Nay Sayers Quotes

The nay-sayers insist loudly that they're "climate sceptics", but this is a calculated misnomer – scientific scepticism is the method of investigating whether a particular hypothesis is supported by the evidence. Climate sceptics, by contrast, persist in ignoring empirical evidence that renders their position untenable. This isn't scepticism, it's unadulterated denialism, the very antithesis of critical thought. ~ David Robert Grimes

I have definitely gone through my ups and downs and faced my adversity and my nay-sayers, but managed to do all right. It is a pretty classic tale. ~ Steve Nash

Your life was meant for more than being a life-long doormat for deadbeats, losers, gossipers, nay-sayers, dream-crushers, energy vampires, users, abusers, ragers and passive-aggressive backstabbers. ~ Bryant McGill

As an African American, I don't take myself too seriously that I can't poke fun at stereotypes that used to offend me. Despite the title of my book, I think many will be surprised if they actually read it to see what it's really about, and come away having been entertained. If that happens for only a few people, I will be proud to have put myself out there.

My challenge to all the nay-sayers is: HOW DARE YOU READ THIS! ~ L.V. Lewis

In a modern democracy, not only can a libertarian be elitist; a libertarian has to be elitist. To be a libertarian in a modern democracy is to say that nearly 300 million Americans are wrong, and a handful of nay-sayers are right. ~ Bryan Caplan

Dorothy Sayers challenged the thought of many nay-sayers of her time who claimed that doctrinal preaching led to boredom and a lack of interest. She wrote: Official Christianity, of late years, has been having what is known as bad press. We are constantly assured that the churches are empty because preachers insist too much upon doctrine - "dull dogma," as people call it. The fact is the precise opposite. It is the neglect of dogma that makes for dullness. The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that staggered the imagination of man - and the dogma is the drama.2 ~ Robert Smith Jr.

When cats sat staring into the fire they were thinking out problems. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Unless we do change our whole way of thought about work, I do not think we shall ever escape from the appalling squirrel cage of economic confusion in which we have been madly turning for the last three centuries or so, the cage in which we landed ourselves by acquiescing in a social system based upon Envy and Avarice. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

And in this it is right, for the meaning of any beautiful created thing is, at least, as much in the soul of him who looks at it as it was in his soul who wrought it. Nay, it is rather the beholder who lends to the beautiful thing its myriad meanings, and makes it marvellous for us, and sets it in some new relation to the age, so that it becomes a vital portion of our lives and a symbol of what we pray for, or perhaps of what, having prayed for, we fear that we may receive. ~ Oscar Wilde

Boil my brains!" said Lord Peter. "Boil 'em and mash 'em and serve 'em up with butter as a dish of turnips, for it's damn well all they're fit for! Look at me! ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

I was a woman alone, yet never lonely. I was enough for myself. Nay, more than enough; I was a feast.

Had Henry known, I would surely have gone to the block.

To be happy without him was the highest of treasons.

[Anna of Cleves] ~ Jennifer Donnelly

Shall a man
grave his sorrows upon a stone when he hath but need to write them on
the water? Nay, oh /She/, I will live my day, and grow old with my
generation, and die my appointed death, and be forgotten. ~ H. Rider Haggard

It's very good of you
"
"No, no, not at all. It's my hobby. Not proposing to people, I don't mean, but investigating things. Well, cheer-frightfully-ho and all that. And I'll call again, if I may."
"I will give the footman orders to admit you," said the prisoner, gravely, "you will always find me at home. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

She started to rise, for she feared Dash might become angry, lose his temper as he had before with Finn, but this Dash, this man who was struggling to find his footing, planted his feet solidly on the deck.
"She married someone else, Finn," he said quietly. "There was no battle to fight once she'd done that. I'd lost, and sometimes when you lose, there is nothing you can do but move on."
Finn sighed and shook his head, the arguments and problems of adults far beyond his ken, but he still persisted, struggling to understand. "Did you?"
"Did I what?"
"Move on? After you lost her?"
Again, Dash shook his head. "Nay, I didn't. Not at all."
"'Cause you loved her?"
Dash looked away. "Aye. Without her, I lost my course and sailed about the seas rather like the Dutchman. ~ Elizabeth Boyle

People think I played 10 years. I played 68 ball games. ~ Gale Sayers

Here am I, sweating my brains out to introduce a really sensational incident into your dull and disreputable little police investigation, and you refuse to show a single spark of enthusiasm. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

The war has jerked us pretty sharply into consciousness about this slug-a-bed sin of Sloth, and perhaps we need not say too much about it. But two warnings are rather necessary. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Of course, [Miss Climpson,] you mustn't appear to be inquiring. You must find some good gossipy lady living in the neighborhood and just get her to talk in a natural way. You must pretend to be gossipy yourself – it's not in your nature, I know, but I'm sure you can make a little pretence about it – and find out all you can. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter? ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Poor little Hilary Thorpe wasn't in church,' she observed. 'Such a nice child. I should have liked you to see her. But she's quite prostrated, poor child, so Mrs Gates tells me. And you know, the village people do stare so at anybody who's in trouble and they will want to talk and condole. They mean well, but it's a terrible ordeal. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Will you let me say, here and now, that the one thing which frustrated the whole attack from first to last was the remarkable solidarity and public spirit displayed by your college as a body. I think that was the last obstacle that X expected to encounter in a community of women. Nothing but the very great loyalty of the Senior Common Room to the College and the respect of the students for the Senior Common Room stood between you and a most unpleasant publicity. It is the merest presumption in me to tell you what you already know far better than I do; but I say it, not only for my own satisfaction, but because this particular kind of loyalty forms at once the psychological excuse for the attack and the only possible defense against it. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

We are with Europe but not of it. We are linked, not combined. We are interested and associated, not absorbed. And should European statesmen address us in the words that were used of old - Shall I speak for thee to the King or the Captain of the Host? - we should reply with the Shunamite woman: "Nay sir, for we dwell among our own people". ~ Winston Churchill

A good player who is a great putter is a match for any golfer. A great hitter who cannot putt is a match for no one. ~ Ben Sayers

The dogma of the Incarnation is the most dramatic thing about Christianity, and indeed, the most dramatic thing that ever entered the mind of man; but if you tell people so, they stare at you in bewilderment. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

It is resignation and contentment that are best calculated to lead us safely through life. Whoever has not sufficient power to endure privations, and even suffering, can never feel that he is armor proof against painful emotions,
nay, he must attribute to himself, or at least to the morbid sensitiveness of his nature, every disagreeable feeling he may suffer. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Cruelty to animals is cruelty and a vile thing; but cruelty to a man is not cruelty, it is treason. Tyranny over a man is not tyranny, it is rebellion, for man is royal. Now, the practical weakness of the vast mass of modern pity for the poor and the oppressed is precisely that it is merely pity; the pity is pitiful, but not respectful. Men feel that the cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is injustice to equals; nay, it is treachery to comrades. This dark scientific pity, this brutal pity, has an elemental sincerity of its own; but it is entirely useless for all ends of social reform. Democracy swept Europe with the sabre when it was founded upon the Rights of Man. It has done literally nothing at all since it has been founded only upon the wrongs of man. Or, more strictly speaking, its recent failure has been due to its not admitting the existence of any rights, or wrongs, or indeed of any humanity. Evolution (the sinister enemy of revolution) does not especially deny the existence of God; what it does deny is the existence of man. And all the despair about the poor, and the cold and repugnant pity for them, has been largely due to the vague sense that they have literally relapsed into the state of the lower animals. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Every unfulfilled aspiration of humanity in the past; all partial representation of perfect character; all sacrifices, nay, even those of idolatry, point to the fulfillment of what want, the answer to every longing
the type of perfect humanity, the Lord Jesus Christ. ~ Frederick William Robertson

She let him know how much she liked what he was doing by scoring his back with her nails and crying out with pleasure.
"Oh, God."
"Nay, lass. Connor. ~ Julie Garwood

The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts. ~ Rene Descartes

At that moment Marilla had a revelation. In the sudden stab of fear that pierced her very heart she realized what Anne had come to mean to her. She would have admitted that she liked Anne--nay, that she was very fond of Anne. But now she knew as she hurried wildly down the slope that Anne was dearer to her than anything else on earth ~ L.M. Montgomery

I've always had a great fondness for English detective fiction such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

Material civilization, nay, even luxury, is necessary to create work for the poor. Bread! Bread! I do not believe in a God who cannot give me bread here, giving me eternal bliss in heaven! ~ Bill Vaughan

We are all dying, every moment that passes of every day. That is the inescapable truth of this existence. It is a truth that can paralyze us with fear, or one that can energize us with impatience, with the desire to explore and experience, with the hope- nay, the iron-will!- to find a memory in every action. To be alive, under sunshine, or starlight, in weather fair or stormy. To dance with every step, be they through gardens of flowers or through deep snows. ~ R.A. Salvatore

Always there is the one choice to be made: which road to take? which duty to accept? which item, amidst a store's displays, to purchase as our own? The paths of the past parts of our lives are strewn with things not chosen. One believes, nay, one is taught, that choice provides fulfillment of desire. In truth, however, relinquishment and loss enter in to the bargain every single time. Loss looks over the shoulders of fair choice. For every thing one chooses, some thing is left behind. ~ Joan W. Blos

The justice hearing thereof (whose name is Mr Francis Wingate), forthwith issued out his warrant to take me, and bring me before him, and in the meantime to keep a very strong watch about the house where the meeting should be kept, as if we that were to meet together in that place did intend to do some fearful business, to the destruction of the country; when alas! the constable, when he came in, found us only with our Bibles in our hands, ready to speak and hear the word of God; for we were just about to begin our exercise. Nay, we had begun in prayer for the blessing of God upon our opportunity, intending to have preached the word of the Lord unto them there present: but the constable coming in prevented us. ~ John Bunyan

If any religion had a chance of ruling over England, nay Europe within the next hundred years, it could be Islam. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I do not know what is happening. The reason of my waking mind tells me that great evil has befallen and we stand at the end of days. But my heart says nay; and all my limbs are light, and a hope and joy are come to me that no reason can deny. [ ... ] I do not believe that darkness will endure! ~ J.R.R. Tolkien