Quotes about admire
page 3

“Behaviour that's admired
is the path to power among people everywhere.”

Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) Irish poet, playwright, translator, lecturer

Source: Beowulf

People

“I admire your capacity for admiring.”

Jonathan Franzen book Freedom

Source: Freedom

“Be loved, be admired, be necessary; be somebody.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

Source: Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

Love

“Confound you handsome young fellows! You think of having it all your own way in the world. You don't understand women. They don't admire you half so much as you admire yourselves.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Source: Middlemarch

Women, World, Way, Understanding

“A man's admiration for absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book The Old Regime and the Revolution

Original text: Les despotes eux-mêmes ne nient pas que la liberté ne soit excellente ; seulement ils ne la veulent que pour eux-mêmes, et ils soutiennent que tous les autres en sont tout à fait indignes. Ainsi, ce n'est pas sur l'opinion qu'on doit avoir de la liberté qu'on diffère, mais sur l'estime plus au moins grande qu'on fait des hommes ; et c'est ainsi qu'on peut dire d'une façon rigoureuse que le goût qu'on montre pour le gouvernement absolu est dans le rapport exact du mépris qu'on professe pour son pays.
Ancien Regime and the Revolution (L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution) (fourth edition, 1858), de Tocqueville, tr. Gerald Bevan, Penguin UK (2008), Author’s Foreword :
1850s and later
Variant: We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man's support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.
Context: Even despots accept the excellence of liberty. The simple truth is that they wish to keep it for themselves and promote the idea that no one else is at all worthy of it. Thus, our opinion of liberty does not reveal our differences but the relative value which we place on our fellow man. We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man's support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.

Feeling

“In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Variant: In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will no longer be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.
Source: Pride And Prejudice

Love, Feeling, Relationship, Romantic

“Any faith that admires truth, that strives to know God, must be brave enough to accommodate the universe.”

Carl Sagan book Contact

Source: Contact

God, Truth, Faith, Universe

“People always ask me where they should go to work, and I always tell them to go to work for whom they admire the most.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

People

“Admire as much as you can. Most people do not admire enough.”

Vincent Van Gogh book The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

1870s
Variant: Find things beautiful as much as you can, most people find too little beautiful.
Source: The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

People

“I always thought it was what I wanted: to be loved and admired. Now I think perhaps I'd like to be known.”

Kristin Hannah book The Nightingale

Variant: He loves a version of me that is incomplete. I always thought it was what I wanted: to be loved and admired. Now I think perhaps I'd like to be known.
Source: The Nightingale

Love, Thinking

“Nom, do say something funny so she can admire!”

Shannon Hale River Secrets

Source: River Secrets

“I have always been a huge admirer of my own work. I'm one of the funniest and most entertaining writers I know.”

Mel Brooks (1926) American director, writer, actor, and producer

Funny

“Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own - they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal - for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Loneliness

“Beauty is often spoken of as though it only stirs lust or admiration, but the most beautiful people are so in a way that makes them look like destiny or fate or meaning, the heroes of a remarkable story.”

Rebecca Solnit (1961) Author and essayist from United States

Source: A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Fate, People, Beauty, Way

“Thus, from admiration of one wise and innocent child, and from a misheard remark, the process that not even Aristotle could codify was triggered.
Where do you get your ideas?
I purposely mishear things.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

Idea

“I learned to go into business only with people whom I like, trust, and admire.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

People, Business, Learning

“I was a beautiful vampire princess loved, worshiped and admired by all. I lived in a luxurious gothic castle and I have no idea how I ended up at this fiberglass table with you losers.”

Alyson Nöel book Evermore

Source: Evermore

Love, Beauty, Idea, Princess

“She admired him; she was used to clutching her hands together in his wake and heaving audible sighs.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Crack-Up

Source: The Crack-Up

“Makes sense to me. Sometimes starting over is exactly what a person needs. And I think it's admirable. A lot of people don't have the courage it takes to do something like that.”

Nicholas Sparks book Safe Haven

Source: Safe Haven

People, Courage, Thinking, Sense

“People. You must love people. Men are admirable. I want
to vomit—and suddenly, there it is: the Nausea”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Source: Nausea

Love, Men, People

“No man is offended by another man's admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment.”

Jane Austen book Northanger Abbey

Source: Northanger Abbey

Love

“Even so, I must admire your skill.
You are so gracefully insane.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

"Elegy in the Classroom"
Referring to Robert Lowell
To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960)
Variant: Even so, I must admire your skill.
You are so gracefully insane.

“Today a woman must ignore her reflection in the eyes of her lover, since he might admire her, and seek it in the gaze of the God of Beauty, in whose perception she is never complete.”

Naomi Wolf book The Beauty Myth

Source: The Beauty Myth

God, Beauty, Lovers

“She lacks confidence, she craves admiration insatiably. She lives on the reflections of herself in the eyes of others. She does not dare to be herself.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Variant: She lacks the core of sureness, she craves admiration insatiably. She lives on reflections of herself in others' eyes. She does not dare to be herself.
Source: Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin

Confidence

“Yes, but knee pants are so much more flattering. You can see my legs."
You want people to see your legs?"
I have very nice legs!" We both paused to admire them for a moment.”

Karen Chance American writer

Source: Death's Mistress

People

“Haters are confused admirers who can’t understand why everybody else likes you”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Variant: Haters are confused admirers who want to be like you.

Understanding

“Young men often laugh at the sensible girls whom they secretly respect, and affect to admire the silly ones whom they secretly despise, because earnestness, intelligence, and womanly dignity are not the fashion.”

Louisa May Alcott book An Old-Fashioned Girl

Source: An Old-Fashioned Girl

Men, Girl, Intelligence, Fashion

“The decorator of Las Colimas must have been a great admirer of both early Aztec and late Taco Bell architectural styles.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bites

“Her fluency was marvelous. She would say things at random, intricate, flamelike, or slide off into a parenthetical limbo peppered with fireworks-- admirable linguistic feats which a practiced writer might struggle for hours to achieve.”

Henry Miller book Sexus

Source: Sexus

“Isn't there a mirror someplace where you can go admire yourself?"
"I never knew a woman so hung up on my good looks."
"All your women are hung up on your good looks. They just pretend it's your personality.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: This Heart of Mine

Women, Personality

“The Princess Bride
S. Morgenstern's
Classic Tale of True Love
and High Adventure

You had to admire a guy who called his own new book a classic before it was published and anyone had a chance to read it.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

Love, Books, Guy, Chance

“I yield to nobody in my admiration for God, but he's no good in bed.”

Diana Norman (1933–2011) British author and journalist

Source: The Serpent's Tale

God

“What bothered me most was their lack of style. I learned early that class is universally admired. Almost any fault, sin or crime is considered more leniently if there's a touch of class involved.”

Frank W. Abagnale (1948) American security consultant, former confidence trickster, check forger, impostor, and escape artist

Source: Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

Learning, Universe

“Do you know we are being led to
Slaughters by placid admirals

& that fat slow generals are getting
Obscene on young blood

Do you know we are ruled by t. v.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Source: An American Prayer

“I do not admire greatness that has no substance.”

Mary Balogh (1944) Welsh-Canadian novelist

Slightly Dangerous

“I can't praise a young lady who is alive only when people are admiring her, but as soon as she is left alone, collapses and finds nothing to her taste--one who is all for show and has no resources in herself”

Leo Tolstoy book Family Happiness

Source: Family Happiness

People

“It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement — that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life.”

Sigmund Freud book Civilization and Its Discontents

Man kann sich des Eindrucks nicht erwehren, daß die Menschen gemeinhin mit falschen Maßstäben messen, Macht, Erfolg und Reichtum für sich anstreben und bei anderen bewundern, die wahren Werte des Lebens aber unterschätzen.
Source: 1920s, Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), Ch. 1, as translated by James Strachey, p.25

Life, People, Success, Falseness

“Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

“Satan has his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and detested.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

“The pounding music, the cheers, the admiration work their way into my blood, and I can’t suppress my excitement. Cinna has given me a great advantage. No one will forget me. Not my look, not my name. Katniss. The girl who was on fire.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Music, Way, Girl, Forgetting

“Now be sincere; did you admire me for my impertinence?"

"For the liveliness of your mind, I did.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Sincerity

“have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Learning

“Love made you admire funny things about a person, like how good she was at remembering to return her library books and at slicing cucumbers very thin. She was a veritable wonder at pulling a splinter out of her foot.”

Ann Brashares (1967) American children's writer

Love, Books, Personality

“Pity does not get you aid. Admiration at your refusal to give in does.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“She had been proud of his decision to serve his country, her heart bursting with love and admiration the first time she saw him outfitted in his dress blues.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Lucky One

Source: The Lucky One

Love, Decision, Time, Heart

“He was someone whom everyone admired and liked but whom nobody knew. He was like a book that you could feel good holding, that you could talk about without ever having read, that you could recommend.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

Books, Feeling, Reading

“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Men, People, Truth

“I will add that I do not believe his admiration of my person, dazzling through I am, to be sincere. He told me I was a beautiful, sparkling lady.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Midnight Heir

Beauty, Personality, Sincerity

“I like to be admired from afar, and then complimented up close.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Seduction

“I find out of long experience that I admire all nations and hate all governments”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Hate

“Love is the most difficult and dangerous form of courage. Courage is the most desperate, admirable and noble kind of love.”

Delmore Schwartz (1913–1966) American poet

Source: Last and Lost Poems

Love, Courage

“Despereaux marveled at his own bravery. He admired his own defiance. And then, reader, he fainted. :(”

Kate DiCamillo book The Tale of Despereaux

Source: The Tale of Despereaux (2004)

“He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Source: Wealth, War, and Wisdom

“I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for, but I admire their discipline and their organization.”

Howard Dean (1948) American political activist

Maggie Haberman, "Dean's Howling For Shot To Lead DNC Into Future Battle To Head Democrats", New York Daily News, January 30, 2005. Retrieved from Proquest May 12, 2016.

Hate

“Catherine hoped at least to pass uncensured through the crowd. As for admiration, it was always very welcome when it came, but she did not depend on it.”

Jane Austen book Northanger Abbey

Source: Northanger Abbey

Hope, Dependency

“Some writers, notably Anton Chekov, argue that all characters must be admirable, because once we've looked at anyone deeply enough and understood their motivation we must identify with them rather than judge them.”

Scarlett Thomas (1972) British writer

Source: Monkeys with Typewriters: How to Write Fiction and Unlock the Secret Power of Stories

Motivation

“guileless and without vanity, we were still in love with ourselves then. We felt comfortable in our own skins, enjoyed the news that our senses released to us, admired our dirt, cultivated our scars, and could not comprehend this unworthiness.”

Toni Morrison book The Bluest Eye

Source: The Bluest Eye

Love, Sense

“There is nothing more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

Source: The Odyssey

People, Housing, For Wife

“Venice is beautiful, but like a Bergman movie is beautiful; you can admire it, but you don't really want to live in it.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Beauty

“Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.”

Rex Stout book The Red Box

Source: The Red Box

Wealth

“It means thanks, it means admiration, it means good-bye to someone you love.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Love

“What is admirable about the fantastic is that there is no longer anything fantastic: there is only the real.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within.”

Immanuel Kant book Critique of Practical Reason

Variant: Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
Source: Critique of Practical Reason (1788)
Context: Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within. I have not to search for them and conjecture them as though they were veiled in darkness or were in the transcendent region beyond my horizon; I see them before me and connect them directly with the consciousness of my existence. The former begins from the place I occupy in the external world of sense, and enlarges my connection therein to an unbounded extent with worlds upon worlds and systems of systems, and moreover into limitless times of their periodic motion, its beginning and continuance. The second begins from my invisible self, my personality, and exhibits me in a world which has true infinity, but which is traceable only by the understanding, and with which I discern that I am not in a merely contingent but in a universal and necessary connection, as I am also thereby with all those visible worlds. The former view of a countless multitude of worlds annihilates as it were my importance as an animal creature, which after it has been for a short time provided with vital power, one knows not how, must again give back the matter of which it was formed to the planet it inhabits (a mere speck in the universe). The second, on the contrary, infinitely elevates my worth as an intelligence by my personality, in which the moral law reveals to me a life independent of animality and even of the whole sensible world, at least so far as may be inferred from the destination assigned to my existence by this law, a destination not restricted to conditions and limits of this life, but reaching into the infinite.

Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott

Law

“That should have been my strategy! By the time I’ve worked through the emotions of surprise, admiration, anger, jealousy, and frustration, I’m watching that reddish mane of hair disappear into the trees well out of shooting range.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Jealousy, Tree, Time, Anger

“If a grasshopper tries to fight a lawnmower, one may admire his courage but not his judgement.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Farnham's Freehold

Source: Farnham's Freehold (1964), Chapter 16 (p. 235)

Courage, Fight

“I need to feel strongly, to love and admire, just as desperately as I need to breathe.”

Jean-Dominique Bauby book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Source: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Love, Feeling

“Ethan gave me an admiring look that wasn't about sex, but about that guy moment when they realize you are not just another pretty face, but maybe, just maybe you can be cute, petite, and one of the guys all at the same time.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Hit List

Source: Hit List

Sex, Guy, Time

“What is admired in one generation is abhorred in another. We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory… We are men only, a brief flare of the torch.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

Men, Memory

“… we
do not admire what
we cannot understand.”

Marianne Moore (1887–1972) American poet and writer

Source: Complete Poems

Understanding

“After telling the hard facts to anyone from lover to friend, I have changed in their eyes. Often it is awe or admiration, sometimes it is repulsion, once or twice it has been fury hurled directly at me for reasons I remain unsure of.”

Alice Sebold book Lucky

Source: Lucky

Lovers, Change

“My religion consists of an humble admiration for the vast power which manifests itself in that small part of the universe which our poor, weak minds can grasp!”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1930s, Wisehart interview (1930)
Context: I do not believe in a God who maliciously or arbitrarily interferes in the personal affairs of mankind. My religion consists of an humble admiration for the vast power which manifests itself in that small part of the universe which our poor, weak minds can grasp!

Religion, Universe, Parting

“Nobody admires anyone else without qualification. If they do they’re after an image, not a person.”

Scott Lynch book The Republic of Thieves

Interlude “Striking Sparks” section 6 (p. 247)
Source: The Republic of Thieves (2013)

Personality

“But to admire a strong person
and to live under that strong person’s thumb are
two different things.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Strong, Personality

“The woman is the most perfect doll that i have dressed with delight and admiration.”

Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer

Perfection

“What must that be like? To be admired before you’ve even said a word, to be desired two or three hundred times a day by people who have absolutely no idea what you’re like?”

David Nicholls book Starter for Ten

Source: Starter for Ten

People, Idea, Time

“Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

“Christian, n.: one who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

Source: The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Context: Christian, n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ so long as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.

Books

“The grandiose person is never really free; first because he is excessively dependent on admiration from others, and second, because his self-respect is dependent on qualities, functions, and achievements that can suddenly fail.”

Alice Miller (1923–2010) Swiss psychologist

Source: The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

Dependency, Personality

“It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Source: My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 9 (Education At Bangalore).

Books, Study, Memory, Reading

“The sun rises every day. What is to love? Lock the sun in a box. Force the sun to overcome adversity in order to rise. Then we will cheer! I will often admire beautiful sunrise, but I will never consider the sun a champion for having risen.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Love, Beauty, Sun, Box

“It is our ignorance of things that causes all our admiration and chiefly excites our passions.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Source: A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

Passion

“You have grown abominably lazy, and you like gossip, and waste time on frivolous things, you are contented to be petted and admired by silly people, instead of being loved and respected by wise ones.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Love, People, Time

“Admire the world for never ending on you -- as you would an opponent, without taking your eyes away from him, or walking away.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

Source: The Writing Life

World

“CNN found that Hillary Clinton is the most admired woman in America. Women admire her because she's strong and successful. Men admire her because she allows her husband to cheat and get away with it.”

Jay Leno (1950) American comedian, actor, writer, producer, voice actor and television host

Women, Men, Strong, Success

“Poirot," I said. "I have been thinking."
"An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it.”

Agatha Christie book Peril at End House

Source: Peril at End House

Exercises, Thinking

“Most of the people I admire, they usually smell funny and don't get out much. It's true. Most of them are either dead or not feeling well.”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

People, Feeling, Dead

“i find it easy to admire in trees what depresses me in people”

Marge Piercy (1936) American novelist and poet

People, Tree

“I didn’t and don’t want to be a ‘feminine’ version or a diluted version or a special version or a subsidiary version or an ancillary version, or an adapted version of the heroes I admire. I want to be the heroes themselves.”

Joanna Russ book The Female Man

Part 9, Chapter 4 (p. 206)
Source: Fiction, The Female Man (1975)
Context: Remember: I didn’t and don’t want to be a “feminine” version or a diluted version or a special version or a subsidiary version or an ancillary version, or an adapted version of the heroes I admire. I want to be the heroes themselves.
What future is there for a female child who aspires to being Humphrey Bogart?