“Sarcasm is the last refuge of the imaginatively bankrupt.”
Source: City of Bones
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Martha Wells 1
American writer 1964Related quotes
“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”
April 7, 1775, p. 253
Boswell's full mention of this statement reads:
:Patriotism having become one of our topicks, Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm, at which many will start: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." But let it be considered, that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak of self-interest.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II
“Conformity is the last refuge of the unimaginitive”
Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young (1894)
Variant: Ambition is the last refuge of the failure
Context: Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
“Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”
"The Relation of Dress to Art," The Pall Mall Gazette http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14062/14062-h/14062-h.htm (February 28, 1885)
reprinted in Aristotle at Afternoon Tea:The Rare Oscar Wilde (1991)
Source: A Long Way Down
“Jargon is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”
" O, Synecdoche, my Synecdoche! http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/11/o_synecdoche_my_synecdoche.html," (10 November 2008)
Context: I was instructed long ago by a wise editor, "If you understand something you can explain it so that almost anyone can understand it. If you don't, you won't be able to understand your own explanation." That is why 90% of academic film theory is bullshit. Jargon is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
“Good behavior is the last refuge of mediocrity.”
Variant: Sedate ignorance is the last stage of deterioration.
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 135
“Violence,” came the retort, “is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
Variant: Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Source: Part II, The Encyclopedists, section 5; This also appears three times in "Bridle and Saddle" which is titled "The Mayors" within Foundation. It is derived from the famous phrase by Samuel Johnson: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" and from the words of Lady Anne Bellamy in H. Rider Haggard's Dawn, “I do not believe in violence; it is the last resource of fools.” Asimov is usually quoted simply with "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
“A prig always finds a last refuge in responsibility.”
The Wedding on the Eiffel Tower (1922), Preface
“The God excuse, the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument.”
“The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.”