Disagreeable Quotes

Can you tell me in one sentence what is meant by logotherapy?" he asked. "At least, what is the difference between psychoanalysis and logotherapy?" "Yes," I said, "but in the first place, can you tell me in one sentence what you think the essence of psychoanalysis is?" This was his answer: "During psychoanalysis, the patient must lie down on a couch and tell you things which sometimes are very disagreeable to tell." Whereupon I immediately retorted with the following improvisation: "Now, in logotherapy the patient may remain sitting erect but he must hear things which sometimes are very disagreeable to hear. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

Our time was most delightfully spent, in mutual Protestations of Freindship, and in vows of unalterable Love, in which we were secure from being interrupted, by intruding and disagreeable Visistors, as Augustus and Sophia had on their first Entrance in the Neighbourhood, taken due care to inform the surrounding Families, that as their happiness centered wholly in themselves, they wished for no other society. ~ Jane Austen

If you want a safe compass to guide you through life, and to banish all doubt as to the right way of looking at it, you cannot do better than accustom yourself to regard this world as a penitentiary... •If you accustom yourself to this view of life you will regulate your expectations accordingly, and cease to look upon all its disagreeable incidents, great and small, its sufferings, its worries, its misery, as anything unusual or irregular; nay, you will find that everything is as it should be, in a world where each of us pays the penalty of existence in his own peculiar way. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

You journey to Olympia to see the work of Phidias; and each of you holds it a misfortune not to have beheld these things before you die. Whereas when there is no need even to take a journey, but you are on the spot, with the works before you, have you no care to contemplate and study these?

Will you not then perceive either who you are or unto what end you were born: or for what purpose the power of contemplation has been bestowed on you?

"Well, but in life there are some things disagreeable and hard to bear."

And are there none at Olympia? Are you not scorched by the heat? Are you not cramped for room? Have you not to bathe with discomfort? Are you not drenched when it rains? Have you not to endure the clamor and shouting and such annoyances as these? Well, I suppose you set all this over against the splendour of the spectacle and bear it patiently. What then? have you not received greatness of heart, received courage, received fortitude? What care I, if I am great of heart, for aught that can come to pass? What shall cast me down or disturb me? What shall seem painful? Shall I not use the power to the end for which I received it, instead of moaning and wailing over what comes to pass? ~ Epictetus

The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly. Those services which the community will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man. The State does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Lucinda," Elizabeth said for the third time in an hour, "I cannot tell you how sorry I am about this." Five days ago, Lucinda had arrived at the inn at the Scottish border where she joined Elizabeth for the journey to Ian Thornton's house. This morning, their hired coach broke an axle, and they were now ignominiously ensconced on the back of a hay wagon belonging to a farmer, their trunks and valises tipping precariously to and fro along the rutted path that evidently passed for a road in Scotland. The prospect of arriving in a hay wagon on Ian Thornton's doorstep was so horrible that Elizabeth preferred to concentrate on her guilt, rather than her forthcoming meeting with the monster who had ruined her life.
"As I said the last time you apologized, Elizabeth," Lucinda replied, "it is not your fault, and therefore not your responsibility to apologize, for the deplorable lack of roads and conveyances in this heathen country."
"Yes, but if it weren't for me you wouldn't be here."
Lucinda sighed impatiently, clutched the side of the hay wagon as it made a particularly sharp lurch, and righted herself. "And as I have already admitted, if I hadn't been deceived into mentioning Mr. Thornton's name to your uncle, neither of us would be here. You are merely experiencing some nervousness at the disagreeable prospect of confronting the man, and there is no reason in the world-"The wagon tipped horribly and they both clutched at the sides of it for leverage. "-no reason ~ Judith McNaught

You do not have to do everything disagreeable that you have a right to do. ~ Judith Martin

To disagree one doesnt have to be disagreeable ~ Barry M. Goldwater

Politeness is fictitious benevolence. Depend upon it, the want of it never fails to produce something disagreeable to one or other. ~ Samuel Johnson

Nihil tam acerbum est in quo non aequus animus solatium inveniat.
There is nothing so disagreeable, that a patient mind can not find some solace for it. ~ Seneca The Younger

One should be wary of talking on end about such subjects as learning, morality or folklore in front of elders or people of rank. It is disagreeable to listen to. ~ Yamamoto Tsunetomo

Mme. de Gallardon, who could never stop herself from sacrificing her greatest social ambitions and highest hopes of someday dazzling the world to the immediate, obscure, and private pleasure of saying something disagreeable. ~ Marcel Proust

Can any thing, my good Sir, be more painful to a friendly mind than a necessity of communicating disagreeable intelligence? Indeed, it is sometimes difficult to determine, whether the relater or the receiver of evil tidings is most to be pitied. ~ Fanny Burney

November is the most disagreeable month in the whole year," said Margaret, standing at the window one dull afternoon, looking out at the frostbitten garden.
"That's the reason I was born in it," observed Jo pensively, quite unconscious of the blot on her nose. ~ Louisa May Alcott

It's a disagreeable thing to be whipped. ~ William Tecumseh Sherman

[I]nfectious disease is merely a disagreeable instance of a widely prevalent tendency of all living creatures to save themselves the bother of building, by their own efforts, the things they require. Whenever they find it possible to take advantage of the constructive labors of others, this is the path of least resistance. The plant does the work with its roots and its green leaves. The cow eats the plant. Man eats both of them; and bacteria (or investment bankers) eat the man ... ~ Hans Zinsser

In the zazen posture, your mind and body have, great power to accept things as they are, whether agreeable or disagreeable.
In our scriptures (Samyuktagama Sutra, volume 33), it is said that there are four kinds of horses: excellent ones, good ones, poor ones, and bad ones. The best horse will run slow and fast, right and left, at the driver's will, before it sees the shadow of the whip; the second best will run as well as the first one does, just before the whip reaches its skin; the third one will run when it feels pain on its body; the fourth will run after the pain penetrates to the marrow of its bones. You can imagine how difficult it is for the fourth one to learn how to run! ~ Shunryu Suzuki

If you have any duty which must be done, and it seems disagreeable, do it promptly and have it over. ~ Thomas Jefferson

At night his most frequent recurring dream was of doing The Times crossword puzzle; his most disagreeable that he was reading a tedious book aloud to his family. ~ Evelyn Waugh

In my paper the fact the XY was not equal to YX was very disagreeable to me. I felt this was the only point of difficulty in the whole scheme ... and I was not able to solve it. ~ Werner Heisenberg

Charientism (n.) A rhetorical term to describe saying a disagreeable thing in an agreeable way.

If I knew how to say disagreeable things in an agreeable fashion I most likely would not be spending most of my time siting alone in a room, reading the dictionary. ~ Ammon Shea

People who have a creative side and do not live it out are most disagreeable clients. They make a mountain out of a molehill, fuss about unnecessary things, are too passionately in love with somebody who is not worth so much attention, and so on. There is a kind of floating charge of energy in them which is not attached to its right object and therefore tends to apply exaggerated dynamism to the wrong situation. ~ Marie-Louise Von Franz

People of all races generally prefer the company of people like themselves. Racial diversity is a source of conflict, not strength. Non-whites, especially blacks and Hispanics, nurture a strong sense of racial pride and solidarity. Whites have little sense of racial solidarity, and most whites strongly condemn any signs of it. Immigration from non-European countries is changing the United States in profound ways, many of which whites find disagreeable. To the extent that these statements are true, they have serious implications both for the country as a whole and for whites as a group. ~ Jared Taylor

Learning is the property of those who fear to do disagreeable things. ~ Pietro Aretino

Outrage is like a lot of other things that feel good but, over time, devour us from the inside out. Except it's even more insidious than most vices because we don't even consciously acknowledge that it's a pleasure. We prefer to think of it as a disagreeable but fundamentally healthy reaction to negative stimuli, like pain or nausea, rather than admit that it's a shameful kick we eagerly indulge again and again, like compulsive masturbation. And, ~ Tim Kreider

The camel has a big dumb ugly hump. But in the desert, where prettier, more streamlined beasts die quickly of thirst, the camel survives quite nicely. As legend has it, the camel carries its own water, stores it in its stupid hump. If individuals, like camels, perfect their inner resources, if we have the power within us, then we can cross any wasteland in relative comfort and survive in arid surroundings without relying on the external. Often, moreover, it is our "hump" - that aspect of our being that society finds eccentric, ridiculous, or disagreeable - that holds our sweet waters, our secret well of happiness, the key to our equanimity in malevolent climes. ~ Tom Robbins

raise the affections of my hearers as high as I possibly can, provided they are affected with nothing but truth, and with affections that are not disagreeable to the nature of what they are affected with."1 ~ Bob Kauflin

While she is still hospitalised, I take Emma out for strengthening walks, for her muscles and been under-used for a long time. She is sometimes breathless, I notice with concern, and there are other changes in her, either through a nerve her therapy touches, or through her illness, or both, which make her, quite often, disagreeable to be with. ~ Carol Lee

PANTOMIME, n. A play in which the story is told without violence to the language. The least disagreeable form of dramatic action. ~ Ambrose Bierce

When a man finds a conclusion agreeable, he accepts it without argument, but when he finds it disagreeable, he will bring against it all the forces of logic and reason. ~ Thucydides

A few words which he wanted to emphasize were put into brackets or set off by quotation marks. My first impulse was to point out to him that it was ridiculous to put slang words and expressions between quotation marks, for that prevents them from entering the language. But I decided not to. When I received his letters, his parentheses made me shudder. At first, it was a shudder of slight shame, disagreeable. Later (and now, when I reread them) the shudder was the same, but I know, by some indefinable, imperceptible change, that it is a shudder of love- it is both poignant and delightful, perhaps because of the memory of the word shame that accompanied it in the beginning. Those parentheses and quotation marks are the flaw on the hip, the beauty mark on the thigh whereby my friend showed that he was himself, irreplaceable, and that he was wounded. ~ Jean Genet

No one should be allowed to stop in one place any longer than necessary. A man isn't a tree, and being settled in one place is his misfortune. It saps his courage, breaks his confidence. When a man settles down somewhere, he agrees to any and all of its conditions, even the disagreeable ones, and frightens himself with the uncertainty that awaits him. Change to him seems like abandonment, like a loss of an investment: someone else will occupy his domain, and he'll have to begin again. Digging oneself in marks the real beginning of old age, because a man is young as long as he isn't afraid to make new beginnings. If he stays in the same place, he has to put up with things, or take action. If he moves on, he keeps his freedom; he's ready to change places and the conditions imposed on him. ~ Mesa Selimovic

Taken thus by surprise, it was several moments before she was able to decide whether to make herself known to him, or to await a formal introduction. The strict propriety in which she had been reared urged her to adopt the latter course; then she remembered that she was not a young girl any longer, but a guardian-aunt ... To flinch before what would certainly be an extremely disagreeable interview would be the act, she told herself, of a pudding-heart. Bracing herself resolutely, she got up from the writing-table, and turned, saying, in a cool, pleasant tone: 'Mr Calverleigh?'
He had picked up a newspaper from the table in the centre of the room, and was glancing through it, but he lowered it, and looked enquiringly across at her. His eyes, which were deep-set and of a light grey made the more striking by the swarthiness of his complexion, held an expression of faint surprise; he said: 'Yes? ~ Georgette Heyer

In society every man is taken for what he gives himself out to be; but he must give himself out to be something. Better to be slightly disagreeable than altogether insignificant. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Indifference is a form of sloth. For one can work hard, as I've always done, and yet wallow in sloth; be industrious about one's job, but scandalously lazy about all that isn't the job. Because, of course, the job is fun. Whereas the non-job
personal relations, in my case
is disagreeable and laborious. ~ Aldous Huxley

November is usually such a disagreeable month ... as if the year had suddenly found out that she was growing old and could do nothing but weep and fret over it. This year is growing old gracefully ... just like a stately old lady who knows she can be charming even with gray hair and wrinkles. We've had lovely days and delicious twilights. ~ L.M. Montgomery

Speaking generally, sociability stands in inverse ratio with age. A little child raises a piteous cry of fright if it is left alone for only a few minutes; and later on, to be shut up by itself is a great punishment. Young people soon get on very friendly terms with one another; it is only the few among them of any nobility of mind who are glad now and then to be alone; - but to spend the whole day thus would be disagreeable. A grown-up man can easily do it; it is little trouble to him to be much alone, and it becomes less and less trouble as he advances in years. An old man who has outlived all his friends, and is either indifferent or dead to the pleasures of life, is in his proper element in solitude; and in individual cases the special tendency to retirement and seclusion will always be in direct proportion to intellectual capacity. For ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Well, if she doesn't like pelicans she must be very disagreeable. ~ Tess Oliver

The male has been persuaded to assume a certain onerous and disagreeable role with the promise of rewards
material and psychological. Women may in the first place even have put it into his head. BE A MAN! may have been, metaphorically, what Eve uttered at the critical moment in the garden of Eden. ~ Wyndham Lewis

Never since the dawn of human history, as far as I can find out, did people long settled in any region give a friendly welcome to newcomers. One of the disagreeable traits of our human nature seems to be to dislike on sight people who come later than the first settlers. ~ Dorothy Canfield Fisher

It is 11 years since I have seen my figure in a glass [mirror]. The last reflection I saw there was so disagreeable I resolved to spare myself such mortification in the future. ~ Mary Wortley Montagu

Poppy Devine did not deserve cancer. Poppy was sweet and industrious and careful and measured and always, always did the right thing. If anyone deserved cancer it was Julia. Julia was loud and opinionated and disagreeable. Rude, some might even say. She went out with bad men, took unnecessary risks, pushed people to their limits, swore like a sailor and flipped the bird more than any female in the history of the world.
It should be her number coming up in the cancer lottery. ~ Amy Andrews

Mans most disagreeable habits and idiosyncrasies, his deceit, his cowardice, his lack of reverence, are engendered by his incomplete adjustment to a complicated civilisation. It is the result of the conflict between our instincts and our culture. ~ Sigmund Freud

When you get right down to it, there is no dignified way to go, be it decomposition, incineration, dissection, tissue digestion, or composting. They're all, bottom line, a little disagreeable. It takes the careful application of a well-considered euphemism - burial, cremation, anatomical gift-giving, water reduction, ecological funeral - to bring it to the point of acceptance. ~ Mary Roach

John Wesley's conversation is good, but he is never at leisure. He is always obliged to go at a certain hour. This is very disagreeable to a man who loves to fold his legs and have his talk out as I do. ~ Samuel Johnson

The woman at the desk was a university graduate, young, colourless, spectacled, and intensely disagreeable. She had a fixed suspicion that no one - at least, no male person - ever consulted works of reference except in search of pornography. As soon as you approached she pierced you through and through with a flash of her pince-nez and let you know that your dirty secret was no secret from HER. After all, all works of reference are pornographical, except perhaps Whitaker's Almanack. You can put even the Oxford Dictionary to evil purposes by looking up words like - and - . ~ George Orwell

Criminal cases receive the attention of the press. The cruel and disagreeable things of life are more apt to get the newspaper space than the pleasant ones. It must be that most people enjoy hearing of and reading about the troubles of others. Perhaps men unconsciously feel that they rise in the general level as others go down. ~ Clarence Darrow

[On Thomas Babington Macaulay:] He was a most disagreeable companion to my fancy ... His conversation was a procession of one. ~ Florence Nightingale

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it. ~ Samuel Johnson

Goldsmith tells us, that when lovely woman stoops to folly, she has nothing to do but to die; and when she stoops to be disagreeable, it is equally to be recommended as a clearer of ill-fame. ~ Jane Austen

As we can not love what is hateful, let us accustom ourselves neither to think nor to speak of disagreeable things and persons. ~ John Lancaster Spalding

The meditative mind sees disagreeable or agreeable things with equanimity, patience, and good-will. Transcendent knowledge is seeing reality in utter simplicity. (146) ~ Jean-Yves Leloup

Still, there's no harm in putting a full stop to one's disagreeable thoughts by looking at a mark on the wall ... Here is something definite, something real. thus, waking from a midnight dream of horror, one hastily turns on the light and lies quiescent, worshipping the chest of drawers, worshipping solidity, worshipping reality, worshipping the impersonal world which is proof of some existence other than ours. ~ Virginia Woolf

We criticize a thinker more acutely when he advances a proposition that is disagreeable to us; and yet it would be more reasonableto do so when his proposition is agreeable to us. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

It is to me a most affecting thing to hear myself prayed for, in particular as I do every day in the week, and disposes me to bear with more composure, some disagreeable circumstances that attend my situation. ~ Abigail Adams

Humph,' he said, with a disagreeable air, 'the universe does its work very quietly.' ("The Bogey Man") ~ A.E. Coppard

I have a vocabulary all my own. I "pass the time" when it is wet and disagreeable. When it is fine I do not wish to pass it; I ruminate it and hold on to it. We should hasten over the bad, and settle upon the good. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Death was more like what we went through in the park: two people walking side by side in the mist, rubbing against trees and bushes, and not a word between them. It was something emptier than the name itself and yet right and peaceful, dignified, if you like. It was not a continuation of life, but a leap in the dark and no possibility of ever coming back, not even as a grain of dust. And that was right and beautiful, I said to myself, because why would one want to come back. To taste it once is to taste it forever - life or death. Whichever way the coin flips is right, so long as you hold no stakes. Sure, it's tough to choke on your own spittle - it's disagreeable more than anything else. And besides, one doesn't always die choking to death. Sometimes one goes off in his sleep, peaceful and quiet as a lamb. The Lord comes and gathers you up into the fold, as they say. Anyway, you stop breathing. And why the hell should one want to go on breathing forever? Anything that would have to be done interminably would be torture. The poor human bastards that we are, we ought to be glad that somebody devised a way out. We don't quibble about going to sleep. A third of our lives we snore away like drunken rats. What about that? Is that tragic? Well then, say three-thirds of drunken rat-like sleep. Jesus, if we had any sense we'd be dancing with glee at the thought of it! We could all die in bed tomorrow, without pain, without suffering - if we had the sense to take advantage of our reme ~ Henry Miller

Anyhow, whether undergraduate or shop boy, man or woman, it must come as a shock about the age of twenty - the world of the elderly - thrown up in such black outline upon what we are; upon the reality; the moors and Byron; the sea and the lighthouse; the sheep's jaw with the yellow teeth in it; upon the obstinate irrepressible conviction which makes youth so intolerably disagreeable - "I am what I am, and intend to be it," for which there will be no form in the world unless Jacob makes one for himself. The Plumers will try to prevent him from making it. Wells and Shaw and the serious sixpenny weeklies will sit on its head. ~ Virginia Woolf

When you know too much information and you acquire it too easily, you tend to either use it in disagreeable ways, out of vanity, or you tend to be indiscriminate about it. I mean, in the old days, it was tricky, you had to go to various encyclopedias, you had to go to the library, maybe spend a day there, whatever. But in the end, if you found something, it was really exciting. Now you hit a couple of buttons and you get some information. Which, by the way, is almost always presented in that same goddamn mediocre style that characterizes the Internet for me. It is slightly deadening. ~ Norman Mailer

If there is any thing disagreeable going on, men are always sure to get out of it. ~ Jane Austen

In the course of the world, a man must very often put on an easy, frank countenance, upon very disagreeable occasions; he must seem pleased, when he is very much otherwise; he must be able to accost and receive with smiles, those whom he would much rather meet with swords. ~ Lord Chesterfield

If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable. ~ William J. Brennan

I wish we could treat our bodies as the place we live from, rather than regard it as a place to be worked on, as though it were a disagreeable old kitchen in need of renovation and update. ~ Susie Orbach

It is absolutely fascinating to see how far educated, intelligent, self-proclaimed feminist women end up submitting to the authority of psychotic and mediocre men. It is as if these highly evolved women struggled intellectually with machismo but, in their daily life, end up submitting to a man. Women who have been beaten, even raped, forgive their attackers. One must ask whether they do not love them because of their brutality.

Cases of men submitting to women exist, but are far more rare. What is extraordinary is that many of these submissive women who allow their lives to be degraded are economically independent and have no need of a man. The explanation of female submission by violence or economic dependence
(as in traditional societies) does not hold water, since mistreated women today could easily take off. One explanation could be that women tolerate loneliness less well than men, and that they end, even after a free and emancipated youth, by needing a guardian - even if a disagreeable and hateful one. One often gets the impression that the idea of freedom is less important for women than the fear of loneliness. ~ Guillaume Faye

Among the Founders, Thomas Jefferson wrote about race at greatest length. He thought blacks were mentally inferior to whites and biologically distinct: "[They] secrete less by the kidnies [sic], and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a strong and disagreeable odor." He hoped slavery would be abolished, but he did not want free blacks to remain in America: "When freed, [the Negro] is to be removed from beyond the reach of mixture."
Jefferson was one of the first and most influential advocates of "colonization," or returning blacks to Africa. He also believed in the destiny of whites as a racially distinct people. In 1786 he wrote, "Our Confederacy [the United States] must be viewed as the nest from which all America, North and South, is to be peopled."
In 1801 he looked forward to the day "when our rapid multiplication will expand itself . . . over the whole northern, if not the southern continent, with a people speaking the same language, governed in similar forms, and by similar laws; nor can we contemplate with satisfaction either blot or mixture on that surface. ~ Jared Taylor

More and more it seems to me that the philosopher, being of necessity a man of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, has always found himself, and had to find himself, in contradiction to his today: his enemy was ever the ideal of today. So far all these extraordinary furtherers of men whom one calls philosophers, though they themselves have rarely felt like friends of wisdom but rather like disagreeable fools and dangerous question marks, have found their task, their hard, unwanted, inescapable task, but eventually also the greatness of their task, in being the bad conscience of their time. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Why--?" he jerked his thumb in the direction of the young, "when they're so lovely--"

She too looked at the girl, who was fastening a flower that had come undone in the front of her frock. She smiled. She said nothing. Then half consciously she echoed his question without a meaning in her echo, "Why?"

He was dashed for a moment. It seemed to him that she refused to help him. And he wanted her to help him. Why should she not take the weight off his shoulders and give him what he longed for --assurance, certainty? Because she too was deformed like the rest of them? He looked down at her hands. They were strong hands; fine hands; but if it were a question, he thought, watching the fingers curl slightly, of "my" children, of "my" possession, it would be one rip down the belly; or teeth in the soft fur of the throat. We cannot help each other, he thought, we are all deformed. Yet, disagreeable as it was to him to remove her from the eminence upon which he placed her, perhaps she was right, he thought, and we who make idols of other people, who endow this man, that woman, with power to lead us, only add to the deformity, and stoop ourselves. ~ Virginia Woolf

Strict and literal truthfulness was a trivial game and might even be a disagreeable neurotic affliction. ~ Saul Bellow

Can he keep from throwing his hissy fit until he gets to the cauldron?"
"I don't know. You're not impressed by his warp spasm, huh?"
He grimaced. "It's abhorrent. Total loss of control. No beauty to it, no symmetry. His eye was hanging out on his cheek like some piece of snot. No, I'm not impressed."
"I can try to keep a lid on him until we get to the cauldron." I made a pun, but he wasn't in the mood to notice.
"No."
"What do you mean no?"
"No, you're not going with him."
I crossed my arms. "Who decided that?"
He put on his "I'm alpha and I'm putting my foot down" expression. "I decided."
"You don't get to decide. I'm not under your authority."
"Yes, you are. Without you the fight will happen, but without me and the Pack, it won't. I command the superior force, therefore I'm in charge. You and your army of one can put yourself under my authority or you can take a walk."
"You don't think I can do it, is that it?"
"No, I want you where I can see you."
"Why?"
His lip quivered with the beginning of a snarl. His face relaxed, as he brought himself under control. "Because that's how I want it," he said, using a slow, patience voice reserved for rowdy children and disagreeable mental patients. It drove me to the edge of reason. I really wanted to punch him. ~ Ilona Andrews

What has a man's face to do with his character? Can a man of good character help having a disagreeable face? ~ Ann Radcliffe

I love my fellow creatures - I do all the good I can - yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man! ~ W.S. Gilbert

A lofty mind always thinks nobly, it easily creates vivid, agreeable, and natural fancies, places them in their best light, clothes them with all appropriate adornments, studies others' tastes, and clears away from its own thoughts all that is useless and disagreeable. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

But what's the use of arguing with a man? You belong, Mr. Smith, to a sex devoid of a sense of logic. To bring a man into line, there are just two methods: one must either coax or be disagreeable. I scorn to coax men for what I wish. Therefore, I must be disagreeable. ~ Jean Webster

When women are encouraged to be competitive, too many of them become disagreeable. ~ Benjamin Spock

Evidence of true faith is the determination to trust God when that which He allows makes no sense--and is utterly disagreeable. ~ David P. Ingerson

Empty space eventually fills up with something. A void, cultivated in the aftermath of misfortune, begins to attract the wrong kind of attention. Marco knew it was time to leave when disagreeable spirits started roaming freely through the house, as if they owned the place. ~ Rahma Krambo

Mr. Bingley was good-looking and gentlemanlike; he had a pleasant countenance, and easy, unaffected manners. His sisters were fine women, with an air of decided fashion. His brother-in-law, Mr. Hurst, merely looked the gentleman; but his friend Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien, and the report which was in general circulation within five minutes after his entrance, of his having ten thousand a year. The gentlemen pronounced him to be a fine figure of a man, the ladies declared he was much handsomer than Mr. Bingley, and he was looked at with great admiration for about half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust which turned the tide of his popularity; for he was discovered to be proud; to be above his company, and above being pleased; and not all his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be compared with his friend. ~ Jane Austen

Filling the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic of Western theosophy, but not the confrontation with the Shadow and the world of darkness. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular. ~ Carl Jung

If you have learned how to disagree without being disagreeable, then you have discovered the secrete of getting along - whether it be business, family relations, or life itself. ~ Bernard Meltzer

People only tell lies when the truth is disagreeable to them, or frightens them, or to cover sin. ~ Anne Perry

Giving and taking are based on our motives and values, and they're choices that we make regardless of whether our personalities trend agreeable or disagreeable. ~ Adam M. Grant

It seems to be that way with most things. No one to do the really disagreeable jobs except oneself. ~ Kate DiCamillo

Savage though he was, and hideously marred about the face - at least to my taste - his countenance yet had a something in it which was by no means disagreeable. You cannot hide the soul. Through all his unearthly tattooings, I thought I saw the traces of a simple honest heart; ~ Herman Melville

The men could be easily distinguished as fellow Americans by the quality of their mustaches and the innocent and amicable expressions on their faces; the several women could only have come from New England, making this clear, he felt, by their willingness to allow their menfolk the right to speak at length while confining their own talk to short and brisk, intelligent interruptions or slightly disagreeable remarks once the men had finished. ~ Colm Toibin

You're a prickly, stubborn, spirited woman."
"Don't forget crude, rude, and vulgar."
"Only when it suits you. You're sly when occasion calls for it, direct to the point of forgetting tact even exists, sarcastic, fierce, I did mention stubborn, didn't I?"
"Yes," she said dryly.
"You're also smart, kind, gentle, beautiful, and always cling to your personal integrity, even when it's in your best interests to abandon it." A little warm feeling spread through her chest, and even her natural suspicion that he was lying couldn't quite extinguish it. Where was he going with this? "You're also quite funny," he said.
"Oh, I amuse you?" He gave her one of his devastating, slightly wicked smiles.
"You have no idea." Arrogant ass.
"And all of that means what?"
"Just that I mean to have you." She frowned at him. "I mean to have you, Rose, you and all of your thorns. I'm a disagreeable and stubborn bastard, but I'm not a fool. You didn't really expect me to pass you up, did you? ~ Ilona Andrews

A man may accommodate himself to a disagreeable situation in a few months. The intolerable may take a little longer. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

Poor darling," he said, shaking his head, "you're not cold-hearted enough to be a detective. You only want the disagreeable people to be guilty, and I'm afraid you'll find that life isn't like that. ~ Ashley Weaver

A number of porcupines huddled together for warmth on a cold day in winter; but, as they began to prick one another with their quills, they were obliged to disperse. However the cold drove them together again, when just the same thing happened. At last, after many turns of huddling and dispersing, they discovered that they would be best off by remaining at a little distance from one another. In the same way the need of society drives the human porcupines together, only to be mutually repelled by the many prickly and disagreeable qualities of their nature. The moderate distance which they at last discover to be the only tolerable condition of intercourse, is the code of politeness and fine manners; and those who transgress it are roughly told - in the English phrase - to keep their distance. By this arrangement the mutual need of warmth is only very moderately satisfied; but then people do not get pricked. A man who has some heat in himself prefers to remain outside, where he will neither prick other people nor get pricked himself. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

When liberals equate criticizing Islamic doctrine with anti-Muslim bigotry, it leaves a vacuum that is too frequently filled by genuine right-wing anti-Muslim bigots who are even more disagreeable. Who gets stuck in the middle? Ex-Muslims. ~ Ali A. Rizvi

It's a very bad habit to put off disagreeable things ... ~ L.M. Montgomery

I want to show the richness of even the most disagreeable bits of life. ~ Alfonso A. Ossorio

One only says it is one's duty when one has something disagreeable to do ... ~ Margaret Oliphant

A forest of all manner of trees is poor, if not disagreeable, in effect; a mass of one species of tree is sublime. ~ John Ruskin

Rain is disagreeable, but snow is as much part of the mountain as are sunshine and clear skies. ~ Gaston Rebuffat

When something painful or disagreeable happens to me, instead of a melancholy look, I answer by a smile. At first I did not always succeed, but now it has become a habit which I am glad to have acquired. ~ Therese De Lisieux

Have you ever noticed," asked Anne reflectively, "that when people say it is their duty to tell you a certain thing you may prepare for something disagreeable? Why is it that they never seem to think it a duty to tell you the pleasant things they hear about you? ~ L.M. Montgomery

When you run into someone who is disagreeable to others, you may be sure he is uncomfortable with himself; the amount of pain we inflict upon others is directly proportional to the amount we feel within us. ~ Sydney J. Harris

Just because I disagree with you doesn't mean I'm disagreeable ... ~ Samuel Goldwyn

Dark and sour humours, especially those which have a spice of malevolence in them, are vastly disagreeable. Such men have no music in their souls. ~ Abigail Adams