Misanthropy Quotes

“Man is a self-conscious nothing.”
― Julius Bahnsen

“She had to fight against developing too combative a personality or becoming altogether a misanthrope. She suddenly caught herself. "Misanthrope" is someone who dislikes everybody, not just men.
And they certainly had a word for someone who hates women: "misogynist." But the male lexicographers had somehow neglected to coin a word for the dislike of men. They were almost entirely men themselves, she thought, and had been unable to imagine a market for such a word.”
― Carl Sagan, Contact

“People think they're interesting. That's their first mistake.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, The Giant's House

“There would never be a way for me to live comfortably with people. Maybe I'd become a monk. I'd pretend to believe in God and live in a cubicle, play an organ and stay drunk on wine. Nobody would fuck with me. I could go into a cell for months of meditation where I wouldn't have to look at anybody and they could just send in the wine.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“Misanthropist’s manifesto: Do not tell a friend what your enemy ought not to know. Giving way neither to love nor hate is one half of world wisdom: to say nothing and believe nothing, is the other half. Distrust is the mother of safety. To forget at any time the bad traits of a man’s character is like throwing away hard-earned money. Better to let men be what they are than to take them for what they are not. By being polite and friendly, you can make people pliable and obliging: hence politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.”
― Irvin D. Yalom

“If I have a book that thinks for me, a pastor who acts as my conscience, a physician who prescribes my diet, and so on... then I have no need to exert myself. I have no need to think, if only I can pay; others will take care of that disagreeable business for me.”
― Immanuel Kant, What is Enlightenment

“Are you sick now?"
"No."
"Then what's wrong?"
"I don't like people."
"Do you think that's right?"
"Probably not.”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum

“I wish I was friends with things," he said at last, "but I'm not. I never had anything to be friends with, and I can't bear people.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett

“The most overrated things are fame, the future, marriage, being rich, happiness, being in love, sanity, being alive, sex, and human beings.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“...And suddenly, from behind me, I hear the metaphysically abrupt arrival of the office boy. I feel like I could kill him for barging in on what I wasn't thinking. I turn around and look at him with a silence full of hatred, tense with latent homicide, my mind already hearing the voice he'll use to tell me something or other. He smiles from the other side of the room and says 'Good afternoon' in a loud voice. I hate him like the universe. My eyes are sore from imagining.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“I see
In many an eye that measures me
The mortal sickness of a mind
Too unhappy to be kind.
Undone with misery, all they can
Is to hate their fellow man;

- from Poem XLI”
― A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad

“At that moment I realised all the things I miss, all the fascinating stories I don't get to hear, because I refuse to mix with people on principle.”
― Andrej Nikolaidis, The Son

“My consultants recommended several nihilists and existentialists but I rejected them all. A black turtleneck sweater does not a misanthrope make. Nihilists and existentialists tend to be bohemians, who invariably run in packs; despite their alienated stance, they have always struck me as a sociable lot who surround themselves with people because they are forever saying "Nothing matters," and they need someone to say it to.”
― Florence King

“Creative nihilism, aggressive pity, total misanthropy.”
― Willem Frederik Hermans

“[Patricia Highsmith] was an extremely unbalanced person, extremely hostile and misanthropic and totally incapable of any kind of relationship, not just intimate ones. I felt sorry for her, because it wasn't her fault. There was something in her early days or whatever that made her incapable. She drove everybody away and people who really wanted to be friends ended up putting the phone down on her.
It seemed to me as if she had to ape feelings and behaviour, like Ripley. Of course sometimes having no sense of social behaviour can be charming, but in her case it was alarming. I remember once, when she was trying to have a dinner party with people she barely knew, she deliberately leaned towards the candle on the table and set fire to her hair. People didn't know what to do as it was a very hostile act and the smell of singeing and burning filled the room.”
― Andrew Wilson, Patricia Highsmith, ζωή στο σκοτάδι

“You are not special. You're just fucking not. You're a bland, boring motherfucker just like everybody else. You ever been to the mall and just looked in the eyes of the fellow travelers and seen how dull and lifeless their eyes are? Yours look like that too. You know why? 'Cause you're just as bland, you're just as fucking boring, there's nothing special about you. And trying to piggyback on the accomplishments of your race, or like, any fucking larger group really, is pathetic. You have to stand on individual merit and you just can't accept the fact that you suck. It's alright! I suck, Weber sucks, everyone sucks! We're all fucking shit, we suck dick, we're lame as fuck. And that's okay. That's fine.”
― T.J. Kirk

“As soon as I entered the house, my wife took me in her arms, and kissed me; at which, having not been used to the touch of that odious animal for so many years, I fell into a swoon for almost an hour. At the time I am writing, it is five years since my last return to England. During the first year, I could not endure my wife or children in my presence; the very smell of them was intolerable; much less could I suffer them to eat in the same room. To this hour they dare not presume to touch my bread, or drink out of the same cup, neither was I ever able to let one of them take me by the hand. The first money I laid out was to buy two young stone-horses, which I keep in a good stable; and next to them, the groom is my greatest favourite, for I feel my spirits revived by the smell he contracts in the stable. My horses understand me tolerably well; I converse with them at least four hours every day. They are strangers to bridle or saddle; they live in great amity with me and friendship to each other.”
― Jonathan Swift, Guilliver's Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World

“people say that I’m sour and misanthropic, and I tell them they’re probably right.”
― Quinn

“He was regarded merely as an eccentric employee of indifferent merit, and his post of deputy chief clerk was the highest he would ever reach. Well aware of this, he made it a rule never to show any zeal, except in special circumstances. It is true that in these cases his zeal was clothed with a spirit of vengeance directed against the whole human race—this being his second favourite occupation. Petitbidois would have liked to hold the reins of power. This being beyond his sphere, he utilized the small driblets of authority which came his way for the purpose of casting ridicule upon established law and order, by making it act as a sort of unintelligent and, if possible, malicious Providence. 'The world is an idiot place anyway,' he would say, 'so why worry? Life is just a lottery. Let us leave the decision to chance.”
― Gabriel Chevallier, Clochemerle

“Early in 1967 Highsmith's agent told her why her books did not sell in paperback in America. It was, said Patricia Schartle Myrer, because they were 'too subtle', combined with the fact that none of her characters were likeable. 'Perhaps it is because I don't like anyone,' Highsmith replied. 'My last books may be about animals'.”
― Andrew Wilson, Patricia Highsmith, ζωή στο σκοτάδι

“His room was a sickly dual-tone of crimson and charcoal, like an Untitled Rothko, the colours bleeding into each other horribly and then rather serenely. The overall effect was overwhelmingly unapologetic but it grew on you like a wart on your nose you didn't realise it was a part of your identity until one day it simply was. His room was his identity. Fiercely bold, avant-garde but never monotonous. He was red, he was black, he was bored, and he was fire. At least to me he seemed like fire. A tornado of fire that burned all in its wake leaving only the wretched brightness of annihilation. His room was where he charmed and disarmed us. We were his playthings. Nobody plays with fire and leaves unscarred. The fire soon seeps into chard and soot. The colours of his soul, his aura, and probably his heart if he didn't stop smoking.”
― Moonshine Noire

“I must ration my tendons when people near me.”
― Sean Kilpatrick, Thank You, Steel China

“Her favourite song was 'God Has Blotted Them Out,' which was meant to be about sins, but really was about anyone who had ever annoyed her, which was everyone. She just didn't like anyone and she just didn't like life. Life was a burden to be carried as far as the grave and then dumped. Life was a Vale of Tears. Life was a pre-death experience.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

“Nero would be long since forgotten without his outbursts of bloody clowning. ~ Emil Cioran, A Short History of Decay”
― Emil Cioran

“Jam jamming,” Meghan chanted in a sing song voice. “I like the idea, the feel. I KNOW what you are getting at. Where does a sound end? Has the Earth been pumping billions upon billions of horrendous noises into the depths of space since the time primates began walking? Can you imagine all the noisy concerts, explosions of war, and thundering of bombs, all drifting endlessly into empty darkness? Can you imagine? For infinity? Frozen glaciers, devoid rocks, suddenly illuminated to be crushed by all that deafening din, waking the inhabitants of other planets. Jamming alien satellite signals. If there is life out there, it wants to destroy us....I must be really stoned to see this so clearly”
― Jaime Allison Parker, Justice of the Fox

“The place was a truck stop town. Large 18 wheelers lined the sidewalks and cafes. Giant diesel motors roaring their exhaust into the cloudy night skies. Wearied looking truckers climbed into the cabs like captains of gigantic steel ships. She could not imagine anyone trying to maneuver such large metallic beasts all over the roads of the nation. While the idea of being behind the wheel with nothing but the comfort of the radio, and the isolation were appealing. The thought of fighting all the congested traffic in smog infested industrial waters of choking vapors killed any pleasant dreams of the occupation.”
― Jaime Allison Parker, Justice of the Fox

“Repeated and prolonged proximity to moribund logging communities set off my misanthropy.”
― Mark Frost, Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier

“Mornington suspected his Christianity of being the inevitable result of having moved for some time as a youth of eighteen in circles which were, in a rather detached and superior way, opposed to it; but it was a religion which enabled him to despise himself and everyone else without despising the universe, thus allowing him at once in argument or conversation the advantages of the pessimist and the optimist.”
― Charles Williams, War in Heaven

“Aunque hubiera sabido que, al abrir la puerta de golpe, explotarían simultáneamente mi cerebro, mi corazón y mi sexo, aún así habría entrado. Y aquí estoy, desde hace diecisiete años, paralizado ante el umbral, desesperado, con los puños apretados, rogando y amenazando, golpeando la puerta rojiza con los hombros, con la palma de las manos y con la frente, arrodillándome ante ella y arrastrándome encogido, bañado en lágrimas, por el linóleo helado del pasillo. Aquella primera noche en que exploré las profundidades de mi mente me desgajé, con un esfuerzo de voluntad que solo se puede hacer una vez en la vida, de esa puerta mágica... para seguir bajando, pero he vuelto allí, noche tras noche, tras incontables vagabundeos.”
― Mircea Cărtărescu, Travesti

“Kids are wonderful,' the man was saying. 'Our four-year-old, the things he says! The other night he wouldn't go to sleep, you know. He was making a little fuss and saying he was afraid of the dark and all and mother here says to him, "Don't be afraid of the dark. God's in the room with you," and he says "I know God's here but I want somebody with skin on."'
The woman started to laugh. She was plump and blond and smelled like a rising cake.
'Isn't that a kid though,' the bartender said.
Pearl put her hand out and held on to the bar. She thought that this was the most horrible story she had ever heard in her life.”
― Joy Williams, The Changeling