“In the most commonplace, tiresome, ridiculous, malicious, coarse, crude, or even crooked people or events I had to seek out rare things, good things, comic things, and I did so.”

—  William Saroyan

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)

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 "In the most commonplace, tiresome, ridiculous, malicious, coarse, crude, or even crooked people or events I had to seek…" by William Saroyan?
William Saroyan photo
William Saroyan 190
American writer 1908–1981

Related quotes

Thucydides photo

“I think the two things most opposed to good counsel are haste and passion; haste usually goes hand in hand with folly, passion with coarseness and narrowness of mind.”

Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War

Book III, 3.42-[1] (Speech of Diodotus..).
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book III

Mallika Sherawat photo

“Isn't it great that I evoke a reaction from people? Whether it is good or bad is secondary. The thing is that I like being myself. I find it very tiresome to put up a fake smile, say the right things, and be diplomatic. It's just not in my personality to be like that.”

Mallika Sherawat (1976) Indian actress

Cine Bliitz magazine,(July 2005)

Leonardo Da Vinci photo

“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

“I was sort of a hellraiser with a bunch of friends, most of whom were squeaking by with C's and D's while I was getting an A-average and should have been doing better. I did a lot of things on my own. I liked to make things with my hands. There was a lot of woodworking, model building, and model railroading. I collected stamps, and did various things in chemistry. I used to make things that exploded, and all that sort of thing. So I evidently got quite a good background in science. I always had a knack for that sort of thing. The hospital had a subscription to Scientific American and Science.”

Douglas T. Ross (1929–2007) American computer scientist

So things came every week and I consumed them...
Response to the question: Did you outstrip the offerings of the school, say in the sciences and mathematics?
An Interview with Douglas T. Ross (1984)

Immanuel Kant photo

“Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”

Immanuel Kant book Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose

Idea for a General History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose (1784), Proposition 6.
Variant translations: Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be built.
From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.
Never a straight thing was made from the crooked timber of man.
Source: Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose

Laxmi Prasad Devkota photo

“I cannot ridicule their every idea but in most things my vote is against the education system.”

Laxmi Prasad Devkota (1909–1959) Nepali poet

शिक्षा (Education)

Sam Walter Foss photo

“I say the very things that make the greatest Stir
An' the most interestin' things, are things that did n't occur.”

Sam Walter Foss (1858–1911) American writer

Things that did n't occur, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Marilyn Monroe photo

“People have curious attitudes about nudity just as they have about sex. Nudity and sex are the most commonplace things in the world. Yet people often act as if they were things that only existed on Mars.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Source: As quoted in My Story (2006) by Marilyn Monroe and Ben Hecht p. 60

Robert LeFevre photo

“Now, where did we ever get the idea that there is such a thing as 'good government?' That is a contradiction in terms as ridiculous as 'constructive rape.”

Robert LeFevre (1911–1986) American libertarian businessman

Rampart Institute, (Society for Libertarian Life edition), from 1977 speech, p. 14.
Good Government: Hope or Illusion? (1978)

“I think if anything is malicious… when somebody can look at harvesting and selling the little heart… of a baby who has been freshly killed — if someone can look at trading that body part for money — if anything is malicious, I think that’s malicious: treating people like things.”

David Daleiden (1989) American anti-abortion activist

Undercover Planned Parenthood investigator David Daleiden: ‘No one is going to be able to say anymore that they didn’t know’ https://www.liveaction.org/news/undercover-investigator-planned-parenthood-daleiden-know/ (June 7, 2020)

Related topics