Excuse Quotes - 2
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Beauty is its own excuse.
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More Excuse Quotes
The days of looking the other way while despotic regimes trample human rights, rob their nations' wealth, and then excuse their failings by feeding their people a steady diet of anti-Western hatred are over.
— 2004 Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, 24 Jan.
Fashiona word which knaves and fools may use, Their knavery and folly to excuse.
Charles Churchill— 1761The Rosciad, l.455-6.
What is called music today is all too often only a disguise for the monologue of power. However, and this is the supreme irony of it all, never before have musicians tried so hard to communicate with their audience, and never before has that communication been so deceiving. Music now seems hardly more than a somewhat clumsy excuse for the self-glorification of musicians and the growth of a new industrial sector.
— Quoted in Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music, ed. Richard Kostelanetz and Joseph Darby (Wadsworth, 1996, ISBN 0-028-64581-2)
Not even the apparently enlightened principle of the ‘greatest good for the greatest number’ can excuse indifference to individual suffering. There is no test for progress other than its impact on the individual.
Aneurin Bevan— In Place of Fear (William Heinemann Ltd, London, 1952), p. 167-8.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee whyThis charm is wasted on the earth and sky,Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,Then beauty is its own excuse for Being.
ralph waldo emerson— The Rhodora
"I fear that by gaining a limit, we'll lose an excuse."
romeo leblanc— Source: Speech as Fisheries Minister, at Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, September 16, 1975, well in advance of Canada declaring 200-mile fisheries jurisdiction in 1977.
I was going through the motions of life, instead of really living, and there’s no excuse for that. It’s not something I’ll let happen to me again.
charles de lint— Making a Noise in This World in Hartwell ed. Year's Best Fantasy, (2000) p. 326
I attribute my success to this — I never gave or took any excuse.
Florence Nightingale— As quoted in The Gigantic Book of Teachers' Wisdom (2007) by Frank McCourt and Erin Gruwell, p. 410
Having touched Christ's feet is not an excuse for punctuation mistakes.
fernando pessoa— Original: O ter tocado os pés de Cristo não é desculpa para defeitos de pontuação.
— A Factless Autobiography, Richard Zenith Edition, Lisbon, 2006, p 229
Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.
russell baker— "The Fact About Progress," The New York Times (1970-02-24)
Of all the people insistently expressing their mental vacuity, none has a better excuse for an empty head than the newspaperman: If he pauses to restock his brain, he invites onrushing headlines to trample him flat.
russell baker— "Introduction" (p.14)
We believe US threats of an approaching World War III and their use of Iran's nuclear issue as an excuse is another form of American insanity.
mohammad hussein fadlallah— Cleric: US threats, fruits of insanity. Press TV (October 2007).
But if one Subject giveth Counsell to another, to do anything contrary to the Lawes, whether that Counsell proceed from evil intention, or from ignorance onely, it is punishable by the Common-wealth; because igorance of the Law, is no good excuse, where every man is bound to take notice of the Lawes to which he is subject.
thomas hobbes— The Second Part, Chapter 25, p. 132
Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.
edward r. murrow— Comments after President John F. Kennedy's inaugural address (20 January 1961).
Love's an excuse to get hurt and to hurt. Do you like to hurt? I do, I do then hurt me.
conor oberst— Lover I Don't Have to Love
The assurance that we have no means of answering [final] questions is no valid excuse for callousness towards them. The more deeply should we feel, down to the roots of our being, their pressure and their sting. Whose hunger has ever been [sated] with the knowledge that he could not eat?
josé ortega y gasset— p. 15 (History as a System (1962))
Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.
thomas szasz— P. 49 (The Second Sin (1973))
Using, as an excuse, others’ failure of common sense is in itself a failure of common sense.
nassim nicholas taleb— p. 7 (The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010))
The Erie railroad kills 23 to 46; the other 845 railroads kill an average of one-third of a man each; and the rest of that million, amounting in the aggregate to that appalling figure of 987,631 corpses, die naturally in their beds! You will excuse me from taking any more chances on those beds. The railroads are good enough for me.
— Mark Twain, "The Danger of Lying in Bed", The Galaxy (February 1871), Volume 11, No. 2.
Bad men excuse their faults, good men will leave them.
Ben Jonson— Ben Jonson, Catiline, Act III, scene 2.
Treason is a charge invented by winners as an excuse for hanging the losers.
— Peter Stone and Sherman Edwards' musical 1776 (character of Benjamin Franklin).
Everything printed or written, which reflects on the character of another, and is published without lawful justification or excuse, is a libel, whatever the intention may have been.
James Parke— O'Brien v. Clement (1846), 15 M. & W. 437.
Take not His name, who made thy mouth, in vain; It gets thee nothing, and hath no excuse.
George Herbert— George Herbert, The Temple (1633), The Church Porch, Stanza 10.
To excuse himself from damage, must say, was ready always and at all times.
— Holt, C.J., Horn v. Lewins (1698), Fortesc. 235.
Having touched Christ's feet is not an excuse for punctuation mistakes.
— Original: O ter tocado os pés de Cristo não é desculpa para defeitos de pontuação.
— A Factless Autobiography, Richard Zenith Edition, Lisbon, 2006, p 229
If, after an absolute consecration to Him, and a conviction in conscience that He requires something of us, we hesitate, delay, lose courage, dilute what He would have us do, indulge fear for our comfort or safety, desire to shield ourselves from suffering and obloquy, or seek to find some excuse for not performing a difficult or painful duty, we are truly guilty in His sight.
— François Fénelon, p. 249. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
A training exercise, that’s all. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got tickets to watch our boys thrash Rapid City.
— Who: Mayor Garcia
— Note: Says this to a reporter who questions the masses of cops going underground to get Bane, before attending a football game that is attacked by a series' of explosions from Bane and his men, killed by one that goes off in his viewing box.
Well, I'm going global! Local service may be fine for timid creatures like yourself, but I'm challenging the big guys! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm due to be on a panel!
— Who: Anonymous mouse businessman.
— Source: Kevin and Kell
— Notes: Speaking with Kevin, who is manning the booth for Hare-Link. Kevin sees that instead of a panel, there is "Feeding Ti-(me)", and the mouse is apparently eaten.
We shall move about in people's rooms and say, "excuse me, we are the World Domination League. May we dominate you?" Then, if they say "Get out," of course we give up. Well, you have to give up if you're told to get out.
Peter Cook— "The World Domination League" (1964)
[to camera] excuse me for just a second. [walks off-camera, to studio audience] Shut up!
craig ferguson— 2009-05-15 broadcast
— The audience had collectively went "Aw…", expressing disappointment.
