Obliviousness Quotes

“People never notice anything.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Let us not remain anchored in the quicksand of a waning past, and lose the war on obliviousness, but let us listen to the bracing sounds of new horizons, grasp the enchantment of the fleeting instants and seize the cleverness of the moment. (Could time be patient?)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“If those, who call the shots, are tightrope-walking between unconcern and ignorance, giving way to unrestrained vagaries, and bypassing all the priorities of our environment, we mustn’t fail to value those who take courage to stand up against random practices, institutional malfunction and flagrant injustice, and speak out against social decay and moral obliviousness. (" High noon)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Deep thinking is a conspiracy against ignorance, blindness, and obliviousness. (" An egg every day? ")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“[Man] literally drives himself into a blind obliviousness with social games, psychological tricks, personal preoccupations so far removed from the reality of his situation that they are forms of madness, but madness all the same.”
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

“She was wearing her fuzzy pink hat and she was happy, which was so obnoxious. She'd become one of those people who waltzed through life without so much as a split end, and I was still one of those people who changed diapers for free but still got treated like a rented mule.”
― Lorraine Zago Rosenthal, Other Words for Love

“These thoughts are depressing I know. They are depressing,
I wish I was more cheerful, it is more pleasant,
Also it is a duty, we should smile as well as submitting
To the purpose of One Above who is experimenting
With various mixtures of human character which goes best,
All is interesting for him it is exciting, but not for us.
There I go again. Smile, smile, and get some work to do
Then you will be practically unconscious without positively having to go.”
― Stevie Smith, Collected Poems

“To eat or be eaten, to escape or be taken...a matter of utmost importance to the one concerned, yet it happens all the time and we don't even notice.”
― Nahoko Uehashi, Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit

“Whoosh! went the bluebird of sarcasm, zooming miles above Dale’s head.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, The Turn of the Story

“Here comes Mamma Vauquerr, fair as a starrr; and strung up like a bunch of carrots. Aren't we suffocating ourselves a wee bit?' he asked, placing a hand on the top of her corset. 'A bit of a crush in the vestibule, here, Mamma! If we start crying, there'll be an explosion. Never mind, I'll be there to collect the bits--just like an antiquary.'
'Now, there's the language of true French gallantry,' murmured Madame Vauquer in an aside to Madame Couture.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot

“Ansel sighed. “You know, this is the problem with you alphas, you’re so concerned about taking over the new pack that you don’t notice what’s happening right in front of your face.”
― Andrea Cremer, Nightshade

“I don't know if this deception qualified as a half-step down the slippery slope. I had no sensation of sliding. But of course we never notice the descent until we're rocketing along at high velocity.”
― Dean Koontz, Brother Odd

“Most everyone is waiting for something to happen with you two. Even Nicky thinks it's inevitable. But Renee promised Allison nothing would come of it. Allison said as much to Seth. Why?" "Does it matter?" Neil gave an uncomfortable shrug. "Yes? No? It should be—it is—irrelevant, but…" He hesitated, but Andrew said nothing, unwilling to make this easy on him. Neil shouldn't be surprised by Andrew's attitude, but he was annoyed regardless. "I'm just trying to understand." "Sometimes you're interesting enough to keep around. Other times you're so astoundingly stupid I can barely stand the sight of you.”
― Nora Sakavic, The Raven King

“Evangeline's obliviousness was a reason to like her rather than not: I liked least those schoolfellows whose awareness of me invariably caused misery.”
― Sonya Hartnett, Surrender

“Never had I felt so much the slave as when I scoured those stone steps each afternoon. Working against time, I would wet five steps, sprinkle soap powder, then a white doctor or a nurse would come and, instead of avoiding the soppy steps, walk on them and track the dirty water onto the steps that I had already cleaned. To obviate this, I cleaned but two steps at a time, a distance over which a ten-year-old child could step. But it did no good. The white people still plopped their feet down into the dirty water and muddled the other clean steps. If I ever really hotly hated unthinking whites, it was then. Not once during my entire stay at the institute did a single white person show enough courtesy to avoid a wet step.”
― Richard Wright, Black Boy

“The world rising
can put an end
to anything:
the murder of children
whales
elephants
oceans.
Get up. Roll over
on that part
of you
that will not
welcome
recognize
encourage
or even see
our rise.
A compassionate roll:
we must be done
with cruelty
especially to ourselves,
to start again
beaming like the sun;
fresh.
But a roll that shows
we’ve reached the end
of polite moves
to repair and re-create the Earth,
and will press hard
on any parts of us
even those we have loved,
that insist
on remaining
oblivious
and
asleep.”
― Alice Walker, Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart

“Nefret was still pouting when Emerson helped her into the carriage. Emerson did not observe the pout. He would not have observed it (men being what they are) even if something had not distracted him.”
― Elizabeth Peters, The Hippopotamus Pool

“[...] the human brain is not equipped to see War, Famine, Pollution, and Death when they don't want to be seen, and has got so good at not seeing that it often manages not to see them even when they abound on every side.”
― Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

“But they weren’t small children, they were women, they were admiring someone they didn’t know the first thing about. Look at the hag Truth for once, college girl.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“The Hartliebs had no time for the snow. Outside their window, San Giorgio Maggiore seemed to be floating on the lagoon as if it had just surfaced there. The view was so beautiful that Victor felt his heart ache. Esther and her husband, however, stood side by side with their backs to the window.”
― Cornelia Funke, The Thief Lord

“He pursued the problem like the sleuth-hound that he was. If Smee was lovable, what was it that made him so? A terrible answer suddenly presented itself:" Good form? "

Had the bo'sun good form without knowing it, which is the best form of all?”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“We are all dead, we just haven't figured it out yet.”
― Courtney M. Privett, The Shattered Veil

“Evil became invisible when it was everywhere. Like air, everyone forgot it was there until it was blowing hard enough to knock off their hat or muss up their hair.”
― Sean DeLauder, The Least Envied

“Look," said Mary Ann evenly, "ifIthink you're really attractive, there must be plenty of men inthistown who feel the same way. "

"Yeah," said Michael ruefully. "Size queens."

"Oh, don't be silly!" Sometimes Michael was sensitive about the dumbest things. He's at least five nine, thought Mary Ann. That's tall enough for anybody.”
― Armistead Maupin, More Tales of the City

“Sometimes Blake was shockingly perceptive. And other times he got himself locked in Portaloos.”
― Lisa Henry, Mark Cooper versus America

“The Karen Novotny Experience. As she powdered herself after her bath, Karen Novotny watched Trabert kneeling on the floor of the lounge, surrounded by the litter of photographs like an eccentric Zen cameraman. Since their meeting at the emergency conference on Space Medicine he had done nothing but shuffle the photographs of wrecked capsules and automobiles, searching for one face among the mutilated victims. Almost without thinking she had picked him up in the basement cinema after the secret Apollo film, attracted by his exhausted eyes and the torn flying jacket with its Vietnam flashes. Was he a doctor, or a patient? Neither category seemed valid, nor for that matter mutually exclusive. Their period in the apartment together had been one of almost narcotic domesticity. In the planes of her body, in the contours of her breasts and thighs, he seemed to mimetize all his dreams and obsessions.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition