Quotes about lack
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“Lack of comfort means we are on the threshold of new insights.”
“Hard work is only a prison sentence when you lack motivation”
Source: Outliers: The Story of Success
“Comfort is beauty muted by heroin. Sadness is beauty drained by lack of it.”
Source: Candy
“Lack of certification hardly proves intelligence,” Will muttered.”
Variant: I am not a certified idiot—"
"Lack of certification hardly proves intelligence," Will muttered.
Source: Clockwork Princess
Source: Waiting and Dating
Source: Bleach―ブリーチ― 27 [Burīchi 27]
for the lack of it.' Pt. 1, Ch. 3 - p.51
Source: Giovanni's Room (1956)
“The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.”
Widely attributed to Shaw, this quotation is actually of unknown origin.
Misattributed
Variant: She had lost the art of conversation, but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.
Source: (1962), Ch. 1 The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, 2002 edition, page 15
Books, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? (2004)
“Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”
Source: Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
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
“A one-eyed man is much more incomplete than a blind man, for he knows what it is that's lacking.”
Source: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
“Evil is the moment when I lack the strength to be true to the Good that compels me.”
Source: Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil
“There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.”
Source: Liberty and the news
“I always lacked common sense when taken by surprise.”
Variant: No, thank you, I don't mind the rain,' I said. I always lacked common sense when taken by surprise.
Source: Agnes Grey
Source: Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake
Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
Source: The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
“Apparently I lack some particular perversion which today's employer is seeking.”
Source: A Confederacy of Dunces
Feel This Book, co-authored with Ben Stiller
from "Feel this Book"
Source: Feel This Book: An Essential Guide to Self-Empowerment, Spiritual Supremacy, and Sexual Satisfaction
Context: Many people feel that mass acceptance and smooth socialization are desirable life paths for a young adult... Many people are often wrong... Don't bother being nice. Being popular and well liked is not in your best interest. Let me be more clear; if you behave in a manner pleasing to most, then you are probably doing something wrong. The masses have never been arbiters of the sublime, and they often fail to recognize the truly great individual. Taking into account the public's regrettable lack of taste, it is incumbent upon you not to fit in.
Excerpts from the two paragraphs above have sometimes been quoted in abbreviated form: At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality... We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.
Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)
Context: At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality. Perhaps it is one of the great dramas of the leader that he or she must combine a passionate spirit with a cold intelligence and make painful decisions without flinching. Our vanguard revolutionaries must idealize this love of the people, of the most sacred causes, and make it one and indivisible. They cannot descend, with small doses of daily affection, to the level where ordinary people put their love into practice.
The leaders of the revolution have children just beginning to talk, who are not learning to call their fathers by name; wives, from whom they have to be separated as part of the general sacrifice of their lives to bring the revolution to its fulfilment; the circle of their friends is limited strictly to the number of fellow revolutionists. There is no life outside of the revolution.
In these circumstances one must have a great deal of humanity and a strong sense of justice and truth in order not to fall into extreme dogmatism and cold scholasticism, into isolation from the masses. We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.
“To lack feeling is to be dead, but to act on every feeling is to be a child.”
Source: The Way of Kings
“People do not lack strength, they lack will.”
The Solar Anus (1927)
“She wept with shame for her lack of will and with fear for a love she couldn't control.”
Source: Perfect
Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
Source: Bad Astronomy (2002), p. 47
Source: Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing "Hoax"
“The enemy of a love is never outside, it's not a man or woman, it's what we lack in ourselves.”
Source: A Spy in the House of Love (1954)
Source: You Can Heal Your Life
“When the leader lacks confidence, the followers lack commitment.”
Source: Developing the Leader Within You
“Some men die for lack of love…some die because of it. Think about it." - Daemon”
Source: Daughter of the Blood
“Being poor is not an indication of potential or worth. It’s a lack of resources.”
Source: A Perfect Blood
Variant: Most of the time, because of their failure to fasten on to words, my thoughts remain misty and nebulous. They assume vague, amusing shapes and are then swallowed up: I promptly forget them.
Source: Nausea
Source: Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
Source: Gunmetal Magic
Source: Assassination Vacation (2005), p. 144
Source: John F. Kennedy 1917-63: Chronology-documents-bibliographical aids
Baltimore Evening Sun (9 August 1926)
1920s
Source: A Mencken Chrestomathy
“We are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style.”
Source: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Source: Gunn's Golden Rules: Life's Little Lessons for Making It Work
Source: Eurydice
Source: The God Delusion
Source: Kiss of a Demon King
“The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks.”
Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 14
Context: What was the Sherlock Holmes principle? 'Once you have discounted the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'
I reject that entirely. The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks. How often have you been presented with an apparently rational explanation of something that works in all respects other than one, which is just that it is hopelessly improbable? Your instinct is to say 'Yes, but he or she simply wouldn't do that.
Source: Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
“Gymn says your fine. He's examined your internal organs and found nothing lacking.”
Source: DragonSpell
When asked how the world had changed following the September 11, 2001 attacks
Has the world changed? http://books.guardian.co.uk/writersreflections/story/0,1367,567546,00.html, The Guardian (October 11, 2001)
“You must gain control over your money or the lack of it will forever control you.”
“My silences he mistook for a lack of wit rather than a lack of any need to speak.”
Source: Assassin's Apprentice
“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”
Source: Postscript to the Name of the Rose
Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 45, “Interlude—Some Tavern Tale” (p. 333)
“Nobody dies from the lack of sex. It's lack of love we die from.”
13 August 1846
Correspondence, Letters to Madame Louise Colet
Source: Revelations of Divine Love
“My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.”
Not a Kerouac quote, but by Allen Ginsberg in his journal of 30 July 1947. Published in The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice, page 199.
Misattributed