Top 100 Scarcely Quotes
#1. There is scarcely anything that drags a person down like debt.
P.T. Barnum
#2. Nature scarcely ever gives us the very best; for that we must have recourse to art.
Baltasar Gracian
#3. And here we must narrowly watch ourselves, seeing that banquets can scarcely be celebrated blamelessly, for almost always luxury accompanies feasting; and when the body is swallowed up in the delight of refreshing itself, the heart relaxes to empty joys.
Pope Gregory I
#4. Out of one hundred thousand sinners who continue in sin until death, scarcely one will be saved.
St. Jerome
#5. While all men seek after happiness, scarcely one in a hundred looks for it from God.
John Calvin
#6. Men who attain great heights always have few friends but many admirers, while those who ply the lower reaches of fortune often have many friends but scarcely an admirer in sight
Agona Apell
#7. The brutal truth is, we're scarcely 'educating' children at all. Even if you overlook the guilt, fear, bigotry, and dangerous anti-intellectual flapdoodle being funneled into young brains by schools on the religious right, what we're doing is training kids to be cogs in the wheels of commerce.
Tom Robbins
#8. It was funny how people who had nothing would offer everything to those in need, and people who had comfort scarcely offered it to people who needed it.
Belle Aurora
#9. The mention of one apartment in a building naturally introduces an enquiry or discourse concerning the others: and if we think ofa wound, we can scarcely forbear reflecting on the pain which follows it.
David Hume
#10. Quite without thought, he glanced at his left hand, and saw the ghost of the scar at the base of his thumb, the "C" so faded that it was scarcely visible. He had not noticed it or thought of it in years, and felt suddenly as though there was not air enough to breathe.
Diana Gabaldon
#11. Admiration is a youthful fancy will which scarcely ever survives to mature years.
Josh Billings
#12. Sweetly, albeit hoarsely and with a burr, the girl started singing something scarcely comprehensible, but, judging by the women's faces in the stalls, very seductive:
Guerlain, Chanel no 5, Mitsuko, Narcissus noir, evening dresses, cocktail dresses..
Mikhail Bulgakov
#13. Yoga is, as I can readily believe, the perfect and appropriate method of fusing body and mind together so that they form a unity which is scarcely to be questioned. This unity creates a psychological disposition which makes possible intuitions that transcend consciousness.
Paramahansa Yogananda
#14. Happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than
F Scott Fitzgerald
#15. Contemplating Clodia I find scarcely a drop in my heart of that compassion which Epicurus enjoins us to extend toward the erring.
Thornton Wilder
#16. I hope I reach the point where epiphanies become so commonplace that I scarcely bother to register them: Oh look, another epiphany - as we acquire knowledge we become mired in the ignorance of the educated, delivered from the wisdom of innocence by a corrupted midwife. Now what's on telly?
Anonymous
#17. What the world stigmatises as romantic, is often more nearly allied to the truth than is commonly supposed; for, if the generous ideas of youth are too often over-clouded by the sordid views of after-life, that scarcely proves them to be false.
Anne Bronte
#18. Is that true? Are you really him?"
"I am afraid I still hold that distinction."
"You are Sherlock Holmes? No, I don't believe it."
"That is quite all right. I scarcely believe it myself.
Mitch Cullin
#19. I scarcely ever," he said, with an unconscious and colossal arrogance, "hear of anything on the face of the earth that I do not understand at once, without going to see it." And he led the way out into the purple night.
The Club of Queer Trades
G.K. Chesterton
#20. Rations were scarcely issued, and the men about preparing supper, when rumors that the enemy had been encountered that day near Gettysburg absorbed every other interest, and very soon orders came to march forthwith to Gettysburg.
Joshua Chamberlain
#21. Nicole's world had fallen to pieces, but it was only a flimsy and scarcely created world; beneath it her emotions and instincts fought on.
F Scott Fitzgerald
#22. But here, in the murk of conflagration, where scarcely a friend is left to know we, the survivors, do not flinch from anything, not from a single blow. Surely the reckoning will be made after the passing of this cloud. We are the people without tears, straighter than you ... more proud ...
Anna Akhmatova
#23. Love ... is in fact so unnatural a phenomenon that it can scarcely repeat itself
James Joyce
#25. There is scarcely a person on Earth who has not heard of UFOs; many believe in them. Few, however, can say much about them. Fewer still-even believers-can find much time to think about them. Life finds a way of keeping us occupied with other matters.
Richard M. Dolan
#26. Scarcely is there any peace so unjust that it is better than even the fairest war. -Vix ulla tam iniqua pax, quin bello vel aequissimo sit potior
Desiderius Erasmus
#28. The scarcely audible whisper of soft airs through the trees morning and evening, rain drops falling gently, and the murmur of drowsy surges far below, alone break the stillness.
Isabella L. Bird
#29. The idea of demonstrating that this unknown something [God] exists, could scarcely suggest itself to Reason. For if God does not exist it would of course be impossible to prove it, and if he does exist it would be folly to attempt it.
Soren Kierkegaard
#30. Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know: I scarcely think it is.
Charlotte Bronte
#31. The tree is happy because it is scarcely sentient;
the hard rock is happier still, it feels nothing:
there is no pain as great as being alive,
no burden heavier than that of conscious life.
Ruben Dario
#32. As a man without forethought scarcely deserves the name of a man, so forethought without reflection is but a metaphorical phrase for the instinct of a beast.
- (1772-1834)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
#33. It is true that the reluctance to abstain from animal food, in those who have been long accustomed to its stimulus, is so great in some persons of weak minds, as to be scarcely overcome; but this is far from bringing any argument in its favour
Percy Bysshe Shelley
#34. I believe a person of any fine feeling scarcely ever sees a new face without a sensation akin to a shock, for the reason that it presents a new and surprising combination of unedifying elements.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#35. Planets that don't currently sport plate tectonics, such as Venus and Mars, are scarcely habitable. Tectonics might be a requirement of any world that aspires to a rich diversity of life.
Seth Shostak
#36. The cat is such a perfect symbol of beauty and superiority that it seems scarcely possible for any true aesthete and civilised cynic to do other than worship it.
H.P. Lovecraft
#37. Much comment has been given lately to the Code of the Samurai,
the Art of Death which makes our soldiers exult in self- sacrifice; but scarcely any attention has been drawn to Teaism, which represents so much of our Art of Life.
Okakura Kakuzo
#38. The dying man doesn't struggle much and he isn't much afraid. As his alkalies give out he succumbs to a blest stupidity. His mindfogs. His will power vanishes. He submits decently. He scarcely gives a damn.
H.L. Mencken
#39. Many leave the labours of half their life to their executors and to chance, because they will not send them abroad unfinished, and are unable to finish them, having prescribed to themselves such a degree of exactness as human diligence can scarcely ontain.
Samuel Johnson
#40. Morning made a considerable difference in my general prospects of Life and brightened it so much that is scarcely seemed the same.
Charles Dickens
#41. He who uses trickery should at least make use of his judgment to learn that he can scarcely hide treacherous conduct for very long among clever men who are determined to find him out, although they may pretend to be deceived in order to disguise their knowledge of his deceitfulness.
Madeleine De Souvre, Marquise De ...
#42. The attractiveness that exists to man in the very helplessness of woman is scarcely realized.
Alphonse De Lamartine
#43. I share my name with an aerobatic bird that can whiz across a whole summer sky in seconds. A swift is so equipped for speed that it can scarcely cope with being stationary.
Graham Swift
#44. The force of love will change your life so fast that you will scarcely believe it!
Rhonda Byrne
#45. The mad joy over the prisoners who were saved, had astounded him scarcely less than the mad ferocity against those who were cut to pieces.
Charles Dickens
#46. There is scarcely a subject that cannot be mathematically treated and the effects calculated or the results determined beforehand from the available theoretical and practical data.
Nikola Tesla
#47. The idea of sovereignty current in the English speaking world of the 1760's was scarcely more than a century old. It had first emerged during the English Civil War, in the early 1640's, and had been established as a canon of Whig political thought in the Revolution of 1688.
Bernard Bailyn
#48. The executive, in our government is not the sole, it is scarcely the principle, object of my jealousy. The tyranny of the legislature is the most formidable dread at present and will be for many years. That of the executive will come in its turn, but it will be at a remote period.
Thomas Jefferson
#49. It can hardly be pressed forcibly enough on the attention of the student of nature, that there is scarcely any natural phenomenon which can be fully and completely explained, in all its circumstances, without a union of several, perhaps of all, the sciences.
John Herschel
#50. Birth and ancestry, and that which we have not ourselves achieved, we can scarcely call our own.
Ovid
#51. We are so accustomed to the apparently rational nature of our world that we can scarcely imagine anything happening that cannot be explained by common sense. The primitive man confronted by a shock of this kind would not doubt his sanity; he would think of fetishes, spirits or gods
Carl Jung
#52. From the tangle of chimney-pots scarcely a wisp of smoke came,
H.P. Lovecraft
#53. But since then, it seemed he had been caught up in a hurricane, whirling from one thing to another with scarcely enough time to catch a breath. Perhaps that was good. Because if he stopped and took the time to think about things too deeply, dark thoughts started to intrude.
Brian Falkner
#54. If young women were not deceived into a belief that affectation pleases, they would scarcely trouble themselves to practise it so much.
Maria Edgeworth
#55. Scarcely have I ever heard or read the introductory phrase, "I may say without vanity," but some striking and characteristic instance of vanity has immediately followed.
Benjamin Franklin
#56. You get right down to it, writing is no means to self-help. It's scarcely a passing attempt at self-help.
Haruki Murakami
#57. Investment based on genuine long-term expectations is so difficult today as to be scarcely practicable.
John Maynard Keynes
#58. This quality becomes important at a time when almost everyone is a poet. And as I said, we live in an age where almost everybody is a poet, but scarcely anyone can write a poem.
Clive James
#59. Nostalgia has nothing to do with aesthetics, it's not even connected to happy memories. We feel nostalgia for a place simply because we've lived there; whether we lived well or badly scarcely matters.
Michel Houellebecq
#60. Scarcely was I arrived at fifteen years of age, when, after having doubted in turn of different tenets, according as I found them combated in the different books that I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself.
Benjamin Franklin
#61. The establishment of democracy on the American continent was scarcely as radical a break with the past as was the necessity, which Americans faced, of broadening this concept to include black men.
James A. Baldwin
#62. There is scarcely a page of the Bible on which an open mind does not perceive a contradiction, an unlikely story, an obvious error, an historical impossibility of one sort or another.
Steve Allen
#63. A military man can scarcely pride himself on having smitten a sleeping enemy; it is more a matter of shame, simply, for the one smitten.
Isoroku Yamamoto
#64. Prosperity seems to be scarcely safe, unless it be mixed with a little adversity.
Hosea Ballou
#65. Assuming that his talent can survive the increasing strain, there is one scarcely avoidable danger that lies ahead of the pupil on his road to mastery.
Eugen Herrigel
#66. Insight roams the sea of the unconscious like the Loch Ness monster, a rumor whose wake occasionally becomes visible, but even then it's mystifying and scarcely believed.
Diane Ackerman
#67. It is less than five hundred years since an entire half of the world was discovered. It is less than two hundred years since the discovery of the last continent. The sciences of chemistry and physics go back scarcely one century.
Jeff VanderMeer
#69. Topics of conversation among the multitude are generally persons, sometimes things, scarcely ever principles.
William Benton Clulow
#70. They smiled at each other. His smile, even at night was dazzling; hers, too. They could scarcely distinguish anything but the brilliant smiles and the outlines of their perfect bodies.
Anais Nin
#71. Hear the verbal protestations of all men: Nothing so certain as their religious tenets. Examine their lives: You will scarcely think that they repose the smallest confidence in them.
David Hume
#72. The most vulgar slang is scarcely worse than the attempted elegance which those unused to good society imagine to be the evidence of cultivation.
Emily Post
#73. Poor sleepers should endeavor to compose themselves. Tampering with empty space, stirring up echoes in pitch-black pits of darkness is scarcely sedative.
("Out Of The Deep")
Walter De La Mare
#74. He who runs from God in the morning will scarcely find Him the rest of the day.
John Bunyan
#75. On this thin, scarcely real and yet so perceptible sensation the whole world hung as on a faintly trembling axis, and this in turn rested on the two people in the room.
Robert Musil
#76. True poets, like great artists, have scarcely any childhood, and no old age.
Sophie Swetchine
#77. Now nearly all the mysteries have gone, and there is scarcely an unknown country left to peer at.)
Jan Morris
#78. A hardened and shameless tea-drinker, who has, for twenty years, diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant; whose kettle has scarcely time to cool; who with tea amuses the evening, with tea solaces the midnight, and, with tea, welcomes the morning.
Samuel Johnson
#79. The essence of the expert is that his field shall be very special and narrow: one of the ways in which he inspires confidence is to rigidly limit himself to the little toe; he would scarcely venture an off-the-record opinion on an infected little finger.
Louis Kronenberger
#80. Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.
Charles Dickens
#81. He disliked the narrative aspects of history, particularly that part of it. People were so boringly deformed by it, like Ash, or else, like Lev, scarcely aware of it.
William Gibson
#82. I am in myself so little that what they do with me scarcely interests me.
Antonio Porchia
#83. I scarcely know the meaning of your question; much less can I answer it.
Boethius
#84. I learned enough Hebrew to stagger through a meaningless ceremony that I scarcely remember.
David Antin
#85. Do angels take the Lord's name in vain? The idea is so ridiculous that we scarcely like to ask the question ... How dare we do that which angels dare not do? Is it possible for us to argue that that which is forbidden in heaven is praiseworthy on earth?
George Q. Cannon
#86. She was sometimes happy, in the sense of being somehow complete, and ready for what another day might bring. And knows she is no longer that, and that while she was, she scarcely knew it.
William Gibson
#87. The best school in the world will scarcely save a boy who hates the school and the purpose it serves and the society that created it.
Gilbert Highet
#88. It is scarcely possible to doubt that the love of man has become instinctive in the dog.
Charles Darwin
#89. Miss you, he said. It was the barest murmur, scarcely a sound.
Loretta Chase
#90. Ireland, in breadth, and for wholesomeness and serenity of climate, far surpasses Britain; for the snow scarcely ever lies there above three days: no man makes hay in the summer for winter's provision, or builds stables for his beasts of burden ... the island abounds in milk and honey.
Venerable Bede
#91. There is scarcely any writer who has not celebrated the happiness of rural privacy, and delighted himself and his reader with the melody of birds, the whisper of groves, and the murmur of rivulets.
Samuel Johnson
#92. The fact that nine-tenths of all the smutty literature, artistic tripe and theatrical banalities, had to be charged to the account of people who formed scarcely one per cent. of the nation - that fact could not be gainsaid. It was there, and had to be admitted.
Adolf Hitler
#93. He who wishes to revenge injuries by reciprocal hatred will live in misery. But he who endeavors to drive away hatred by means of love, fights with pleasure and confidence; he resists equally one or many men, and scarcely needs at all the help of fortune. Those whom he conquers yield joyfully
Baruch Spinoza
#94. Almost everyone takes pleasure in repaying trifling obligations, very many feel gratitude for those that are moderate; but there is scarcely anyone who is not ungrateful for those that are weighty.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld
#95. O Oysters,' said the Carpenter,
You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none -
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.
Lewis Carroll
#96. The entire point of a new theory is that it is unprecedented; the first man to invent a jet aircraft could scarcely submit examples of jet aircraft flying in the past.
Stefan Molyneux
#97. I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.
John Keats
#98. Such a kiss--it was a flower held against the face, never to be described, scarcely to be remembered; as though her beauty were giving off emanations of itself which settled transiently and already dissolving upon his heart.
F Scott Fitzgerald
#99. Submission to something you didn't preach yourself is no good, I quote. Because Man must burst his ridiculous bonds, which consist of what is supposedly current reality with a prospect of a future reality of scarcely any greater value.
Elfriede Jelinek
#100. Our civilization is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason.
Theodore Dreiser
