A Quote by Phyllis McGinley

The mass of men live lives of quiet exasperation.

Phyllis McGinley

Quote Topics

Exasperation Live Lives Mass Men Quiet

Quote Author

Phyllis McGinley
American - Author
March 21, 1905 - February 22, 1978

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Henry David Thoreau

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

Henry David Thoreau

When the mass of men are dispossessed - own nothing - they become wholly dependent upon the owners; and when those owners are in active competition to lower the cost of production the mass of men whom they exploit not only lack the power to order their own lives, but suffer from want and insecurity as well.

Hilaire Belloc

It is not women's fault if we are so tender. It is in the nature of the lives we live. And further, it would be a terrible catastrophe if men had to live men's lives and women's also. Which is precisely what has happened today -- to women.

Selma James

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation. I can't take quiet desperation!

Ray Milland

The intellect of most men is barren. They neither fertilize or are fertilized. It is the marriage of the soul with nature that makes the intellect fruitful, that gives birth to imagination...without nature-awakened imagination most persons do not really live in the world, they merely pass through it as they live dull lives of quiet desperation.

Henry David Thoreau

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Henry David Thoreau

I do believe that most men live lives of quiet desperation. For despair, optimism is the only practical solution. Hope is practical. Because eliminate that and it's pretty scary. Hope at least gives you the option of living.

Harry Nilsson

The Second Wave Society is industrial and based on mass production, mass distribution, mass consumption, mass education, mass media, mass recreation, mass entertainment, and weapons of mass destruction. You combine those things with standardization, centralization, concentration, and synchronization, and you wind up with a style of organization we call bureaucracy.

Alvin Toffler

Thoughts and pictures come to my mind... thoughts from before the year 1914 when there was real peace, quiet and security on this earth - a time when we didn't know fear... Security and quiet have disappeared from the lives of men since 1914.

Konrad Adenauer

The distinguishing trait of people accustomed to good society is a calm, imperturbable quiet which pervades all their actions and habits, from the greatest to the least. They eat in quiet, move in quiet, live in quiet, and lose their wife, or even their money, in quiet; while low persons cannot take up either a spoon or an affront without making such an amazing noise about it.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

The vast majority of the people who populate our planet live lives of quiet desperation that are all too often quite harsh and painful, lives in which events and circumstances usually don't turn out the way they had hoped or planned.

Frederick Lenz

The mass of men lead lives of shallow happiness; the superior man exults in his gloom.

Garrison Keillor

We will be able to depart this life with the quiet peace-giving notion, that we were permitted to contribute to the happiness of many who will live after us. In our long lives we endeavored to unfold the collective consciousness. In our lives we have known hell and heaven; the final balance, however, is that we helped pave the way to dynamic harmony in this earthly house. That, I believe, is the meaning of this live.