Mawkish Quotes

The rich never have a chance of being neighborly to their equals. The best they can do is feel mawkish about the sufferings of their inferiors, which they can never begin to understand, and to be patronizingly kind. ~ Aldous Huxley

I would jump down Etna for any public good - but I hate a mawkish popularity. ~ John Keats

Presents don't really mean much to me. I don't want to sound mawkish, but - it was the realization that I have a great many people in my life who really love me, and who I really love. ~ Gabriel Byrne

Smiling, Simon stared into the depths of his brandy.
"What a difficult evening you've had," he heard Westcliff remark sardonically. "First you were compelled to carry Miss Peyton's nubile young body all the way to her bedroom …then you had to examine her injured leg. How terribly inconvenient for you."
Simon's smile faded. "I didn't say that I had examined her leg."
The earl regarded him shrewdly. "You didn't have to. I know you too well to presume that you would overlook such an opportunity."
"I'll admit that I looked at her ankle. And I also cut her corset strings when it became apparent that she couldn't breathe." Simon's gaze dared the earl to object.
"Helpful lad," Westcliff murmured.
Simon scowled. "Difficult as it may be for you to believe, I receive no lascivious pleasure from the sight of a woman in pain."
Leaning back in his chair, Westcliff regarded him with a cool speculation that raised Simon's hackles. "I hope you're not fool enough to fall in love with such a creature. You know my opinion of Miss Peyton - "
"Yes, you've aired it repeatedly."
"And furthermore," the earl continued, "I would hate to see one of the few men of good sense I know to turn into one of those prattling fools who run about pollenating the atmosphere with maudlin sentiment - "
"I'm not in love."
"You're in something," Westcliff insisted. "In all the years I've known you, I've never seen you look so mawkish as you did outside ~ Lisa Kleypas

We even, at the worst, reach the state for which Buddhism, in the East presents most ably the case: as in the West, does James Thomson (B.V.) in The City of Dreadful Night; we come to wish for - or, more truly to think that we wish for "blest Nirvana's sinless stainless Peace" (or some such twaddle - thank God I can't recall Arnold's mawkish and unmanly phrase!) and B.V.'s "Dateless oblivion and divine repose."

I insist on the "think that you wish," because, if the real You did really wish the real That, you could never have come to exist at all! ("But I don't exist." - "I know - let's get on!")

Note, please, how sophistically unconvincing are the Buddhist theories of how we ever got into this mess. First cause: Ignorance. Way out, then, knowledge. O.K., that implies a knower, a thing known - and so on and so forth, through all the Three Waste Paper Baskets of the Law; analysed, it turns out to be nonsense all dolled up to look like thinking. And there is no genuine explanation of the origin of the Will to be.

How different, how simple, how self-evident, is the doctrine of The Book of the Law! ~ Aleister Crowley

The wall of silence that had instantaneously sprung between us was strong, deafening. I could not concentrate, having a sudden surge of emotions about all relationships being mawkish and pointless. ~ Kavipriya Moorthy

When I looked at him, I understood, for the first time since Jacob died, what people meant when they said someone was heartbreaking, that something could break your heart. I had always thought it mawkish, but in that moment I realized that it might have been mawkish, but it was also true.
And that, I suppose, was when I knew. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

The truth, I am convinced, is that there is no longer a poetical audience among the higher class of minds, that moral, political, and physical science have entirely withdrawn from poetry the attention of all whose attention is worth having; and that the poetical reading public being composed of the mere dregs of the intellectual community, the most sufficing passport to their favour must rest on the mixture of a little easily-intelligible portion of mawkish sentiment with an absolute negation of reason and knowledge. ~ Thomas Love Peacock

Suddenly, he wanted some credit for it. He wanted someone to thank him for not crapping on the institution of love. He wanted someone to thank him for not being yet another dilettante. He wanted someone to thank him for quitting poetry. He wanted some great poet to thank him for quitting poetry instead of desecrating it with his amateurishness. He wanted some unborn child to thank him for not conceiving her and not leaving her a hope chest full of mawkish villanelles. He wanted some sort of organization of martyrs to give him an award. He wanted to be decorated for not putting up a fuss. He wanted to be the president of forgettable people. He wanted there to be a competition for the least competitive person, and he wanted to win that competition. He wanted some sort of badge or outfit or medal or key or hat. He wanted to be asked to stand. He wanted to be considered. He wanted to be considered in earnest before being ignored. He wanted all the insane and beautiful and passionate people in the world to take one moment of silence in gratitude for the ones who had ceded them the stage-- he, the unread poet, the sacrifice, the schoolteacher-- he wanted one goddamned moment of appreciation. ~ Amity Gaige

The lovelorn, the cry-for-helpers, all mawkish tragedians who give suicide a bad name are the idiots who rush it, like amateur conductors.A true suicide is a paced, disciplined certainty. People pontificate, 'Suicide is selfishness.' Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call it a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reasons: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one's audience with one's mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching. The only selfishness lies in ruining strangers' days by forcing 'em to witness a grotesqueness. ~ David Mitchell

One of the most mawkish of human delusions is the notion that friendship should be eternal, or, at all events, life-long, and that any act which puts a term to it is somehow discreditable. ~ H.L. Mencken

We have never made an effort to understand what is greatness in man and how to recognize it," said another Wynand editorial. "We have come to hold, in a kind of mawkish stupor, that greatness is to be gauged by self-sacrifice. Self-sacrifice, we drool, is the ultimate virtue. Let's stop and think for a moment. Is sacrifice a virtue? Can a man sacrifice his integrity? His honor? His freedom? His ideal? His convictions? The honesty of his feeling? The independence of his thought? But these are a man's supreme possessions. Anything he gives up for them is not a sacrifice but an easy bargain. They, however, are above sacrificing to any cause or consideration whatsoever. Should we not, then, stop preaching dangerous and vicious nonsense? Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed. It is the unsacrificed self that we must respect in man above all. ~ Ayn Rand

This noble word [women], spirit-stirring as it passes over English ears, is in America banished, and 'ladies' and 'females' substituted: the one to English taste mawkish and vulgar; the other indistinctive and gross. ~ Harriet Martineau

The transience of humanity frames the tragedy of all people. There are no happy conclusions to life, we all die, and until we die, we will experience both happiness and pain. Acceptance of the tragedy of humankind without remorse is a shattering experience; it enables us to relinquish mawkish misconceptions, destructive obsessions, and crippling attachments. Only by accepting the tragedy of life as an integral part of the incandescent beauty of life, will I understand what it means to rejoice in the indelible bloom of life. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster