A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“All my life I have battled the alarm clock, pummeling the snooze button over and over with mounting self-loathing until the shame is finally strong enough to lever me upright.”
Source: Warm Bodies and The New Hunger: A Special 5th Anniversary Edition
“All my life I have been a nomad.”
Source: Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations
“All my life I have been a poor go-to-sleeper. No matter how great my weariness, the wrench of parting with consciousness is unspeakably repulsive to me.”
Source: The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov
“All my life I have been a rower of two boats. I have been here physically and somewhere else mentally. My existence is split, my soul is cut, my heart is rent asunder.”
Source: The Weight of Tender Things
“All my life I have been acutely aware of a contradiction in the very nature of my existence. For forty-five years I struggled to resolve this dilemma by writing plays and novels. The more I wrote, the more I realized mere words were not enough. So I found another form of expression.”
“All my life I have been happiest when the folks watching me said to each other, `Look at the poor dope, wilya?”
Source: My Wonderful World Of Slapstick
“All my life I have been haunted by the obsession that to desire a thing or to love a thing intensely is to place yourself in a vulnerable position, to be a possible, if not a probable, loser of what you most want. Let's leave it like that.”
Source: The Theatre of Tennessee Williams
“All my life I have been hearing that the oil was going to run out. It never happens. They keep discovering new oil fields. The world is apparently floating in oil fields.”
“All my life I have been honest-comparatively honest. I could never use money I had not made honestly-I could only lend it.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)
“All my life I have been intensely repelled by the idea of 'making an effort'. I hate this idea today as much as I did as a child. I don't know why I hate it so much; I just do.”
“All my life I have been passionately interested in monomaniacs of any kind, people carried away by a single idea. The more one limits oneself, the closer one is to the infinite; these people, as unworldly as they seem, burrow like termites into their own particular material to construct, in miniature, a strange and utterly individual image of the world.”
“All my life I have been reading romance novels. Those stupid books ruined me. I've always wanted that fire that every book I ever read talks about.”
“All my life, I have been searching for a home," the drow said quietly. "All my life, I have been wanting more than that which was offered to me, more than Menzoberranzan, more than friends who stood beside me out of personal gain. I always thought home would be a place, and indeed it is, but not in any physical sense. It is a place in here," Drizzt said, putting a hand to his heart and turning back to look upon his companions. "It is a feeling given by true friends.
I know this now, and know that I am home."
"But ye're off to Carradoon," Cattie-brie said softly.
"And so're we!" Bruenor bellowed.
Drizzt smiled at them, laughed aloud. "If circumstances will not allow me to remain at home," the ranger said firmly, "then I will simply take my home with me!”
Source: Passage to Dawn
“All my life I have been seeking to climb out of the pit of my besetting sins and I cannot do it and I never will unless a hand is let down to draw me up.”
“All my life I have been taught to take the high road and never to dignify salacious or false accusations and I have been taught never, never to lie.”
“All my life I have been trying to improve my German.
At last my German is better
—but now I am old and ill and don’t have long to live.
Soon I will be dead,
with better German.”
“All my life I have been trying to learn to read, to see and hear, and to write.”
Source: The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg
“All my life I have been trying to learn, to read, to see and hear, and to write. At sixty-five I began my first novel and after the five years, lacking a month, I took to finish it, I was still traveling, still a seeker.”
Source: The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg
“All my life I have dealt with objective matters; hence I lack both the natural aptitude and the experience to deal properly with people and to carry out official functions.”
Source: The Ultimate Quotable Einstein
“All my life I have dreamed of you.”
Source: Sapphique
“All my life I have fought corruption.”
“All my life I have generally avoided my neighbors. If I happen to encounter one of them I immediately move somewhere else.”
Source: In Mr. Lublin's Store
“All my life I have gone out on a limb, but I have turned the limb into a bridge, and there is cool, clear water flowing under.”
Source: Fire in the Rain- Singer in the Storm: An Autobiography
“All my life I have had a certain idea of France.”
“All my life I have had a choice of hate and love. I chose love and I am here”
“All my life I have had a passionate desire to understand how our universe works. Why are our lives the way they are? Why is there so much suffering in life? Is there a larger intelligence operating in the universe, and if so, toward what end? What is the purpose and project of existence? In our culture's current materialist paradigm that reduces everything to physical matter, these questions are considered beyond the pale of genuine knowledge, and attempts to answer them are seen as being purely speculative enterprises. In my sessions, however, I was given the opportunity to explore these questions in exercises of profound experiential instruction choreographed by a vast intelligence. I was shown things that stunned and transfixed me, was allowed to experience things that completely reframed my understanding of existence.
What philosopher could turn down such an opportunity?
As this journey deepened, I found myself entering a spiraling love affair with this intelligence, a Being so vast I can only describe it using the vocabulary of the Divine even while the sessions themselves were repeatedly demonstrating how limited and childlike our historical conceptions of the Divine have been. I agree with Jonathan Goldman who in speaking of ayahuasca said, "The rituals of the Daime are not meant to be an 'experience,' but rather to provide a chance to interact intimately with a Divine Being of unimaginable intelligence, compassion, clarity, and spiritual power."* I do not know the limits of this Being and I hesitate to even call it a "Being" at all. As I have experienced it, it is the fabric of existence itself. I think of it as the generative intelligence of our universe, the Mind of the Cosmos-both transcendent source and manifest body of existence, beyond all categories of He or She yet infinitely more than any It.
Knowing that I could sustain the deepest intimacy with this intelligence for only a few hours on any given day and that I had no control over which session would become one of these magical days, I kept driving forward. When the communion opened, it was so intense that at the end of the day I would feel supremely fulfilled and at the same time achingly bereaved because I could not stay with my Beloved.
Everyone must choose a name for the Absolute, a title that approximates its truth, power, and beauty. Though I will use many terms to describe it in this book, in my heart of hearts I call it my Beloved. Once held in her embrace, once dissolved into her radiant splendor, I was hers forever. I will be hers until my last breath and after still. If my description tilts toward the feminine, it is because of two things-the specific story of creation that emerged on this journey and the love that reuniting with this reality awakened within me.”
Source: LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven
“All my life I have had an awareness of other times and places. I have been aware of other persons in me. Oh, and trust me, so have you, my reader that is to be. Read back into your childhood, and this sense of awareness I speak of will be remembered as an experience of childhood. You were then not fixed, not crystallized. You were plastic, a soul in flux, a consciousness and an identity in the process of forming--ay, of forming and forgetting.”
Source: Jack London on Adventure: Words of Wisdom from an Expert Adventurer
“All my life I have had the utmost admiration for suicides. I have always considered them superior to me in every way.”
“All my life I have hated and despised alto! ... From a boy it has affected me very strangely. That's why I hate Sunday. People will sing alto on Sunday that would never dream of singing it any other time.”
“All my life I have lied. I lied to escape, I lied to be loved, I lied for placement and power; I lied to lie. It was a way of living; lies are life's almost-anagram.”
Source: Shroud
“All my life I have lived and behaved very much like the sandpiper - just running down the edges of different countries and continents, 'looking for something'.”
“All my life I have lived within the very hours of the hands of love.”
“All my life I have longed to be alone in a place like this. Even when everything was going well, as it often did. I can say that much. That it often did. I have been lucky. But even then, for instance in the middle of an embrace and someone whispering words in my ear I wanted to hear, I could suddenly get a longing to be in a place where there was only silence. Years might go by and I did not think about it, but that does not mean that I did not long to be there. And now I am here, and it is almost exactly as I had imagined it.”
Source: Out Stealing Horses
“All my life I have longed to have a loving relationship that would last a lifetime.”
“All my life I have made it a rule never to permit a religious man or woman take for granted that his or her religious beliefs deserved more consideration than non-religious beliefs or anti-religious ones. I never agree with that foolish statement that I ought to respect the views of others when I believe them to be wrong.”
“All my life I have painted pictures so that certain people would drop dead when they looked at them, but I have not succeeded yet. The worst painting cant hurt you, but a bad driver can kill you, a bad judge can send you to the chair, a bad politician can ruin an entire country, That is why even a bad painting is sacred.”
“All my life I have placed great store in civility and good manners, practices I find scarce among the often hard-edged, badly socialized scientists with whom I associate. Tone of voice means a great deal to me in the course of debate. I despise the arrogance and doting self-regard so frequently found among the very bright.”
“All my life I have prayed to God that I should remain religiously orthodox, culturally conservative, politically liberal and economically pragmatic.”
“All my life I have preserved in the depths of my heart a live faith in my Creator, the Defender of the World, in His Sanctifying Grace and in the expiatory sacrifice of Christ our Saviour, but never have I agreed that true religion demands outward manifestations.”
“All my life I have refused to be for or against parties, for or against nations, for or against people. I never seek novelty or the eccentric; I do not go from land to land to contrast civilizations. I seek only, wherever I go, for symbols of greatness, and as I have already said, they may be found in the eyes of a child, in the movement of a gladiator, in the heart of a gypsy, in twilight in Ireland or in moonrise over the deserts. To hold the spirit of greatness is in my mind what the world was created for. The human body is beautiful as this spirit shines through, and art is great as it translates and embodies this spirit.”
Source: The Art Spirit
“All my life I have regarded myself as one of Mozart's greatest admirers, and I will remain one until my last breath.”
“All my life I have risen regularly at four o'clock and have gone into the woods and talked to God. There He gives me my orders for the day.”
“All my life I have said, "Whatever happens there will always be tables and chairs"--and what a mistake.”
Source: The Mulberry Tree
“All my life I have struggled to make one authentic gesture.”
“All my life I have struggled with making decisions—which I blame on being a true Libra—”
Source: Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years
“All my life I have studies the peculiar powers of music. It has a force of its own that few would deny.”
Source: The Eight
“All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind.”
“All my life I have wanted to skate, and all my life I have skated.”
Source: Wings on my feet
“All my life I have worked to be able to earn my living, but I thought that one could do good painting without attracting attention to one's private life. Certainly, an artist wishes to raise himself intellectually as much as possible, but the man must remain obscure. The pleasure must be found in the work.”
“All my life I just wanted to be a beatnik. Meet all the heavies, get stoned, get laid, have a good time. That's all I ever wanted. Except I knew I had a good voice and I could always get a couple of beers off of it. All of a sudden someone threw me in this rock 'n' roll band. They threw these musicians at me, man, and the sound was coming from behind. The bass was charging me. And I decided then and there that that was it. I never wanted to do anything else. It was better than it had been with any man, you know. Maybe that's the trouble.”