Top 100 As Vague As Sayings
#1. My intention to lecture is as vague as my intention is to go on the stage. I will never consider an offer to lecture, not because I despise the vocation, but because I have no desire to appear on the public rostrum.
Mary MacLane
#2. She entered his life without knocking, as one might step into the wrong room because of its vague resemblance to one's own. She stayed there forgetting the way out and quietly getting used to the strange creatures she found there
Vladimir Nabokov
#3. Public opinion is a mysterious and invisible power, to which everything must yield. There is nothing more fickle, more vague, or more powerful; yet capricious as it is, it is nevertheless much more often true, reasonable, and just, than we imagine.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#4. I can't fool myself into thinking that musically I don't need other people, whether it's as a foil or just to come in and make real the ideas that are kind of vague and wispy in my head.
Dan Bejar
#5. I come down as an actor and my marks are already laid out on the floor - somebody else organized what I'm going to do. I think, why am I here? And why I'm here is to express the words with some sort of vague emotion and make them seem real. I wanted to go back to how it was before.
Paul Bettany
#6. Divide the world into regional groups as a transitional stage to world government. Populations will more readily abandon their national loyalty to a vague regional loyalty than they will for a world authority. Later the regions can be brought together all the way into a single world dictatorship.
Joseph Stalin
#7. There are few persons, even among the calmest thinkers, who have not occasionally been startled into a vague yet thrilling half credence in the supernatural, by coincidences of so seemingly marvellous a character that, as mere coincidences, the intellect has been unable to receive them.
Edgar Allan Poe
#8. At home they thought of white people as a vague but powerful entity
like the forces that control the weather, that capable of destruction, that hidden from view.
Ayana Mathis
#9. That in the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts. All about in the world were truths and they were all beautiful.
Sherwood Anderson
#10. She [Mme Sazerat] did not offer her hand, but smiled at my mother with vague melancholy as one smiles at a playmate from one's childhood, but with whom all connection has been severed because she has lived a debauched life, married a jailbird or, worse still, a divorced man.
Marcel Proust
#11. They always try to trick you, deliberately throwing extraneous plot lines just to confuse and misguide you, withholding important information until the last chapter, using vague and misleading descriptions so you don't notice something that should be plain as day.
Moxie Mezcal
#12. But I didn't know where I wanted to go. Or what I wanted to do when I got there. I had dreams, but they were vague things with no real substance. I wanted to be famous, or really rich, or wildly successful, but that was as far as the dream went. My whole life was a fill-in-the-blank.
Nick Hornby
#13. You don't write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich. A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery.
Nelson Algren
#14. As far as rapprochements go, it's awkward and vague, but the advantage of being as emotionally inarticulate as we are is that it will do the trick.
Jonathan Tropper
#15. I had come to regard him as a loner with no real past and a future so vague that there was no sense talking about it.
Hunter S. Thompson
#16. As a consequence of these hesitations and of the vague character of such innovations, the Commission on Human Rights itself had doubts from the beginning about its role and its functions in general.
Rene Cassin
#17. The current state of knowledge remains vague when history is not considered, just as history remains vague without substantive knowledge about the current state.
Ludwik Fleck
#18. Julia edged closer, wondering what kind of vocabulary dogs understood. Frederico Fellini, her cat, was an intellectual and she could talk about books and films to him, as long as it was after he'd been fed, and fed well. She had the vague notion that dogs preferred football and politics.
Lisa Marie Rice
#19. The vague disquietude which prevailed among the spectators had so much affected one of the crowd that he did not await the arrival of the vessel in harbor, but jumping into a small skiff, desired to be pulled alongside the Pharaon, which he reached as she rounded into La Reserve basin.
Alexandre Dumas
#20. Squandering time is a luxury of profligate youth, when the years are to us as dollars are to billionaires. Doing the same thing in middle age just makes you nervous, not with vague puritan guilt but the more urgent worry that you're running out of time, a deadline you can feel in your cells.
Tim Kreider
#21. He's very nice. He's something I replied. She considered this zipping her purse shut. Then she said Well everyone is. Everyone is Something. For some reason that stuck with me simple and yet not every since she'd said it. It was like a puzzle as well two vague words with one clear one between them.
Sarah Dessen
#22. vague as a soft copper pulse of moonlight through blossoming sea coast fog.
Ellen Hopkins
#23. It's not vague,' Anna said. 'I'm certain of it. Just as when you're certain you did have a dream ... you knew you dreamed ... but you can't remember any of the details.
Eleanor Catton
#24. One is happy as a result of one's own efforts, once one knows of the necessary ingredients of happiness-simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self-denial to a point, love of work, and, above all, a clear conscience. Happiness is no vague dream, of that I now feel certain.
George Sand
#25. Legally speaking, the term 'public rights' is as vague and indefinite as are the terms 'public health,' 'public good,' 'public welfare,' and the like. It has no legal meaning, except when used to describe the separate, private, individual rights of a greater or less number of individuals.
Lysander Spooner
#26. As long as you are not aware of the continual law of Die and Be Again, you are merely a vague guest on a dark Earth.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#27. The 'appetite for joy' which pervades all creation, that tremendous force which sways humanity to its purpose, as the ride sways the helpless weed, was not to be controlled by vague lucubrations over the social rubric
Thomas Hardy
#28. The thought of Kate having that sort of experience, of another man touching her, created a vague knot in his chest. He'd far rather imagine her as virginal and untouched, waiting for him to be her Prince Charming. Damn, he had it bad.
Aden Lowe
#29. We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.
George F. Kennan
#30. When the thing observed ... is seen as an agglomeration of pieces, the details lose their meaning and the whole becomes unrecognizable. This is often true of snapshots in which no pattern of salient shapes organizes the mass of vague and complex nuances.
Rudolf Arnheim
#31. ...the vague thought passed through my mind that all of us, probably, would die like that: unexpectedly, in the middle of something we wanted to do, instead of at the end of our endeavors, as we always fondly believe.
Kenneth Roberts
#32. As a child, I had a serious illness that lasted for two years or more. I have vague recollections of this illness and of my being carried about a great deal. I was known as the 'sick one.' Whether this illness gave me a twist away from ordinary paths, I don't know; but it is possible.
Jacob Epstein
#33. I am neither sad nor cheerful; the air here fills
one with a kind of vague excitement and induces a
state as far removed from cheerfulness as it is from
sorrow; perhaps it is happiness.
Andre Gide
#34. Now 'pay equity' has everything to do with pay and nothing to do with equity. It's based on the vague notion of 'equal pay for work of equal value,' which is not the same as equal pay for the same job.
Stephen Harper
#35. I learnt too late that what is most important to us is always most precious at the moment it occurs, and it is precious in its absolute immediacy and not as some vague confirmation of future directions; since the only certain fact, aside from death, is the flimsiness of everything.
Luke Davies
#36. I say vague things because that's as close as I can get to stopping myself from saying anything, my mind addled by the feeling of her body through her shirt.
Veronica Roth
#37. I had this vague notion that one day I might be editor of 'Vogue China.' It was a bizarre ambition, as I didn't speak a word of Chinese. There were flaws in my plan, admittedly.
Katie McGrath
#38. As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities.
Charles Darwin
#39. Architects and painters know precisely what they are about as long as they deal with material phenomena ... But when they come to the aesthetics of their work, when they aim at a particular effect on the mind or on the senses, the rules dissolve into nothing but vague ideas.
Carl Von Clausewitz
#40. As I grew up I got cynical. I'd see Mother enthusiastic and involved with charlatans. Numerologists and astrologists who charged five hundred dollars for a 'reading' which was so vague you could twist the meaning any way you wanted.
Anya Seton
#41. I do accept that, with - with respect to those vague terms in the Constitution such as equal protection of the laws, due process of law, cruel and unusual punishments. I fully accept that those things have to apply to new phenomena that didn't exist at the time.
Antonin Scalia
#42. As Tolkien points out, the name is "a pleasantly ingenious pun," referring to those who "dabble in ink." It also suggests people "with vague or half-formed intimations and ideas.
Diana Pavlac Glyer
#43. We need some imaginative stimulus, some not impossible ideal such as may shape vague hope, and transform it into effective desire, to carry us year after year, without disgust, through the routine-work which is so large a part of life.
Walter Pater
#44. The future, vague and sad, did not frighten me half as much as knowing that it was not carved in stone.
Jincy Willett
#45. Melody and harmony are like lines and colors in pictures. A simple linear picture may be completely beautiful; the introduction of color may make it vague and insignificant. Yet color may, by combination with lines, create great pictures, so long as it does not smother and destroy their value.
Rabindranath Tagore
#46. Oh, I beg your pardon! she exclaimed in a tone of great dismay, and began picking them up again as quickly as she could, for the accident of the gold-fish kept running in her head, and she had a vague sort of idea that they must be collected at once and put back into the jury-box, or they would die.
Lewis Carroll
#47. A jurisdiction thus vague and arbitrary was exposed to the most dangerous abuse: the substance, as well as the form, of justice were often sacrificed to the prejudices of virtue, the bias of laudable affection, and the grosser seductions of interest or resentment.
Edward Gibbon
#48. Conformity - the natural instinct to passively yield to that vague something recognized as authority.
Mark Twain
#49. Gary has made the classic mistake of equating precise cheekbones, perfect breasts, and a vague association with philanthropy as the signs of a good woman.
Matthew Norman
#50. Sleep seems to hammer out for me the logical conclusions of my vague days, and offer them to me as dreams.
D.H. Lawrence
#51. The definition of gumbo is almost as slippery as that of Creole. Just as gumbo can contain pretty much any kind of meat or seafood, Creole is a vague and inclusive term for native New Orleanians, who may be black or white, depending on whom you're asking.
Jay McInerney
#52. The characters are that vague TV high school age, but they'll be in high school as long as we need them to be.
Josh Schwartz
#53. Home was that lone house on its great bend of Chatham River, no destination anymore but only the source of a vague sadness he thought of as "homegoing," a returning to the lost paradise of true belonging.
Peter Matthiessen
#54. Jazz was formerly a crude term for indulging in an action which in polite society is referred to, if at all, only with such vague Latin terms as intercourse and cohabitation.
Charlton Laird
#55. From the deepest silence between us arose uncertain, utterly vague and, as it were, whispered varieties on the theme 'smile'.
Nicola Lecca
#56. Solaristics, wrote Muntius, is a substitute for religion in the space age. It is faith wrapped in the cloak of science; contact, the goal for which we are striving, is as vague and obscure as communion with the saints or the coming of the Messiah.
Stanislaw Lem
#57. So many vague, as yet unanswered ponderings in my mind about social interactions became clear and moved into that happy, "situation now understood" part of the mind.
Peter Rogers
#58. Just as we descend into our consciences to judge of actions which our minds can not weigh, can we not also search in ourselves for the feeling which gives birth to forms of thought, always vague and cloudy?
Alfred De Vigny
#59. The Court abandoned the traditional constitutional meaning of 'religion' as a single denomination or system of worship and instead substituted a new 'modern' concept which even now remains vague and nebulous, having changed several times in recent years.
David Barton
#60. The human language, as precise as it is with its thousands of words, can still be so wonderfully vague.
Garth Stein
#61. Courtship consists in a number of quiet attentions, not so pointed as to alarm, nor so vague as not to be understood.
Laurence Sterne
#62. I have a vague memory of seeing an image of a child in an iron lung and the phrase "sad little breathing machine" coming into my head. The more I thought about it, the more I felt that on certain days - the worse ones - we could all be described as sad little breathing machines.
Matthea Harvey
#63. Her lips touched his brain as they touched his lips, as though they were a vehicle of some vague speech and between them he felt an unknown and timid preasure, darker than the swoon of sin, softer than sound or odor.
James Joyce
#64. His will to live was waning, and it made him almost transparent, as though rather than dying, he might just disappear one day, leaving behind only a vague scent of regret.
Ian Morgan Cron
#65. People live their lives bound by what they accept as correct and true. That's how they define Reality. But what does it mean to be "correct" or "true"? Merely vague concepts ... Their Reality may all be a mirage. Can we consider them to simply be living in their own world, shaped by their beliefs?
Masashi Kishimoto
#67. By the time you kill and mount what you catch, it has lost that very thing that made it worth having. I knew this only as a vague sense of disappointment at age 10; not until later did I recognize it as a metaphor for much of life.
Anna Quindlen
#68. As human beings, we can encompass a vague feeling of what the universe is, and all in this funny little brain here - so there has to be something more than just brain, it has to be something to do with spirit as well.
Jane Goodall
#69. Usually in France we prefer to say bad things about the Nouvelle Vague, but I'm always impressed with its freedom and the fact of not making a film to give your opinion but just as a piece of art, which to me means the Nouvelle Vague.
Arnaud Desplechin
#70. Over all crowds there seems to float a vague distress, an atmosphere of pervasive melancholy, as if any large gathering of people creates an aura of terror and pity.
Emile Zola
#71. I am growing to hate the vague declarations of psychiatric treatment, the airy cross-your-fingers pronouncements. The treatment of mental health is an inexact science. But, as I am slowly coming to understand, depression is an inexact illness.
Sally Brampton
#72. The chief danger to our philosophy, apart from laziness and woolliness, is scholasticism, the essence of which is treating what is vague as if it were precise and trying to fit it into an exact logical category.
Frank P. Ramsey
#73. Who is this vague "they" we blame for so many of our problems? "They" is the obscure party we use as our whipping boy to camouflage the fact that we - you and I and other specific human beings just like us - have to start doing things differently. "They" can't fix anything. We can.
Price Pritchett
#74. The word Palestine always brought to my mind a vague suggestion of a country as large as the United States. I do not know why, but such was the case. I suppose it was because I could not conceive of a small country having so large a history.
Mark Twain
#75. Moreover, behind this vague tendency to treat religion as a side issue in modern life, there exists a strong body of opinion that is actively hostile to Christianity and that regards the destruction of positive religion as absolutely necessary to the advance of modern culture.
Christopher Dawson
#76. Jefferson found in the religion phrases of the First Amendment no vague or fuzzy language to be bent or shaped or twisted as suited any Supreme Court Justice or White House incumbent. That amendment had built a wall, with the ecclesiastical estate on one side and the civil estate on the other.
Edwin Gaustad
#77. He was not a practical joke nor was he a fool but he was determinedly original and had a vague and modest idea of himself as a legendary figure.
John Cheever
#78. I think every good song tells a story, as ambiguous and vague as it may be. And if you know what a song is talking about, it can only help your performance.
David Cook
#79. But to enjoy him we must know him. Seeing is savoring. If he remains a blurry, vague fog, we may be intrigued for a season. But we will not be stunned with joy, as when the fog clears and you find yourself on the brink of some vast precipice.
John Piper
#80. Between lips and lips there are cities of great ash and moist summit, drops of when and how, vague comings and goings: between lips and lips as along a shore of sand and glass the wind passes.
Pablo Neruda
#81. Read the news every morning" or "Call one client each day" are easy to monitor, while vague resolutions such as "Be more informed" or "Cultivate better client relationships" are hard to monitor ... Accurate monitoring helps determine whether a habit is worth the time, money, or energy it consumes.
Gretchen Rubin
#82. As I got farther and farther along in the series I did less and less preparation. I didn't use outlines or sketches. I just had a vague idea of what I wanted to tell and then the dialogue just came to me as I was inking the page.
Jhonen Vasquez
#83. You can't plan your character arc - you have a vague idea, maybe, but I'm constantly surprised. Sometimes actors in films will play the ending of the movie, or even the middle, and you know where it's going - as an audience member you can read the actor.
Evan Peters
#84. My muse is my wife. It's not some vague thing that flutters around the astrosphere or wherever it is. Sometimes as a songwriter you need something to hang a song on, to give it some kind of presence and form. For me, Susie is that.
Nick Cave
#85. The average, vague understanding of being can be permeated by traditional theories and opinions about being in such a way that these theories, as the sources of the prevailing understanding, remain hidden.
Martin Heidegger
#86. For as long as he could remember, he'd suffered from a vague nagging feeling of being not all there.
Douglas Adams
#87. It is frequently stated that loosely worded frameworks such as Real ITSM or ITIL are too vague and too open to interpretation to serve as the basis for compliance certification.
Rob England
#88. A vague goal is no goal at all. The Ten Commandments wouldn't be very impressive, for instance, if they weren't specific, but simply were couched in a phraseology such as 'thou shalt not be a bad person.
Neal A. Maxwell
#89. He looked around circumspectly, then introduced himself: Professor Camestres. At the question "Professor of what?" he made a vague gesture, as if urging us to exercise greater discretion.
Umberto Eco
#90. What we have at the moment isn't as the old liturgies used to say, 'the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead,' but a vague and fuzzy optimism that somehow things may work out in the end.
N. T. Wright
#91. We're teaching our kids that attributes as vague and relatively meaningless as a toothy smile or a fine head of hair make a fine statement about a person.
Neil Cavuto
#92. What one reads, or rather all that comes to us, is surely only of interest and value in proportion as we find ourselves therein,
form given to what was vague, what slumbered stirred to life.
Alice James
#93. What happiness (I thought) if we were married, and we're going away to live among the trees and the fields. Some picture, with no real world in it, bright with the light of our innocence, and vague as the starts afar off, was in my mind all the way.
Charles Dickens
#94. Who sat in darkness and in fear seemed to answer a vague and persistent question that haunted [Nwoye's] young soul
the question of the twins crying in the bush and the question of Ikemefuna who was killed. He felt a relief within as the hymn poured into his parched soul.
Chinua Achebe
#95. Since long ago all peoples have recognized that the world, apart from its physical meaning, also has a moral one. Yet everywhere the matter has only come to a vague consciousness, which, as it sought expression, clothed itself in all sorts of images and myths. There are religions.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#96. My dad was a very violent, frightening and dangerous guy. Next to him, I was this vague kind of kid who walked around, as I still do, gathering impressions.
Peter Coyote
#97. It was a perfect spring afternoon, and the air was filled with vague, roving scents, as if the earth exhaled the sweetness of hidden flowers.
Ellen Glasgow
#98. And for every project, because it takes years, you can see the early drawings and collages as just a simple, vague idea, and through the years and through the negotiations of getting the permit, you see that every detail is now clarified.
Christo
#99. The mere thought that she was alone and surrounded by books gave her a near-sensuous thrill. As she looked around her room, dark escaper for the slash of light near her lamp, and saw the vague outlines of her books, she asked herself 'Have I not the whole world?
Andrew Wilson
#100. The recollection of how, when and where it all happened became vague as the lingering strains hung in the rafters of the studio. I wanted to shout back at it, Maybe I didn't write you, but I found you.
Hoagy Carmichael
