Quotes & Sayings About Whimsy

Sun-struck,
stuck in mid tropic strut, it sometimes stands
as if considering how to cool avian plastic,
dive into the mown lagoon of lawn;
how take flight on dayglow flap-
doodle wings, no matter
if it is ball-bald going nowhere fast. — Joyce Thomas

"And in the process," Morpheus says from beside the fireplace, "you'll destroy some of her best qualities."
Mom and Ivory glance at him, as if taken aback to hear those words coming from his lips.
He sits hard on the chaise lounge, wings draped over the back, then slouches with elbows on knees. The silvery flames flicker across his bejeweled face. "What of her whimsy and curiosity, her compassion and loyalty? Her imagination, her dreams. These are all part of her humanness." — A.G. Howard

A trail made of pine needles and thistles leads you into the green darkness. The canopy casts shadows on old oaks and dogwoods, and you think you can smell the sour breath of a witch behind you. The wind sighs like a sleeping girl, carrying her bittersweet dreams along the paths to attract any man willing to look for thorn-covered castles. A wolf darts between fallen, rotted wood; maybe he's the one who can tell you where your heart is, how you're still breathing. — Kimberly Karalius

I made a sorry face in response to such strong insistence, but I couldn't believe him. Fantasies were exactly that.. ... ..fantasies. Whimsy. Wishes. Mere castles in the sky without foundation or substance. Dreams didn't come true. To believe so would be to believe falsely, to surrender to madness, to give in to an unreliable hope that would crush me once again as it always, always did! — Richelle E. Goodrich

You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life. — Mary Oliver

Make no investment in the whimsy of others. — MW Kennard

You mere device," he gnarled. "You platitude! Your Gollux ex machina! — James Thurber

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

We must leave Christmas to be what it is, for to reduce it to the stuff of myth and whimsy is take the single and sole hope of a dying humanity and obliterate it. And I would contend that such an action is insanity of the greatest sort. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

I think shoppers are looking for newness and creativity. Look at C. Wonder, for instance. They're dancing in our stores. We don't believe in retail like retail was done in the past. We believe in disrupting the whole environment, offering them amazing value in an amazing package of fun, excitement and whimsy. — J. Christopher Burch

Living a life fully engaged and full of whimsy and the kind of things that love does is something most people plan to do, but along the way they just kind of forget. Their dreams become one of those "we'll go there next time" deferrals. The sad thing is, for many there is no "next time" because passing on the chance to cross over is an overall attitude toward life rather than a single decision. — Bob Goff

Frowning, Lillian stared at her sister's small ivory face, with its intelligent dark eyes and brows that were a shade too strongly marked. Not for the first time, she wondered how it was that the person most willing to join her reckless adventures was also the one who could most easily recall her to reason. Many people were often deceived by Daisy's frequent moments of whimsy, never suspecting the bedrock of ruthless common sense beneath the elfin facade. — Lisa Kleypas

I don't belong there."
"You do. Because of who you are. WHAT you are. One half brimming with dark curiosities and a fierce appetite for all things mad. But the other half whimsy and light - filled with courage and loyalty."
He bites his lower lip, a gesture so minute I might've imagined it.
"Nothing can break the chains you have on my heart. For you ARE Wonderland."
-Unhinged, pg 179 — A.G. Howard

We shouldn't be afraid to embrace whimsy, that nagging idea that life could be magical; it could be special if we were only willing to take a few risks. — Donald Miller

In harmony there is nothing strange. And life is a vast harmony. I've understood this. But, you see- the moulded whimsy of a frieze on a portico keeps us from recognizing, sometimes, the symmetry of the whole ... — Vladimir Nabokov

Living a life fully engaged in full of whimsy and the kind of things that love does is something most people plan to do, but along the way they just kind of forget. — Bob Goff

To have endured all the horrors he did, to have seen the worst of humanity and have your life made unrecognizable by it, to come out of all that the honorable and brave and good person I knew him to be - *that* was magical. — Ransom Riggs

When wisdom gives way to whimsy and ethics fall to excitement, it is highly likely that the ground beneath me will 'give way' and it is I who will 'fall. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

She's one of those soppy girls, riddled from head to foot with whimsy. She holds the view that the stars are God's daisy chain, that rabbits are gnomes in attendance on the Fairy Queen, and that every time a fairy blows its wee nose a baby is born, which, as we know, is not the case. She's a drooper. — P.G. Wodehouse

The word quirky is so much more loathed than the word whimsy that it does not bear the time it would require to dissect its horrors. The choice to have a perceptible aesthetic at all is often called a quirk. The word quirky suggests that in a homogenized culture, difference has to be immediately defined, sequestered, and formally quarantined while being gently patted on the head. — Sarah Ruhl

When I am old and addled I will make coronets like Cad, that have nothing to do with history, but represent the whimsy and cobwebs in my brain. — Sherri Baldy

You want to hear a riddle, you say? I know a very good one. It begins, why is a raven like a writing desk?'
She lifted her chin. 'Have you gone mad, Hatta? I can't seem to tell.'
'They are both so full of poetry, you see. Darkness and whimsy, nightmares and song. — Marissa Meyer

As if the whimsy of chugging through a gargantuan slice of watermelon wasn't enough, you can actually smell the mouthwatering scent of watermelon as you breeze through it. The box of animal crackers that you travel through smells of vanilla cookies-- always a soothing scent--and a giant gnawed apple exudes an apple fragrance as you pass. — Leslie Le Mon

Having the rug pulled from under one, and flying magic carpets -- cousin events? — Leslie Miklosy

They are lovely pigeons to look at and their eyes are full of lessons to learn.."
They came back yesterday, they came back home," was the answer. "They came back limping on their feet with their toes turned in so far they nearly turned backward.
Every day the last six days I get a telegram, six telegrams from six pigeons
and at last they come home. — Carl Sandburg

His soul was susceptible to god's whimsy, just as his body was susceptible to any opportunistic thing that might hurt it. If he'd known how to pray, Six would have asked God to take his gift away. — Ayana Mathis

...a totally dried noose for one is to another an integrated text adept at the cards that ruin whimsy... — Peter Ganick

And, as Rhonda told the story, she thought: this is how the past gets passed down. This is how memories are made. Half-invented, embellished, given a touch of whimsy. — Jennifer McMahon

Herein find fiction full of whimsy, wit, hurt, and terror. Wicked, as in wickedly funny, is in the mix, too, along with a prose style both seductive and sly. Any one of Doug Watson's first collection of stories, The Era of Not Quite, can mend a broken world. — Christine Schutt

The kitchen door, painted red from the day Naomi moved in, and a geranium, also red, outside on the stoop, gave the whole area a feeling of whimsy. — Suzanne Palmieri

Because hope is a knife that can cut through the foundations of the world, said Sumi. Her voice was suddenly crystalline and clear, with none of her prior whimsy. She looked at Nancy with calm, steady eyes. Hope hurts. That's what you need to learn, and fast, if you don't want it to cut you open from the inside out. Hope is bad. Hope means you keep on holding to things that won't ever be so again, and so you bleed an inch at a time until there's nothing left. Ely-Eleanor is always saying 'don't use this word' and 'don't use that word,' but she never bans the ones that really bad. She never bans hope. — Seanan McGuire

Artists know that you can take an advertising sign and make something joyful with it. It's sometimes hard for people who don't make things to understand labor and joy and attention and whimsy. — Ellen Gallagher

I always like hair being a little messy because I think there's something appealing about the whimsy of putting on a gown with any hair or make-up - just stepping into it, and you're ready. — Blake Lively

Show me the telegrams they sent you, one every day for six days while they were walking six hundred miles on their pigeon toes."
..
1. Feet are as good as wings if you have to. Chickamauga ...
3. In the night sleeping you forget whether you have wings or feet or neither. Chattahoochee ...
6. Pity me. Far is far. Near is near. and there is no place like home when the yellow roses climb up the ladders and sing in the early summer. Pity me. Wednesday Evening In The Twilight And The Gloaming.
..
Well, Wednesday Evening was the only one I noticed making any mention of the yellow roses in her telegram," Hatrack the Horse explained.
Then the old man and the girl sat on the cracker box saying nothing, only listening to the yellow roses all on fire with early summer climbing up th ecrooked ladders, up and down and crossways, some of them leaning out and curving and nearly falling. — Carl Sandburg

Gene Wolfe has produced a work of art that can satisfy adult appetites and in which even the most fantastical elements register as poetry rather than as penny-whistle whimsy. — Thomas M. Disch

With this blistering salvo of poetic gutshots Lawson has proven himself Bizarro's true bard, its mad laureate. Switching from dark whimsy to retina-blast shock to political outrage without missing a beat, The Troublesome Amputee is a powerful collection of pitch-black verse. — Jeremy Robert Johnson

In I Praise My Destroyer, Diane Ackerman demonstrates once again her love for the specific language that rises from the juncture of self and the natural world, and her skillful use of that language. Whether she turns her attention to the act of eating an apricot 'the color of shame and dawn,' or to 'the omnipotence of light,' or to grief when 'All the greens of summer have blown apart,' her linking of unique images, her energetic wit and whimsy, her compassionate investment in life, always bring new pleasures and perceptions to the reader. — Pattiann Rogers

My parents were supportive of my creativity but did not have a lot of patience for whimsy with zero production value. They had stuff to do. — Mindy Kaling

My personal decorating style is cozy, romantic and a little rustic, with a sense of whimsy. — Kimberly Schlapman

Will you treat people who make you miserable, as prison guards, or travel agents? — Leslie Miklosy

Creativity does not belong exclusively to professional artists and geniuses; it is the birthright of every single human being. Creativity is our common heritage. You don't need to quit your job and move to Paris in order to lay claim to this heritage - all you have to do is clear some space in your life for whimsy, invention, sensory pleasure, and play. Most of all, you have to learn how to follow your curiosity more than your fear. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Whimsy doesn't care if you are the driver or the passenger; all that matters is that you are on your way. — Bob Goff

Most people don't see the edginess in my work. They think it's all fantasy and whimsy. — Niki De St. Phalle

Despite the sisters' pretend rivalry and occasional squabbles, they were each other's staunchest ally and closest friend. Few people in Lillian's life had ever loved her except Daisy, who adored the ugliest stray dogs, the most annoying children, and things that needed to be repaired or thrown out altogether.
And yet for all their closeness, they were quite different. Daisy was an idealist, a dreamer, a mercurial creature who alternated between childlike whimsy and shrewd intelligence. Lillian knew herself to be a sharp-tongued girl with a fortress of defenses between herself and the rest of the world- a girl with well-maintained cynicism and a biting sense of humor. — Lisa Kleypas

I think a band that doesn't have a sense of humor can come up with their own take on whimsy.Kind of lead-footed and ham-handed, but I think just all the better for that. — Michael McKean

To her amazement, snow began to fall. Paper snowflakes cascaded through the air, some as small as Ceony's thumbnail, some as large as her hand. Hundreds of them poured down as the paper ceiling gave way, all somehow timed just right so that they fell like real snow. Ceony stood from her chair, laughing, and held out her hand to catch one. To her astonishment it felt cold, but didn't melt against her palm. Only tingled.
"When did you do this?" she asked, her breath fogging in the library's air as more snowflakes fell like crisp confetti from the ceiling. "This would take . . . ages to make."
"Not ages," Mg. Thane said. "You'll get quicker as you learn." He still sat on the floor, completely unfazed by the magic around him. But of course he would be - it was his creation. "Magician Aviosky mentioned you hadn't exactly jumped at the news of your assignment, and I can't blame you. But casting through paper has its own whimsy. — Charlie N. Holmberg

Every girl needs a bit of whimsy to remind her that life is a game and it's all about having fun. — Candace Havens

His stride was long, tall, and proud. He wore a mask of proprietary disinterest, as though everything before his eyes belonged to him and his whimsy. He looked arrogant.
He fit right in. — S.G. Night

TIME IS THE ONLY TRUE GOD, AND I AM FOREVER. THEREFORE, I AM GOD.
Your logic is flawed. Time is not forever. It is always. Past, Present, and Future. There was a time in the past when you did not exist. Therefore, you are not God.
I CREATE. I DESTROY.
With the whimsy of a spoiled child.
YOU FAIL TO DIVINE THE MASTER DESIGN. EVEN THAT WHICH YOU CALL CHAOS HAS PATTERN AND PURPOSE. — Karen Marie Moning

This is truly marvelous work full of mystery, nostalgia, joy, The Color of Whimsy. — Pete Hamill

The reader feels as if he is in Chongjin, where starving people ate the bark off trees; or atop Mount Taesong with the elite of Pyongyang, whose existence is a mix of sadism and whimsy; or with the masses who are bombarded day and night with the propaganda of North Korea's alternate reality. — Adam Johnson

A folktale without a moral is merely a whimsy. — Stephen Sondheim

Be fun! I don't like homes or rooms that don't have a sense of humor or have some sense of whimsy or a personality. Your home should reflect who you are, and what you love. I would never have something in my home because it's the thing to have. I have to love it and it needs some connection to me. — Bryan Batt

Whimsy is fate, too: just less knowable. — Gregory Maguire

There is only one invitation it would kill me to refuse, yet I'm tempted to turn it down all the time. I get the invitation every morning when I wake up to actually live a life of complete engagement, a life of whimsy, a life where love does. — Bob Goff

So I began, feeling as if I was some elf in a Grim fairy tale climbing the corporate ladder of darkest whimsy, yet somewhere at the top lies the treasure of a pure maiden's heart. Therefore it was my duty to do whatever it might take to win that pure maiden's heart by returning that treasure to her hand. By the way, Spicoli, in the movie Fast Times at Ridge Mont High, said that people on ludes shouldn't drive, that being shortly after crashing a car while he was high on ludes. Therefore, I will say this in advance, people still half drunk and stoned probably shouldn't climb trees either. — Andrew James Pritchard

There can be many reasons to travel, but wandering into the world for no particular reason is a sublime madness, which in all its whimsy and pointlessness may depict the story of life - and indeed could be a useful model to keep in mind, seeing as so much of life's ambition comes unstuck or leads to nothing much at all. — Michael Leunig

How oft do they rescue or ruin us, through whimsy or design or a combination of both, the adults to whom we entrust our care! — Rick Yancey

Some of my favorite poets had a tremendous sense of whimsy, so it's a writing style I guess I admire. — Jewel

As might be expected, he was given to bouts of very purposeful ignorance, and tended to pass over the harsher truths of human nature in favor of those that could be romanticized by whimsy and imagination. — Eleanor Catton

Look after the senses and the sounds will look after themselves — Lewis Carroll

In the silence, she felt the past and the present shift and mix, but that was a mirage. There was no way to comfort the lost boy he'd been back then.
But she had the grown male.
She had him right in her arms, and for a brief moment of whimsy, she imagined that she was never, ever going to let him go. — J.R. Ward

My knowledge of Mr. Forster's works is limited to one novel which I dislike; and anyway it was not he who fathered that trite little whimsy about characters getting out of hand; it is as old as the quills, although of course one sympathizes with his people if they try to wriggle out of that trip to India or whereever he takes them. My characters are galley slaves. — Vladimir Nabokov

There are many Green Dragons in this world of wayside inns, even as there are many White Harts, Red Lions, Silent Women and other incredible things ... — William Henry Hudson

You must understand something, George. The world's leaders create catastrophes and resolve them
all at their own whimsy
every single day. It is how the world runs. Lacking anything else to believe in, common people need to believe in their leaders' abilities to save them. It's true! Their emotional well-being
and yes, their fate
depends on the intelligence and skill of those who manipulate the days' disasters. And it should go without saying that the one who succeeds in taking the reins of leadership
by whatever means
is the most intelligent and skillful, and therefore most qualified to lead. — Trenton Lee Stewart

Being engaged is a way of doing life, a way of living and loving. It's about going to extremes and expressing the bright hope that life offers us, a hope that makes us brave and expels darkness with light. That's what I want my life to be all about - full of abandon, whimsy, and in love. — Bob Goff

If God brings our pets back to life, it wouldn't surprise me. It would be just like Him. It would be totally in keeping with His generous character ... Exorbitant. Excessive. Extravagant in grace after grace. Of all the dazzling discoveries and ecstatic pleasures heaven will hold for us, the potential of seeing Scrappy would be pure whimsy-utterly, joyfully, surprisingly superfluous ... Heaven is going to be a place that will refract and reflect in as many ways as possible the goodness and joy of our great God, who delights in lavishing love on His children. — Joni Eareckson Tada

Clear your mind of whimsy — Maggie Stiefvater

On a certain day in the blue-moon month of September
Beneath a young plum tree, quietly
I held her there, my quiet, pale beloved
In my arms just like a graceful dream.
And over us in the beautiful summer sky
There was a cloud on which my gaze rested
It was very white and so immensely high
And when I looked up, it had disappeared. — Bertolt Brecht

More than whimsy, joy is a weapon we use to fight life's battles. — Margaret Feinberg

You see - the moulded whimsy of a frieze
on a portico keeps us from recognizing,
sometimes, the symmetry of the whole ...
You will leave; we'll forget one another;
but now and then the name of a street,
or a street organ weeping in the twilight,
will remind us in a more vivid and more
truthful way than thought could resurrect
or words convey, of that main thing
which was between us, the main thing which
we do not know ... And in that hour, the soul
will miraculously sense the charm
of past trifles, and we will understand
that in eternity all is eternal — Vladimir Nabokov

There's no backward and no forward, no day other than this. You fill your cart as you go, and that's that. — John Burnham Schwartz

You do. Because of who you are. What you are. One half brimming with dark curiosities and a fierce appetite for all things mad. But the other half whimsy and light - filled with courage and loyalty. — A.G. Howard

I have a good sense of humor. I think everything we do should have whimsy in it. — Judith Leiber

In this movie, you have all the things you love from Tim. All the magic and the whimsy and the surreal, but he also has a fantastic story of a father and son that really gets under your skin. — Danny DeVito

Writing novels is largely about endurance and patience. I take a lot of breaks, hit walls, and go do something else while I think things through. But I do it every day, and I try to treat it as a job, something that is not dictated by whimsy or muses. — Adam Mansbach

I really like the stuff that is very absurd and very real at the same time. I think Anton Chekhov is the greatest comedy writer of all time. I think he would make a great addition to The Office staff. If you look through Chekhov plays there is a lot of awkward pauses in there. His mixture of pathos, absurdity, truthfulness and whimsy is just mixed together perfectly. — Rainn Wilson

I must go
the aunts will be worried. Guy, I don't know if we will meet again, but
" Her voice broke and she tried again. "Sometimes, when you're alone and you look up at
" Once more, she had to stop. Then she managed, "If I cannot be anything else ... could I be your Star Sister? Could I at least be that?"
Guy dug his nails into his palms. Everything in him rose in protest at the fey, romantic conceit. He did not want her in the heavens, linked to him by some celestial whimsy, but here and now in the flesh and after the death of the flesh, her hand in his as they rose from graves like these when the last trump sounded.
"Yes," he managed to say. "You can be my Star Sister. You can at least be that. — Eva Ibbotson

To have endured horrors, to have seen the worst of humanity and have your life made unrecognizable by it, to come out of all that honorable and brave - that was magical. — Ransom Riggs

Pity." The elder gentleman sniffed. "Sad, really. Names are very important." "It's a matter of taste, surely." "Nothing of the sort," replied the elder Cosimo. "People get named all sorts of things - that I will concede. Whimsy, ignorance, sudden inspiration - all play a part. But if anyone guessed how monumentally important it was, the process would be taken a lot more seriously. — Stephen R. Lawhead

The dark ages are obscure but they were not weird. Magicians there were, to be sure, and miracles. In the flickering firelight of the winter hearth, mead songs were sung of dragons and ring-givers, of fell deeds and famine, of portents and vengeful gods. Strange omens in the sky were thought to foretell evil times. But in a world where the fates seemed to govern by whimsy and caprice, belief in sympathetic magic, superstition and making offerings to spirits was not much more irrational than believing in paper money: trust is an expedient currency. There were charms to ward of dwarfs, water-elf disease and swarms of bees; farmers recited spells against cattle thieves and women knew of potions to make men more - or less - virile. Soothsayers, poets and those who remembered the genealogies of kings were held in high regard. The past was an immense source of wonder and inspiration, of fear and foretelling. — Max Adams

There is humor that's just whimsy, that we smile at, but the humor that we laugh at, someone has to be - someone's dignity has to be reduced. — Robert Mankoff

A girl never can predict who might wander into her boudoir during a bubble bath. — John Burnham Schwartz

Cast aside those who liken godliness to whimsy and who try to combine their greed for wealth with their desire for a happy afterlife. — Khalil

Lacking stamina, it became a withering whimsy of a flirtation. — Lisa Genova

Did you name your pigeons with names?" asked Wiffle (the Chick).
These three, the sandy and golden brown, all named themselves by where they came from. This is Chickamauga, here is Chattanooga, and this is Chattahoochee. And the other three all got their names from me when I was feeling high and easy. This is Blue Mist, here is Bubbles, and last of all take a look at Wednesday Evening in the Twilight and the Gloaming."
Do you always call her Wednesday Evening in the Twilight and the Gloaming?"
Not when I am making coffee from breakfast. If I am making coffee for breakfast then I just call her Wednesday Evening. — Carl Sandburg

Your window square a yellow kite, and the Moon a white balloon — John Geddes

I love whimsy. My mother was a word person, a real quipster. She was famous in the 1950s for being a contester in Utah: 25 words or less. My bicycle, our hi-fi ... in 1959, she won $15,000 from Remington-Rand for writing about a shaver. She was a farm girl from South Dakota. — Ron Carlson

Romance is like maintaining a car. If you do a good job of it, you will always have a dependable quiet ride. — T.R. Wallace

Are things moral simply because God says so? Or does God give certain orders because they are inherently moral? This is the question at the core of Plato's Euthyphro dilemma, a problem that lies at the heart of religious debates about the divinity of moral authority (4). If morality exists separate from God's will, there is no reason to rely on God for moral behavior; one could have moral standards independently without divine feedback. On the other hand, if God creates morality simply by saying whether something is right or wrong, then that's not really morality; it's arbitrariness. Morality would become nothing more than the whimsy of a divine being blindly followed by humans. — Armin Navabi

We had each of us some whimsy in the brain, which we believed more than anything else, and which discoloured all experience to its own shade. — Robert Louis Stevenson

The world begins again. Humanity owes its existence to a bit of cosmic whimsy. To a rock. It — Rick Yancey

Driving home I switch on the radio and one of those old Motown voices comes on and reaches my heart. — Ellen Van Neerven

Magic is an exercise of a pattern of thought (sometimes represented by a gesture, ritual, or the calling of a true name) that results in manifestation/s. But these patterns of thought can have so much to do with whimsy that magic often is jokes. — Helen Oyeyemi

Songs are built by whimsy, faulty memory, and free association. — Sting

If someone opens a glorious Scotch or a bottle of wine, it's no more than a whimsy, but after nearly 40 years I'm used to it. I don't find it difficult not being drunk when other people are, but I get uncomfortable because they're uncomfortable with where I am. — Martin Shaw

Modernism isn't a design ethos any more, it's an economy of scale, and a marketing tool to sell the ordinary as something special, the sexless as erotic. A technological device without a specific, personalized identity has a subtext: it asserts the value of instrumentality. Its design is a reflection of its role ... The anonymity of these objects is part of what they are: interchangeable commodities whose uniqueness in so far as they possess any is created by what is done with them. Function is an identity. And that identity is something we are encouraged to incorporate into our perception of self, that anonymity is proposed as something to emulate. Whimsy and uniqueness are indulgences. — Nick Harkaway

The English probably do that wordplay kind of humour and whimsy better than anyone, and I've always felt that my writing goes more to that than what I did when I came to Australia. — Graeme Base

Those who shun the whimsy of things will experience rigor mortis before death. — Tom Robbins

Despite Tub's eye wound he never so much as stumbled, and I felt for the first time that we knew and understood each other; I sensed in him a desire to improve himself, which perhaps was whimsy or wishful thinking on my part, but such are the musings of the traveling man. The — Patrick DeWitt