Monstrous Quotes
More Monstrous Quotes
The psycho-analyst infers the monstrous and abnormal from a trifle; it is often safe to reverse the process. If a man dreams that he has committed a sin before which the sun hid his face, it is often safe to conjecture that, in sheer forgetfulness, he wore a red tie, or brown boots with evening dress.
arthur machen— "The Children of the Pool", in The Children of the Pool and Other Stories (New York: Arno Press, [1936] 1976) p. 83.
" Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, that ye may be the sons of your Heavenly Father, who makes the sun to shine on the good and on the evil , and the rain to fall on the just and unjust." How monstrous a calumny have not impostors dared to advance against the mild and gentle author of this just sentiment, and against the whole tenor of his doctrines and his life, overflowing with benevolence and forbearance and compassion !
Percy Bysshe Shelley— Quoting Jesus, in an unfinished Essay on Christianity (written 1815; published 1859)
Stop and consider! life is but a day; A fragile dew-drop on its perilous way From a tree's summit; a poor Indian's sleep While his boat hastens to the monstrous steep Of Montmorenci.
john keats— 1817 'Sleep and Poetry', l.85-9.
In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.
Somerset Maugham— A Writer's Notebook (1946, pg. 48)
Ugliness is trivial, the monstrous is terrible.
George Moore— Ch. 3. (Confessions of a Young Man (1886))
The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belong to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.
graham greene— Bk. 2, ch. 1
They do not ill, being lords of ours, to slay Me; nay, they could not spare: but thee to slay, To spill thy strong young life for truth to me, In all men's eyes would mark them monstrous:;: thou Must live, and serve my slayers, and serving them Sustain my memory by the proof if God Shall give thee grace to prove it that thy name, Thy father's name and mine, in true men's ears Rings truth, and means not treason.
algernon charles swinburne— Faliero, Act V. Sc. 3.
Two evils, monstrous either one apart, Possessed me, and were long and loath at going: A cry of Absence, Absence, in the heart, And in the wood the furious winter blowing.
john crowe ransom— 1924 Chills and Fever,'Winter Remembered'.
There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men. Imagine a congress of eminent celebrities, such as More, Bacon, Grotius, Pascal, Cromwell, Bossuet, Montesquieu, Jefferson, Napoleon, Pitt, etc. The result would be an Encyclopedia of Error.
john acton— Letter to Mary Gladstone (24 April 1881)
Since the time of the cavemen, man has glorified himself, has made himself divine, and his monstrous vanity has caused human catastrophe. Art has collaborated in this false development. I find this concept of art which has sustained man’s vanity to be loathsome.
hans arp— p. 315 (Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs, 1966)
"You will have no credit for your virtue (if you call it such): even your best friends will not believe in it; because it is monstrous, and not to be credited but by those who suffer, from the effects of it, such cruel torments that they know it to be indeed reality."
anne brontë— Walter to Helen (Ch. XXXVIV : A Scheme of Escape)
An Ambitious woman shewes her selfe to bee a troublesome disturber of the world, powerfull to make smale things great, and great monstrous
thomas overbury— The Just Downfall of Ambition, Adultery and Murder.
Two evils, monstrous either one apart,Possessed me, and were long and loath at going:A cry of Absence, Absence, in the heart,And in the wood the furious winter blowing.
john crowe ransom— "Winter Remembered", line 1.
To suppose such a thing possible as a society, in which men, who are able and willing to work, cannot support their families, and ought, with a great part of the women, to be compelled to lead a life of celibacy, for fear of having children to be starved; to suppose such a thing possible is monstrous.
william cobbett— “To Parson Malthus,” Political Register (8 May 1819)
With all this bulk there's nothing lost in Og, For every inch that is not fool is rogue:;: A monstrous mass of fuul corrupted matter, As all the devils had spew'd to make the baiter. When wine has given him courage to blaspheme, He curses God, but God before curst him:;; And, if man could have reason, none has more. That made his paunch so rich, and him so poor.
john dryden— Pt. II line 462 - 469.
Flattery Is monstrous in a true friend.
— Act I, sc. i.
A murderer is regarded by the conventional world as something almost monstrous, but a murderer to himself is only an ordinary man.... It is only if the murderer is a good man that he can be regarded as monstrous.
graham greene— Bk. 1, ch. 7, sct. 1
What a monstrous thing that a University should teach journalism! I thought that was only done at Oxford. This respect for the filthy multitude is ruining civilisation.
bertrand russell— Letter to Lucy Martin Donnely, July 6, 1902.
On the supposition that the world is to go on divided among aggressive sovereign states, with phases of war preparation known as peace and acute phases of more and more destructive war, it is quite a good move in the game. On the supposition that the world is growing up to an age of reason, and that a world of civilisation is attainable, it is a monstrous crime.
— On the British government's decision to build the Singapore Naval Base, in an article for the Westminster Gazette (13 October 1923)
The individual is handicapped by coming face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. The American mind simply has not come to a realization of the evil which has been introduced into our midst. It rejects even the assumption that human creatures could espouse a philosophy which must ultimately destroy all that is good and decent.
— J. Edgar Hoover, as quoted in The Elks Magazine (August 1956).
Flattery Is monstrous in a true friend.
— Act I, sc. i.
Jefferson was against any needless official apparel, but if the gown was to carry, he said: "For Heaven's sake discard the monstrous wig which makes the English judges look like rats peeping through bunches of oakum."
benjamin harrison— Benjamin Harrison, The Constitution and Administration of the United States of America (1897), p. 320; quoting a comment by Thomas Jefferson on judges' apparel.
I tried to break the spell the heavy, mute spell of the wilderness that seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of gratified and monstrous passions.
— Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 1899
The full, the monstrous demonstration that Tennyson was not Tennysonian.
— The Middle Years (1917), ch. VI
In all the fearful moral dilemmas of our time, Simone Weil never once went astray, whereas Simone de Beauvoir, with I am sure the best of intentions, has found herself aligned with apologists for some of the most monstrous barbarities and falsehoods of history .
— Malcolm Muggeridge, in "A Knight of the Woeful Countenance" in The World of George Orwell (1972) edited by Miriam Gross, p. 167
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
— Wilfred Owen, from Anthem for Doomed Youth
It's monstrous labour, when I wash my brain, And it grows fouler.
— Octavius Caesar, scene vii
Every one fault seeming monstrous, till his fellow fault came to match it.
— Rosalind, Sc. ii
O, monstrous! but one half-pennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack!
— Prince Henry, scene iv
