Self Deprecating Quotes

“He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.”
― Epictetus

“I'd never join a club that would allow a person like me to become a member.”
― Woody Allen

“The rabbis paled. I’d managed to terrify holy men. Maybe I could beat up a nun for an encore.”
― Ilona Andrews, Magic Bleeds

“It is only people who are lacking, or bad, or inferior, who have to be good at things. You have always been full and perfect, so you had nothing to make up for.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“Life occasionally humbles us by making us turned on by someone whom we turn off.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Nothing humbles a beautiful woman better than not being wanted by a man whose girlfriend or wife is ugly (or not as beautiful as she is).”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“I thought I had the world by the tail. It took me a few years to realize the closest I was to having the world by the tail was being a dingle berry on one of its ass hairs.”
― Joe R. Lansdale

“It is not proper, you being closeted up here with him --"
"Delphinia, don't be absurd. I am so firmly on the shelf that the maids are tempted to dust me.”
― Meredith Duran, The Duke of Shadows

“The French always make our sort happy because, like us, they know how to love, they're just as good at playing the accordion, and they've made a real art of their inability to bake proper bread.”
― Saša Stanišić, How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

“A book can’t be a half fantasy any more than a woman can be half pregnant.”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

“Lizzie is hapless about romance in an ironic, self-deprecating way.”
― Kristen Roupenian, You Know You Want This

“Then the front doorbell (already too long delayed by my rambling narrative) rang.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“What surer sign is there that the creative aquifers are dry than a writer creating a writer-character?”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

“Tell us a weird idea you've come up with that's totally out there.'
'Well,' said the author, 'I made George Formby president-for-life of Great Britain.'
'Who's George Formby?' asked Tiger.
'What's Great Britain? asked Boo.
'Okay,' he said, 'here's another: a book about Humpty Dumpty as a police procedural.'
'I think that's been done', said the Troll. 'Everyone's always retelling nursery rhymes. I mean, it's not a massive stretch, is it?'
'How about a social order based wholly on the strength of your colour vision?'
'Better,' I said. 'is there a sequel?'
'Don't you start.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Great Troll War

“None the less, I think there is something in me which will endure. I am fettered by cowardice, I am enfeebled by disastrous memories; and I am maimed by old follies. Still, I seem to detect in myself something which is permanent and rather fine.”
― James Branch Cabell, Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice