A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Against a dark sky, all flowers look like fireworks.”
“Against a diseased imagination demonstration goes for nothing.”
Source: Bite-Size Twain: Wit and Wisdom from the Literary Legend
“Against a heart inflamed with love,
burning with unquenchable fire,
a ruthless tyrant, cruelly armed,
wages war, but all in vain.
From every attack a victor,
Love will always triumph.
- Rosina”
Source: The Barber of Seville
“Against a set of desolate scenery, amid spectral crags and livid mountains of ash, beneath the funereal daylight of slopes illuminated in blue, she personified the spirit of the witches' sabbat. Morbid and voluptuous, sometimes with extenuated grace and infinite lassitude, she seemed to carry the burden of a criminal beauty, a beauty charged with all the sins cf the multitude. She fell again and again upon her pliant legs, and as she outlined the symbolic gestures of her two beautiful dead arms she seemed to be towing them behind her. Then, the vertigo of the abyss took hold of her again, and like one possessed she stood on point, holding herself fully erect from top to toe, like a spike of flesh and shadows. Her arms, weighed down just a few moments earlier, became menacing, demoniac, and audacious. Twisting like a screw, she whirled around, like a winnowing-machine - no, like a great lily stirred by a storm-wind. Clownish and macabre, a nacreous gleam showed between her lips... oh, that cruel and sardonic smile, and the two deep pools of her terrible eyes!
Ize Kranile!”
Source: Monsieur de Phocas
“Against a stupidity that is in fashion, no wisdom compensates.”
“Against all odds, a seed rises from darkness and beautifies the universe.”
“Against all odds, if you still persist and create your art, it will be a victory! It will be your victory. Finally, you would win.”
“Against All Odds
---
Nobody taught me how to swim.
So, I swam and followed the rivers,
hoping that I'd end up in the ocean; the calm seas.
To see some dolphins and the colourful fish.
But the river that chose me was long
with hard turns, blockages, and fishing traps.
On some days, the river would run dry,
leaving me nowhere but in the middle of hard cracks.
While suffering underneath the hot sun,
the rains would hit again on my sore flesh.
Luckily by then, I'd still be breathing;
even though affected, harmed, and bleeding.
But, I had a dream that was heavier than my challenges.
So I continued with my journey,
following the stream of the river.
Hoping to reach the ocean; the calm seas.
Some days the current would be brutal,
even though I was flowing with it.
It would hit on my body,
my bones would crack.
Sometimes the river would eject me to the side.
Where I'd need to survive while I found my way back to it.
I'd have to fend off snakes,
defending myself from harm and malice.
Back in the river, I'd have to fend off scorpions, rocks, and the debris.
So, there I went, alone in the river I flowed.
At times I'd meet with swimmers
who'd be cooling off from the same waters.
Some were kayaking; others fishing.
All oblivious to my dreams, and to my state of struggle.
Some would greet me; smiling at me.
While some laughed the hardest, laughing at me.
Some would express pity,
while some expressed their sympathy.
Some would pretend that I wasn't even there.
And those who ignored me equalled my presence to that of the debris.
I remember that a few picked me up
and placed me in their small boats;
helping me to cruise afloat.
But, eventually, they left me in my struggle too.
Those who carried me,
left me in the rivers where they'd found me.
Those who passed me by,
passed-by me again on the following days.
Some shouted the loudest from their lungs
encouraging me from the sides.
Telling me that I was almost reaching the seas.
That the ocean was at a hand's reach.
But those who shouted the most rarely did anything else to help.
I also learnt that those who picked me up rarely shouted about their help.
Some used my vulnerability to gain charity points.
They'd say, "see I helped her, now clap for me from your joints".
But, above all the help, true or fake,
my dream was carrying me for my sake.
With my dream to reach the ocean, the calm seas,
I held my head the highest and swam beyond all the peaks.”
“Against all odds, the Academy had come to feel like home. A slimy, moldy, dungeonlike home without working toilets, maybe, but home nevertheless. He and George had even named the rats that lived behind their walls. Every night, they left Jon Cartwright Jr., III, and IV a piece of stale bread to nibble, in hopes they'd prefer the crumbs to human feet.”
Source: The Evil We Love
“Against all odds, when the 'no' out-weighs the 'yes' faith become the only bridge to your answer”
Source: Great Reflections on Success
“Against all our historically-minded culture (out of compassion for our present state), the only excitement is to be found in anticipation (out of impertinence towards our future state).
Infinite spaces (Pascal would have nothing to fear today) have become advertising spaces. It is advertising which will fuel all the sidereal infrastructure of communication. No more silent stars or astrological signs. It is advertising which will fuel the no-osphere. The more we colonize virgin space, the more we enter the blackmail space of the fully developed advertising form.
Embryos frozen, unfrozen and then reimplanted in the mother's womb. What becomes of frozen embryos whose parents have died accidentally? Orphans of artificial insemination? Billionaire foetuses? Fortunately there is a committee for embryo-genetic control and a commission for the ethics of human reproduction. But the orphans of the concept? What becomes of a frozen concept whose parents have died accidentally?”
Source: Cool memories
“Against all the opposition in the world, I make this statement - that once I knew a magician. I was a witness of a performance that may some day be considered understandable, but that, in these primitive times, so transcends what is said to be the known that it is what I mean by magic.”
Source: Wild Talents
“Against attempts on my life, I trust in my luck, my good genius, and my guards.”
“Against barbarity, poetry can resist only by confirming its attachment to human fragility like a blade of grass growing on a wall while armies march by.”
“Against boredom even gods struggle in vain.”
Source: The Selected Writings of Friedrich Nietzsche
“Against boredom the gods themselves fight in vain.”
Source: Ecce Homo: How One Becomes what One is; The Antichrist: a Curse on Christianity
“Against Bradley, every time I'm trying to dunk, dunk, dunk.”
“Against classical philosophy: thinking about eternity or the immensity of the universe does not lessen my unhappiness.”
“Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.”
“Against destiny I fulfilled my duty. Uselessly? No, for I fulfilled it.”
“Against diseases here the strongest fence is the defensive vertue, Abstinence.”
“Against eternal injustice, man must assert justice, and to protest against the universe of grief, he must create happiness.”
“Against filling the Heavens with fluid Mediums, unless they be exceeding rare, a great Objection arises from the regular and very lasting Motions of the Planets and Comets in all manner of Courses through the Heavens.”
Source: Isaaci Newtoni Opera quae exstant omnia
“Against fortune the carter cracks his whip in vain.
[Fr., Centre fortune, la diverse un chartier rompit nazardes son fouet.]”
“Against great advantages in another, there are no means of defending ourselves except love.”
Source: Delphi Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Illustrated)
“Against her foes Religion well defends Her sacred truths, but often fears her friends.”
Source: The poetical works of the Rev. George Crabbe: in eight volumes
“Against Him those women sin who torment their skin with potions, stain their cheeks with rouge and extend the line of their eyes with black coloring. Doubtless they are dissatisfied with God's plastic skill. In their own persons they convict and censure the Artificer of all things.”
“Against his own will, almost, Will felt himself understanding; he would have done anything, he thought, told any lie, taken any risk, to make Tessa love him.”
Source: The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Angel; Clockwork Prince; Clockwork Princess
“Against his will, Magnus found a smile curving his lips as he rummaged around for his big blue coffee cup that said BETTER THAN GANDALF across the front in sparkly letters. He was besotted; he was officially revolted by himself.”
Source: What to Buy the Shadowhunter Who Has Everything
“Against Hume, Kant has found a more proper ground for humility: “True humility follows unavoidably from our sincere and exact comparison of ourselves with the moral law” . The proper way to come to terms with our limits is not to compare ourselves with others but to hold ourselves accountable to those rational moral standards we know to be most properly our own.”
“Against ignorance, God Himself is helpless.”
“Against ill chances men are ever merry,
But heaviness foreruns the good event.”
“Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State... Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the true reality of the individual.”
“Against Juventus we were massive underdogs, so to beat them was fantastic.”
“Against legitimacy is arrayed usurpation; against modest,
single-minded, righteous, and brave resistance to encroachment
is arrayed boastful, double-tongued, selfish, and treacherous
ambition to possess. God defend the right!"
"God often defends the powerful.”
“Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.”
“Against love's fire fear`s frost hath dissolution”
Source: Poems: Third Series
“Against my better judgment I feel certain that somewhere very near here—the first house down the road, maybe—there's a good poet dying, but also somewhere very near here somebody's having a hilarious pint of pus taken from her lovely young body, and I can't be running back and forth forever between grief and high delight.”
“Against my mouth she groaned. "I hate being quiet."
A breathless chuckled escaped me.
"Me too. Once we're home..."
"Lots of noise.”
Source: Harvest Moon
“Against my protests a mausoleum was built on the Red Square, a monument unbecoming and offensive to the revolutionary consciousness.”
Source: My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography
“Against my shoulder she whispers, 'He's flint, you're tinder.”
Source: The Cruel Prince
“Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner. BENEDICK Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains. BEATRICE I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank me: if it had been painful, I would not have come. BENEDICK You take pleasure then in the message? BEATRICE Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife's point ... You have no stomach, signior: fare you well. Exit BENEDICK Ha! 'Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner;' there's a double meaning in that... (Much Ado About Nothing)”
Source: Much Ado About Nothing
“Against my will, I became a witness to the most terrible defeat of reason and to the most savage triumph of brutality ever chroniclednever before did a generation suffer such a moral setback after it had attained such intellectual heights.”
“Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.”
Source: Autobiography
“Against naked force the only possible defense is naked force. The aggressor makes the rules for such a war; the defenders have no alternative but matching destruction with more destruction, slaughter with greater slaughter.”
“Against nature and within nature there is no freedom.”
Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist
“Against Nature's silence I use action In the vast indifference I invent a meaning I don't watch unmoved I intervene and say that this and this are wrong and I work to alter them and improve them The important thing is to pull yourself up by your own hair to turn yourself inside out and see the whole world with fresh eyes”
Source: Peter Weiss' The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat: As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade [a Play]
“Against necessity, against its strength, no one can fight and win.”
Source: Aeschylus: The suppliant maidens, The Persians, translated by S. G. Benardete. Seven against Thebes, Prometheus bound, translated by D. Grene
“Against Nothing (The Sonnet)
I am not against consumerism,
I am not against corporations.
I am not against politics and policy,
I am not against politicians.
I am not against fame and fortune,
I am not against celebrity.
I am not against entrepreneurship,
I am not against technology.
I am not against bureaucrats,
I am not against red tape.
I am not against bibles and comics,
I am not against prayers and faith.
I ain't against anything that serves human welfare.
The moment they go astray, I'll be their nightmare.”
Source: Giants in Jeans: 100 Sonnets of United Earth
“Against other things it is possible to obtain security, but when it comes to death we human beings all live in an unwalled city.”