Cynical realism is the intelligent man's best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation.
Aldous Huxley

Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
Ambrose Bierce

Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.
Edward R. Murrow

Every man ought to be inquisitive through every hour of his great adventure down to the day when he shall no longer cast a shadow in the sun. For if he dies without a question in his heart, what excuse is there for his continuance?
Frank Moore Colby

Everybody in Hollywood was in Around the World in 80 Days. If you weren't, you left town and made up an excuse.
Cesar Romero

Excuse me for harrowing you with this picture of war. But I am very full of it at present.
Edward Wadsworth

Excuse me if I'm clinging on to life, but my parents wove me from tight thread.
Jeanne Calment

Excuse me while I kiss the sky.
Jimi Hendrix

Excuse my scribbling, it is late, and I have a poor candle.
Henri Rousseau

Excuse the mess but we live here.
Roseanne Barr

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.
Richard Dawkins

Fishing, with me, has always been an excuse to drink in the daytime.
Jimmy Cannon

From a moral point of view, there is no excuse for terrorist acts, regardless of the motive or the situation under which they are carried out.
Jurgen Habermas

Give me six lines written by the most honorable of men, and I will find an excuse in them to hang him.
Cardinal Richelieu

God's only excuse is that he does not exist.
Stendhal

Having yet another vote on refinery legislation that uses high oil prices as an excuse to weaken environmental protections and to give more legislative gifts to the oil industry is misguided in the extreme.
Sherwood Boehlert

He 's ruthless only because of his ideals. Unfortunately he doesn't succeed. The thing fails and gets out of hand and takes charge of him. Idealism is the only excuse he could have and it's a great excuse.
Terence Fisher

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself.
Henry Ward Beecher

How strange to use "You only live once" as an excuse to throw it away.
Bill Copeland

However, don't let perfectionism become an excuse for never getting started.
Marilu Henner