Misanthrope Quotes

[Patricia Highsmith] was a figure of contradictions: a lesbian who didn't particularly like women; a writer of the most insightful psychological novels who, at times, appeared bored by people; a misanthrope with a gentle, sweet nature. ~ Andrew Wilson

By capitulating to life, this world has betrayed nothingness ... I resign from movement, and from my dreams. Absence! You shall be my sole glory ... Let "desire" be forever stricken from the dictionary, and from the soul! I retreat before the dizzying farce of tomorrows. And if I still cling to a few hopes, I have lost forever the faculty of hoping ~ Emil Cioran

You call me a misanthrope because I avoid society. You err; I love society. Yet in order not to hate people, I must avoid their company. ~ Caspar David Friedrich

I don't have many friends. It's not because I'm a misanthrope. It's because I'm reserved. I'm self-contained. I get all my adventures in my head when I'm writing my books. ~ Ian Rankin

Animal lovers often tend to be misanthropes or loners, and so they transfer their affection to the creature in their control. ~ Paul Theroux

Fossey, Fossey, you cranky difficult strong-arming self-destructive misanthrope, mediocre scientist, deceiver of earnest college students, probable cause of more deaths of the gorillas than if you had never set foot in Rwanda, Fossey, you pain-in-the-ass saint, I do not believe in prayers or souls, but I will pray for your soul, I will remember you for all of my days, in gratitude for that moment by the graves when all I felt was the pure, cleansing sadness of returning home and finding nothing but ghosts. ~ Robert M. Sapolsky

I believe that human brilliance manifests itself only in flashes, among rare individuals. For this reason, humanity as a whole is enormously destructive: the creation of something as devastating as Western culture, which is now allowed to spread throughout the world, offers sufficient proof of this fact. ~ Pentti Linkola

From a misanthrope Bacchus makes me sociable ... Yet on the other hand I had already bowed and smiled; I had performed at least the motions of complaisancy; and how often have I not observed that the imitation begets the reality. ~ Patrick O'Brian

Love rather than fear ... this radical philosophy is coming from me, an avowed misanthrope ... surely there is hope for us all. ~ Bill Hicks

The great dilemma of human life is that we are all strangers in a strange land. Genetically we are disposed to be communitarian. Even the worst misanthrope needs human company, hungers for it. And no matter how individualistic we are, no matter how self-motivated, other people have strange and terrible powers over us. They can fill us with joy just by saying completely stupid things like "Good job" or "You were so cool." We are so hungry for the approval of the community that a pat on the back from someone we despise still makes us feel good. Even if we're ashamed of feeling good, we feel it. It ~ Orson Scott Card

Since I no longer expect anything from mankind except madness, meanness, and mendacity; egotism, cowardice, and self-delusion, I have stopped being a misanthrope. ~ Irving Layton

Sincerity is the defence of every misanthrope. ~ David Joseph Cribbin

People tell me I'm a misanthrope just because I hate all mankind. ~ Carl-John X. Veraja

The misanthrope, as an essentially solitary man, is not a man at all: he must be a beast or a god ... ~ Aristotle.

I'm still a recluse. I still hate everyone. I'm still a misanthrope. ~ Al Jourgensen

There are very few misanthropes, thank goodness! ~ Ivor Novello

I'm not a misogynist. I'm a misanthrope. I hate everyone equally. ~ David Sedaris

I was an incredibly misanthrope. I couldn't relate to people my age, and I'm not sure why, as I wasn't particularly smart or interesting ~ Laura Marling

I am a misanthrope, but exceedingly benevolent; I am very cranky, and am a super-idealist ... I can digest philosophy better than food. ~ Alfred Nobel

The word introvert is not a synonym for hermit or misanthrope. ~ Susan Cain

I found, increasingly, that I did not particularly care and I tried to fake a little kindness, a little sweetness, tried to mirror Luna back at herself, but that exhausted me after a week and I concluded that I was not meant for this sort of thing, friends, friendliness, no, I wasn't meant for it. ~ Catherine Lacey

All the hate and scorn and love of a deep nature, such as the shy man is ever cursed by, fester and corrupt within, instead of spending themselves abroad, and sour him into a misanthrope and cynic. ~ Jerome K. Jerome

A hermitage in the forest is the refuge of the narrow-minded misanthrope; a hammock on the ocean is the asylum for the generous distressed. ~ Herman Melville

I could never find two people who are perfectly equal: one will always be more valuable than the other. And many people, as a matter of fact, simply have no value. ~ Pentti Linkola

I cannot love evergreens - they are the misanthropes of nature. To them the spring brings no promise, the autumn no decline; they are cut off from the sweetest of all ties with their kind - sympathy ... I will have no evergreens in my garden; when the inevitable winter comes, every beloved plant and favorite tree shall drop together - no solitary fir left to triumph over the companionship of decay. ~ Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused - in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened - by the recurrence of Christmas. There are people who will tell you that Christmas is not to them what it used to be; that each succeeding Christmas has found some cherished hope, or happy prospect, of the year before, dimmed or passed away; that the present only serves to remind them of reduced circumstances and straitened incomes - of the feasts they once bestowed on hollow friends, and of the cold looks that meet them now, in adversity and misfortune. Never heed such dismal reminiscences. There are few men who have lived long enough in the world who cannot call up such thoughts any day of the year. Then do not select the merriest of the three hundred and sixty-five for your doleful recollections, but draw your chair nearer the blazing fire - fill the glass and send round the song - and if your room be smaller than it was a dozen years ago, or if your glass be filled with reeking punch, instead of sparkling wine, put a good face on the matter, and empty it offhand, and fill another, and troll off the old ditty you used to sing, and thank God it's no worse. ~ Charles Dickens

If you're a misanthrope you stay at home. There are certain writers who really don't like other people. I'm not like that, I don't think. ~ Paul Theroux

Out of the ashes of misanthropy benevolence rises again; we find many virtues where we had imagined all was vice, many acts of disinterested friendship where we had fancied all was calculation and fraud
and so gradually from the two extremes we pass to the proper medium; and, feeling that no human being is wholly good or wholly base, we learn that true knowledge of mankind which induces us to expect little and forgive much. The world cures alike the optimist and the misanthrope. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Aelin said to Fenrys, "We'll only invite him to Orynth on holidays." "So he can ruin the festivities?" Fenrys scowled. "I, for one, cherish my holidays. I don't need a misanthrope raining on them. ~ Sarah J. Maas

I have stopped being a misanthrope. ~ Irving Layton

My hate is general, I detest all men;
Some because they are wicked and do evil,
Others because they tolerate the wicked,
Refusing them the active vigorous scorn
Which vice should stimulate in virtuous minds. ~ Moliere

If you ever meet someone who cannot understand why solitary confinement is considered punishment, you have met a misanthrope. ~ Florence King

misanthrope." Einstein ~ Walter Isaacson

I am a jack-of-all-trades. I edit and teach and at times desire to be a clothing designer or an artist (one who doesn't draw or paint or sew) and I write everything but poetry and I am a mother and a social maniac and a misanthrope and a burgeoning self-help guru and a girl who wants to look pretty and a girl who wants to look sexy and a girl who wants to look girly and a woman in her middle forties who wishes not to look like anything at all, who wishes sometimes to vanish. ~ Heidi Julavits

There were nights when I got nothing, [but] I still played. With no one to hear me and no one to pay me, and it did not matter.
On those nights, the words were for me alone. They came up unbidden from my heart. They slipped over my tongue and spilled from my mouth. And because of them I, who was nothing and nobody, was a prince of Denmark, a maid of Verona, a queen of Egypt. I was a sour misanthrope, a beetling hypocrite, a conjurer's daughter, a mad and murderous king.
It was dark and it was cold on those nights. The world was harsh and I was hungry. Yet I had such joy from the words. Such joy.
There were times when I lifted my face to the sky, stretched my arms wide to the winter night, and laughed out loud, so happy was I.
The memory of it makes me laugh now, but not from happiness.
Be careful what you show the world.
You never know when the wolf is watching. ~ Jennifer Donnelly

Everyone is awful in their own special way. ~ W.H. Mitchell

No matter how far I try to travel from people, people always appear. Either they follow me, or they're already there, and I followed them, unwittingly. ~ Sara Baume

A few things introverts are not: The word introvert is not a synonym for hermit or misanthrope. Introverts can be these things, but most are perfectly friendly. ~ Susan Cain

Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never have loved mankind. ~ Nicolas Chamfort

Let the misanthrope shun men and abjure; the most are rather lovable than hateful. ~ Martin Farquhar Tupper

Sometimes I feel dead," I told her, "and I hate everybody. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

If you're only sceptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. You never learn anything. You become a crochety misanthrope convinced that nonsense is ruling the world. (There is, of course, much data to support you.) Since major discoveries in the borderlines of science are rare, experience will tend to confirm your grumpiness. But every now and then a new idea turns out to be on the mark, valid and wonderful. If you're too resolutely and uncompromisingly sceptical, you're going to miss (or resent) the transforming discoveries in science, and either way you will be obstructing understanding and progress. Mere scepticism is not enough. ~ Carl Sagan

In a century or two this planet will have been destroyed by external cosmic forces or by the senseless activity of the human race. Human life is a freak phenomenon, soon to be blotted out. That is a consoling thought. Meanwhile we are surrounded by strange invisible entities, possibly your angels."

"I hope so."

"Ah, you think they are good, they cannot be good, there is no good, the tendency to evil is overwhelming. One has only to think of the horrors of sex, its violence, its cruelty, its filthy vulgarity, its descent into bestial degradation. You had better go and dream in your monastery."

"Would you come and visit me there?"

"Of course not. I do not visit. Only, unfortunately, am sometimes visited."

"You don't want to discuss - you know - what happened? My priest said - "

"No."

"I care about how you are, I love you."

"You still fail to realise how this sort of talk sickens me. Now please go. This will do for a welcome home scene. Tell them not to come. I desire to be left alone. ~ Iris Murdoch

The myth of writer as, like, Asperger-style misanthrope, or, like, the Jack Nicholson, 'As Good As It Gets' - it just doesn't work, because writers, in order to write good characters, need to understand people. You need to understand your audience. You need to have so much empathy you could almost encourage empathy in others. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

Some book reviewer whose name I forget recently called me a 'vicious misanthrope' ... or maybe it was a 'cynical misanthrope' ... but either way, he (or she) was right; and what got me this way was politics. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

A savage review is much more entertaining for the reader than an admiring one; the little misanthrope in each of us relishes the rubbishing of someone else. ~ Arthur Smith

Change is when new selves come into the foreground while others recede into forgotten landscapes. Maybe definition of having lived a full life is when every citizen in the hall of selves gets to take you for a spin, the commander the lover the coward the misanthrope the fighter the priest the moral guardian the immoral guardian the lover of life the hater of life the fool the judge the jury the executioner.. ~ Steve Toltz

He who has little communication with people is seldom a misanthrope. True misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the world. This is because it is practical experience of life, and certainly not philosophy, that makes people hate their fellows. ~ Giacomo Leopardi

I don't want to talk about those things. I see the worst in people. I don't need to look past seeing them to get all I need. I've built my hatreds up over the years, little by little, Henry ... to have you here gives me a second breath. I can't keep doing this on my own with these ... people.
[laughs] ~ Paul Thomas Anderson

A misanthrope I can understand - a womanthrope, never! ~ Oscar Wilde

A fine line separates the weary recluse from the fearful hermit. Finer still is the line between hermit and bitter misanthrope. ~ Dean Koontz

I wasn't a misanthrope and I wasn't a misogynist but I liked being alone. It felt good to sit alone in a small space and smoke and drink. I had always been good company for myself. ~ Charles Bukowski

I fall in love with everything I also hate everything. It's very hard to be a misanthrope and a romantic. ~ Marilyn Manson

Only small fish swim in schools. (p. 31)

"Don't ever see another human being, lock yourself up and live like a misanthrope." And another power tells me to accept people, talk to them. There is a struggle all the time within me. I also know that if I stay away from people, then I have to deal with only one human being-myself - and I 'd rather have other people than to all the time have only myself for an associate. When you are with yourself your egotism grows, your bitterness and suspicions grow. You become twice as meshuga as before. (p. 32)

An assimilated Jew is a man who is ashamed of his origin, who denies his roots. He wants to make believe that he's somebody else. (p. 60)

I believe in God but I have my doubts about revelation. I would say that I have no proof whatsoever
that God reveals Himself or tells us how to behave, what He wants. I believe that God is a silent God, and He must have a very good reason why He is silent. If He would begin to talk, He would have to speak in three thousand languages and in all kinds of dialects. God speaks in deeds, but the language of deeds is so large its vocabulary is as large as the universe perhaps. So we only understand a very small part of His language. Everything man says about God is pure guesswork. But since I believe in God's existence and since God created man and formed his brain, I believe also that there must be something of the divine in men's ideas about Him even if they are far fr ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer

My father was a misanthrope who slept all day and stayed up all night so that he wouldn't have to see people. He ran a business with a large staff but would go there at night and leave things for them to do during the day when he wasn't there. ~ Edmund White

My brother asked me once, 'Are you a misanthrope?' And I said, 'No, I just find people irritating.' ~ Craig Kilborn

Euripides questioned everything. He was a misanthrope who preferred books to men. ~ Edith Hamilton

Betrayed and wronged in everything,
I'll flee this bitter world where vice is king,
And seek some spot unpeopled and apart
Where I'll be free to have an honest heart. ~ Moliere