Smart Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Nay, tho' our Atoms shou'd revolve by chance,
And matter leape into the former dance;
Tho' time our Life and motion cou'd restore,
And make our Bodies what they were before,
What gain to us wou'd all this bustle bring,
The new made man wou'd be another thing;
When once an interrupting pause is made,
That individual Being is decay'd.
We, who are dead and gone, shall bear no part
In all the pleasures, nor shall feel the smart,
Which to that other Mortal shall accrew,
Whom of our Matter Time shall mould anew.

We have so many ideas and beliefs about ourselves. We told ourselves story about what we want and who we are, smart or kind. Often these are the unexamined and limited ideas of others that we have internalized and then gone on to life out.

There were three types of people in the world, Elizabeth believed. Some, like Cassidy, were naïve and full of ridiculous scruples that held them back from ever enjoying life. Others, like that Allison and Nicole, were phonies who pretended to care about others. And some—only a few—were like her. Strong enough to take what they could. And smart enough not to get caught.

A stupid person can make only certain, limited types of errors; the mistakes open to a clever fellow are far broader. But to the one who knows how smart he is compared to everyone else, the possibilities for true idiocy are boundless.

He slowed down a bit more. "Gaia, how do you know these things?" She shrugged. "I'm smart." "And modest, too." "Modesty is a waste of time," she pronounced. "I'll keep that in mind.

Francine Pascal

A smart man isn't necessarily one who knows all the answers, but knows where to find them.

SADNESSES OF THE INTELLECT: Sadness of being misunderstood [sic]; Humor sadness; Sadness of love wit[hou]t release; Sadne[ss of be]ing smart; Sadness of not knowing enough words to [express what you mean]; Sadness of having options; Sadness of wanting sadness; Sadness of confusion; Sadness of domes[tic]ated birds; Sadness of fini[shi]ng a book; Sadness of remembering; Sadness of forgetting; Anxiety sadness...

Jonathan Safran Foer

The big trouble with dumb bastards is that they are too dumb to believe there is such a thing as being smart.

The small town smart set is deadly serious about its smartness.

One of the keys to our present definition of good taste is that it is better to be kind than to be 'correct.' There is no situation in which it is smart to be nasty.

Millicent Fenwick

More like the movie where the guy meets a smart girl who wears a lot of sweaters and drinks cocoa. They talk about books and issues and kiss in the rain.

Stephen Chbosky

Then the door flew open and Mr. Faulks told us to head over to the gym. I thought that was really smart. Get all of us in one place so the aliens didn't have to waste a lot of ammunition.

I remember opening the letter, scanning the first few lines, feeling the blood go thick behind my eyes. I remember a sound in my head. It wasn't thinking, just a silent howl. A million things all at once — I was too good for this war. Too smart, too compassionate, too everything. It couldn't happen. I was above it.

Only stupid men trying to seem smart need to be with dumb women. Only weak men trying to look strong are attracted to compliant women.

Orson Scott Card

Cliff was a very smart guy, a reader, very eloquent. I just don't understand why he went, and not one of us.

I was so happy to be out of there. Barabas, if you weren't batting for the other team, I'd marry you. He grinned. If I weren't batting for the other team, I would accept your proposal. You had me at 'No comment.' If all my clients were this smart, my life would be much easier. Much, much easier.

Christ, how did you ever get this screwed up! his mind demanded of him. He knew the answer, but even that was not a full explanation. Different segments of the organism called John Terrance Kelly knew different parts of the whole story, but somehow they'd never all come together, leaving the separate fragments of what had...once been a tough, smart, decisive and to blunder about in confusion - and despair! There was a happy thought.

You don't have to be brave or a saint, a martyr, or even very smart to be an atheist. All you have to be able to say is "I don't know."

Harry! Boutin said. Nice guy. Didn't know he was that smart. He hid it well.

I am not a smart man, particularly, but one day, at long last, I stumbled from the dark woods of my own, and my family's, and my country's past, holding in my hands these truths: that love grows from the rich loam of forgiveness; that mongrels make good dogs; that the evidence of God exists in the roundness of things. This much, at least, I've figured out. I know this much is true.

A state's foreign policy should not just be smart, it should also be just.

Nayef Al-Rodhan

Rossini, in music, is the genius of sheer animal spirits. It is a species as inferior to that of Mozart, as the cleverness of a smart boy is to that of a man of sentiment; but it is genius nevertheless.

It takes a lot of things to prove you are smart, but only one thing to prove you are ignorant.

The theory of objectivism claims that there are certain things that most people in society can agree upon. A model is pretty. A lawyer is smart. Our society is based upon objectivism. It's how we make rules and why we obey them.

Portia de Rossi

Loving people, and allowing yourself to be loved, was only worth the risk if the odds were in your favor, but they quite clearly weren't. There were about seventy-nine squillion people in the world, and if you were very lucky, you would end up being loved by fifteen or twenty of them. So how smart did you have to be to work out that it just wasn't worth the risk?