Perfunctory Quotes

#1. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.

Sol LeWitt

#2. Ageing, slightly mad and on the threshold of retirement, it was an uneasy combination and it was no wonder that people shied away from her or made only the most perfunctory remarks. It was difficult to imagine what her retirement would be like - impossibe and rather gruesome to speculate on it.

Barbara Pym

#3. Putting all of my time In learning to care And a bucket of rhymes I threw up somewhere Want a locket of who Made me lose my perfunctory view Of all that is around And of all that I do.

Rufus Wainwright

#4. You can tell by the applause: There's perfunctory applause, there's light applause, and then there's real applause. When it's right, applause sounds like vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce.

Skitch Henderson

#5. There are so many more productive things to do than sit around feeling shame and guilt. Beyond touching on shame and guilt in a perfunctory manner, I wouldn't bother with that at all.

Antony Hegarty

#6. Promises to get beyond partisanship are the most perfunctory sort of campaign rhetoric, almost as empty as the partisanship itself.

Thomas Frank

#7. The thing that's cool about the recording booth is that it's so perfunctory, so cut-to-the-chase.

Ron Perlman

#8. When you repeat, in that wooden and perfunctory way, that our situation is better than others, that we're 'well-placed to weather the storm', I have to tell you that you sound like a Brezhnev-era apparatchik giving the party line.

Daniel Hannan

#9. These and other of his words were nothing but the perfunctory babble of the surface while the depths remained paralyzed.

Thomas Hardy

#10. Later on, I read the end of the New Order described as being 'like sex without orgasm'. It was an unmomentous a historic moment as could be imagined - perfunctory, anti-climactic and unconvincing.

Richard Lloyd Parry

#11. It's kind of amazing how popular 'Grey's Anatomy' is. What other show can boast such an annoyingly sincere cast of doctors, sniveling through such perfunctory love triangles?

Rob Sheffield

#12. And prefers to sit out a problem rather than sweat out a solution. That nonchalant and perfunctory attitude is a powerful tool of satan in his efforts to retard the growth of God's Kingdom.

Myles Munroe

#13. Oh, of course, it was a sad role, the lover no longer loving. But once the perfunctory sympathy was given him the heart went outfully to oneself, the real victim, the unloved.

Dawn Powell

#14. My work is whatever I want it to be, and I report to no one regularly. The head librarian
the man in charge of the University's entire collection
is a figurehead, well-to-do and poorly read, with whom I have only perfunctory contact.

Martha Cooley

#15. Aomame gave him a perfunctory smile. I don't give a shit about your business, mister, she thought, I just happen to like the shape of your head.

Haruki Murakami

#16. Colin mustered a perfunctory leer, but his mind was obviously elsewhere. 'Do you know ... ' he began.
I knew many things, but I didn't think he needed to hear the entirety of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales right at just this moment.

Lauren Willig

#17. Time is not a great healer. It is an indifferent and perfunctory one. Sometimes it does not heal at all. And sometimes when it seems to, no healing has been necessary.

Ivy Compton-Burnett

#18. I say "illusion" of choice because, in many cases, the nature of their choices hardly reaches the level of will, but of merely perfunctory activity. For the most part, their desires are not too strong, they are too weak, apathetic and easily placated. They often can be tempted into doing Nothing.

Geoffrey Wood

#19. Ironically, it seems that it is by the means of seemingly perfunctory daily rituals and routines that we enhance the personal relationships that nourish and sustain us.

Kathleen Norris

#20. Mr Verloc extended as much recognition to Stevie as a man not particularly fond of animals may give to his wife's beloved cat; and this recognition, benevolent and perfunctory, was essentially of the same quality.

Joseph Conrad

#21. I understand that what you're doing when you call 911--it sounds so perfunctory--is announcing to strangers that you are losing the battle. I no longer have the strength, I no longer have the answers, the trouble is winning, and won't you please come help"?

Michael Perry

#22. She's the one most likely to call bullshit on even perfunctory get-togethers, unhappy with the charade of being friends when we aren't actually anymore.

Mindy McGinnis

#23. So it would begin. The obligatory questions, the perfunctory answers. Both pretending. Unenthusiastic partners, the two of them, in this tired old dance.

Khaled Hosseini

#24. Long-distance train conversations are unlike the perfunctory exchanges one normally associates with strangers, or the truncated, cut-to-the-chase kind that sometimes take place between seatmates on a plane.

Alan Huffman

#25. Camila had intended to be perfunctory and if possible impudent, but now she was struck for the first time with the dignity of the old woman. The mercer's daughter could carry herself at times with all the distinction of the Montemayors and when she was drunk she wore the grandeur of Hecuba.

Thornton Wilder

#26. It was a precept of Pythagoras, that when we enter into the temple to worship God , we must not so much as speak or think of any worldly business, lest we make God's service an idle ,perfunctory, and lazy recreation. The same I may say of closet prayer.

Thomas Brooks

#27. That was my first clue that love can warp a hierarchy; the whole pyramid got flipped on its head. My pet, because she was mine, was at the top of the chain. I cared for the squirmy swamp rats in the most perfunctory way, with none of the love I felt for my red Seth.

Karen Russell

#28. Basketball teams, after the perfunctory lay-up drill, fall into the crowded isolation and personal style of 10 city kids shooting at the same basket or playing one-on-one.

Ted Solotaroff

#29. What is new is not always true, and what is true is not always new.

William Sargant

#30. Only reform and opening up can develop China. We must not be afraid of any risks, and not be confused by any distractions.

Hu Jintao

#31. The Russians love Brooke Shields because her eyebrows remind them of Leonid Brezhnev.

Robin Williams

#32. How we gets to the place where we scared to talk softness to each other.

Lorraine Hansberry

#33. God's provision is timely.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#34. If you have one foot in the past and one foot in the future, you're pissing on the present.

Malachy McCourt

#35. I want you to believe ... to believe in things that you cannot.

Bram Stoker

#36. Is not birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, Manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality, and such like, the spice and salt that season a man

William Shakespeare

#37. The only legacy I want is to be thought of as a winner.

Derek Jeter

#38. I am not a regular at film festivals.

Lillete Dubey

#39. Imagine the wisdom to be passed down from the classical Buddhist texts.

Russell Brand