“a man whose life is so boring that if it flashed past he wouldn't be in it”

—  David Lange

Referring to former Labour Party member Peter Dunne.
Source: [Pryor, Nicole, Rare stumble by political chameleon, 8 June 2013, The Press, 8 June 2013, A16]

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "a man whose life is so boring that if it flashed past he wouldn't be in it" by David Lange?
David Lange photo
David Lange34
New Zealand politician and 32nd Prime Minister of New Zeala… 1942–2005

Related quotes

“Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn”

John Berryman book The Dream Songs

Source: The Dream Songs

Jack London photo

“He was a man without a past, whose future was the imminent grave and whose present was a bitter fever of living.”

Jack London Martin Eden

Source: Martin Eden

Oscar Wilde photo

“The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Frederick Rolfe photo

“He was a confidence-man, pauper, tutor, blackmailer, paedophile, translator – and author of seven novels and a number of short stories. Rolfe was a trickster whose failed life stank to himself as to the few friends whom he had and betrayed. But he was a fascinating figure: a bore, but also a pseudo-Borgian freak whose vindictiveness and paranoia have deservedly become legendary.”

Frederick Rolfe (1860–1913) British writer, photographer and historian

Martin Seymour-Smith Guide to Modern World Literature (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975) vol. 1, pp. 302-3.
Criticism

“No life goes past so swiftly as an eventless one, no clock spins like a clock whose days are all alike.”

Wallace Stegner book Angle of Repose

Source: Angle of Repose

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor photo

“Why is life so complicated….?' I asked.
'To keep us from being bored,' he said.”

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (1933) American children's writer

Source: Dangerously Alice

Amy Hempel photo

“if it's true your life flashes past your eyes before you die, then it is also the truth that your life rushes forth when you are ready to start to truly be alive.”

Amy Hempel (1951) Short story writer

Source: The Collected Stories

William Cullen Bryant photo

“The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore,
And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.”

William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) American romantic poet and journalist

Death of the Flowers http://www.bartleby.com/248/85.html (1832), st. 4, lines 23-24

John Crowley photo

“God, he thought, her eyes are so bright, flashing, deep, full of promise, all those things eyes are in books but never are in life, and she was his.”

John Crowley book Little, Big

Source: Little, Big

Reinhold Niebuhr photo

“I wouldn't judge a man by the presuppositions of his life, but only by the fruits of his life.”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

The Mike Wallace Interview (1958)
Context: My personal attitude toward atheists is the same attitude that I have toward Christians, and would be governed by a very orthodox text: "By their fruits shall ye know them." I wouldn't judge a man by the presuppositions of his life, but only by the fruits of his life. And the fruits — the relevant fruits — are, I'd say, a sense of charity, a sense of proportion, a sense of justice. And whether the man is an atheist or a Christian, I would judge him by his fruits, and I have therefore many agnostic friends.

Related topics