Top 100 Hardly Quotes
#1. [A]ll her life she [Chantal] had been carefully, heroically watching over mediocre beings who were hardly real, over things of no value.
Georges Bernanos
#2. Once you've arrived at the end of the world, it hardly matters which route you took.
Isaac Marion
#3. A harem is not a brothel, as so many Westerners erroneously believe. It is merely the women's living quarters. Male relatives can join them
but no male nonrelatives may do so. It is hardly a den of eroticism.
Phyllis Chesler
#4. I suppose there is hardly any one in the civilized world - particularly of those who do just a little more every day than they really have strength to perform - who has not at some time regarded bed as a refuge.
J. E. Buckrose
#5. Hardly had I left when we ran into the Korean war, doubled what I had asked for and doubled it again. I had told him I would stay in Government, be honored to, but not with the Air Force.
Stuart Symington
#6. The superior leader keeps informed about everything but interferes hardly at all.
Laozi
#7. The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other.
Walter Bagehot
#8. I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him. [- Nick Carroway]
F Scott Fitzgerald
#9. This advice from a college freshman carrying a cane?"
"It's a walking stick, I'll have you know."
"Same difference."
"Hardly. It's fashion.
Danika Stone
#10. It isn't as easy as I thought. I suppose that's why Heffalumps hardly ever get caught.
A.A. Milne
#11. Men spend their life down here in the worship of petty (or mean) interests and the search of perishable things, and with that ("et avec cela", Fr.) they pretend to perpetuate for all eternity their self ("moi", Fr.) so hardly worthy ("digne", Fr.) of it.
African Spir
#12. I've been so ridiculous all my life that a little bit more or a little bit less hardly matters now.
Jean Rhys
#13. Surely there was something taught her by this experience of great need; and she must be learning a secret of human tenderness and long-suffering, that the less erring could hardly know?
George Eliot
#14. A citizen can hardly distinguish between a tax and a fine, except that the fine is generally much lighter.
G.K. Chesterton
#15. Without death, there is hardly any threat strong enough to truly appreciate human life. He thinks: I am as good as dead
too afraid to live, only waiting, never taking a risk
I am as good as dead already.
Joe Meno
#16. Probably people always feel that they are living in a time of transition, but we can hardly be mistaken perhaps in thinking that this is an era of particularly momentous change, rapid and proceeding at an ever quickening rate.
Emily Greene Balch
#17. When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be writing a Novel.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
#18. I did 'Tumbleweeds' for fun. I did it because I loved it and I hardly even got paid.
Janet McTeer
#19. Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people, you know. It's produced by humans who can't stand looking at other humans. And that's why the industry is full of otaku!
Hayao Miyazaki
#20. Aedion snorted. "Hurry up with the eggs. I'm going to die of starvation."
"Make the bacon, or you don't get any."
Aedion could hardly move fast enough.
Sarah J. Maas
#21. Even Mahatma Gandhi - hardly a comfortable character - always wore a bowler hat with his loin cloth when practising as a barrister in London.
William Donaldson
#22. When you love, whatever you do is because you want to do it. It becomes a pleasure, it's like a game, and you have fun with it. When you love, you don't expect something to happen; whatever happens is okay, and hardly anything disappoints you.
Miguel Angel Ruiz
#23. When the whole point was that the Devil hardly ever made anyone do anything. He didn't have to.
Terry Pratchett
#24. She caught me looking at her.
'What?' she asked.
'Your lightness,' I said, hardly knowing what I was saying. 'It's disarming.
David Levithan
#25. Expecting people to read your mind hardly ever gets you what you desire.
Sue Patton Thoele
#26. Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain
Marquis De Sade
#27. It would take little more than $50 billion to raise every poor person above the official poverty line, yet the percentage of the population classified as poor hardly budges, while annual welfare spending amounts to four times that much. Where's the money going?
Robert Higgs
#28. One hardly need believe that the events in your life are actually planned as bolts from the blue, sent special delivery from a deity who is testing and training you like a lab rat! And that is what we are saying when we fretfully ask, What can God be trying to teach me through this tragedy?
Robert M. Price
#29. I went to Brunel University and very much wanted to go on to do a PhD in management, but then my acting career started to take off. In those days when you switched on the box there were hardly any brown or black faces.
Archie Panjabi
#30. The happy ending is hardly important, though we may be glad it's there. The real joy is knowing that if you felt the trouble in the story, your kingdom isn't dead.
Lynda Barry
#31. There is so much trouble in coming into the world, and so much more, as well as meanness, in going out of it, that 'tis hardly worth while to be here at all.
Viscount Henry St. John Bolingbroke
#32. You know, in the WikiLeaks cables, the Chinese discovered that Kevin Rudd was urging the Americans to keep the military option open against them. This is hardly a friendly gesture.
Paul Keating
#33. With such a worshipping wife, it was hardly possible that any natural defects in it should not be increased. The extreme sweetness of her temper must hurt his.
Jane Austen
#34. I could hardly get to sleep for dreaming of revenge.
Ralph Ellison
#36. I don't watch any television, hardly ever because I'm so busy. I always obviously watch my shows because I blog about it and talk about it, but no, I can watch the news in the morning and that's it.
Lisa Vanderpump
#37. You are pregnant, with child, in the family way. People, some of whom you hardly know, will begin to comment on your belly size. They might even give it a rub, like you have strapped an animal of some kind in your front side and given total strangers permission to pet you at their leisure.
Amy E. Spiegel
#38. With all due respect, Jacobi, that's a load of bull. It was bad, but I handled it. That's what the job is. I hardly have a scratch on me. So stop treating me like a victim. I'm fully functional and absolutely sane. This is my case and I'm on it. OK? OK?
James Patterson
#39. Hardly anything is as exciting or as diverse, as strong a confirmation of life and hope and the universe's urge towards creativity, as a lively compost heap or the first draft of a novel.
Margaret Simons
#40. In Labor movements generally, success through violence can hardly be expected except in circumstances where success without violence is attainable.
Bertrand Russell
#41. Expression, sentiment, truth to nature, are essential: but all those are not enough. I never care to look at a picture again, if it be ill composed; and if well composed I can hardly leave off looking at it.
John Ruskin
#43. There is hardly an activity that a person can think about that does not intrinsically involve energy, most of which is currently provided by fossil fuels.
Lee R. Raymond
#44. You can hardly open a newspaper without seeing that a woman has been killed by a man for clearly gender-related reasons.
Gloria Steinem
#45. Some were bitter. Some were sweet. Some were hardly anything. That was just the way of things.
Patrick Rothfuss
#46. We are so accustomed to think of religion as a thing between individual men and God that we can hardly enter into the idea of a religion in which a whole nation in its national organisation appears as the religious unit.
William Robertson Smith
#47. There is a fascination about crime, which is understandable, but hardly anyone talks about the families of victims of violent crime and the devastation that is beyond the victim alone.
Werner Herzog
#48. Milkman could hardly breathe. Hagar's voice scooped up what little pieces of heart he had left to call his own.
Toni Morrison
#49. The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated.
William Ellery Channing
#50. I'm happy with my language progress - the only difficulty when I tour Premier League matches is that different people talk to me in different accents - and sometimes I can hardly understand a word!
Fabio Capello
#51. Hardly out of mortal danger and already he gets impertinent.
Angelika Rust
#52. In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give, and life cannot be rich without such gratitude. It is so easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements compared with what we owe to the help of others.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#53. Hardly anyone today thinks about sex. We joke about it, dream about it, watch movies about it, listen to music about it, lust about it. But we don't ever really think about it.
Jason Evert
#54. God breathes through us so completely ... So gently we hardly feel it ... yet it is our everything.
John Coltrane
#55. Hardly anybody," he said, "understands how essential shit is to holding things together.
Jane Urquhart
#56. It seems that we had ... not a better education, per se, but perhaps more incentive to use it. They learn, but they hardly think.
Ilona Andrews
#57. In short, we need to recover the courage we celebrate in our heroes, and in particular, the courage to tolerate, for the sake of a free society, a level of risk we hardly ever imagined in the past.
Daniel Dennett
#58. When I was 15, I was wearing sandals and corduroys, Guernsey, striped pullover, a beard that was hardly there, shades and a beret, and the goal was hanging out.
Roy Harper
#59. Use original detail in your writing. Life is so rich, if you can write down the real details of the way things were and are, you hardly need anything else.
Natalie Goldberg
#60. From a selection of his other works, we might think him variously courtly, cerebral, metaphysical, melancholic, Machiavellian, neurotic, lighthearted, loving, and much more. Shakespeare was of course all these things - as a writer. We hardly know what he was as a person.
Bill Bryson
#61. Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.
G.K. Chesterton
#62. Most schools have only a microwave or deep fryer, hardly the tools needed to feed our children real, fresh food.
Mark Hyman
#64. To use two languages familiarly and without contaminating one by the other, is very difficult; and to use more than two is hardly to be hoped. The prizes which some have received for their multiplicity of languages may be sufficient to excite industry, but can hardly generate confidence.
Samuel Johnson
#65. The arts world prides itself on its diversity, inclusivity, open-mindedness and constant efforts to reach out to all. Yet at the very moment when Britain decides its future, hardly anyone in the arts seems to understand, let alone agree with, the opinion of at least half the population.
Richard Morrison
#66. Even T.E. Lawrence, who hardly knew the meaning of fear, was by Sassoon's own account, terrified after only five minutes of his driving; 'my methods of turning from side roads into main roads were abrupt in those days' Sassoon added by way of explanation.
Jean Moorcroft Wilson
#67. What would I have done if I'd been put to the test? Would I have risked my own life for people I hardly knew? Probably, I would have looked the other way at best or become another apologist for evil at worst.
Lionel Blue
#68. It's been interesting how kids have had hardly any problems watching it, but adults have more trouble. This happened way back even with Jabberwocky and Time Bandits.
Terry Gilliam
#69. All discussion between students and professors has become completely meaningless, since no one dares to state their opinion anymore. People hardly dare describe what they have in their lunch box.
Jesper Bugge Kold
#70. There are some men formed with feelings so blunt that they can hardly be said to be awake during the whole course of their lives.
Edmund Burke
#72. Do you mind if I'm naked?"
"I hardly expected you in full evening dress.
Gordon Merrick
#73. Premature as the question may be, it is hardly possible not to wonder whether we will find any answer to our deepest questions, any signs of the workings of an interested God, in a final theory. I think that we will not.
Steven Weinberg
#74. Right now in this space, I feel a brand new pull to him. I've always been drawn to his features, his brilliance, his laughter, his passion. But right now I'm attracted to his pain. It makes him human. It makes him real. It makes him something he hardly ever is to me: accessible.
Sarah Noffke
#75. Trying to pick individual stocks is a trap. I can't do it. Warren Buffett can, but hardly anyone else can beat the indexes over a long period of time.
Ben Stein
#76. Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength. But already there is joy enough in the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life.
C.S. Lewis
#77. I hardly know so true a mark of a little mind as the servile imitation of others.
Sir Fulke Greville
#79. The very notion of Great Britain's "greatness" is bound up with Empire,' the cultural theorist, Stuart Hall, once wrote: 'Euro-scepticism and littel Englander nationalism could hardly survive if people understood whose sugar flowed through English blood , and rotted English teeth.
Andrea Levy
#80. The corridor is hardly ever found in small houses, apart from the verandah, which also serves as a corridor.
Stephen Gardiner
#81. The "sharp female newly-born, and called La Guillotine," was hardly known to him, or to the generality of people, by name.
Charles Dickens
#82. Living apart is hardly possible if people have children together. It can also be more expensive to maintain two homes. But then, it's expensive to break up when you live in one property.
Deborah Moggach
#83. A parcel
taken from one place to another, handed from one owner to another, unwrapped and bundled up at will
is all that I am. A vessel, for the bearing of sons, for one nobleman or another: it hardly matters who.
Philippa Gregory
#84. One's relation to one's house, in other words, is hardly a relation between a pure subject and a pure object - between an active intelligence, or mind, and a purely passive chunk of matter.
David Abram
#85. You know, I've always wrote my best stuff when it takes me hardly any time at all. Actually I wrote ... this is actually a really funny story ... 'Ghost Of Vincent Price', I've been wanting to write a song about Vincent Price coz he's one of my favorite characters of all time.
Wednesday 13
#87. If in a country, most of the wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few, then this country can hardly witness harmony and stability.
Wen Jiabao
#88. Well, sir, let us do what we can to curtail this visit, which can hardly be agreeable to you, and is inexpressibly irksome to me.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#89. If Margaret Thatcher took climate change seriously and believed that we should take action to reduce global greenhouse emissions, then taking action and supporting and accepting the science can hardly be the mark of incipient Bolshevism.
Malcolm Turnbull
#91. I've had aunts and uncles who not only haven't read my books but could hardly believe that I was a writer.
Robert Cormier
#92. All ages before ours believed in gods in some form or other. Only an unparalleled impoverishment in symbolism could enable us to rediscover the gods as psychic factors, which is to say, as archetypes of the unconscious. No doubt this discovery is hardly credible as yet.
Carl Jung
#93. The power of the Latin classic is in character , that of the Greek is in beauty . Now character is capable of being taught, learnt, and assimilated: beauty hardly.
Matthew Arnold
#94. Endometriosis is notoriously difficult to diagnose because the symptoms are perverse. A woman with mild endometriosis can be in an agony for days every month (or every day for every month); women with the severe kind can have hardly any pain at all, like me.
Rose George
#95. Muse, time has taught me that all metaphysical systems, even historical facts given as truths, are hardly that, so I amuse myself with more agreeable lies; I no longer read anything but novels.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#96. Faking it in front of a guy's family is hardly a common occurrence in my life. How about yours?
FAKING IT TO MAKING IT
Ally Blake
#97. Hardly any one is able to see what is before him, just as it is in itself. He comes expecting one thing, he finds another thing, he sees through the veil of his preconception, he criticizes before he has apprehended, he condemns without allowing his instinct the chance of asserting itself.
Arthur Symons
#98. There is hardly a mistake which in the course of our lives we have committed, but some proverb, had we known and attended to its lesson, might have saved us from it.
Richard Chenevix Trench
#99. Benevolence is a world of itself
a world which mankind, as yet, have hardly begun to explore. We have, as it were, only skirted along its coasts for a few leagues, without penetrating the recesses, or gathering the riches of its vast interior.
Horace Mann
#100. Can it be out of discretion, and a reluctance to hurt, that they affect to be unaware of my existence? But this is a refinement of feeling which can hardly be attributed to the dogs that come pissing against my abode, apparently never doubting that it contains some flesh and bones.
Samuel Beckett
