NONSENSE QUOTES II

quotations about nonsense

Although nonsense is rooted in our own minds, nonsensical art in a "frozen" state serves to show us how we rope-walk inside our cranium. The history of culture, however, does not limelight so many artists that have seriously played with nonsense. For who will stake credibility?

HENDRIK VAN LEEUWEN

"The Liaison of Visual and Written Nonsense", Explorations in the Field of Nonsense


Does a man of sense run after every silly tale of hobgoblins or fairies, and canvass particularly the evidence? I never knew anyone, that examined and deliberated about nonsense who did not believe it before the end of his enquiries.

DAVID HUME

Letters of David Hume

Tags: David Hume


You are hurrying to the sweet place,
To the nonsense chasing your spirit
And in the nonsense you look for answers.

DEJAN STOJANOVIC

Circling: 1978-1987


If, therefore, nonsense is really to be the literature of the future, it must have its own version of the Cosmos to offer; the world must not only be tragic, romantic, and religious, it must be nonsensical also.

G. K. CHESTERTON

The Defendant

Tags: G. K. Chesterton


As Charms are nonsense, Nonsence is a Charm.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Poor Richard's Almanack, 1734

Tags: Benjamin Franklin


In nonsense is strength.

KURT VONNEGUT

Breakfast of Champions

Tags: Kurt Vonnegut


Good sense about trivialities is better than nonsense about things that matter.

MAX BEERBOHM

"An Inquiry into a Convention", Saturday Review, December 19, 1903

Tags: Max Beerbohm


Nonsense is not an absence of sense, but rather a frustration of expectations about sense, and that is also why it allows for the expression of "total poetry". Like all verbal art, but perhaps more literally, nonsense is a world of words come to life, which does not so much antagonize the real world ... as ignore it.

WIM TIGGES

"An Anatomy of Nonsense", Explorations in the Field of Nonsense


The evolution of sense is, in a sense, the evolution of nonsense.

VLADIMIR NABOKOV

Pnin

Tags: Vladimir Nabokov


If others examined themselves attentively, as I do, they would find themselves, as I do, full of inanity and nonsense. Get rid of it I cannot without getting rid of myself.

MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

"Of Vanity", The Essays

Tags: Michel de Montaigne


Nonsense is of not in comedy, as I will argue, its discovery is a central pleasure of the genre. What is lost when comedy is interpreted is precisely this discovery of nonsense. If interpretation is the discernment of consequence in an utterance or action, that mode which deprives utterances and action of their consequence -- namely, the mode in which nonsense is found -- is its opposite. The choice of interpretation excludes that option, and in that exclusion, comedy experiences its central loss.

STEPHEN E. KIDD

Nonsense and Meaning in Ancient Greek Comedy


Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected.

CHARLES LAMB

The Life, Letters and Writings of Charles Lamb

Tags: Charles Lamb


Whenever you come near the human race, there's layers and layers of nonsense.

THORNTON WILDER

Our Town

Tags: Thornton Wilder


But Noodynaady's actual ingrate tootle is of come into the garner mauve and thy nice are stores of morning and buy me a bunch of iodines.

JAMES JOYCE

Finnegans Wake

Tags: James Joyce


I talk nonsense at times, because sense is monotonous.

LORD ACTON

letter to Mary Gladstone, September 21, 1880

Tags: Lord Acton


To die for faction is a common evil,
But to be hanged for nonsense is the devil.

JOHN DRYDEN

Abaslom and Achitophel

Tags: John Dryden


A man may debar nonsense from his library of reason, but not from the arena of his impulses.

REX STOUT

The League of Frightened Men

Tags: Rex Stout


My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense.

LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN

Philosophical Investigations

Tags: Ludwig Wittgenstein


The avant-garde is to the left what jingoism is to the right. Both are a refuge in nonsense.

DAVID MAMET

Three Uses of the Knife

Tags: David Mamet


The Red Queen shook her head, 'You may call it "nonsense" if you like,' she said, 'but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!'

LEWIS CARROLL

Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There

Tags: Lewis Carroll