A Quote by Fernando Pessoa

Only sterility is noble and dignified. Only killing what never was is elevated and perverse and absurd.

Fernando Pessoa

Quote Topics

Absurd Elevated Killing Never Noble Only Perverse

Quote Author

Fernando Pessoa
Portuguese - Author
June 13, 1888 - November 30, 1935

Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down... Why do we laugh? Because it is a grave religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Perfection does not consist in macerating or killing the body, but in killing our perverse self-will.

St. Catherine of Siena

As soon as an American man loves a girl he wants to marry her. This is not only a blunder but it is rather absurd. It is so typical of American men, always wanting to do the noble thing.

Helen Lawrenson

The civil forfeiture law - if something so devoid of due process can be dignified as law - is an incentive for perverse behavior: Predatory government agencies get to pocket the proceeds from property they seize from Americans without even charging them with, let alone convicting them of, crimes. Criminals are treated better than this because they lose the fruits of their criminality only after being convicted.

George Will

The pure and noble, the graceful and dignified, simplicity of language is nowhere in such perfection as in the Scriptures and Homer. The whole book of Job, with regard both to sublimity of thought and morality, exceeds, beyond all comparison, the most noble parts of Homer.

Alexander Pope

Comedy is serious - deadly serious. Never, never try to be funny! The actors must be serious. Only the situation must be absurd. Funny is in the writing, not in the performing. If the situation isn't absurd, no amount of joke will help.

Mel Brooks

It was moving, but so absurd that I nearly laughed out loud. I imagined a new line of Hallmark cards: "Thank you for not killing my boyfriend, even if it risks killing you.

Hilary Duff

Not every love, but only that which has a noble purpose, is noble and worthy of praise.

Plato

The only way to the top is killing and greed. Okay, I'm kidding. But killing helps.

Douglas Coupland

The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. ... We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or to feel remorse for this shameful episode.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

It is only the inexperienced and thoughtless who find pleasure in killing fish for the mere sake of killing them. No sportsman does this.

William Cowper Prime

Nothing is bigger than life. There's nothing noble in death. What's noble about never seeing the sunshine again? What's noble about having your legs and arms blown off? What's noble about being an idiot? What's noble about being blind and deaf and dumb? What's noble about being dead?