A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“All high truth is poetry. Take the results of science: they glow with beauty, cold and hard as are the methods of reaching them.”
Source: Notes of Thought
“All higher humor begins with ceasing to take oneself seriously.”
“All highly competent people continually search for ways to keep learning, growing, and improving. They do that by asking WHY. After all, the person who knows HOW will always have a job, but the person who knows WHY will always be the boss.”
“All hippies around now just represent complete apathy.”
“All his beauty, wit and grace
Lie forever in one place,
He who sang and sprang and moved
Now, in death, is only loved.”
Source: The Birds of the Air
“All his court were cast down in slumber, and all the fires faded and were quenched; but the Silmarils in the crown on Morgoth's head blazed forth suddenly with a radiance of white flame; and the burden of that crown and of the jewels bowed down his head, as though the world were set upon it, laden with a weight of care, of fear, and of desire, that even the will of Morgoth could not support. Then Lúthien catching up her winged robe sprang into the air, and her voice came dropping down like rain into pools, profound and dark. She cast her cloak before his eyes, and set upon him a dream, dark as the outer Void where once he walked alone.”
Source: The Silmarillion
“All his faults are such that one loves him still the better for them.”
“All his feelings and all his being were shaken to their depths, and he came to know that terrible torment which, by way of a striking exception, sometimes occurs in nature, when a weak talent strains to show itself on too grand a scale and fails; that torment which gives birth to great things in a youth, but, in passing beyond the border of dream, turns into a fruitless yearning; that dreadful torment which makes a man capable of terrible evildoing. A terrible envy possessed him, an envy bordering on rage. The bile rose in him when he saw some work that bore the stamp of talent. He ground his teeth and devoured it with the eyes of a basilisk.”
Source: The Mysterious Portrait
“All His glory and beauty come from within, and there He delights to dwell, His visits there are frequent, His conversation sweet, His comforts refreshing; and His peace passing all understanding.”
“All his leisure clothes were absurd - jokes, really - as though leisure itself had to be ridiculed.”
Source: A Boy's Own Story: Picador Classic
“All his life he [Robert Kennedy] had been schooled that nothing was worse than to finish second. But crushing fears are no longer so crushing once they are experienced.”
“All his life he [the American] jumps into the train after it has started and jumps out before it has stopped; and he never once gets left behind, or breaks a leg.”
Source: Character and Opinion in the United States
“All his life he'd dealt in honour and service, the way a furrier deals in furs or a vintner in wine. On his lips the terms had had specialised political meanings, and he'd long since stopped thinking about what the words stood for in the world at large. Now, unfortunately a little bit too late, he'd been granted a little gleam of insight; service is what makes you stand in the line when nobody would try and stop you if you ran away, and honour is what's left when every other conceivable reason for staying there has long since evaporated.”
Source: Colours in the Steel
“All his life he had been plagued by impulses to do something inappropriate or despicable for no reason: grab his dissertation supervisor by the ears and give him a big Bugs Bunny kiss, drop the precious vase . . . These thoughts arose from nowhere that he could account for and, at their worst, caused him to lose sleep. When he read Goethe's statement about every man secretly believing himself to be an undiscovered genius or an undiscovered maniac, he wept with relief. He lived in fear that the thoughts might show in his eyes. Usually, though, when he had reason to be offended, his mind was a clear disc of hurt, not a thought of any action, violent or otherwise. But something had changed.”
Source: The Transition
“All his life he had controlled machines, bent nature and the forces of nature to man and man's needs. The human race had slowly evolved until it was in a position to operate things, run them as it saw fit. Now all at once it had been plunged back down the ladder again, prostrate before a Power against which they were children.”
“All his life, he had found his way out of difficult situations by determining what people wanted and then convincing them that he was the best one to provide it. Then he'd go ahead and provide it, even if providing it meant walking the narrowest of paths.”
Source: Landslide: LBJ and Ronald Reagan at the Dawn of a New America
“All his life he had lived by the law. Often his job had been to stop acts of revenge....And now revenge was all that life had left for him.”
Source: A Fire Upon The Deep
“All his life he had managed in such ways to disconnect himself from things which he couldn't escape and which threatened to define him in a way in which he didn't want to be defined, and go on untouched, untouched by things that should have touched him, hurt him, burned him.”
Source: The Dragon Can't Dance
“All his life, he has been
as strong and tall as an oak tree,
towering over the world.
She sees through the canopy of leaves
and the protective layer of bark
that surrounds him.
She sees the new green shoots
of growth curling towards the light,
and the way his roots reach towards stability.
All his life, he has needed to be strong,
but with her, he can be vulnerable.
Underneath the soil, their
roots tangle together, like two
hands reaching out.”
Source: Twelve Midnight
“All his life he has been in the shadow of Grandfather, and of the man for whom he was named."
...
"Then, Grandfather would tell us it has nothing to do with fame.”
“He enjoyed the notoriety, though,” said Dash.
“Agreed,” said Jimmy. “But he gained it from being so bloody brilliant at what he did. He didn’t set out to be the most fiendishly clever noble in history.”
“Maybe that’s what Father knew from the start; it’s just getting the job done and let history decide what history will decide,” observed Dash.”
Source: Shards of a Broken Crown
“All his life he tried to be a good person. Many times, however, he failed. For after all, he was only human. He wasn't a dog.”
“All his life he would hold this moment as exemplary of what love was. It was not wanting anything more, nor was it expecting people to exceed what they had just accomplished; it was simply feeling so complete.”
“All his life Robert Grainier would remember vividly the burned valley at sundown, the most dreamlike business he’d ever witnessed waking—the brilliant pastels of the last light overhead, some clouds high and white, catching daylight from beyond the valley, others ribbed and gray and pink, the lowest of them rubbing the peaks of Bussard and Queen mountains; and beneath this wondrous sky the black valley, utterly still, the train moving through it making a great noise but unable to wake this dead world.”
Source: Train Dreams
“All his life the example of a syllogism he had studied in Kiesewetter's logic - "Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal" - had seemed to him to be true only in relation to Caius the man, man in general, and it was quite justified , but he wasn't Caius and he wasn't man in general, and he had always been something quite, quite special apart from all other beings; he was Vanya, with Mama, with Papa, with Mitya and Volodya, with his toys and the coachman, with Nyanya, then with Katenka, with all the joys, sorrows, passions of childhood, boyhood, youth. Did Caius know the smell of the striped leather ball Vanya loved so much?: Did Caius kiss his mother's hand like that and did the silken folds of Caius's mother's dress rustle like that for him? Was Caius in love like that? Could Caius chair a session like that? And Caius is indeed mortal and it's right that he should die, but for me, Vanya, Ivan Ilych, with all my feelings and thoughts - for me it's quite different. And it cannot be that I should die. It would be too horrible.”
Source: The Death of Ivan Ilych
“All his life, Klaus had believed that if you read enough books, you could solve any problem, but now he wasn't so sure.”
“All his memories of her were like that: They had come back together by streetcar from the apartment where they first made love. (Mirek noted with distinct satisfaction that he had completely forgotten their coitions, that he was unable to recall even a single moment of them.) More robust, taller than he (he was small and frail), she sat on a corner bench in the jolting streetcar, her face sullen, closed, surprisingly old. When he asked her why she was so silent, she told him she had not been satisfied with their lovemaking. She said he had made love to her like an intellectual. In the political jargon of those days, the word “intellectual” was an insult. It indicated someone who did not understand life and was cut off from the people.”
Source: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
“All his movements and facial expressions have a tension to them, like he was carved out of stone and locked in a chamber of ice and recently brought back to life.”
“all his prayers of the past had been simple concrete requests: God, give me a bicycle, a knife with seven blades, a box of oil paints. Only how, how, could you say something so indefinite, so meaningless as this: God, let me be loved.”
Source: Other Voices, Other Rooms
“All his senses screamed in warning, the very air reeking of forbidden magic, but duty call him forward.”
Source: The Assassin's Tear
“All his successors gone before him have done 't; and all his ancestors that come after him may.”
Source: The Plays of Shakespeare
“All his tangles were tugging tighter, and he couldn’t blame anyone but himself”
Source: The Sugared Game
“All his words and actions would now be fit for his daughter’s ears and eyes. Life would be lived as if under [her] constant scrutiny. He would never do anything that might cause her pain or anxiety or embarrassment and there would be nothing, absolutely nothing in his life to be ashamed of anymore.”
“All historians, even the most scientific, have bias, if in no other sense than the determination not to have any.”
“All historical writing, even the most honest, is unconsciously subjective, since every age is bound, in spite of itself, to make the dead perform whatever tricks it finds necessary for its own peace of mind.”
“All histories do show, and wise politicians do hold it necessary that, for the well-governing of every Commonweal, it behoveth man to presuppose that all men are evil, and will declare themselves so to be when occasion is offered.”
“All history . . . is an inarticulate Bible.”
Source: Carlyle on Heroes, Hero-worship, and the Heroic in History
“All history and art are against us, but we still expect happiness in love.”
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
Source: Letters on the equality of the sexes, and the condition of woman: Addressed to Mary S. Parker
“All history consists of successive excursions from a single starting-point, to which man returns again and again to organize yet another search for a durable scale of values.”
Source: A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There
“All history has been a history of class struggles, of struggles between exploited and exploiting, between dominated and dominating classes at various stages of social development.”
“All history involves selection, and it is always human beings who do the selecting.”
“All history is a lie!”
“All history is an attempt to find pattern and meaning in a section of human experience, and every historian worthy of the name raises questions about man's ultimate destiny and the meaning of all history to which, as history, he can provide no answers. The answers belong to the realm of theology.”
“All history is biography.”
“All history is but a romance, unless it is studied as an example.”
Source: A memoir of the political life of ... Edmund Burke
“All history is but the lengthened shadow of a great man.”
“All history is contemporary history.”
Source: Historical Materialism and the Economics of Karl Marx
“All History is current; all injustice continues on some level, somewhere in the world.”
“All history is defined by shifting modes of reality and time and how things change. That’s what I love about cinema. It changes in the moment.”
“All history is fictionalised narration of an opinion and good authors keep coming up with new opinions on existing narrations. Those who have locked themselves in ideological echo chambers and thrown away the key consider any difference of opinion as an unwelcome perturbation on their sea of conforming tranquility.”