A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Against self-slaughter There is a prohibition so divine That cravens my weak hand.”
“Against specious appearances we must set clear convictions, bright and ready for use. When death appears as an evil, we ought immediately to remember that evils are things to be avoided, but death is inevitable.”
Source: The Works of Epictetus: Consisting of His Discourses, in Four Books, the Enchiridion, and Fragments
“Against spin, my god, he is really a murderer”
“Against Steve Johnson at the Olympics I was down a couple of times.”
“Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Friedrich Schiller (Illustrated)
“Against stupidity, God Himself fights in vain.”
“Against that background Vernon saw his mother—saw her for the first time—a magnificent woman with white skin and red gold hair—a being like the pictures in his fairy book, saw her suddenly as something wonderful and beautiful. He was never to forget that strange moment. She was his mother and she was beautiful and he loved her. Something hurt him inside, like a pain—only it wasn’t a pain. And there was a queer booming noise inside his head—a thundering noise that ended up high and sweet like a bird’s note. Altogether a very wonderful moment.”
Source: Giant's Bread
“Against the advice of my wife, I endorsed Arlen Specter. I should have listened to my wife.”
“Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.”
“Against the backdrop of people who avoid work, cut corners, and do half-hearted jobs, a diligent man stands out. Practicing diligence is an excellent way to stand out for Christ at home, in the workplace, and even at church. Today, complete each one of your tasks, however big or small, with diligence.”
“Against the background of general freakishness the case of my particular freakishness was lost.”
Source: Ferdydurke
“Against the background of the Obama administration' s negotiating what can turn out to be the most catastrophic international agreement in the nation's history, to complain about protocol is to put questions of etiquette above questions of annihilation.”
“Against the background of this luminous and sparkling stage Bond stood in the sunshine and felt his mission to be incongruous and remote and his dark profession an affront to his fellow actors.”
Source: gilt-edged bonds
“Against the beautiful and the clever and the successful, one can wage a pitiless war, but not against the unattractive: then the millstone weighs on the breast.”
“Against the bold, daring is unsafe.”
“Against the censurers of brevity. - Something said briefly can be the fruit of much long thought: but the reader who is a novice in this field, and has as yet reflected on it not at all, sees in everything said briefly something embryonic, not without censuring the author for having served him up such immature and unripened fare.”
“Against the charitable gesture there is no defence.”
Source: Molloy
“Against the claims of a violent "human nature" there is enormous historical evidence that people, when free of a manufactured nationalist or religious hysteria, are more inclined to be compassionate than cruel. When citizens have an opportunity to learn of vicious acts committed by their own governments, they react with indignation and protest.
So long as atrocities remain remote, abstract, they will be tolerated, even by decent people.”
Source: The Bomb
“Against the dark background of the atomic bomb, the United States does not wish merely to present strength, but also the desire and the hope for peace.”
“Against the dark background of this contemporary civilization of well-being, even the arts tend to mingle, to lose their identity.”
“Against the darkness outer God's light his likeness takes, And he from the mighty doubter The great believer makes.”
“Against the disease of writing one must take special precautions, since it is a dangerous and contagious disease.”
“Against the facts and myths surrounding masculinity, I remain indispensable both in God's schemes and society's survival because I am a woman.”
“Against the flying ball no valor avails.”
“Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence . . . the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake.”
Source: Washington's Farewell Address: The Proclamation of Jackson Against Nullification, and the Declaration of Independence
“Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, (I conjure you to believe me fellow citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government.”
Source: Washington's Farewell Address: The Proclamation of Jackson Against Nullification, and the Declaration of Independence
“Against the light, we are travellers carrying
pails of water for our thirst. Who passed before this path,
a friend in the night, looking for water, looking for respite?”
“Against the long years when family bonds make up all that is happiest in life, there must always be reckoned those moments of agitation and revolution, during which the bosom of a family is the most unrestful and disturbing place in existence.”
Source: Delphi Works of Margaret Oliphant with Complete Stories of the Seen and Unseen
“Against the odd's, I have persevered, I am the living attestation of the American dream. I am the extolment of this great nation. I have coffee and cocktails with presidents and dictators. I'm an international figure, a citizen of the world. I've made it.”
“Against the odds, John Carter is itself pretty amazing-an epic pulp saga that slowly rises to the level of its best imitations and wins you over by degrees. I say that as a grown-up moviegoer; behind me at a recent screening was a row of 10-year-old boys who were ecstatically in from the get-go. That's probably all that matters.”
“Against the persecution of a tyrant the godly have no remedy but prayer.”
“Against the reliability of common sense, the laws of science, the ravages of sin, the tendencies of mankind, and the metaphysics which govern created things, some things are not destroyed by time. The ability to last is so exceedingly rare, when a man finds something which has bested time, he has found something for which there is only fitting adjective: divine.”
Source: Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul from Mediocrity
“Against the resistance of other minds, one's thoughts are pulled out of their comfortable shapes, and true thinking begins.”
Source: The Vaster Wilds
“Against the ruin of the world, there is only one defense: the creative act.”
Source: The alternative society: essays from the other world
“Against the State, against the Church, against the silence of the medical profession, against the whole machinery of dead institutions of the past, the woman of today arises.”
“Against the suffering which may come upon one from human relationships the readiest safeguard is voluntary isolation, keeping oneself aloof from other people. The happiness which can be achieved along this path is, as we see, the happiness of quietness. Against the dreaded external world one can only defend oneself by some kind of turning away from it, if one intends to solve the task by oneself.”
Source: Civilization and Its Discontents
“Against the sustained tick of a watch, fiction takes the measure of a life, a season, a look exchanged, the turning point, desire as brief as a dream, the grief and terror that after childhood we cease to express.”
“Against the tide of violence
something spoken from the silence
like an arrow parting air
with the sharpened point of love.”
Source: Something Will Change Me: Poems of Soul and Spirit
“Against the vast majority of my countrymen, even at this moment, in the name of humanity and civilization, I protest against our share in the destruction of Germany. A month ago Europe was a peaceful comity of nations; if an Englishman killed a German, he was hanged. Now, if an Englishman kills a German, or if a German kills an Englishman, he is a patriot, who has deserved well of his country.”
Source: Prophecy and Dissent, 1914-16
“Against the windows the storm comes dashing, Through tattered foliage the hail tears crashing, The blue lightning flashes, The rapid hail clashes... The thunder is rumbling And crashing and crumbling.”
Source: The Poetical Works of James R. Lowell: Complete in Two Volumes
“Against these two [Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton] I would [vote], but I never voted for [Barack Obama]. I always voted third party - the ones who say their gonna jail the bankers.”
“Against this catalog of social difficulties, we must keep in mind that AS involves a different kind of intelligence. The strong drive to systemize means that the person with AS becomes a specialist in something, or even in everything they delve into. One man with AS in Denmark who I met put it this way: “You people [without AS] are generalists, content to know a little bit about a lot of subjects. We people [with AS] are specialists. Once we start to explore a subject, we do not leave it until we have gathered as much information as we can.” In effect, the systemizing drive in AS is often a drive to identify the underlying structure in the world.”
Source: The Essential Difference: Male And Female Brains And The Truth About Autism
“Against this vision of hope, I find my faithful certainty—that everything will be beautiful, in the end. That God has a plan for the days to come. That love will triumph in all things, and my dreams are born with purpose. These moments unfold like a never-ending collection of poetry, written by the hands of the divine. The days are my own. Each one is made for me. With every twist and turn and tumble, I learn to step back and smile. For when we think we’ve got it made, when the days to come seem so predictable, that is when He shows us the substance of which this life is made.”
“Against those skilled in attack, an enemy does not know where to defend; against the experts in defense, the enemy does not know where to attack.”
“Against those who are indebted to the allegorical utopian model and its offshoots, the Memory Palace proves that alternatives to the tribal consensus exists. Furthermore, this alternative is a leap away, is deeply discontinuous with the allegorists' endless internal struggles for refinement. It promises not quite freedom but the fact that a careful look at history as achievement rather than ruination offers solid evidence that the allegorical utopian has about it no necessity at all.”
Source: Love’s Shadow
“Against total corruption, those on the side of Truth must never be drawn down to the lower level. They must be able to bring the others upward; to The Higher Way. That will be the victory needed here .”
Source: Random Molecular Mirroring
“Against us are all timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty We are likely to preserve the liberty we have obtained only by unremitting labors and perils.”
Source: Jefferson: Political Writings
“Against war it may be said that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished revengeful.”
Source: Human, All-Too-Human: Parts One and Two
“Against war one might say that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished malicious. In its favor, that in producing these two effects it barbarizes, and so makes the combatants more natural. For culture it is a sleep or a wintertime, and man emerges from it stronger for good and for evil.”
“Against what is stupid, nonsensical, erroneous, and evil, [classical] liberalism fights with the weapons of the mind, and not with brute force and repression.”
Source: The free and prosperous commonwealth: an exposition of the ideas of classical liberalism