A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Alas, by the time Fate caught up with my life, Chance had it all planned.”
“Alas, by what rude fate Our lives, like ships at sea, an instant meet, Then part forever on their courses fleet.”
Source: The Poetical Works of Edmund Clarence Stedman
“Alas, criticism has always been what human beings, especially leaders, most hate to hear.”
Source: The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?
“Alas, day, you brought light,
You trailed splendour
You showed us god:
I salute you, most precious one,
But I go to a new place,
Another life.”
Source: Collected Poems 1912-1944
“Alas, everything that men say to one another is alike; the ideas they exchange are almost always the same, in their conversation. But inside all those isolated machines, what hidden recesses, what secret compartments! It is an entire world that each one carries within him, an unknown world that is born and dies in silence! What solitudes all these human bodies are!”
Source: Comedies & proverbs
“Alas, for the effects of bad tea and bad temper!”
Source: The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“Alas, how can we help but mourn When hero bosoms yield their breath! A century itself may bear But once the flower of such a death.”
Source: The Collected Poems of S. Weir Mitchell
“Alas, how easily things go wrong! A sigh too much, a kiss too long And there follows a mist and a weeping rain And life is never the same again”
Source: MacDonalds’ Fairy-Tale Treasure Chest
“Alas, how love can trifle with itself!”
Source: The plays and poems of William Shakspeare
“Alas, how many have been persecuted for the wrong of having been right?”
“Alas, how quickly the gratitude owed to the dead flows off, how quick to be proved a deceiver.”
“Alas, how right the ancient saying is: We, who are old, are nothing else but noise And shape. Like mimicries of dreams we go, And have no wits, although we think us wise.”
“Alas, how wretched is the being who depends on the stability of public favour!”
“Alas, human vices, however horrible one might imagine them to be, contain the proof (were it only in their infinite expansion) of man's longing for the infinite; but it is a longing that often takes the wrong route. It is my belief that the reason behind all culpable excesses lies in this depravation of the sense of the infinite.”
“Alas, I am a woman friendless, hopeless!”
Source: Plays of William Shakespeare
“Alas, I am dying beyond my means.”
“Alas, I emerge from one disaster to fall into a worse.”
“Alas, I have done nothing this day! What?! Have you not lived? It is not only the fundamental but the noblest of your occupations.”
“Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love. Yet love me--wilt thou? Open thine heart wide, And fold within, the wet wings of thy dove.”
Source: Poetical works
“Alas, I have studied philosophy, the law as well as medicine, and to my sorrow, theology; studied them well with ardent zeal, yet here I am, a wretched fool, no wiser than I was before.”
Source: Faust
“Alas, I know if I ever became truly humble, I would be proud of it.”
“Alas, if our children lose the crown of life, it will be but a small consolation that they have won the laurels of literature or art.”
Source: Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 19: 1873
“Alas, if worth be based on beauty, Snow White has surpassed you, cutie.”
Source: Politically Correct Bedtime Stories
“Alas, in 1929 came the Stock Market crash and everything changed and became worrisome. People started practicing conservatism because of financial losses, myself included.”
“Alas, irreverence has been subsumed by mere grossness, at least in the so-called mass media. What we have now - to quote myself at my most pretentious - is a nimiety of scurrility with a concomitant exiguity of taste.”
“Alas, Islam turned against science in the twelfth century. The most influential figure was the philosopher Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali, who argued in The Incoherence of the Philosophers against the very idea of laws of nature, on the ground that any such laws would put God's hands in chains. According to al-Ghazzali, a piece of cotton placed in a flame does not darken and smoulder because of the heat, but because God wants it to darken and smoulder. After al-Ghazzali, there was no more science worth mentioning in Islamic countries.”
“Alas, it is just a single image - an extended moment perhaps. Unlike a biography, a portrait cannot present the many differing moments that make up a personality.”
“Alas, it looks like those unsubstantiated rumours about me are about to come true after all this time.”
“Alas, not all things in life are easy; Even man struggles to be human.”
“Alas, not me, lord!" she said. "Shadow lies on me still. Look not to me for healing! I am a shieldmaiden and my hand is ungentle.”
Source: The Return of the King: Being the Third Part of the Lord of the Rings
“Alas, O Lord, to what a state dost Thou bring those who love Thee!”
“Alas, our frailty is the cause , not we! For, such as we are made of, such we be.”
“Alas, our rulers are not gods, but puny, fallible men, like the kings who constantly forget their parts, and we common men should be their prompters.”
Source: Between Tears and Laughter
“Alas, our technology has marched ahead of our spiritual and social evolution, making us, frankly, a dangerous people.”
“Alas, passion is conducive to certain other things because when you have too much passion and you have too much work, you possibly end up having black holes. The danger is too much passion.”
“Alas, poor men, their destiny. When all goes well a shadow will overthrow it. If it be unkind one stroke of a wet sponge wipes all the picture out.”
Source: Aeschylus II: The Oresteia
“Alas, poor Yorick! How surprised he would be to see how his counterpart of today is whisked off to a funeral parlor and is in short order sprayed, sliced, pierced, pickled, trussed, trimmed, creamed, waxed, painted, rouged and neatly dressed - transformed from a common corpse into a Beautiful Memory Picture.”
Source: The American Way of Death Revisited
“Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?”
“Alas, poor Yorick!" he said. "She heard mermaids, so it follows that there is something rotten in the state of Denmark. I have caught an everlasting cold, but luckily I am terribly dishonest. I cling to that.”
Source: Wizard's Castle
“Alas, Postumus, the fleeting years slip by, nor will piety give any stay to wrinkles and pressing old age and untamable death.”
“Alas, regardless of their doom, the little victims play! No sense have they of ills to come nor care beyond today.”
“Alas, Siddhartha, I see you suffering, but you're suffering a pain at which one would like to laugh, at which you'll soon laugh for yourself.”
Source: Siddhartha (World Classics, Unabridged)
“Alas, sir, how fell you besides your five wits?" Malvolio: "Fool, there was never a man so notoriously abused. I am as well in my wits, fool, as thou art." Feste: "But as well? Then you are mad indeed, if you be no better in you wits than a fool.”
Source: Twelfth Night Or What You Will
“Alas, that love, so gentle in his view, Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof! *It’s sad. Love looks like a nice thing, but it’s actually very rough when you experience it.*”
“Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still, Should without eyes see pathways to his will!”
Source: Romeo and Juliet
“Alas, that Spring should vanish with the Rose! That Youths sweet-scented Manuscript should close!”
Source: Edward FitzGerald, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: A Critical Edition
“Alas, that we should be so unwilling to listen to the still and holy yearnings of the heart! A god whispers quite softly in our breast, softly yet audibly; telling us what we ought to seek and what to shun.”
“Alas, the spheres of truth are less transparent than those of
illusion.”
“Alas, the transports beauty can inspire!”
“Alas, the very name of picture produces a sadness of heart I cannot describe.”