Amusement Quotes

“And pictures of perfection, as you know, make me sick and wicked.”
― Jane Austen

“...happiness does not consist in amusement. In fact, it would be strange if our end were amusement, and if we were to labor and suffer hardships all our life long merely to amuse ourselves.... The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement....”
― Aristotle

“I believe that entertainment and amusements are the work of the Enemy to keep dying men from knowing they're dying; and to keep enemies of God from remembering that they're enemies.”
― A.W. Tozer

“America is the first culture in jeopardy of amusing itself to death.”
― John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life

“...It was one of the great livery-stableman's most masterly intuitions to have discovered that Americans want to get away from amusement even more quickly than they want to get to it.”
― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

“Since the age of five I had been one of those people who was an indefatigable reader, more inclined to go off by myself with a book than do any of the dozens of things that children usually do to amuse themselves. I never aged out of it.”
― Anna Quindlen, Imagined London: A Tour of the World's Greatest Fictional City

“One must be serious about something, if one wants to have any amusement in life.”
― Oscar Wilde, John Cooper, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Nonetheless, when it finally ended and the hairdressers left and Tess insisted upon pulling her to the mirror, Fire saw, and understood, that everyone had done the job well. The dress, deep shimmering purple and utterly simple in design, was so beautifully-cut and so clingy and well-fitting that Fire felt slightly naked. And her hair. She couldn’t follow what they’d done with her hair, braids thin as threads in some places, looped and wound through the thick sections that fell over her shoulders and down her back, but she saw that the end result was a controlled wildness that was magnificent against her face, her body, and the dress. She turned to measure the effect on her guard - all twenty of them, for all had roles to play in tonight’s proceedings, and all were awaiting her orders. Twenty jaws hung slack with astonishment - even Musa’s, Mila’s, and Neel’s. Fire touched their minds, and was pleased, and then angry, to find them open as the glass roofs in July.

‘Take hold of yourselves,’ she snapped. ‘It’s a disguise, remember? This isn’t going to work if the people meant to help me can’t keep their heads.’

‘It will work, Lady Granddaughter.’ Tess handed Fire two knives in ankle holsters. ‘You’ll get what you want from whomever you want. Tonight King Nash would give you the Winged River as a present, if you asked for it. Dells, child - Prince Brigan would give you his best warhorse.”
― Kristin Cashore, Fire

“A man who can laugh at himself is truly blessed, for he will never lack for amusement.”
― James Carlos Blake, Handsome Harry

“Courage?" I gave a very soft laugh. "I find courage is just another of life's illusions. In the end, we all do what we must.”
― Anthony Ryan, Queen of Fire

“Amusement under late capitalism is the prolongation of work. It is sought after as an escape from the mechanised work process, and to recruit strength in order to be able to cope with it again. But at the same time mechanisation has such power over a man’s leisure and happiness, and so profoundly determines the manufacture of amusement goods, that his experiences are inevitably after-images of the work process itself. The ostensible content is merely a faded foreground; what sinks in is the automatic succession of standardised operations. What happens at work, in the factory, or in the office can only be escaped from by approximation to it in one’s leisure time.”
― Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry

“Good day to you, Sister," Gannon grunted, gritting his teeth and clenching the reins in a white-knuckled grip. "May you live to see your great-grandchildren, and may your eyes never grow dim!" Rolin stifled a snicker. His spinster aunt was childless, and her eyesight was poor from years of needlework.”
― William D. Burt, The King of the Trees

“Socrates could enjoy a banquet now and again, and must have derived considerable satisfaction from his conversations while the hemlock was taking effect, but most of his life he lived quietly with Xanthippe, taking a constitutional in the afternoon, and perhaps meeting with a few friends by the way. Kant is said never to have been more than ten miles from Konigsberg in all his life. Darwin, after going round the world, spent the whole rest of his life in his own house. Marx, after stirring up a few revolutions, decided to spend the remainder of his days in the British Museum. Altogether it will be found that a quiet life is characteristic of great men, and that their pleasures have not been of the sort that would look exciting to the outward eye. No great achievement is possible without persistent work, so absorbing and so difficult that little energy is left over for the more strenuous kinds of amusement, except such as serve to recuperate physical energy during holidays, of which Alpine climbing may serve as the best example.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Our modern cities have become in large part agglomerations of bedroom apartments in which men and women spiritually wither away and their personalities become trivialized by the petty concerns of amusement, consumption, and small talk.”
― Murray Bookchin, From Urbanization to Cities: Toward a New Politics of Citizenship

“I can tell stories that will freeze the blood in your veins.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, The Story Girl Illustrated

“And to reading with pride!' Olivia said. 'Because there's no other way to read.”
― Lucy Powrie, Read with Pride

“Fetch me the money box and some punkwood, will you, my boy?" Gannon asked him, licking the honey from his plate. (I fear table manners in the cabin-indeed, all manners-had suffered since Gannon and his son had been left to themselves.)”
― William D. Burt, The King of the Trees

“Danny grinned, this smile reaching her eyes. “I’m more entertained at your inability to casually do anything—whether it’s friendship, dating, or fucking.”
― Katherine McIntyre, Taking Root

“Have you ever been annoyed and amused with yourself at the same time? It's an interesting feeling, to say the very least.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Hard work done for a hobby don't feel so hard !”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“I don't think about Pomegranate often anymore. I've said all I need to about it. Now I just live my life. With my best friend. We go to the cinema. We look up at the clouds. We go to watch his Uncle Max and his airplane. Adrien flies in it now that he's well enough. And Pomegranate is a distant memory. I choose to think of better things. Of Mum. Of Alan Turing and his incredible invention. Of Dad and Gregor. Of Ria and her new career. Of Adrien and his terrible jokes. Adrien and I walk the lonely road together now. It's not lonely anymore. I'm not alone. We laugh most of the time now, I've noticed. We spend hours after school working on the paper in the garden. Next to the vegetable plot. I love to eat what we grow there. I've had enough of bad fruit.”
― Elle McNicoll, Show Us Who You Are

“The funny part of being funny is when you start seeing your fans writing funny words and attributing them to you.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“A grown-up man behaving like a baby was shocking and very embarrassing at the time. But finding amusement in the worst memories may be the best way to move on.”
― Reham Khan

“Love is not a thing to be spoken about but a feeling to be amused with because it is nothing more than an amusement in today's world.”
― Amit Abraham

“Have you ever read stories that weren't true?" demanded Paula.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery

“...but I must say there’s nothing amuses me like a little devilry now and then. Life would be dreadfully monotonous without it.”
― Marcel Proust, Within A Budding Grove

“Discussing reality and facts for the sake of amusement is what the low minds often do. Those intelligent discuss the possibilities of what could/can be.”
― Seun Ayilara

“It amuses her to keep me out of trouble.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“You look... refreshed,' Lucien observed with a glance at Tamlin. I shrugged. 'Sleep well?'

'Like a babe.' I smiled at him and took another bite of food, and felt Lucien's eyes travel inexorably to my neck.

'What is that bruise?' Lucien demanded.

I pointed with my fork at Tamlin. 'Ask him. He did it.'

Lucien looked from Tamlin to me and then back again. 'Why does Feyre have a bruise on her neck from you?' he asked with no small amount of amusement.

'I bit her,' Tamlin said, not pausing as he cut his steak. 'We ran into each other in the hall after the Rite.'

I straightened in my chair.

'She seems to have a death wish,' he went on, cutting his meat. The claws stayed retracted but pushed against the skin above his knuckles. My throat closed up. Oh, he was mad- furious at my foolishness for leaving my room- but somehow managed to keep his anger on a tight, tight leash. 'So, if Feyre can't be bothered to listen to orders, then I can't be held accountable for the consequences.'

'Accountable?' I sputtered, placing my hands flat on the table. 'You cornered me in the hall like a wolf with a rabbit!'

Lucien propped an arm on the table and covered his mouth with his hand, his russet eye bright.

'While I might not have been myself, Lucien and I both told you to stay in your room,' Tamlin said, so calmly that I wanted to rip out my hair.

I couldn't help it. Didn't even try to fight the red-hot temper that razed my senses. 'Faerie pig!' I yelled, and Lucien howled, almost tipping back in his chair. At the sight of Tamlin's growing smile, I left.

It took me a couple of hours to stop painting little portraits of Tamlin and Lucien with pigs' features. But as I finished the last one- Two faerie pigs wallowing in their own filth, I would call it- I smiled into the clear, bright light of my private painting room. The Tamlin I knew had returned.

And it made me... happy.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses

“An Orwellian world is much easier to recognize, and to oppose, than a Huxleyan. Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us. We are not likely, for example, to be indifferent to the voices of the Sakharovs and the Timmermans and the Walesas. We take arms against such a sea of troubles, buttressed by the spirit of Milton, Bacon, Voltaire, Goethe and Jefferson. But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture’s being drained by laughter?
I fear that our philosophers have given us no guidance in this matter.”
― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business