Top 250 Superfluous Quotes & Sayings - Page 2
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Last updated on April 15, 2025.
Given that external reality is a fiction, the writer's role is almost superfluous. He does not need to invent the fiction because it is already there.
We live in an age in which superfluous ideas abound and essential ideas are lacking.
The dachshund is a perfectly engineered dog. It is precisely long enough for a single standard stroke of the back, but you aren't paying for any superfluous leg.
Eliminate something superfluous from your life. Break a habit. Do something that makes you feel insecure.
But life is short: while one lives, everything is lacking; when one is dead, everything is superfluous.
It's time to roll back superfluous governmental regulations and limit government to its sole task: safeguarding the rights of its citizens.
One does not reflect on a point of honor - that is already dishonor. To submit to insult, to forget a humiliation, to quail before an enemy - all these are signs of a life become worthless and superfluous.
Superfluous money buys wasted time, propelling desires that otherwise lay buried beneath the feet of honest toil.
Dry happiness is like dry bread. We eat, but we do not dine. I wish for the superfluous, for the useless, for the extravagant, for the too much, for that which is not good for anything.
I don't aspire, but I would be very happy if one of my poems suddenly offered someone a shady rest stop, a breather in our interminable march under the murderous, scorching heat of the superfluous.
When a thing is said to be not worth refuting you may be sure that either it is flagrantly stupid - in which case all comment is superfluous - or it is something formidable, the very crux of the problem.
What is superfluous to your poor estate, distribute. This is distributive charity: a virtue so sacred that crimes against it are the forerunner of inevitable doom.
If a thing can be done adequately by means of one, it is superfluous to do it by means of several; for we observe that nature does not employ two instruments [if] one suffices.
It seems superfluous to constrain trading in some of the newer derivatives and other innovative financial contracts of the past decade. The worst have failed; investors no longer fund them and are not likely to in the future.
It is not hard to compose but it is wonderfully hard to let the superfluous notes fall under the table. . . So many melodies fly about, one must be careful not to tread on them.
I'm a Nietzschean about human nature. The bulk of humanity is exhausted and superfluous, miscreant, confused, latently criminal, opportunistic. I rely on that. That's leverage, man.
Nature does nothing in vain when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.
While sincerity and over-anxiety can spoil a picture, through superfluous elaboration and unnecessary correction, the carelessness that would leave it in an unfinished state is even more reprehensible.
The states of consciousness are all that psychology needs to do her work with. Metaphysics or theology may prove the Soul to exist; but for psychology the hypothesis of such a substantial principle of unity is superfluous.
Whatever you teach, be brief; what is quickly said, the mind readily receives and faithfully retains, everything superfluous runs over as from a full vessel.
Long hair minimizes the need for barbers; socks can be done without; one leather jacket solves the coat problem for many years; suspenders are superfluous.
human names for natural things are superfluous. Nature herself does not name them. The important thing is to know this flower, look at its color until the blueness becomes as real as a keynote of music.
I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.
The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.
The statue lies hid in a block of marble; and the art of the statuary only clears away the superfluous matter, and removes the rubbish.
Thinking has become a superfluous exercise... purely internal, without compelling force, more or less a game.
In the 20th century alone, there have been 1,600 books about the circus. My adding one more would be superfluous unless I do something totally new and different.
All that is not useful in a picture is detrimental. A work of art must be harmonious in its entirety; for superfluous details would, in the mind of the beholder, encroach upon the essential elements.
Mirth is a Proteus, changing its shape and manner with the thousand diversities of individual character, from the most superfluous gayety to the deepest, moat earnest humor.
We are ending where the savages began. We have found again the lost arts of starving non-combatants, burning hovels, and leading away the vanquished into slavery. Barbarian invasions would be superfluous: we are our own Huns.
After I write, I have nothing to say. The commentary afterwards is superfluous. I write. And that's enough.
It is not hard to compose, but what is fabulously hard is to leave the superfluous notes under the table.
The way the media tends to cover fashion is as this superfluous, vacuous industry. They focus on models and shows, but behind all that is a massive global industry.
It is but a poor establishment where there are not many superfluous things which the owner knows not of, and which go to the thieves.
We are ignorant of things necessary, because we learn things superfluous and unnecessary
There are, while human miseries abound, A thousand ways to waste superfluous wealth, Without one fool or flatterer at your board, Without one hour of sickness or disgust.
I immersed myself in The Periodic Table gladly and gratefully. There is nothing superfluous here, everything this book contains is essential. It is wonderful pure, and beautifully translated...I was deeply impressed.
The best of artists hath no thought to show which the rough stone in its superfluous shell doth not include; to break the marble spell is all the hand that serves the brain can do.
For other things mild Heav'n a time ordains, And disapproves that care, though wise in show, That with superfluous burden loads the day, And when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.
Laughter relieves us of superfluous energy, which, if it remained unused, might become negative, that is, poison. Laughter is the antidote.
The custom of Mother Church in baptizing infants is certainly not to be scorned, nor is it to be regarded in any way as superfluous, nor is it to be believed that its tradition is anything except apostolic.
Some pacifists have carried the sound idea of the prime importance of security too far, to the point of declaring that any consideration of disarmament is superfluous and pointless as long as eternal peace has not been attained.
The essence of religion is the knowledge of God which is eternal life. That and nothing less than that is religion. Everything else is on the surface, is superfluous save for the needs of men.
When I read the Bhagavad-Gita and reflect about how God created this universe everything else seems so superfluous
God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that he may love and perfect them.
Play interests me very much," said Hermann: "but I am not in the position to sacrifice the necessary in the hope of winning the superfluous.
Man finds happiness only in the superfluous. Under communism, he has only the essentials. How abominable and ridiculous!
A novelist can never be his own reader, except when he is ridding his manuscript of syntax errors, repetitions, or the occasional superfluous paragraph.
Elegance is achieved when all that is superfluous has been discarded and the human being discovers simplicity and concentration: the simpler and more sober the posture, the more beautiful it will be.
My writing tends to become very dense, so I have to keep some cushion. Sometimes, words that seem superfluous are actually essential for the overall effect.
The Heaneys were aristocrats, in the sense that they took for granted a code of behavior that was given and unspoken. Argumentation, persuasion, speech itself, for God's sake, just seemed otiose and superfluous to them.
A man should remove not only unnecessary acts, but also unnecessary thoughts, for then superfluous activity will not follow.
In her (nature's) inventions nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous.
The erection of a monument is superfluous, our memory will endure if our lives have deserved it.
From what I have said of the natives of New Holland they may appear to some to be the most wretched people upon earth but in reality they are far happier than we Europeans, being wholly unacquainted not only with the superfluous, but
When men understand what each other mean, they see, for the most part, that controversy is either superfluous or hopeless
Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage,
Till pitying Nature signs the last release,
And bids afflicted worth retire to peace.
The most important question in 21st-century economics may well be, 'What should we do with all the superfluous people, once we have highly intelligent non-conscious algorithms that can do almost everything better than humans?'
Everything in the Universe was as the Creator willed it - nothing superfluous, nothing lacking - a harmony.
Modeling is a lonely business... You don't speak. You don't really portray anything but an image... the business is so superfluous about dealing with the outside, it messes with your mind.
