54 Neglect Quotes

What's to become of the morally sound? Left out in the cold, I suppose. We must heal the sick.

How to save the old that's worth saving, whether in landscape, houses, manners, institutions, or human types, is one of our greatest problems, and the one that we bother least about.

And the world said, Child, you will not be missed. You are cheaper than a wrench, your back is a road; Your death is a table in a book. You had our wit, our heart was sealed to you: Man is the judgment of the world.

The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, But swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread: Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw Daily devours apace, and nothing said; But that two-handed engine at the door Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.

Weeds and nettles, briars and thorns, have thriven under your shadow, dissettlement and division, discontentment and dissatisfaction, together with real dangers to the whole.

Ah, why Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore Only among the crowd and under roofs That our frail hands have raised?

The less we show our love to a woman, Or please her less, and neglect our duty, The more we trap and ruin her surely In the flattering toils of philandery.

Objects which are usually the motives of our travels by land and sea are often overlooked and neglected if they lie under our eye...We put off from time to time going and seeing what we know we have an opportunity of seeing when we please.

To let friendship die away by negligence and silence, is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of this weary pilgrimage.

It is especially shocking that such a tragedy can go on, year after year, with the rest of the world paying so little attention to it. My Christmas message to Colombian refugees and to the millions of displaced people in Colombia is that the world has not totally forgotten them.

At least they're trying to get rid of AIDS. Some diseases they just gave up on. Some diseases, if you get them, you're on your own. They ain't going to have no telethon for you. R Kelly ain't singing no song. You just got this shit.

It's a moving world, but that's no reason To shoot some of those missiles Think of us as fatherless scum It won't be forgotten 'Cos we'll never say anything nice again, will we?

But tir'd at length poor Beauty slept, And while she rested, wearied quite, Indifference to the dear lamp crept, And quench'd its warm, and splendid light.

You're a historian. Tell me if there are any bath-tubs in history. I think they've been frightfully neglected.

Nevertheless the flames did die down -- whether exhausted from lack of supplies or choked by excessive feeding. Little by little, love was quenched by absence; regret was smothered by routine; and the fiery glow that had reddened her pale sky grew gray and gradually vanished. . . . But the storm kept raging, her passion burned itself to ashes, no help was forthcoming, no new sun rose to the horizon. Night closed in completely around her, and she was left alone in a horrible void of piercing cold.

The children eat and wriggle and laugh, The two old ladies stroke their silk; But the cat is grown small and thin with desire, Transformed to a creeping lust for milk.

[F]or more than three years this Congress, which has been given the name 'The Do-Nothing Congress,' has turned a blind eye to the intractable war in Iraq, ignoring the Administration's many mistakes, allowing it to stay a failed course. Here we are with six days left in the 109th Congress, and the Republicans, which control the House and the Senate and the White House, have not held one hearing, not one, into the President's wartime failures.

The Tribunal is satisfied that Matsui knew what was happening. He did nothing, or nothing effective to abate these horrors. He did issue orders before the capture of the city enjoining propriety of conduct upon his troops and later he issued further orders to the same purport. These orders were of no effect as is now known, and as he must have known. It was pleaded in his behalf that at this time he was ill. His illness was not sufficient to prevent his conducting the military operations of his command nor to prevent his visiting the City for days while these atrocities were occurring. He was in command of the Army responsible for these happenings. He knew of them. He had the power, as he had the duty, to control his troops and to protect the unfortunate citizens of Nanking. He must be held criminally responsible for his failure to discharge this duty.

Probably he really became rather useful, though no one ever told him so. But that, of course, cannot have been the reason why they kept the poor little man so long. They may have been waiting for him to get better, and judging 'better' by some odd medical standard of their own.

All the love, all the love, All the love we should have given. All the love, all the love, All the love you could have given. All the love...

The most useful thing I could do before this meeting is to keel over. On the other hand, artists are keeling over by the thousands every day and nobody seems to pay the least attention.

[Minding one's own business] is a cheap and second rate virtue, much extolled in certain circles, over estimated by the world at large; in constant use as an excuse for laziness; an alibi for indifference coldness and neglect; the slacker's refuge; the sluggard's sure defense.

I blame on you only what you did. You started a fire on a hot, dry, windy day, despite all the warnings. I blame you for that, and if you hold yourself responsible for all the consequences of your own acts, then you are truly unworthy of human society and I hope you lose your freedom forever.

'Fools,' said I, 'you do not know Silence like a cancer grows Hear my words that I might teach you Take my arms that I might reach you' But my words like silent raindrops fell And echoed in the wells of silence.

Yes, this is Europe. The Europe that did not respond to the Serb shelling of Dubrovnik. Or the three-year siege of Sarajevo. The Europe that let Bosnia die. A new definition of Europe: the place where tragedies don't take place. Wars, genocides - that happened here once, but no longer. It's something that happens in Africa. (Or places in Europe that are not 'really' Europe. That is, the Balkans.) Again, perhaps I exaggerate. But having spent a good part of three years, from 1993 to 1996, in Sarajevo, it does not seem to me like an exaggeration at all.

The problems we see today are going to be a hell of a lot worse in 10 years if we're not willing to face up to them.

There is a small proportion betwixt a fool who useth not wit because he hath it not and him that useth it not when it should avail him.

Under the market system, there is demand for a product if a lot of people want it - but that demand counts for nothing if those people have no money. If they lack money, their demand essentially doesn't exist...This explains why the drug industry is not investing money to develop a cure for a disease known as sleeping sickness, which leaves its victims in a coma. The disease...killed 66,000 people last year and threatens to infect 60 million more - but the only people who are afflicted by it are poverty-stricken Africans with no clout in the marketplace. Interestingly, there is a drug called eflornithine that is effective in lifting victims out of their comas. But drug companies stopped producing eflornithine in 1995 because it was no longer profitable to continue. The drug was still desperately needed, but only by people without money. So, following modern market practices, these people were simply left in a coma.

Give the crack to the kids who the hell cares/one less hungry mouth on the welfare

'Despite the fact that my weapons and armor are in desperate need of repair, I blow the entire reward on ale and whores.'

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter. This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.

Ah, you come to see the others but rarely to see me.

People don't die of old age, they die of neglect.

I do nothing upon myself, and yet am mine own executioner.

No one ever listens to me. I might as well be a Leonard Cohen record.

What is a neglected child? He is a child not planned for, not wanted. Neglect begins, therefore, before he is born.

There was no need to do any housework at all. After four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.

Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.

No man has seen her, this pitiful ghost, And no woman either, but heard her at most, Sighing and tapping and sighing again, You have weaned me too soon, you must nurse me again.

We are finding out that what looked like a neglected house a year ago is in fact a ruin.

We seek the support of all political groups and protection of the government, which is also our government, in our struggle. For too many years we have been treated like the lowest of the low. Our wages and working conditions have been determined from above, because irresponsible legislators who could have helped us, have supported the rancher's argument that the plight of the Farm Worker was a 'special case.' They saw the obvious effects of an unjust system, starvation wages, contractors, day hauls, forced migration, sickness, illiteracy, camps and sub-human living conditions, and acted as if they were irremediable causes. The farm worker has been abandoned to his own fate - without representation, without power - subject to mercy and caprice of the rancher. We are tired of words, of betrayals, of indifference. To the politicians we say that the years are gone when the farm worker said nothing and did nothing to help himself. From this movement shall spring leaders who shall understand us, lead us, be faithful to us, and we shall elect them to represent us. We shall be heard.

'Those whimpering Stateside young people will wake up on the Day of Judgment condemned to worse fates than these demon-fearing Indians, because, having a Bible, they were bored with it - while these never heard of such a thing as writing' - Jim Elliot