby

The reindeer are immortal. They are, in fact, the eight demiurges of reindeer-kind, and this accounts for their flying. Their names might sound whimsical, but they are the closest the human tongue can come to approximating the true names of the caribou lords. Rudolph, far from being the adorable, earnest fellow of the tale, is in fact Ruyd-al-Olafforid, the All-Destroying Flame of the Yukon. His mother was Kali and his father was an ice floe. His nose appears red because his body is full of coals, and his eyes flare with a terrible conflagration of the soul. The tips of his antlers are like candles in the snowy wind. He is not vengeful, but he is the light in the dark of winter, consuming and giving life at the same time. Your carrots only make the lord of flame stronger. — Catherynne M Valente

For if the modern mind is whimsical and discursive, the classical mind is narrow, unhesitating, relentless. It is not a quality of intelligence that one encounters frequently these days. But though I can digress with the best of them, I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive. — Donna Tartt

There is indeed no such thing in life as absolute darkness; one's eyes revolt and hasten to fill the vacuum by floating in sparks, dream patterns, figures whimsical and figures grotesque, shifting and clad in complementary colors, to appease the indignant cups and rods of the retina. — Gelett Burgess

A suspicion that lightness is not deeply serious (but instead whimsical) pervades aesthetic discourse. But what if lightness is a philosophical choice to temper reality with strangeness, to temper the intellect with emotion, and to temper emotion with humor. — Sarah Ruhl

Life really is a most whimsical thing. While we consistently try and chart its route, it goes ahead and takes its own turn. Just follow the paths it lays out before you. And you may find, at some sudden turn, a miracle waiting just for you. — Jyoti Arora

Lettering creates readable art that comes to life, displaying a quirky, whimsical nature. — Peggy Dean

Barnet was a man with a rich capacity for misery, and there is no doubt that he exercised it to its fullest extent now. The events that had, as it were, dashed themselves together into one half-hour of this day showed that curious refinement of cruelty in their arrangement which often proceeds from the bosom of the whimsical god at other times known as blind Circumstance. That his few minutes of hope, between the reading of the first and second letters, had carried him to extraordinary heights of rapture was proved by the immensity of his suffering now. The sun blazing into his face would have shown a close watcher that a horizontal line, which had never been seen before, but which was never to be gone thereafter, was somehow gradually forming itself in the smooth of his forehead. His eyes, of a light hazel, had a curious look which can only be described by the word bruised; the sorrow that looked from them being largely mixed with the surprise of a man taken unawares. — Thomas Hardy

And why does it make you sad to see how everything hangs by such thin and whimsical threads? Because you're a dreamer, an incredible dreamer, with a tiny spark hidden somewhere inside you which cannot die, which even you cannot kill or quench and which tortures you horribly because all the odds are against its continual burning. In the midst of the foulest decay and putrid savagery, this spark speaks to you of beauty, of human warmth and kindness, of goodness, of greatness, of heroism, of martyrdom, and it speaks to you of love. — Eldridge Cleaver