Top 100 Quotes About Benign
#1. I wish for a moment that time would lift me out of this day, and into some more benign one. But then I feel guilty for wanting to avoid the sadness; dead people need us to remember them, even if it eats us, even if all we can do is say "I'm sorry" until it is as meaningless air.
Audrey Niffenegger
#2. According to a Pew poll, 49% of young Americans have a favorable view of socialism. What is socialism? it is a system that leads to mass misery, mass impoverishment, and human slaughter. That's what it means. Yet almost half of the young think it's benign.
David Horowitz
#3. The big white house glowed on the hill above them, tranquil in the afternoon light, the big red spruce behind it a looming but benign presence; not for the first time, he felt that the tree was somehow guarding the house - and in his present fragile mental state, found that notion a comfort.
Diana Gabaldon
#5. Of course, I prefer organic farming to chemical-dependent farming, but sometimes absolutist organic prescriptions go too far. I don't even rule out the possibility of genetic modification generating some benign ideas, as long as we can keep them away from monopolists such as Monsanto.
Tristram Stuart
#6. Service, which is nothing other than a modern echo of noblesse oblige, and generally undertaken in the same spirit of benign condescension.
William Deresiewicz
#7. To awaken within the dream is our purpose now. When we are awake within the dream, the ego-created earth-drama comes to an end and a more benign and wondrous dream arises. This is the new earth.
Eckhart Tolle
#8. They reminded me of the people of my village, their indomitable spirit in the face of disaster, their unshakable belief that no matter what might befall them, life was basically good and the world benign.
Lian Hearn
#9. Orders can be benign or malign, but the habit of obeying them can become ingrained.
Theodore Dalrymple
#10. Parents take far too much notice of their children these days. Bring back the good old days of benign indifference, I reckon.
Liane Moriarty
#11. I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.
Emily Bronte
#12. Even when there are banalities, they're usually kind of benign banalities.
Michael McKean
#13. Most of us spend most of our time in other peoples' worlds - working at predetermined jobs, relaxing to pre-packaged entertainment - and no matter how benign this ready-made world may be, there will always be times when something is missing or doesn't quite ring true.
David Bayles
#14. I wasn't raised Catholic; I just really like the image of a neutral and benign Mary floating around somewhere, being nice to people.
Moby
#15. Parents have that special skill of making the truth, no matter how benign, an embarrassing thing. We all know this.
M O Walsh
#16. Intelligence may indeed be a benign influence creating isolated groups of philosopher-kings far apart in the heavens ... On the other hand, intelligence may be a cancer of purposeless technological exploitation, sweeping across a galaxy as irresistibly as it has swept across our own planet.
Freeman Dyson
#17. For the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed so brotherly, made me realize that I'd been happy, and that I was happy still.
Albert Camus
#18. Our understanding of racism is therefore shaped by the most extreme expressions of individual bigotry, not by the way in which it functions naturally, almost invisibly (and sometimes with genuinely benign intent), when it is embedded in the structure of a social system. The
Michelle Alexander
#19. Eating a tuna roll at a sushi restaurant should be considered no more environmentally benign than driving a Hummer or harpooning a manatee.
Daniel Pauly
#20. The Primrose for a veil had spread The largest of her upright leaves; And thus for purposes benign, A simple flower deceives.
William Wordsworth
#21. The president feels not only do we need to change these rogue regimes, but even our friendly allies, who really basically have, sort of, benign dictatorships, need to get with the program if they want to have long-term security and prosperity from terrorism.
Mitch McConnell
#22. To be a flamboyant failure, that's better than being any kind of benign success
Malcolm McLaren
#23. If we allow public funds to be used to support our relatively benign, morally grounded schools, we will have to allow those public funds to be used for any type of private school.
Jonathan Kozol
#24. We need an army of white-haired, wild-eyed radicals cutting a swath against the sexism that crosses our paths. It is a good antidote to the larger community's apparent belief that older women are slightly dotty, grandmotherly, benign souls.
Shari Graydon
#25. But maybe that's what the dead do. They stay. They linger. Benign and sweet and painful. They don't need us. They echo all by themselves.
Sangu Mandanna
#27. The fairies in the ancient notion of fairies, they are not positive and cute and twinkly.They can be incredibly nasty or they can be incredibly benign. It's a really interesting mythology when you dig into it.
Guillermo Del Toro
#28. A certain slightly cruel disregard for the feelings of living people is simply part of the package. I think a writer, if he's any good, is not an entirely benign entity in the world.
Michael Cunningham
#29. A university is not a service station. Neither is it a political society, nor a meeting place for political societies. With all its limitations and failures, and they are invariably many, it is the best and most benign side of our society insofar as that society aims to cherish the human mind.
Richard Hofstadter
#30. The nature of peoples is first crude, then severe, then benign, then delicate, finally dissolute.
Giambattista Vico
#31. How sweet and soothing is this hour of calm! I thank thee, night! for thou has chased away these horrid bodements which, amidst the throng, I could not dissipate; and with the blessing of thy benign and quiet influence now will I to my couch, although to rest is almost wronging such a night as this.
Lord Byron
#32. Children live in occupied territory. The brave and the foolhardy openly rebel against authority, whether harsh or benign. But most tread warily, outwardly accommodating themselves to alien mores and edicts while living in secret their iconoclastic and subversive lives.
P.D. James
#33. Easter celebrations are evidence of the increased benign influence of the Russian Orthodox Church and other traditional churches in our country on society.
Vladimir Putin
#34. I think there are people in this Congress who actually believe that government does not have a benign role in the lives of the people, except as an engine to redistribute the wealth of the Nation upwards.
Dennis Kucinich
#35. Humor helps us get through life with a modicum of grace. It offers one of the few benign ways of coping with the absurdity of it all.
Diane Keaton
#36. To have a viable civilization, people have to have a benign government, a semblance of education, spare time, imagination, and manners
Jonathan Chamberlain Williams
#37. For all the venom and fear spewed at members of the 'religious right,' most of today's churches are left alone ... the nonreligious tend to look at our churches as benign institutions that create a placid and docile citizenry, having little impact on our culture.
Kay Coles James
#38. The Spy Act strikes a right balance between preserving legitimate and benign uses of this technology, while still, at the same time, protecting unwitting consumers from the harm caused when it is misused and, of course, designed for nefarious purposes.
Cliff Stearns
#39. My wife and I thought we were in love, but it turned out to be benign
Woody Allen
#40. The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.
Carl Sagan
#41. Whole community of millions of living things living out their lives in a kind of benign continuum.
Robert M. Pirsig
#42. Beneficent spirals, operating by benign feedback, mean that everything needful is not required at once: each individual improvement is beneficial for the whole
Jane Jacobs
#43. I have seen these marshes a thousand times, yet each time they're new. It's wrong to call them benign. You could just as well call them cruel and senseless, they are all of those things, but the reality of them overwhelms halfway conceptions.
Robert M. Pirsig
#44. When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign, is Solitude
William Wordsworth
#45. All we are asked to bear we can bear. That is a law of the spiritual life. The only hindrance to the working of this law, as of all benign laws, is fear.
Elizabeth Goudge
#46. My introduction, implicitly echoing Oscar Wilde's remark that all bad poetry is sincere, grants the benign social decency of [Stephen] King's fictions.
Harold Bloom
#47. If you pursue meditation with a non-competitive attitude, with a hopeful and helpful attitude, without violence, then you will find that you will become a very benign and powerful being, one who is at peace with himself and the universe.
Frederick Lenz
#48. I've said it before about the Nobel Prize: it's like being struck by a more or less benign avalanche. It was unexpected, unlooked for, and extraordinary.
Seamus Heaney
#49. Unlike classical liberalism, which saw the government as a necessary evil, or simply a benign but voluntary social contract for free men to enter into willingly, the belief that the entire society was one organic whole left no room for those who didn't want to behave, let alone "evolve.
Jonah Goldberg
#50. I stand beside Tom's barn and ponder the benign heedlessness of the people in the speeding cars, and here I am in the speeding car. In my heart I wish the bypass had never been built; in my car I never take the old way.
Michael Perry
#52. I had to be careful. Nothing from the Otherworld was benign, especially something in packaging this attractive.
Mary Lindsey
#53. The execution of William Bonin was not the traditional gas chamber of the past. That has been ruled cruel and unusual. Instead, we have something that seems very kind and benign and technical; the injection of chemicals, Nazi-style.
Jerry Brown
#54. No benign deity plucks television news show hosts from their desks in the prime of life and then hastily compensates their friends and family by displays of irradiated droplets in the sky.
Mark Leibovich
#55. The paramount destiny and mission of woman is to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. That is the law of the Creator.
Joseph P. Bradley
#56. I find it personally distracting when kids are constantly texting, but they can be texting something that is just benign and just fine.
Mike DeWine
#57. The universe is under the control of a loving purpose, and that in the struggle for righteousness man has cosmic companionship (angels). Behind the harsh appearance of the world there is a benign power.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#58. Biocides, for example, are designed to kill bacteria - it's not a benign material.
William Stringfellow
#59. What a magical thing is the bed, and what a vulnerable, innocent creature is the sleeping human - the human who never looks more truthful or pitiful or benign; the curled-up, childlike dreaming soul who has for a few hours become an angel adrift.
Michael Leunig
#60. So shall the world go on, To good malignant, to bad men benign, Under her own weight groaning.
John Milton
#61. How do you survive living in a cell knowing you are innocent? Many of those exonerated whom I have met seem to have a more benign, grateful attitude toward life than those of us who walk free. Many find a religious or spiritual stronghold.
Richard LaGravenese
#62. No pleasure is simpler, no luxury cheaper, no consciousness-altering substance more benign.
James Norwood Pratt
#63. Sure, integrating schools may sound benign. But whats the use of living in a gated community if my kids go to school and get poor all over them?
Stephen Colbert
#64. Fame is indeed beautiful and benign and gentle and satisfying, but happiness is something at once tender and brilliant beyond all things.
Mary MacLane
#65. It's sometimes too easy to point fingers when circumstances dramatically go awry, but as an addict, I'm ultimately responsible for my own decisions, no matter how benign or tragic the consequences.
Moby
#66. Art is the most benign cultural practice, and yet art has an upper bound of personal revelation that is so far away it is basically a horizon.
Ken Baumann
#67. I take a benign view of digital connectedness. I notice in most young people's lives, Facebook and such doesn't replace normal dating or hanging out, it just facilitates it.
David Brooks
#68. He was only thirty-eight. His body was clean, well-fed, and benign. He had all his teeth. A fresh Armenian joke stirred in his head like a child in its mother's womb. He thought life was wonderful.
Ilya Ilf
#69. Sam Cameron has managed the near impossible: to have lived in Number Ten for three years and maintained a benign and broadly positive press.
Andy Coulson
#70. No small thing, a bee's sting When it enters the heart Not so benign, the growing vine When it tears stone apart
Shannon Hale
#71. There is no cure for fictional character love, but the plus side is that it is an entirely benign disease with no bad side effects.
Cassandra Clare
#72. Just heard the best word in the English language: benign. (And I don't need to see that doctor again for five years.)
Jeff Jarvis
#73. Prayer puts God in the position He deserves - that of King, Governor, Benign Controller, Possessor, Lord, and Master.
Leslie Ludy
#74. In fiction, every treachery and setback appears to serve some end: the characters learn and grow and come into their own. In life, it is not always clear that the hijacking of our plans is quite so provident or benign.
Azar Nafisi
#75. Fat had witnessed a benign power which had invaded this world. No other term fitted it: the benign power, whatever it was, had invaded this world, like a champion ready to do battle. That terrified him but it also excited his joy because he understood what it meant. Help had come.
Philip K. Dick
#76. Sometimes it's better to have a benign dictator than a dumb democracy, to be honest.
Serj Tankian
#77. If you ignored the benign ghost that haunted the place and the witch who lived inside, it was practically the picture of normalcy.
Deborah Blake
#78. 'Kukla, Fran and Ollie' occurred in real time and was a benign and bewitching example of pure television.
Tom Shales
#79. He knew how isolated he could become and hardly notice it was happening. How relationships could slip away like smoke in the breeze. How easily he could sink into himself. How natural and benign his isolating obsessions could seem.
John Verdon
#80. I began to long for the benign indifference of Robert Redford flossing his molars.
Michael J. Fox
#81. I shall take my present leave-but not without resorting once more to the benign Parent of the Human Race in humble supplication [prayer] that ... His Divine blessing may be equally conspicuous in ... the wise measures on which the success of this government must depend.
George Washington
#82. Rarely if ever, moments come that are so defining in our lives. The years are glutted with benign matters which impact us more deeply than we could have ever imagined in our youth.
Joel T. McGrath
#83. Taking away a person's control of her own life - meaning her bank account - is one of the greatest infringements a democracy can impose, especially when it applies to young people. It is an infringement even if the intent may be perceived as benign and socially valid.
Stieg Larsson
#84. The most beautiful words in the English language are not 'I love you', but 'It's benign'.
Woody Allen
#85. Why, he wondered, did he have to peddle his difference for their amusement, and yet at the same time temper it, suppress it, make it suitably benign?
Leslie Parry
#86. Personally I find the democratic chaos of the Internet fascinating, and for the most part really benign.
Moby
#87. Acid wasn't getting a whole lot of bad press at the time, and as I saw the whole bad-press thing happen, I became aware that the government had done a whole lie on all the other benign drugs as well. It became clear to me that the government wanted no real drug education.
Tommy Rettig
#88. You don't go to a town to present the play and have applause at the end of it, but that's benign conquest. It's a glorious way of exploring other landscapes and other cultures in a very life-affirming way.
Ben Kingsley
#89. A good meal soothes the soul as it regenerates the body.
From the abundance of it flows a benign benevolence.
Frederick W. Hackwood
#90. Heartbreak comes in different sizes, and the departure of an 18-year-old child for a far college has to be treated as a very benign form of the disease.
Jonathan Raban
#91. Being made to feel like an irrelevant child was probably an asset. Benign negligence is not a bad parental attitude or at least a cross between a benevolent dictator and benign negligence - you should just let kids crack on with it.
Clare Balding
#92. I chose to believe that God, a benign God, would understand our sufferings and forgive us our trespasses.
Jojo Moyes
#93. Whatever your religious persuasion, if you believe that that the universe is governed by benign forces, at some point you have to explain why there is so much suffering, misfortune and misery in the world.
Julian Baggini
#94. And I too, felt ready to start life all over again. It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.
Albert Camus
#95. Maybe I would get a ferret. A cat just felt too benign. My kind of crazy deserved an ambiguously cute rodent with a penchant for biting.
L. H. Cosway
#96. New York City is a mismanaged carnival of stupidity that is desperate for revenue and anxious to criminalize behavior once thought benign,
Alec Baldwin
#97. Music is sometimes the only benign avenue of communication between antagonists.
Paul Simon
#98. She raised a thick, ruddy brow at him. "You never heard of benign hypocrisy? I thought they teach you stuff like that when you go to minister school. Since you mention gassing away about morality. That's a minister's job, too, isn't it?
Diana Gabaldon
#99. The best you can hope for in this life is that your delusions are benign and your compulsions have utility.
Scott Adams
#100. It took a long time, but my heart now feels full when I think of him. When you fall in love again - which I have - it's funny the other things that come back in with that open-ness. You have this ghost chorus of the lovers who came before, but they're benign now, they're good spirits.
Emma Forrest
