Untidiness Quotes

The master of a private dwelling will not allow any untidiness or unseemliness to be seen in the house, such as a couch upset, or the table littered with rubbish, or vessels of price thrown away into dirty corners, while those which serve ignobler uses are thrust forward for entering guests to see. He has everything arranged neatly and in the proper place, where it stands to most advantage; and then he can welcome his guests, without any misgivings that he need be ashamed of opening the interior of his house to receive them. The same duty, I take it, is incumbent on that master of our "tabernacle," the mind; it has to arrange everything within us, and to put each particular faculty of the soul, which the Creator has fashioned to be our implement or our vessel, to fitting and noble uses. (Gregory of Nyssa)

But it is impossible, I find, to tidy books without ending by sitting on the floor in the middle of a great untidiness and reading.

Elizabeth von Arnim

I used to think then that I was Bohemian, but I know now that I am not. I prefer order and precision to untidiness and looseness.

Conrad Veidt

My only phobia is untidiness. My hair has to be neatly kept; my shoes are always clean. Everything has to be in a straight line, in its place.

Norman Wisdom

The utopian urge that prompted us in recent decades to write the world's thickest instruction manual, naming it the law of the land, has led us to invent a device that, like detailed rules, also avoids the untidiness of human judgment. It goes by an ancient name, process, but its purpose is new. It once existed to help humans make responsible decisions. Process now has become an end in itself.

Philip K. Howard