Awfulness Quotes:

In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

source: Friedrich Nietzsche (2016). “The Birth of Tragedy”, p.65, Friedrich Nietzsche

topic: Men, Loathing, Existentialism, Awfulness

I've gotten a lot of livid letters about the awfulness of my work. I've never known what to make of it. Why do people bother to write if they hate what I do?

- Lynda Barry

topic: Hate, Writing, People, Hate People, Awfulness

Such things as anguish, woe, affliction, guilt, feelings of awfulness, and utter wretchedness, the bread and butter of Days of Yore and Russians, sadly have very little staying power in these lickety-split Modern Times.

- Marisha Pessl

topic: Feelings, Guilt, Splits, Staying Power, Modern Times

This boy has negative charisma. He walks into a room and the oxygen starts to evaporate. I guess that's why girls sleep with him. They find his awfulness transfixing. He's like a lousy 1970's disaster movie that they can't bring themselves to turn off, even though it is making their life worse every minute they leave it on.

- Emma Forrest

topic: Girl, Sleep, Boys, Disaster Movie, Awfulness

I suppose I really seemed mad, then; but it was only through the awfulness of having said nothing but the truth, and being thought to be deluded.

- Sarah Waters

topic: Mad, Said, Nothing But The Truth, Awfulness

Crazy Love is crazy good! Leslie What's brain is evidently crowded with strangeness, awfulness, wonderfulness, wildness, madness of all kinds...and love. Lots of love. How lucky we are that her imagination runs deep, runs true, runs onto the page in crazily beautiful stories -- and lucky, so very lucky, to be holding those stories right now in our hands.

- Molly Gloss

topic: Beautiful, Running, Crazy, Leslie, Crazy Love

Having become conscious of the truth he once perceived, man now sees only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence, he now understands the symbolic element in Ophelia's fate, he now recognizes the wisdom of the woodland god, Silenus: it nauseates him.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

topic: Fate, Men, Nausea, Ophelia, Awfulness

A person should go out on the water on a fine day to a small distance from a beautiful coast, if he would see Nature really smile. Never does she look so delightful, as when the sun is brightly reflected by the water, while the waves are gently rippling, and the prospect receives life and animation from the glancing transit of an occasional row-boat, and the quieter motion of a few small vessels. But the land must be well in sight; not only for its own sake, but because the immensity and awfulness of a mere sea-view would ill accord with the other parts of the glittering and joyous scene.

- Augustus William Hare

source: Augustus William Hare (1827). “Guesses at Truth”, p.8

topic: Beautiful, Distance, Sight, Fine Day, Row Boats

After most deaths, I imagine, the awfulness lies in how everything’s changed….there’s a hole. It’s person-shaped and it follows you everywhere…. For us what was killing was how nothing had changed. We’d been waiting to be transformed, and now here we were, back in our old life.

- Elizabeth McCracken

topic: Lying, Waiting, Imagine, Old Life, Awfulness

Why is the awfulness of families such a popular reason for starting another?

- Peter De Vries

topic: Reason, Starting, Awfulness

A dim consciousness of infinite mystery and grandeur lies beneath all the commonplace of life . There is an awfulness and a majesty around us, in all our little worldliness .

- Albert Pike

topic: Lying, Littles, Majesty, Awfulness, Worldliness

Marriage is a step so grave and decisive that it attracts light-headed, variable men by its very awfulness.

- Robert Louis Stevenson

source: 'Virginibus Puerisque' (1881) 'Virginibus Puerisque, pt. 1'

topic: Men, Light, Variables, Awfulness

My experience is that journalists report on the nearest-cliche algorithm, which is extremely uninformative because there aren't many cliches, the truth is often quite distant from any cliche, and the only thing you can infer about the actual event was that this was the closest cliche.... It is simply not possible to appreciate the sheer awfulness of mainstream media reporting until someone has actually reported on you. It is so much worse than you think.

- Eliezer Yudkowsky

topic: Thinking, Media, Appreciate, Mainstream Media, Awfulness

Wonderful is the depth of thy words, whose surface is before us, gently leading on the little ones: and yet a wonderful deepness, O my God, a wonderful deepness. It is awe to look into it; even an awfulness of honour, and a trembling of love.

- Saint Augustine

topic: Depth, Looks, Littles, Leading On, Deepness

I feel like a lot of my aesthetic was in response to feeling the awfulness and cheapness of that [ the 70'th].

- Daniel Clowes

topic: Feelings, Aesthetic, Feels, Cheapness, Awfulness

All I try to do is as earnestly and as acutely as I can, conceive a character and try to portray this character just honestly. If the humor is within the absurdity and the awfulness of situations, then let it be seen that way.

- Patrick Warburton

source: "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

topic: Character, Trying, Way, Awfulness

Forgiving and being reconciled to our enemies or our loved ones are not about pretending that things are other than they are. It is not about patting one another on the back and turning a blind eye to the wrong. True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the abuse, the hurt, the truth. It could even sometimes make things worse. It is a risky undertaking but in the end it is worthwhile, because in the end only an honest confrontation with reality can bring real healing. Superficial reconciliation can bring only superficial healing.

- Desmond Tutu

topic: Hurt, Real, Eye, Accepting Reality, Awfulness

. . .only the victims and survivors can truly comprehend the awfulness of that time and place; the rest of us live on the other side of the fence, staring through from our own comfortable place, trying in our own clumsy ways to make sense of it all.

- John Boyne

topic: Trying, Sides, Survivor, Awfulness

It's disquieting to reflect that one's dreams never symbolize one's real wishes, but always something Much Worse... If I really wanted to be passionately embraced by Peter, I should dream of dentists or gardening. I wonder what unspeakable depths of awfulness can only be expressed by the polite symbol of Peter's embraces?

- Dorothy L. Sayers

topic: Dream, Real, Wish, Lord Peter Wimsey, Awfulness

However baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it.

- Herman Melville

source: Herman Melville (2016). “Moby Dick (World Classics, Unabridged)”, p.190, Vij Books India Pvt Ltd

topic: Baby, Men, Sea, Awfulness

Animals are God's creatures, not human property, nor utilities, nor resources, nor commodities, but precious beings in God's sight. ...Christians whose eyes are fixed on the awfulness of crucifixion are in a special position to understand the awfulness of innocent suffering. The Cross of Christ is God's absolute identification with the weak, the powerless, and the vulnerable, but most of all with unprotected, undefended, innocent suffering.

- Andrew Linzey

topic: Christian, Eye, Animal, Vegan Health, Awfulness

His eyes were frighteningly alive, the curve of his mouth savage and pleased. It suddenly didn't seem at all surprising that he should be able to pull things from his dreams. In that moment, Blue was a little in love with all of them. Their magic. Their quest. Their awfulness and strangeness. Her raven boys.

- Maggie Stiefvater

topic: Love, Dream, Eye, Awfulness, Strangeness

Forgiveness is taking seriously the awfulness of what has happened when you are treated unfairly. Forgiveness is not pretending that things are other than the way they are.

- Desmond Tutu

topic: Forgiveness, Way, Pretending, Treated Unfairly, Awfulness

It's the very awfulness of [murder] that makes reading about it feel so cozy.

- Louise Doughty

topic: Reading, Cozy, Murder, Awfulness

I learned at a very early age that life is a battle. My family was poor, my neighborhood was poor. The only way that I could get away from the awfulness of life, at that time, was at the movies. There I decided that my big aim was to make money. And it was there that I became a very determined woman.

- Susan Hayward

topic: Age, Battle, Way, Determined Woman, Awfulness

Oft in my way have I stood still, though but a casual passenger, so much I felt the awfulness of life.

- William Wordsworth

source: William Wordsworth (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of William Wordsworth (Illustrated)”, p.686, Delphi Classics

topic: Life, Way, Casual, Awfulness