Clich C3 A9s Quotes

If woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance ( ... ); as great as a man, some think even greater. But this is woman in fiction. In fact, as Professor Trevelyan points out [in his History of England], she was locked up, beaten and flung about the room. ~ Virginia Woolf

When all the archetypes burst out shamelessly, we plumb Homeric profundity. Two clichés make us laugh but a hundred clichés move us because we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, celebrating a reunion. ~ Umberto Eco

In a crisis perhaps it is old clichés one clings to, like a child to a parent. ~ Graham Greene

That night she wrote a hasty sketch and showed it to Oliver. "It's all right," he said. "But I'd take out that stuff about Olympian mountains and the Stygian caverns of the mine. That's about used up, I should think. ~ Wallace Stegner

People are fond of spouting out the old cliché about how Van Gogh never sold a painting in his lifetime. Somehow his example serves to justify to us, decades later, that there is merit in utter failure.
Perhaps, but the man did commit suicide. The market for his work took off big-time shortly after his death. Had he decided to stick around another few decades he most likely would've entered old age quite prosperous. And sadly for failures everywhere, the cliché would have lost a lot of its power.
The fact is, the old clichés work for us in abstract terms, but they never work out in real life quite the same way. Life is messy; clichés are clean and tidy. ~ Hugh MacLeod

Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail. ~ Charles Dickens

rather babble away and at least partially express something difficult than reproduce impeccable clichés ~ Thomas Mann

Every culture has its southerners -- people who work as little as they can, preferring to dance, drink, sing brawl, kill their unfaithful spouses; who have livelier gestures, more lustrous eyes, more colorful garments, more fancifully decorated vehicles, a wonderful sense of rhythm, and charm, charm, charm; unambitious, no, lazy, ignorant, superstitious, uninhibited people, never on time, conspicuously poorer (how could it be otherwise, say the northerners); who for all their poverty and squalor lead enviable lives -- envied, that is, by work-driven, sensually inhibted, less corruptly governed northerners. We are superior to them, say the northerners, clearly superior. We do not shirk our duties or tell lies as a matter of course, we work hard, we are punctual, we keep reliable accounts. But they have more fun than we do ... They caution[ed] themselves as people do who know they are part of a superior culture: we mustn't let ourselves go, mustn't descend to the level of the ... jungle, street, bush, bog, hills, outback (take your pick). For if you start dancing on tables, fanning yourself, feeling sleepy when you pick up a book, developing a sense of rhythm, making love whenever you feel like it -- then you know. The south has got you. ~ Susan Sontag

Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation. ~ Virginia Woolf

Why do you consult [women's] words when it is not their mouths that speak? Consult their eyes, their colour, their breathing, their timid manner, their slight resistance, that is the language nature gave them for your answer. The lips always say 'No,' and rightly so; but the tone is not always the same, and that cannot lie. Has not a woman the same needs as a man, but without the same right to make them known? Her fate would be too cruel if she had no language in which to express her legitimate desires except the words which she dare not utter. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I have spent a great deal of my life discovering that my ambitions and fantasies - which I once thought of as totally unique - turn out to be clichés ~ Nora Ephron

Always go with your first impetuosity. ~ Brian Spellman

When a man gives his opinion, he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she's a bitch. ~ Bette Davis

The clichés are, of course, disguised; essentially, they are the same throughout all cheap reading matter, whether it spans the universe or the living room. They are like those 'assorted' cookies that differ from one another only in shape and shade. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I hate that more than anything - being part of a cliché. ~ Kim Edwards

Women, for their part, are always complaining that we raise them only to be vain and coquettish, that we keep them amused with trifles so that we may more easily remain their masters; they blame us for the faults we attribute to them. What stupidity! And since when is it men who concern themselves with the education of girls? Who is preventing the mothers from raising them as they please? There are no schools for girls - what a tragedy! Would God, there were none for boys! They would be raised more sensibly and more straightforwardly. Is anyone forcing your daughters to waste their time on foolish trifles? Are they forced against their will to spend half their lives on their appearance, following your example? Are you prevented from instructing them, or having them instructed according to your wishes? Is it our fault if they please us when they are beautiful, if their airs and graces seduce us, if the art they learn from you attracts and flatters us, if we like to see them tastefully attired, if we let them display at leisure the weapons with which they subjugate us? Well then, decide to raise them like men; the men will gladly agree; the more women want to resemble them, the less women will govern them, and then men will truly be the masters. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The man or the woman in whom resides greater virtue is the higher; neither the loftiness nor the lowliness of a person lies in the body according to the sex, but in the perfection of conduct and virtues. ~ Christine De Pizan

In a typical college romance novel, he'd be a gorgeous but troubled sex god who'd cure all my deep-seated psych issues with a good hard fuck. I'd smell his misogyny and abusive tendencies from miles off but my brain would turn to hormone soup because abs. That's the formula. Broken girl + bad boy = sexual healing. All you need to fix that tragic past is a six-pack. More problems? Add abs.
It's Magic Dick Lit. ~ Leah Raeder

Morris Weissman [on the phone, discussing casting for his movie]: What about Claudette Colbert? She's British, isn't she? She sounds British. Is she, like, affected or is she British? ~ Julian Fellowes

What'll Geoffrey do when you pull off your First, my child?" demanded Miss Haydock.
"Well, Eve
it will be awkward if I do that. Poor lamb! I shall have to make him believe I only did it by looking fragile and pathetic at the viva. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

But maybe your outside of the box is someone else's cliché … ~ Samiha Totanji

Come on, it's an American tradition. Apple soup? Mom's homemade chicken pie?'
She chuckled in spite of herself, then winced. 'It's apple pie and Mom's homemade chicken soup. But you didn't do badly, for a start. ~ L.J.Smith

A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. "Well," said the man, "I shouldn't have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing." I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Indeed it may be said with some confidence that the average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. There are moments when his cogitations are relatively more respectable than usual, but even at their climaxes they never reach anything properly describable as the level of serious thought. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés. What they mistake for thought is simply a repetition of what they have heard. My guess is that well over eighty per cent. of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought. That is to say, they never think anything that has not been thought before and by thousands. ~ H.L. Mencken

Is it possible to say "It was a beautiful morning at the end of November" without feeling like Snoopy? ~ Umberto Eco

[Y]ou are not ashamed of your sin [in committing adultery] because so many men commit it. Man's wickedness is now such that men are more ashamed of chastity than of lechery. Murderers, thieves, perjurers, false witnesses, plunderers and fraudsters are detested and hated by people generally, but whoever will sleep with his servant girl in brazen lechery is liked and admired for it, and people make light of the damage to his soul. And if any man has the nerve to say that he is chaste and faithful to his wife and this gets known, he is ashamed to mix with other men, whose behaviour is not like his, for they will mock him and despise him and say he's not a real man; for man's wickedness is now of such proportions that no one is considered a man unless he is overcome by lechery, while one who overcomes lechery and stays chaste is considered unmanly. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

Do you really believe ... that everything historians tell us about men – or about women – is actually true? You ought to consider the fact that these histories have been written by men, who never tell the truth except by accident. ~ Moderata Fonte

Wine and women make wise men dote and forsake God's law and do wrong.
However, the fault is not in the wine, and often not in the woman. The fault is in the one who misuses the wine or the woman or other of God's crations. Even if you get drunk on the wine and through this greed you lapse into lechery, the wine is not to blame but you are, in being unable or unwilling to discipline yourself. And even if you look at a woman and become caught up in her beauty and assent to sin [= adultery; extramarital sex], the woman is not to blame nor is the beauty given her by God to be disparaged: rather, you are to blame for not keeping your heart more clear of wicked thoughts ... If you feel yourself tempted by the sight of a woman, control your gaze better ... You are free to leave her. Nothing constrains you to commit lechery but your own lecherous heart. ~ Anonymous

I do not say 'good-bye.' i believe that's one of the bullshittiest words ever invented. it's not like you're given the choice to say 'bad-bye' or 'awful-bye' or 'couldn't-care-less-about-you-bye.' every time you leave, it's supposed to be a good one. well, i don't believe in that. i believe against that. ~ David Levithan

[I]f we revert to history, we shall find that the women who have distinguished themselves have neither been the most beautiful nor the most gentle of their sex. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

I felt like the blonde in every horror movie who hears a noise in the basement and goes to investigate alone. Sometimes you smell the stupid all around you, but you step in it anyway. ~ Ann Aguirre

Now, it is frequently asserted that, with women, the job does not come first. What (people cry) are women doing with this liberty of theirs? What woman really prefers a job to a home and family? Very few, I admit. It is unfortunate that they should so often have to make the choice. A man does not, as a rule, have to choose. He gets both. Nevertheless, there have been women ... who had the choice, and chose the job and made a success of it. And there have been and are many men who have sacrificed their careers for women ... When it comes to a choice, then every man or woman has to choose as an individual human being, and, like a human being, take the consequences. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Does a rake deserve to possess anything of worth, since he chases everything in skirts and then imagines he can successfully hide his shame by slandering [women in general]? ~ Christine De Pizan

Sometimes I believe that love dies but hope springs eternal. Sometimes I believe that hope dies but love springs eternal. Sometimes I believe that sex plus guilt equals love, and sometimes I believe that sex plus guilt equals good sex. Sometimes I believe that love is as natural as the tides, and sometimes I believe that love is an act of will. Sometimes I believe that some people are better at love than others, and sometimes I believe that everyone is faking it. Sometimes I believe that love is essential, and sometimes I believe that only reason love is essential is that otherwise you spend all your time looking for it. ~ Nora Ephron

It is time to effect a revolution in female manners - time to restore to them their lost dignity - and make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the world. It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

What we ask is to be human individuals, however peculiar and unexpected. It is no good saying: "You are a little girl and therefore you ought to like dolls"; if the answer is, "But I don't," there is no more to be said. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking. ~ Virginia Woolf

Perhaps it was that I wanted to see what I had learned, what I had read, what I had imagined, that I would never be able to see the city of London without seeing it through the overarching scrim of every description of it I had read before. When I turn the corner into a small, quiet, leafy square, am I really seeing it fresh, or am I both looking and remembering? [ ... ]
This is both the beauty and excitement of London, and its cross to bear, too. There is a tendency for visitors to turn the place into a theme park, the Disney World of social class, innate dignity, crooked streets, and grand houses, with a cavalcade of monarchs as varied and cartoony as Mickey Mouse, Snow White, and, at least in the opinion of various Briths broadhseets, Goofy.
They come, not to see what London is, or even what it was, but to confirm a kind of picture-postcard view of both, all red telephone kiosks and fog-wreathed alleyways. ~ Anna Quindlen

[T]he more clamour we make about 'the women's point of view', the more we rub it into people that the women's point of view is different, and frankly I do not think it is
at least in my job. The line I always want to take is, that there is the 'point of view' of the reasonably enlightened human brain, and that this is the aspect of the matter which I am best fitted to uphold. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

The cliché comes not in what you shoot but in how you shoot it. ~ David DuChemin

She has a quiet paroxysm.
Now remember that these are the days
before digital pornography.
There is no cliché of how women are supposed to orgasm,
no idea in their heads of how they are supposed to sound when they climax.
Mrs. Daldry's first orgasms could be very quiet,
organic, awkward, primal. Or very clinical. Or embarrassingly natural.
But whatever it is, it should not be a cliché, a camp version
of how we expect all women sound when they orgasm.
It is simply clear that she has had some kind of release. ~ Sarah Ruhl

There are no atheists in the foxhole. ~ Ernie Pyle

Assume' makes an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me'. ~ Karen Marie Moning

One of us in this very room is in fact the murderer. ~ Agatha Christie

Most girls recently out of finishing school are like soufflés: puffed up, not very substantial inside, and prone to collapsing at the slightest provocation. ~ Gail Carriger

I often warn people: "Somewhere along the way, someone is going to tell you, 'There is no "I" in team.' What you should tell them is, 'Maybe not. But there is an "I" in independence, individuality and integrity. ~ George Carlin

The atmosphere in the room was so thick with dramatic clichés you could have cut it with a knife. ~ Jasper Fforde

Lavina led me to an abandoned warehouse. I think that at some point someone decreed that all clandestine meetings must be held in one. Woe to the criminal overlord who lives in a city thriving with commerce, with no empty warehouses to be found. He probably needs to build one, just to have a place to arrange late-night meetings. (Bewitched) ~ Kelley Armstrong

Life is so ridiculously clichéd sometimes I wonder why we bother living it when nothing is ever a surprise any more. ~ Holly Bourne

Literary truth is not the truth of the biographer or the reporter, it's not a police report or a sentence handed down by a court. It's not even the plausibility of a well-constructed narrative. Literary truth is entirely a matter of wording and is directly proportional to the energy that one is able to ­impress on the sentence. And when it works, there is no stereotype or cliché of popular literature that resists it. It reanimates, revives, subjects ­everything to its needs. ~ Elena Ferrante

Deeply exciting, though, cliché was, as a concept. It was truth misted by overexpression, wasn't it, like a structure seen in a fog, something waiting to be re-felt, re-seen. Something dainty fumbled at through thick gloves. Cliché was true, obviously, which was why it had become cliché in the first place; so true that cliché actually protected you from its own truth by being what it was, nothing but cliché. ~ Ali Smith

The trouble with cliché's, some philosopher remarked, probably with a yawn, is that they are so boringly true. But "love at first sight" is never boring. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

about clichés. Avoid them like the plague. ~ Khaled Hosseini

It hadn't always been this way, that's a cliché, but it is a cliché for a reason. It's not like anyone starts a relationship with nothing to say to the other person. No-one wants to feel like a complete stranger and live together because it's easier than trying to remember who owns the copy of Almost Famous – which was mine by the way. ~ David Louden

The wild nature has a vast integrity to it. It means to establish one's territory, to find one's pack, to be in one's body with certainty and pride regardless of the body's gifts and limitations, to speak and act in one's own behalf, to be aware, alert, to draw on the innate feminine powers of intuition and sensing, to come into one's cycles, to find what one belongs to, to rise with dignity, to retain as much consciousness as possible. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

A creative writing teacher at San Jose State used to say about clichés: 'Avoid them like the plague.' Then he'd laugh at his own joke. The class laughed along with him, but I always thought clichés got a bum rap. Because, often, they're dead-on. But the aptness of the clichéd saying is overshadowed by the nature of the saying as a cliché. ~ Khaled Hosseini

It may be appropriate to quote a statement of Poincare, who said (partly in jest no doubt) that there must be something mysterious about the normal law since mathematicians think it is a law of nature whereas physicists are convinced that it is a mathematical theorem. ~ Mark Kac

We are accustomed to repeating the cliché, and to believing, that 'our most precious resource is our children.' But we have plenty of children to go around, God knows, and as with Doritos, we can always make more. The true scarcity we face is practicing adults, of people who know how marginal, how fragile, how finite their lives and their stories and their ambitions really are but who find value in this knowledge, even a sense of strange comfort, because they know their condition is universal, is shared. ~ Michael Chabon

They rode through the quiet streets. The rain had stopped and an early morning mist fell around them under the streetlights. Victor remembered that his ancestors had believed this was a magical time when the gods walked the earth, Götterdämmerung, a time when men slept and divine creatures laid plans that ensnared or released them. He was not such a creature, no; he had to walk step by step on the hard earth beneath his feet and watch tragedies unfold, without shaping them. It was a disappointment to him. ~ J.J. Brown

Their voices were melodious and unsentimental, almost to the point where a somewhat more denominational man than myself might, without straining, have experienced levitation. ~ J.D. Salinger

Is 'tired old cliché' one? ~ Steven Wright

I´ve read that it´s the smell some carnivores use to find their prey. Imagine the trembling victim trying to hide, but knowing that the smell of its own fear will kill it. ~ Jo Nesbø

You'll be so busy with Bridge and what's-his-name that you'll forget all about your English mate, St. Clair."
"Ha! So you are English!" I poke him in the stomach.
He grabs my hand and we wrestle, laughing. "I claim ... no ... nationality. ~ Stephanie Perkins

The rage inside Charlotte crested to a peak. "I'm angry because Papa and Aunt Branwell never would have sent you here," she shouted. "Not to a charity school. Not the precious boy."
"I know that," Branwell said, his voice ragged. "I've always known that. Don't you think that might be hard to live with? ~ Lena Coakley

That it was no doubt a dark hour, but that he should get through it; that after all he held his destiny, evil as it might be, in his own hand; that he was master of it. He clung to that thought. ~ Victor Hugo

My love for you isn't going anywhere, I promise. Only my body." Søren ~ Tiffany Reisz

Bellona has answered my prayer. She doesn't fight my battles for me. She doesn't guarantee me easy victory. She grants me opportunities to prove myself. She gives me strong enemies and potential allies. ~ Rick Riordan

If you choose to keep your true face secret, then the people who know you by one mask, must never meet those who know you by another. ~ A.J. Darkholme

Do you have a Wish?' he asked, referring to this organization, The Genie Foundation, which is in the business of granting sick kids one wish.
'No' I said. 'I used my Wish pre-Miracle.'
'What'd you do?'
I sighed loudly. 'I was thirteen,' I said.
'Not Disney,' he said.
I said nothing.
'You did not go to Disney World.'
I said nothing.
'HAZEL GRACE!' he shouted. 'You did not use your one dying Wish to go to Disney World with your parents.'
'Also Epcot Center,' I mumbled.
'Oh, my God,' Augustus said. 'I can't believe I had a crush on a girl with such cliché wishes. ~ John Green

He had not breathed a word of love, or dropped one hint of tenderness or affection, and yet I had been supremely happy. To be near him, to hear him talk as he did talk, and to feel that he thought me worthy to be so spoken to - capable of understanding and duly appreciating such discourse - was enough. ~ Anne Bronte

We bite back the things we can't say and we cushion every surface for the inevitable moment when they all come fighting out. ~ Moira Fowley Doyle

Oh, noble child, everything is severing the mind. As for the mind, it is severing pride. There is nothing whatsoever that is not included in pride. If one simply understands that it is merely the production of pride, then, for example, one is like a thief in an empty house: by simply recognizing [the situation], grasping is impossible. Having correctly understood, there is no practice with an intentional objective. Because it crushes any hesitations (mi phod), it is explained as Chöd. ~ Machik Labdrön

He asked himself ... whether it was not outrageous for society to treat thus precisely those of its members who were the least well endowed in the division of goods made by chance, and consequently the most deserving of consideration. ~ Victor Hugo

On the land adjoining La Grenouillère strollers were sauntering under the gigantic trees which help to make this part of the island one of the most delightful parks imaginable. Busty women with peroxided hair and nipped-in waists could be seen, made up to the nines with blood red lips and black-kohled eyes. Tightly laced into their garish dresses they trailed in all their vulgar glory over the fresh green grass. They were accompanied by men whose fashion-plate accessories, light gloves, patent-leather boots, canes as slender as threads and absurd monocles made them look like complete idiots. ~ Guy De Maupassant

It is a cliché that most clichés are true, but then like most clichés, that cliché is untrue ~ Stephen Fry

You are the one I didn't see coming, the one I barely asked for. Heck I never even pictured it to be you, but it's been you since we met.
Doing another lifetime, side by side, again. ~ Nikki Rowe

Although I am an anarch, I am not anti-authoritarian. Quite the opposite: I need authority, although I do not believe in it. My critical faculties are sharpened by the absence of the credibility that I ask for. As a historian, I know what can be offered. ~ Ernst Junger

Is she really old enough to have crushes on boys? I feel like she's too young for all that."
"I had crushes on boys when I was nine," I tell him. I'm still thinking about Kitty. I wonder how I can make it so she isn't mad at me anymore. Somehow I don't think snickerdoodles will cut it this time.
"Who?" Josh asks me.
"Who what?" Maybe if I can somehow convince Daddy to buy her a puppy…
"Who was your first crush?"
"Hmm. My first real crush?" I had kindergarten and first- and second-grade crushes aplenty, but they don't really count. "Like the first one that really mattered?"
"Sure."
"Well…I guess Peter Kavinsky."
Josh practically gags. "Kavinsky? Are you kidding me? He's so obvious. I thought you'd be into someone more…I don't know, subtle. Peter Kavinsky's such a cliché. He's like a cardboard cutout of a 'cool guy' in a movie about high school."
I shrug. "You asked."
"Wow," he says, shaking his head. "Just…wow."
"He used to be different. I mean, he was still very Peter, but less so." When Josh looks unconvinced, I say, "You're a boy, so you can't understand what I'm talking about."
"You're right. I don't understand!"
"Hey, you're the one who had a crush on Ms. Rothschild!"
Josh turns red. "She was really pretty back then!"
"Uh-huh." I give him a knowing look. "She was really 'pretty.'" Our across-the-street neighbor Ms. Rothschild used to mow her lawn in terry-cloth short shorts and a string bikini top. ~ Jenny Han

Ceux qui revent eveilles ont conscience de 1000 choses qui echapent a ceux qui ne revent qu'endormis.
The one who has day dream are aware of 1000 things that the one who dreams only when he sleeps will never understand.
(it sounds better in french, I do what I can with my translation ... ) ~ Edgar Allan Poe

The woman with hair of flames knelt over me. She might have been pretty if not for the anger in every corner of her face. Emerald eyes glowed with almost seeping venom as her nostrils flared.
- Lord Tristan Dracanburh, Ethandun ~ Alexandra May

The anarch's study of the history of the caesars has more of a theoretical significance for him - it offers a sampling of how far rulers can go. In practice, self-discipline is the only kind of rule that suits the anarch. He, too, can kill anyone (this is deeply immured in the crypt of his consciousness) and, above all, extinguish himself if he finds himself inadequate. ~ Ernst Junger

[U.Eco habla de la época greco-latina]: No es que no hayan existido mujeres que filosofaran. Es que los filósofos han preferido olvidarlas, tal vez después de haberse apropiado de sus ideas
/[U. Eco is talking about the Greco-Latin era]; It is not that there had not been women philosophers. It is that male philosophers have preferred to forget them, perhaps after having appropriated their ideas. ~ Umberto Eco

To be able to see a magic, you need to have a mind that can detect that magic! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

If commitment is required to start, it is deeply important to persist to reach the end. All the path is done walking, where there are obstacles, go around them, where there are falls, get up, where you feel tired, rest, but never stop until you reach the destination.

Tania Tome (C) ~ Tânia Tomé

She heard Brannie call out to her, but she ignored her as well and kept going. Kept going with visions of a bloody and limb-missing Éibhear dancing through her head. Gods! What if they cut off his wings? Or removed his scales? Oh, by the gods, what if they shaved his head? What if they shaved his head? Nooooo! ~ G.A. Aiken