Why Do People Despise Platitudes?

All that is gold does not glitter; not all those that wander are lost. — J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973)
It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers. — James Thurber (1894-1961)
Funny how people despise platitudes, when they are usually the truest thing going. A thing has to be pretty true before it gets to be a platitude. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879-1944)
Integrity needs no rules. — Albert Camus (1913-1960)
The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side. — James Baldwin (1924-1987)
Freedom breeds freedom. Nothing else does. — Anne Roe (1904-1991)
The people who think they are happy should rummage through their dreams. — Edward Dahlberg (1900-1977)
Le sens
commun n'est pas si commun. (Common sense is not so common.) — François Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694-1778)
Men tire themselves in pursuit of rest. — Laurence Sterne (1713-1768)
Perfect order is the forerunner of perfect horror. — Carlos Fuentes (1928- )
Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times. — Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
Children are God's spies. — Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973)
One is easily fooled by that which one loves. — Jean Baptiste Poquelin Molière (1622-1673)
Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well-informed about the United States. — J. Bartlet Brebner (1895-1957)
One of the few men who became great while remaining good. — Karl Marx (1818-1883) on Abraham Lincoln
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. — William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. — Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Statesmen think they make history; but history makes itself and drags the statesmen along. — Will Rogers (1879-1935)
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence. — Robert Frost (1874-1963)
The willing contemplation of vice is vice. — Arabic proverb
My friends, there are no friends. — Coco Chanel (1883-1971)
The human heart dares not stay away too long from that which hurt it most. There is a return journey to anguish that few of us are released from making. — Lillian Smith, American writer and social critic (1897-1966)
One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways. — Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction. One has to go abroad in order to find the home one has lost. — Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
I know of no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution. — Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885)
It wasn't until quite late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say "I don't know." — W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
History, n. An account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools. — Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), The Cynic's Word Book
At every single moment of one's life one is what one is going to be no less than what one has been. — Oscar Wilde (1856-1900)
The greatest right any nation can afford its people is the right to be left alone. — Larry Flynt (1942- )
That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves. — Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
A man who does not lose his reason over certain things has none to lose. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781)
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common. — John Locke (1632-1704)
Only those ideas that are least truly ours can be adequately expressed in words. — Henri Bergson (1859-1941)
It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships that they give credibility to the opinions they attack. — Voltaire
Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of the few; and number not voices, but weigh them. — Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
There are two kinds of people in one's life—people whom one keeps waiting—and the people for whom one waits. — Samuel Nathaniel Behrman (1893-1973)
How glorious it is—and also how painful—to be an exception. — Alfred de Musset, French author (1810-1857)
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them. — Eric Hoffer (1902-1983)
Proust has pointed out that the predisposition to love creates its own objects: Is this not true of fear?
— Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973)
. . . We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), The Tempest
Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling. — Margaret Lee Runbeck (1905-1956)
To oppose something is to maintain it. — Ursula K. Le Guin (1929- )
Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love—that is the soul of genius. — Attributed to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it. — Thoreau
Nothing recedes like success. — Walter Winchell (1897-1972)
Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil. Our great hope lies in developing what is good. — Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)
You can keep the things of bronze and stone and give me one man to remember me just once a year. — Damon Runyan (1884-1946)
When you are right, no one remembers; when you are wrong, no one forgets. — Irish proverb
The only thing we have to fear on this planet is man. — Carl Jung
(1875-1961)
If you want to make enemies, try to change something. — Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)
Our civilization is still in a middle stage, no longer wholly guided by instinct, not yet wholly guided by reason. — Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)
The world is like a mirror; frown at it, and it frowns at you. Smile, and it smiles, too. — Herbert Samuel (1870-1963)
Fear is a disease that eats away at logic and makes man inhuman. — Marian Anderson (1902-1993)
Curses are like processions. They return to the place from which they came. — Giovanni Ruffini (1807-1881)
People love to talk but hate to listen. — Alice Duer Miller (1874-1942)
A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. — William Hazlitt (1778-1830)
Those who give have all things. Those who withhold have nothing. — Hindu proverb
In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play. — Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Many people's tombstones should read, "Died at 30. Buried at 60." — Nicholas Murray Butler, American educator (1862-1947)
In much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. — Ecclesiastes 1:18
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. — Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember. — Oscar Levant (1906-1972)
The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. — John Cage (1912-1992)
If men could foresee the future, they would still behave as they do now. — Russian proverb
News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read. And it's only news until he's read it. After that it's dead. — Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)
What experience and history teach is this: That people and governments have never learned anything from history. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)
El amor es fuego, pero con el no se cuece el puchero. (Love is a furnace, but it will not cook the stew.) — Spanish proverb
In most things success depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed. — Charles Louis de Montesquieu (1689-1755)
Think much, speak little, and write less. — Italian proverb
Life is 10 percent what you make it, and 90 percent how you take it. — Irving Berlin (1888-1989)
Ah, les bons vieux temps ou nous etions si malheureux! (Ah, the good old times when we were so unhappy!) — French saying
There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life. — Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)
We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love. — R.D. Laing (1927-1989)
Prophecy is the wit of a fool. — Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977)
There is nothing more horrifying than stupidity in action. — Adlai E. Stevenson (1900-1965)
What we really are matters more than what other people think of us. — Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964)
When a friend speaks to me, whatever he says is interesting. — Jean Renoir (1894-1979)
No man has a right in America to treat any other man tolerantly, for tolerance is the assumption of superiority. — Wendell Willkie (1892-1944)
No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true. — Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), The Scarlet Letter
The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity. — George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
There are no hopeless situations; there are only men who have grown helpless about them. — Clare Boothe Luce (1903-1987)
No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities. — Christian Nestell Bovee
Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity. — Vera Brittain (1893-1970)
We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them. — Livy, Roman historian (64 or 59 BC-17 AD)
In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous. — Robert S. Ingersoll (1833-1899)
The heaviest baggage for a traveler is an empty purse. — German proverb
Christ's Beatitudes
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
Matthew 5:1-12
The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. — General Omar N. Bradley (1893-1981)
All mankind is divided into three classes: Those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move. — Arab proverb
He who is learned is not wise; he who is wise is not learned. — Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
The price of justice is eternal publicity. — Arnold Bennett (1867-1931)
To have doubted one's own first principles, is the mark of a civilized man.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841-1935)
Ideas won't keep; something must be done about them. — Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)
He who confers a favor should at once forget it, if he is not to show a sordid, ungenerous spirit. — Demosthenes (384 B.C.-322 B.C.)
There is many a good man to be found under a shabby hat. — Chinese proverb
The world fears a new experience more than it fears anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences. — D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you. — Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones. — St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)
Great wisdom is generous, petty wisdom is contentious. Great speech is impassioned, small speech cantankerous. — Chuang-Tzu (c 369-c 286 BC)
What you see is news, what you know is background, what you feel is opinion. — Lester Markel, American editor (1894-1977)
Only the vanquished remember history. — Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980)
Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it. — George Orwell
(1903-1950)
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time. — Willem de Kooning
He, who will not reason, is a bigot; he, who cannot, is a fool; and he, who dares not, is a slave. — William Drummond (1585-1649)
One today is worth two tomorrows. — Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead. — Bertrand Russell
Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man. — Robert G. Ingersoll
I never think of the future. It comes soon enough. — Albert Einstein (1889-1955)
The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. — Elie Wiesel (1928- )
I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. — William Faulkner (1897-1962)
There is nothing so powerful as the truth, and nothing so strange. — Daniel Webster (1782-1852)
We fear something before we hate it. A child who fears noises becomes a man who hates noise. — Cyril Connolly (1903-1974)
It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor. — Eric Hoffer
Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else. — Sir James Barrie (1860-1937)
Men hate those to whom they have to lie. — Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all. — Dame Rebecca West (1892-1983)
Trouble is only opportunity in work clothes. — Henry J. Kaiser (1882-1967)
Education is hanging around until you've caught on. — Robert Frost
When you shut one eye, you do not hear everything. — Swiss proverb
Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in our own sunshine. — Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by a common hatred of its neighbours. — William Ralph Inge (1860-1954)
He who knows nothing, doubts nothing. — Italian proverb
I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing. — Oscar Wilde (1856-1900)
Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection—they have many friends and few enemies. — Wendell Phillips (1811-1884)
I venture to suggest that patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime. — Adlai E. Stevenson (1900-1965)
After three days without reading, talk becomes flavorless. — Chinese proverb
The wise man is astonished by anything. — André Gide (1869-1951)
There are two statements about human beings that are true: That all human beings are alike, and that all are different. On those two facts all human wisdom is founded. — Mark Van Doren (1894-1972)
Ideas are one thing, and what happens is another. — John Cage
Life is never so bad at its worst that it is impossible to live; it is never so good at its best that it is easy to live. — Gabriel Heatter (1890-1972)
The most exhausting thing in life . . . is being insincere. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906- )
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. — Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)
Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. — Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
There are no warlike peoples—just warlike leaders. — Ralph Bunche (1904-1971)
This is the final test of a gentleman: His respect for those who can be of no possible service to him. — William Lyon Phelps, American educator (1865-1943)
Life is like a landscape. You live in the midst of it, but can describe it only from the vantage point of distance. — Charles A. Lindbergh (1902-1974)
The final lesson of history: 'Let's never go back there again!' — Nietzsche
When you look into a mirror you do not see your reflection—your reflection sees you. — Anonymous
Laziness is often mistaken for patience. — French proverb
I love criticism just so long as it's unqualified praise. — Sir Noel Coward (1899-1973)
If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow. — Chinese proverb
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness. — Bertrand Russell
We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another. — Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Many of us spend half our time wishing for things we could have if we didn't spend half our time wishing. — Alexander Woollcott, American author and critic (1887-1943)
Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers. — Voltaire
The wise make proverbs and fools repeat them. — Isaac D'Israeli (1766-1848)