Top 14 Ornery Quotes & Sayings

Nobody walks through life as a pure babyface per se or a pure heel, we all have shades of grey, and there's some days we're a little better than others, and some days we're a little more ornery. And I think that I just embody that.

The more we love, and the more unlikely people we love, the more we resemble God - who, after all, loves ornery creatures like us.

I’ve flown kites before and I know – sometimes they’re gone forever, and sometimes they’re just waiting in the middle of the road for you to rescue them. Kites can be lucky or they can be ornery. I’ve had both kinds, and a lucky kite is definitely worth chasing for.

the world is just as concrete, ornery, vile, and sublimely wonderful as before, only now I better understand my relation to it and it to me.

What keeps my flame burning is, first, I'm ornery and persistent. I don't like giving up on things and I believe in my band and I just happen to have the sort of personality that really likes to see things to the bitter end. The second reason is the incredible people I've been fortunate to meet as a result of pursuing this insane, money-hemorrhaging enterprise. Literally every time I release a well-reviewed, poor-selling record, the net result is that I end up meeting more kind, like-minded, creative and brilliant people. That's really all the reward I need.

When I saw the sun bears at the Oakland Zoo, I immediately was drawn to them. Not to be ornery, but regarding what you said about the speaker identifying with the bear: I'm not sure it's exactly right to say that the speaker feels that the bear must share his sadness, or whatever else he is feeling. That would be classic pathetic fallacy, which is certainly generative for poetry, but here the speaker appears actually to be rejecting that idea.

All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot. It's the way they're raised.

Curiously, the righteous Pharisees had little historical impact, save for a brief time in a remote corner of the Roman Empire. But Jesus' disciples - an ornery, undependable, and hopelessly flawed group of men - became drunk with the power of a gospel that offered free forgiveness to the worst sinners and traitors. Those men managed to change the world.

I think rock should always stay a little bit outside the pale; I think it should remain a little bit dangerous - a little bit ornery, as the Americans say.

I asked my doctor how many more years I have left and he said, 'You're too ornery to die.'

The paleoclimate record shouts to us that, far from being self-stabilizing, the Earth's climate system is an ornery beast which overreacts even to small nudges.

I asked my doctor how many more years I have left and he said, 'You're too ornery to die.

Keep the faith. Whatever that may be. Don't get too depressed yet, because I have a belief in America being very diverse and ornery, and containing a lot of people who are not going to roll over very easily for a totalitarian dictatorship. That is what I think.

Vulnerability of artists is definitely what makes organizations like PEN necessary because, as I tried to argue, the actual work that writers and artists do has an ornery way of surviving. Particularly in this age of the internet, it is very easy for forbidden work to be found online somewhere if you know where to look. Artists themselves, however, are in increasing danger, and not just artists. The great concern is that year after year, rising numbers of journalists are being killed in pursuit of their work.