A Quote by Norman Mailer

Did a sense of shame ever reside in our Republican toadies? You can't stop people who are never embarrassed by themselves. Will's readiness to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse can be cited as world class sycophancy.

Norman Mailer

Quote Topics

Cited Class Did Ear Embarrassed Ever Never Our People Purse Readiness Republican Sense Shame Silk Sow Stop Themselves Turn Will World World Class

Quote Author

Norman Mailer
American - Novelist
January 31, 1923 - November 10, 2007

The best way to make a silk purse from a sow's ear is to begin with a silk sow. The same is true of money.

Norman Ralph Augustine

With a bad script and even the best cast, the most you can hope for is to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse.

John Rhys-Davies

Even if one succeeds in making a silk purse out of a sow's ear, there remains the problem of what to do with a one-eared sow.

Dave Hickey

You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Jonathan Swift

The gospel may not make a sow's ear into a silk purse, but it will make everybody better if they live it. I've tried it. It stands the test.

Henry B. Eyring

Going back into the negative past to find happiness is like trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear

Sydney Banks

Alongside getting faith out of a heart that is utterly hostile and unbelieving, making a silk purse out of a sow's ear or getting blood from a turnip is child's play.

John Gerstner

If you get a bad script, then you start expending energy trying to make a silk purse of a sow's ear. When the script's as good as those on 'Game of Thrones,' say, I don't think there was a single occasion where any of us thought there was a bad scene.

Charles Dance

It is a fallacy to believe that a Republic of any kind can be won through the shackled Free State. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. The Free State is British created and serves British Imperialist interests. It is the buffer erected between British Capitalism and the Irish Republic.

Liam Mellows

We are Jesus Christ's; we belong to him. But even more, we are increasingly him. He moves in and commandeers our hands and feet, requisitions our minds and tongues. We sense his rearranging: debris into the divine, pig's ear into silk purse. He repurposes bad decisions and squalid choices. Little by little, a new image emerges.

Max Lucado

If you don't generate tension in the film to begin with... you can't really make a purse out of a sow's ear, you know.

Dennis Weaver

One disadvantage of being a hog is that at any moment some blundering fool may try to make a silk purse out of your wife's ear.

J. B. Morton

What we often feel in ecstatic moments in this world - 'I don't ever want this to stop' - will be the constant thought of our hearts in that world. We shall think it, knowing that in fact it never WILL stop.

J. I. Packer

Lead the people with administrative injunctions and put them in their place with penal law, and they will avoid punishments but will be without a sense of shame. Lead them with excellence and put them in their place through roles and ritual practices, and in addition to developing a sense of shame, they will order themselves harmoniously

Confucius

Guide them by edicts, keep them in line with punishments, and the common people will stay out of trouble but will have no sense of shame. Guide them by virtue, keep them in line with the rites, and they will, besides having a sense of shame, reform themselves.

Confucius

[I] never understood [what a republican government was and] I believe no other man ever did or ever will.