Impudence Quotes:

Folly often goes beyond her bounds, but impudence knows none.

- Ben Jonson

source: Ben Jonson (1756). “The Works of Ben. Jonson: Underwoods. Timber; or, Discoveries made upon men and matter. Horace, Of the art of poetry [with an English translation by Jonson]. The English grammar. Leges convivales, rules for the Tavern Academy. The case is altered”, p.78

topic: Rudeness, Folly, Impudence

Villainy, when detected, never gives up, but boldly adds impudence to imposture.

- Oliver Goldsmith

source: Oliver Goldsmith (1854). “The Works of Oliver Goldsmith: Enquiry into the present state of polite learning. The citizen of the world”, p.467

topic: Giving Up, Add, Impudence, Villainy

Because impudence is a vice, it does not follow that modesty is a virtue; it is built upon shame, a passion in our nature, and may be either good or bad according to the actions performed from that motive.

- Bernard de Mandeville

source: Bernard de Mandeville (1723). “The Fable of the Bees”, p.36, Jazzybee Verlag

topic: Nature, Passion, May, Impudence

Impudence is the worst of all human diseases.

- Euripides

topic: Disease, Worst, Humans, Impudence

Bold knaves thrive without one grain of sense, But good men starve for want of impudence.

- John Dryden

topic: Men, Good Man, Want, Impudence

True wisdom is plenty of experience, observation, and reflection. False wisdom is plenty of ignorance, arrogance, and impudence.

- Josh Billings

topic: Ignorance, Reflection, Arrogance, Impudence

Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.

- John Ruskin

topic: Teaching, Complaining, Literature, Impudence, Modern Education

It may be a species of impudence to think that the way you understand God is the way God is. (60).

- Joseph Campbell

source: Joseph Campbell (2001). “Thou Art that: Transforming Religious Metaphor”, p.60, New World Library

topic: Inspirational, God, Thinking, Impudence

I haven't got as much money as some folks, but I've got as much impudence as any of them, and that's the next thing to money.

- Josh Billings

topic: Funny, Money, Next, Impudence

Nothing pleases a woman quite so well as to look so sweet that a man wants to kiss her, and then abuse him for his impudence.

- E. W. Howe

topic: Sweet, Women, Kissing, Impudence

Want of principle is power. Truth and honesty set a limit to our efforts, which impudence and hypocrisy easily overleap.

- William Hazlitt

source: William Hazlitt (1871). “The Round Table. A collection of Essays ... By W. H. and Leigh Hunt”, p.487

topic: Honesty, Power, Hypocrisy, Impudence

It takes great labor to uncover the convincing simple speech of the heart. Poetic candor comes with hard labor, so even does impetuosity and impudence.

- Kenneth Rexroth

source: Kenneth Rexroth, Bradford Morrow (1989). “More Classics Revisited”, p.28, New Directions Publishing

topic: Heart, Simple, Doe, Impudence

There are seasons in every country when noise and impudence pass current for worth; and in popular commotions especially, the clamors of interested and factious men are often mistaken for patriotism.

- Alexander Hamilton

source: Alexander Hamilton, John Church Hamilton (1850). “The Works of Alexander Hamilton: Miscellanies, 1774-1789: A full vindication; The farmer refuted; Quebec bill; Resolutions in Congress; Letters from Phocion; New-York Legislature, etc”, p.159

topic: Country, Men, Noise, Impudence

Satiation, like any state of vitality, always contains a degree of impudence, and that impudence emerges first and foremost when the sated man instructs the hungry one.

- Anton Chekhov

source: Letter to A.S. Suvorin, October 20, 1891.

topic: Men, Vitality, Degrees, Impudence, Sated

Impertinence will intermeddle in things in which it has no concern, showing a want of breeding, or, more commonly, a spirit of sheer impudence.

- George Crabbe

topic: Disrespect, Want, Spirit, Impudence, Impertinence

But twice-two-makes-four is for all that a most insupportable thing. Twice-two-makes-four is, in my humble opinion, nothing but a piece of impudence. Twice-two-makes-four is a farcical, dressed-up fellow who stands across your path with arms akimbo and spits at you.

- Fyodor Dostoevsky

source: Fyodor Dostoevsky (2012). “The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky”, p.124, Modern Library

topic: Humble, Math, Two, Impudence

The exhibition has now become no more than a bazaar where mediocrity spreads itself out with impudence. The exhibitions are useless and dangerous... they ought to be abolished.

- Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

topic: Mediocrity, Bazaars, Useless, Impudence

I suppose if there were a part of the world in which mastodon still lived, somebody would design a new gun, and men, in their eternal impudence, would hunt mastodon as they now hunt elephant. Impudence seems to be the word. At least David and Goliath were of the same species, but, to an elephant, a man can only be a midge with a deathly sting.

- Beryl Markham

topic: Gun, Men, Elephants, Impudence, Midges

Being myself animated by feelings of affection toward my fellowmen, I am saddened by the modern system of advertising. Whatever evidence it offers of enterprise, ingenuity, impudence, and resource in certain individuals, it proves to my mind the wide prevalence of that form of mental degradation which is called gullibility.

- Joseph Conrad

source: Joseph Conrad (2015). “A Set of Six”, p.103, Sheba Blake Publishing

topic: Sadness, Feelings, Mind, Impudence, Gullibility

There are no friends more inseparable than pride and hardness of heart, humility and love, falsehood and impudence.

- Johann Kaspar Lavater

topic: Heart, Humility, Pride, Impudence, Hardness Of Heart

Lust is inseparably accompanied with the troubling of all order, with impudence, unseemliness, sloth, and dissoluteness.

- Plato

topic: Order, Lust, Sloth, Impudence

You must never believe what the newspapers say. I stand aghast at the impudence of the lies they contain, things not only false in fact, but absolutely impossible.

- Anna Brownell Jameson

topic: Lying, Believe, Facts, Impudence, Aghast

When Fashion hath once Established, what Folly or craft began, Custom makes it Sacred, and 'twill be thought impudence or madness, to contradict or question it.

- John Locke

source: John Locke (1728). “Two Treatises of Government: In the Former the False Principles & Foundation of Sir Robert Filmer & His Followers, are Detected & Overthrown; the Latter is an Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent & End of Civil Government”, p.49

topic: Fashion, Crafts, Sacred, Impudence

Wealth, howsoever got, in England makes lords of mechanics, gentlemen of rakes; Antiquity and birth are needless here; 'Tis impudence and money makes a peer.

- Daniel Defoe

source: Daniel Defoe (1855). “The Novels and Miscellaneous Works of Daniel De Foe”, p.443

topic: Gentleman, England, Peers, Impudence

What was said by the Latin poet of labor--that it conquers all things--is much more true when applied to impudence.

- Henry Fielding

topic: Latin, Conquer, Poet, Impudence

Your national greatness, swelling vanity; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.

- Frederick Douglass

topic: Religious, Prayer, Greatness, Impudence, Solemnity

Bashfulness is more frequently connected with good sense than we find assurance; and impudence, on the other hand, is often the mere effect of downright stupidity.

- William Shenstone

source: William Shenstone (1804). “Essays on Men and Manners”, p.66

topic: Hands, Stupidity, Assurance, Impudence, Bashfulness

Long live impudence. It was my guardian angel in this world.

- Albert Einstein

topic: Angel, Long, World, Impudence, My Guardian Angel

It sometimes strikes me that the whole of science is a piece of impudence; that nature can afford to ignore our impertinent interference. If our monkey mischief should ever reach the point of blowing up the earth by decomposing an atom, and even annihilated the sun himself, I cannot really suppose that the universe would turn a hair.

- Aleister Crowley

topic: War, Hair, Sun, Impudence, Interference

Art almost always has its ingredient of impudence, its flouting of established authority, so that it may substitute its own authority and its own enlightenment.

- Ben Shahn

source: Ben Shahn (1957). “The Shape of Content”, p.9, Harvard University Press

topic: Art, Enlightenment, May, Impudence

I am prejudiced in favor of him who, without impudence, can ask boldly. He has faith in humanity, and faith in himself. No one who is not accustomed to giving grandly can ask nobly and with boldness.

- Johann Kaspar Lavater

topic: Giving, Humanity, Favors, Impudence, Faith In Humanity

For the forest takes away from you all excuse to die. There is nothing here to cabin or thwart your free desires. Here all impudences of the brawling world reach you no more.

- Robert Louis Stevenson

topic: Desire, Forests, Cabins, Impudence

However modest one may be in one's demand for intellectual cleanliness, one cannot help feeling, when coming into contact with the New Testament, a kind of inexpressible discomfiture: for the unchecked impudence with which the least qualified want to raise their voice on the greatest problems, and even claim to be judges of such things, surpasses all measure. The shameless levity with which the most intractable problems (life, world, God, purpose of life) are spoken of, as if they were not problems at all but simply things that these little bigots knew!

- Friedrich Nietzsche

source: "The Will to Power".

topic: Atheist, Voice, Judging, Impudence, Levity

The true artist and the sane collector never will tolerate insincerity and impudence.

- Walter J. Phillips

topic: Artist, Insincerity, Tolerate, Impudence, True Artists

I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.

- John Ruskin

source: Fors Clavigera Letter 79, 18 June 1877. This comment was the basis for Whistler's 1878 libel suit against Ruskin.

topic: Art, Pain, Two, Impudence, Cockneys

Unbecoming forwardness oftener proceeds from ignorance than impudence.

- Sir Fulke Greville

topic: Ignorance, Manners, Unbecoming, Impudence

Frivolous thinking is due to foreign thought. Japan must no longer let the impudence of the white peoples go unpunished. It is the duty of Japan to fulfill her natural destiny, to cause China to respect the Japanese, to expel Chinese influence from Manchuria, and to follow the way of imperial destiny.

- Sadao Araki

source: "World War II almanac" by Robert Goralski (p. 9), 1981.

topic: Destiny, Thinking, White, Impudence

What so pure, which envious tongues will spare? Some wicked wits have libell'd all the fair, With matchless impudence they style a wife, The dear-bought curse, and lawful plague of life; A bosom serpent, a domestic evil, A night invasion, and a mid-day devil; Let not the wise these sland'rous words regard, But curse the bones of ev'ry living bard.

- Alexander Pope

topic: Wise, Night, Evil, Impudence, Bards

It just sort of suggested a very specific kind of impudence like this little-man syndrome. Chucky has this Napoleon complex. He's a little guy with a lot of rage and that really pointed us in the direction of exploiting that aspect of his character, which people always seem to enjoy.

- David Kirschner

source: Source: www.movieweb.com

topic: Character, Men, People, Impudence, Little Man

I don't say 'Tis impossible for an impudent man not to rise in the world, but a moderate merit with a large share of impudence is more probable to be advanced than the greatest qualifications without it.

- Mary Wortley Montagu

topic: Men, World, Merit, Impudence

How any human being ever has had the impudence to speak against the right to speak, is beyond the power of my imagination. Here is a man who speaks-who exercises a right that he, by his speech, denies. Can liberty go further than that? Is there any toleration possible beyond the liberty to speak against liberty-the real believer in free speech allowing others to speak against the right to speak?

- Robert Green Ingersoll

source: Robert Green Ingersoll (1889). “The Limitations of Toleration: A Discussion Between Robert G. Ingersoll, Frederic R. Coudert, Stewart L. Woodford, Before the Nineteenth Century Club, of New York, at the Metropolitan Opera House”

topic: Real, Exercise, Men, Impudence, Toleration

I do not believe that since man was in the habit of living on this planet anyone has ever lived possessed of the impudence of Jay Gould.

- Jay Gould

topic: Believe, Men, Habit, Impudence, Jay Gould

That little hypocrites and half-crazed people dare to imagine that on their account the laws of nature are constantly broken; such an enhancement of every kind of selfishness to infinity, to impudence, cannot be branded with sufficient contempt. And yet Christianity owes its triumph to this pitiable flattery of personal vanity.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

source: Friedrich Nietzsche (2012). “Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist”, p.120, Courier Corporation

topic: Hypocrite, Vanity, Law, Impudence, Enhancement