A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Almost everything that I behold in this wonderful country bears traces of improvement and reform - everything except Pie.”
“Almost everything that I've ever worried about has never happened ..”
Source: Your Simple Path - Find Happiness in every step.
“Almost everything that is great has been done by youth.”
Source: Coningsby, etc
“Almost everything that's happened in my poetry is what you might call organic. I don't do much preconceiving. The only consistent plan I've ever had is to try to break my patterns, my habits, my kneejerk tendencies in writing. If I start to sound too much like the Ron Padgett that I've read before, I stop myself. I don't want to get locked perpetually in a mode or a level of diction or a stylistic vein - what is called a poetic voice.”
“Almost everything The Beatles did was great, and it's hard to improve on. They were our Bach. The way to get around it may be to keep it as simple as possible.”
“Almost everything Truman did in foreign affairs I approve of.”
“Almost everything we do is automatic, yet we're not aware of that. We feel like there's a circle of light. We're like the drunk who lost his keys and is looking under the streetlight, and the cop says, "Where'd you lose your keys?" You say, "Back in the alley, but the light's so much better over here." The divided self refers to the fact that we are basically animals with animal brains. These animal brains run our lives. They're very good at it.”
“Almost everything we'll ever do in life that is really powerful, that really produces a result in our lives, that quantum-leaps us to a new level . . . requires us to do something uncomfortable. It takes risks to achieve. It's often scary. It requires something you didn't know before or a skill you didn't have before. But in the end, it's worth it. As former Congressman Ed Forman says, 'Winners are those people who make a habit of doing things losers are uncomfortable doing.' Make today your day to start that uncomfortable new habit.”
“Almost everything we'll ever do in life that is really powerful, that really produces a result in our lives, that quantum-leaps us to a new level... requires us to do something uncomfortable.”
“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”
“Almost everything worth doing in human life is very difficult in its early stages and the good we are aiming at is never available at first, to strengthen us when we seem to need it most.”
“Almost everything worthwhile carries with it some sort of risk, whether it's starting a new business, whether it's leaving home, whether it's getting married, or whether it's flying in space.”
“Almost everything worthwhile carries with it some sort of risk.”
“Almost everything wrong with our health care system comes from government interference with the free market. If the health care system is broken, then fix it. Don't try to invent a new one premised on all the bad ideas that are causing problems in the first place.”
“Almost everything you do, you do because you are afraid to die. And yet dying is exactly what you are doing, from the moment you are born. Two hours of absorption in a good Super Bowl telecast may distract you temporarily, but the fact remains. You were born as a sacrifice. And you can either participate in the sacrifice, dissolving in the giving of your gift, or you can resist it, which is your suffering.”
“Almost everything you think is sacred, good and decent, is a lie and an all-out assault against truth and decency.”
Source: Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
“Almost everything, if one keeps one's eyes open, is potential material for painting.”
“Almost everywhere else in Europe, the more military the state, the stronger the king - except in Britain. Here it was parliament, not the monarchy, who signed the cheques. The longer the war went on, the stronger parliament became, as the purse on which it sat grew bigger and bigger.”
“Almost everywhere men have become the particular things which their particular work has made them.”
Source: PLAIN TALKS ON FAMILIAR SUBJECTS
“Almost everywhere people marry, monogamy is the official norm and infidelity the clandestine one.”
Source: The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity
“Almost everywhere we find . . . the use of various coercive measures, to rid ourselves as quickly as possible of the child withinus--i.e., the weak, helpless, dependent creature--in order to become an independent competent adult deserving of respect. When we reencounter this creature in our children, we persecute it with the same measures once used in ourselves.”
Source: For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence
“Almost everywhere, climate change denial now looks as stupid and as unacceptable as Holocaust denial.”
“Almost fifty years ago, John F. Kennedy made this appeal:
'Too many of us think [that peace] is impossible. Too many think it is unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view ... Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions - on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace; no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process - a way of solving problems.' (Close quote.)”
Source: The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts
“Almost finished my second guide book into all Truth, revealing my DNA and the amazing writings and revelations of Enoch, the earthly man who walked with God Most High, before eventually being raised from this Earth Plane alive.”
Source: The Spiritual Truth,: a Guide into all Truth.
“Almost forty-five years after my parents first became Americans, I stand before you and them tonight as the proud governor of the state of South Carolina.”
“Almost from childhood, she knew that a concentration camp was nothing exceptional or startling but something very basic, a given into which we are born and from which we can escape only with the greatest of efforts, p. 137.”
Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“Almost half of all Latinas currently on Social Security rely exclusively on their benefit check in retirement.”
“Almost half of the population of the world lives in rural regions and mostly in a state of poverty. Such inequalities in human development have been one of the primary reasons for unrest and, in some parts of the world, even violence.”
“Almost half of the Turkish population believes it is not legitimate to criticize the government. Interestingly, this correlates with the number of supporters of Erdogan's government.”
“Almost halfway down the aisle, she saw someone she wasn't expecting, and she almost stumbled on her satin heels. Kingsley Martin stood at the end of a pew, his arms crossed. He was wearing a tuxedo as well. Just like any other guest. What was he doing here? He was supposed to be in Paris! He was supposed to be gone! He looked directly at Mimi. She heard his voice loud and clear in her head. Leave him. Why should I? What do you promise me? Nothing. And everything. A life of danger and adventure. A chance to be yourself. Leave him. Come with me.”
“Almost here with me, you seem to be, you do,
every song, each sound, that’s new, is you,
almost is enough, if just for me you are,
passionate, my blood will boil for you, my star,
of you I think when raindrops pure,
make you seem like sky, or clouds, or sun, or stars; -
the stars, afar from, always shining soft,
each evening, their light is needed, for needs do come oft…”
Source: На чист Български...: Pristine Bulgarian sayings...
“Almost I feel the pulsebeat of the ages,
Now swift, now slow, beneath my fingertips.
The heartthrobs of the prophets and the sages
Beat through these bindings; and my quick hand slips
Old books from dusty shelves, in eager seeking
For truths the flaming tongues of the ancients tell;
For the words of wisdom that they still are speaking
As clearly as an echoing silver bell.
Here is the melody that lies forever
At the deep heart of living; here we keep
The accurate recorded discs that never
Can be quite silenced, though their makers sleep
The still deep sleep, so long as a seeker finds
The indelible imprint of their moving minds.”
“Almost, I thought. Out loud I said, "Just because we don't see eye to eye on everything doesn't mean we can't be close.
Auden”
“Almost immediately after jazz musicians arrived in Paris, they began to gather in two of the city’s most important creative neighborhoods: Montmartre and Montparnasse, respectively the Right and Left Bank haunts of artists, intellectuals, poets, and musicians since the late nineteenth century. Performing in these high-profile and popular entertainment districts could give an advantage to jazz musicians because Parisians and tourists already knew to go there when they wanted to spend a night out on the town. As hubs of artistic imagination and experimentation, Montmartre and Montparnasse therefore attracted the kinds of audiences that might appreciate the new and thrilling sounds of jazz. For many listeners, these locations leant the music something of their own exciting aura, and the early success of jazz in Paris probably had at least as much to do with musicians playing there as did other factors.
In spite of their similarities, however, by the 1920s these neighborhoods were on two very different paths, each representing competing visions of what France could become after the war. And the reactions to jazz in each place became important markers of the difference between the two areas and visions. Montmartre was legendary as the late-nineteenth-century capital of “bohemian Paris,” where French artists had gathered and cabaret songs had filled the air. In its heyday, Montmartre was one of the centers of popular entertainment, and its artists prided themselves on flying in the face of respectable middle-class values. But by the 1920s, Montmartre represented an established artistic tradition, not the challenge to bourgeois life that it had been at the fin de siècle. Entertainment culture was rapidly changing both in substance and style in the postwar era, and a desire for new sounds, including foreign music and exotic art, was quickly replacing the love for the cabarets’ French chansons. Jazz was not entirely to blame for such changes, of course. Commercial pressures, especially the rapidly growing tourist trade, eroded the popularity of old Montmartre cabarets, which were not always able to compete with the newer music halls and dance halls. Yet jazz bore much of the criticism from those who saw the changes in Montmartre as the death of French popular entertainment. Montparnasse, on the other hand, was the face of a modern Paris. It was the international crossroads where an ever changing mixture of people celebrated, rather than lamented, cosmopolitanism and exoticism in all its forms, especially in jazz bands. These different attitudes within the entertainment districts and their institutions reflected the impact of the broader trends at work in Paris—the influx of foreign populations, for example, or the advent of cars and electricity on city streets as indicators of modern technology—and the possible consequences for French culture. Jazz was at the confluence of these trends, and it became a convenient symbol for the struggle they represented.”
Source: Making Jazz French: Music and Modern Life in Interwar Paris
“Almost immediately, I found the red door into the library. I opened it idly- and the breath stopped in my throat. It was the same room I remembered: the shelves, the lion-footed table, the white bass-relief of Clio. But now, tendrils of dark green ivy grew between the shelves, reaching toward the books as if they were hungry to read. White mist flowed along the floor, rippling and tumbling as if blown by wind. Across the ceiling wove a network of icy ropes like tree roots. They dripped- not little droplets like the ice melting off a tree but grape-sized drops of water, like giant tears, that splashed on the table, plopped to the floor.”
Source: Cruel Beauty
“Almost immediately, reality gave ground on more than one point. The truth is that it hankered to give ground. Ten years ago, any symmetrical system whatsoever which gave the appearance of order–dialectical materialism, anti-Semitism, Nazism–was enough to fascinate men. Why not fall under the spell of Tlön and submit to the minute and vast evidence of an ordered planet? Useless to reply that reality, too, is ordered. It may be so, but in accordance with divine laws–I translate: inhuman laws–which we will never completely perceive. Tlön may be a labyrinth, but it is a labyrinth plotted by men, a labyrinth destined to be deciphered by men.
Contact with Tlön and the ways of Tlön have disintegrated this world. Captivated by its discipline, humanity forgets and goes on forgetting that it is the discipline of chess players, not of angels.”
Source: Ficciones
“Almost in the same way as earlier physicists are said to have found suddenly that they had too little mathematical understanding to be able to master physics; we may say that young people today are suddenly in the position that ordinary common sense no longer suffices to meet the strange demands life makes. Everything has become so intricate that for its mastery an exceptional degree of understanding is required. For it is not enough any longer to be able to play the game well; but the question is again and again: what sort of game is to be played now anyway?”
“Almost inconceivable is the power of a visible communion of numbers to give intensity to those feelings of the heart which usually retire into privacy, or only open themselves to the confidence of friendship. The faith in the validity of such emotions becomes irrefragable from its diffusion; we feel ourselves strong among so many associates, and all hearts and minds flow together in one great and irresistible stream. On this very account the privilege of influencing an assembled crowd is exposed to most dangerous abuses. As one may disinterestedly animate them, for the noblest and best of purposes, so another may entangle them in the deceitful meshes of sophistry, and dazzle them by the glare of a false magnanimity, whose vainglorious crimes may be painted as virtues and even as sacrifices. Beneath the delightful charms of oratory and poetry, the poison steals imperceptibly into ear and heart.”
Source: Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature
“Almost inevitably there are tensions in the picture, tensions between the outside world and the inside world. For me, a successful picture resolves these tensions without eliminating them.”
“Almost instantly [after my announcement of Parkinson's], I saw the first couple of days the coverage was about, you know, "Fox's Parkinson's, blah, blah, blah." Then, two days after that, I saw the coverage turn. It started to become, "Can young people get Parkinson's?" All of a sudden, the conversation turned to become about that. And that was one of the first eye-opening things.”
“Almost invariably there comes the question—Why did you do such a thing? Or—How could you treat me like that? If it's the man speaking he says: Let's not talk about it ... let's forget it! But the woman reacts as if she had been shocked in her vital centers, as if perhaps she might never recover from the mortal stab... she talks egotistically, but it is not the ego which prompts her reproaches—it's WOMAN.”
Source: SEXUS -The Rosy Crucifixion - Book One, Two and Three
“Almost invariably, whoever doesn't win the argument is going to be unhappy.”
“Almost is almost a way of life for almost everybody”
“Almost Kien was tempted to believe in happiness, that contemptible life-goal of illiterates. If it came of itself, without being hunted for, if you did not hold it fast by force and treated it with a certain condescension, it was permissible to endure its presence for a few days”
Source: The tower of Babel
“Almost lost you," he thought, surprised to find himself blinking back tears. "Been through too much, me and you. We're going to finish this thing together.”
“Almost makes you want to go to jail out here, doesn't it?”
“Almost means it didn’t happen, and it never will. Almost is the antithesis of hope. We almost had it all. But almost will never be enough.”
“Almost Myself
On a twilight road, I met a young man with my face.
A denizen of some distant dust devil in drifter denim.
We stood and eyed each other, then, with a look of mutual disdain, we parted.
Our backward glances were not narcissistic flirtation, but self-conscious reflection and surrender to the formality of the familiar.
Against a backdrop of veined lightning and coyote song, I was alone again.”
“Almost never does a single company have excellence in a multiplicity of disciplines.”
“Almost nine years later, I know that stars don’t burn forever, and even the brightest can shatter into a million, burning sparks before falling from the sky.”
Source: Dropping In