A Quote by Elsa Maxwell

Under pressure, people admit to murder, setting fire to the village church or robbing a bank, but never to being bores.

Elsa Maxwell

Quote Topics

Admit Bank Being Bores Church Fire Murder Never People Pressure Robbing Setting Under Pressure Village

Quote Author

Elsa Maxwell
American - Writer
May 24, 1883 - November 1, 1963

We do not admit the authority of the church with respect to its pretended infallibility, its manufactured miracles, its setting itself up to forgive sins. It was by propagating that belief and supporting it with fire that she kept up her temporal power.

Thomas Paine

If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.

Thomas de Quincey

Not everybody fantasizes about robbing a bank, but I think most people have that fantasy of being in a high speed chase.

Edgar Wright

Fire is a speed reader, which is why the ignorant burn books: fire races through pages, takes care of all the knowledge, and never bores you with a summary.

Elizabeth McCracken

I never, in all my life, had anything whatever to do with robbing any bank in the state of Missouri.

Cole Younger

Fight fire with fire. If you must have bores, always put them together or at the same table ... bores have an effervescent chemical reaction on one another at a party. They invariably have a marvelous time trading banalities in the absence of competition. Clichés roll trippingly off the tongue like sparkling epigrams and trite observations acquire depth sinking into receptive minds.

Elsa Maxwell

What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?

Bertolt Brecht

I would never commit the positively anti-social action of robbing a bank, or worse still, working in one.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

People love to admit they have bad handwriting or that they can't do math. And they will readily admit to being awkward: 'I'm such a klutz!' But they will never admit to having a poor sense of humor or being a bad driver.

George Carlin

My take on tithing in America is that it's a middle-class way of robbing God. Tithing to the church and spending the rest on your family is not a Christian goal. It's a diversion. The real issue is: How shall we use God's trust fund-namely, all we have-for His glory? In a world with so much misery, what lifestyle should we call our people to live? What example are we setting?

John Piper

English people ... never speak, excepting in cases of fire or murder, unless they are introduced.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

I can't think of any bank robbery comedy where it's about two normal guys. It's kind of like Superbad meets Heat, which is a cool combo, and it's just fun doing a normal guy that's robbing a bank.

Aziz Ansari

Progress is born of doubt and inquiry. The Church never doubts, never inquires. To doubt is heresy, to inquire is to admit that you do not know—the Church does neither.

Robert Green Ingersoll

Men ablaze are invincible. Hell trembles when men kindle. The stronghold of Satan is proof against everything but fire. The Church is powerless without the flame of the Holy Ghost. Destitute of fire, nothing else really counts; possessed of fire, nothing else really matters. The one vital need is fire. Without the flame and fervour of the Holy Ghost the Church will never accomplish its mission.