Mean quotes
28K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"That is the injustice of a woman's lot. A woman has to bring up her children; and that means to restrain them, to deny them things they want, to set them tasks, to punish them when they do wrong, to do all the unpleasant things. And then the father, who has nothing to do but pet them and spoil them, comes in when all her work is done and steals their affection from her."
"Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?"
"Why do 'slow down' and 'slow up' mean the same thing? Why is the third hand on the watch called the second hand?"
"When people asked me, "Do you get high to go onstage?" I could never understand the question. I mean, I'd been high since eight that morning. Going onstage had nothing to do with it."
"There's a part of me that is angry. Not in the sense of, "Gee, George is an angry guy!" I mean, anyone who's been with me five minutes, five years, whatever, they would tell you they've rarely seen me in a moment of anger. Yes, I can become highly irritated in a line that's moving slowly, or with a clerk who's incompetent. But I don't yell. I don't get rude. I am clear about what I expect. In a store, my mother always told me, "Ask for the manager immediately. It changes the tone of the conversation.""
"Like on the airlines, they say they want to 'pre-board'. Well, what the hell is 'pre board'? What does that mean? To get on before you get on?"
"I went to George Washington High School for six months before my 16th birthday, when I could legally quit. That was an even worse experience than the Catholic schools. I mean, they were still teaching fractions. But mostly, I played hooky."
"Broadway isn't a very big career move. There's no money in it and it doesn't mean anything to your career. It's just a nice little jewel in the crown."
"A man vows, and yet will not east away the means of breaking his vow. Is it that he distinctly means to break it? Not at all; but the desires which tend to break it are at work in him dimly, and make their way into his imagination, and relax his muscles in the very moments when he is telling himself over again the reasons for his vow."
"Marriage is so unlike everything else. There is something even awful in the nearness it brings. Even if we loved someone else better than - than those we were married to, it would be no use. I mean, marriage drinks up all our power of giving or getting any blessedness in that sort of love. I know it may be very dear, but it murders our marriage, and then the marriage stays with us like a murder, and everything else is gone."
"I am not imposed upon by fine words; I can see what actions mean."
"What business has an old bachelor like that to marry?' said Sir James. 'He has one foot in the grave.' 'He means to draw it out again, I suppose."
"Errors look so very ugly in persons of small means -one feels they are taking quite a liberty in going astray; whereas people of fortune may naturally indulge in a few delinquencies."
"What is your religion? I mean-not what you know about religion but the belief that helps you most?"
"If people will be censors, let them weigh their words. I mean that the words were unfair by that disproportionateness of the condemnation, which everybody with some conscience must feel to be one of the great difficulties in denouncing a particular person. Every unpleasant dog is only one of many, but we kick him because he comes in our way, and there is always some want of distributive justice in the kicking."
"I know forgiveness is a man's duty, but, to my thinking, that can only mean as you're to give up all thoughts o' taking revenge: it can never mean as you're t' have your old feelings back again, for that's not possible."
"I thought Daredevil was kind of cool because he couldn't do anything. I mean, he's blind. It wasn't that he could fly. His major power was an impediment. So I was intrigued. When I took over he was kind of like Spider-Man-lite, but I was able to project a lot of my Catholic imagery onto it. And I'd always wanted to do a crime comic."
""Comic book" has come to mean a specific genre, not a story form, in people's minds. So someone will call Die Hard "a comic-book movie," when it has nothing to do with comic books. I'd rather have comics be the vehicle by which stories are told."
"I was thinking about being more global in my work, which means trying more foreign countries and working with foreign filmmakers, hoping they would give me a new take on my work, a new point of view, reinvent me in some way."
"We want to be safe for the future because we don't know how record companies can afford to pay for studios for bands. If we build our own studio, it means we can make our own music for the rest of our lives, whatever happens. We feel safe now, it's really cool."
