mean Quotes

“Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.”

“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

The Herdmans were absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world. They lied and stole and smoked cigars (even the girls) and talked dirty and hit little kids and cussed their teachers and took the name of the Lord in vain and set fire to Fred Shoemaker’s old broken-down toolhouse.

Presently one of the little boys took up the tin soldier, and threw him into the stove. . . . The flames lighted up the tin soldier, as he stood, the heat was very terrible, but whether it proceeded from the real fire or from the fire of love he could not tell.

“Packed it up with their presents, their ribbons, their wrappings, Their snoof and their fuzzles, their tringlers and trappings! Ten thousand feet up, up the side of Mount Crumpet, He rode with his load to the tiptop to dump it!”

“Then he growled, with his Grinch fingers nervously drumming, ‘I must find some way to keep Christmas from coming!‘”

″‘Find THAT!’ sneered the bird. ‘But I think you will fail.’ And he left with a flip of his black-bottomed tail.”

“How strange it is that people of honest feelings and sensibilty, who would not take advantage of a man born without arms or legs or eyes—how such people think nothing of abusing a man with low intelligence.”

If there’s just one kind of folks, why can’t they get along with each other? If they’re all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think I’m beginning to understand something. I think I’m beginning to understand why Boo Radley’s stayed shut up in the house all this time... it’s because he wants to stay inside.

I saw people who were hostile; they had felt so much hurt that hostility was their only defense against being crushed again.

“People are only mean when they’re threatened . . . and that’s what our culture does. That’s what our economy does. Even people who have jobs in our economy are threatened, because they worry about losing them. And when you get threatened, you start looking out only for yourself.”

“It’s a mean world...there’s nobody to take care of you out there.”

“Why are you not smarter? It’s only the rich who can’t afford to be smart. They’re compromised. They got locked years ago into privilege. They have to protect their belongings. No one is meaner than the rich. Trust me.”

“Nothing good shone out of Mrs. Twit’s face. In her right hand she carried a walking stick. She used to tell people that this was because she had warts growing on the sole of her left foot and walking was painful. But the real reason she carried a stick was so she could hit things with it, things like dogs and cats and small children.”

“I meant what I said, and I said what I meant…An elephant’s faithful, one hundred per cent!”

“Why, there’s my grandkids now.” She pointed us out with a spatula. “They’re from Chicago. Gangs run that town, you know,” she told the kid. “My grandson’s in a gang, so you don’t want to mess with him. He’s meaner than he looks.”

″ In a culture of domination everyone is socialized to see violence as an acceptable means of social control. ”

“She’s mean enough to scare the spots off a pup!”

Honor Brown hates, absolutely hates school. It’s horrible--there are monsters and petrifying teachers. The students are crooks and pirates and everyone is so mean! They throw them out of windows and make them walk on glass. It’s so, so horrible, but what happens when it’s over?

“I’m unhappy to say he came back the next day in a spiffy new suit with a big new machine, and he snarled as he said, looking frightfully mean.”

“That’s sort of a mean thing to do.”

“She hung a sign on the front door of the house that said, ‘Mean wind, you took the wrong road. Buy yourself a map.’ ”

″‘He is our father’s father, and he didn’t like our mother,’ said Henry. ‘So we don’t think he would like us. We are afraid he would be mean to us.‘”

“The though was full, and faithful Tray came out to drink one sultry day; he wagg’d his tail and wet his lips, when cruel Fred snatched up a whip... ”

“But then people began to make fun of him. ‘Hi, Super-skinny!’ ”

“Jamie was quiet for a minute, then he said, ‘We probably have no conscience. I think we ought to be homesick. Do you think Mom and Dad raised us wrong? They’re not very mean, you know; don’t you think that should make us miss them?’ ”

“She has narrow hands and a narrow face, Helen Bell. She is good at playing the piano. On the whole I don’t like people who are always playing the piano. They have mean little mouths.”

“Byron was the only person in the world who could make you feel sorry for someone as mean as Larry Dunn.”

“Cilla, waiting and waiting for him at North Square—and then he got there only about when it pleased him. He loved Cilla. She and Rab were the best friends he had ever had. Why was he mean to her? He couldn’t think.”

“It is difficult but important to believe that this precious pair may have been trying to do the best they could, considering the kind of people they were.”

“The bird looked much smaller dead than it had alive. Jody felt a little mean pain in his stomach, so he took out his pocketknife and cut off the bird’s head.”

“Young Jarl Hansen, goaded by the mean and vicious Mate, Heinrich the Bull, jumps ship in South Australia and becomes a hunted person until the spirit wind, invoked by Nunganee, the Aboriginal, comes to his aid.”

“Treat them mean, keep them keen, that was Hirai’s motto.”