A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act which deprived a whole nation of arms as the blackest.”
“Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.”
Source: My Experiments with Truth: An Autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi
“Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. If we want the Arms Act to be repealed, if we want to learn the use of arms, here is a golden opportunity. If the middle classes render voluntary help to Government in the hour of its trial, distrust will disappear, and the ban on possessing arms will be withdrawn.”
Source: My Experiments With Truth: An Autobiography
“Among the many problems which beset the novelist, not the least weighty is the choice of the moment at which to begin his novel.”
Source: Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings
“Among the many problems with taking the Bible literally is it reduces the most mysterious and complex of realities to simple - even simplistic - terms. Yes, scripture speaks of fire and damnation and eternal bliss, but the Bible is the product of human hands and hearts, and much of the imagery is allegorical, not meteorological.”
“Among the many reasons assignable for the sad decay of true Christianity, perhaps the neglecting to assemble ourselves together, in religious societies, may not be one of the least.”
Source: Sermons of George Whitefield
“Among the many short cuts to science, we badly need someone to teach us the art of learning with difficulty.”
Source: Emile, or On Education
“Among the many signs of a lively faith and hope we have in eternal life, one of the surest is not being overly sad at the death of those whom we dearly love in our Lord.”
“Among the many strange servilities mistaken for pieties, one of the least lovely is that which hopes to flatter God by despising the world, and vilifying human nature.”
Source: Problems of Life and Mind
“Among the many subjects which interested me, I dwelt especially upon antiquity, for our own age has always repelled me, so that, had it not been for the love of those dear to me, I should have preferred to place myself in spirit in other ages, and consequently I delighted in history.”
“Among the many things that I showed Sir John [Herschel] while at Hammerfield, was a piece of white calico on which I had got printed one million spots. This was for the purpose of exhibiting one million in visible form. In astronomical subjects a million is a sort of unit, and it occurred to me to show what a million really is. Sir John was delighted and astonished at the sight. He went carefully over the outstretched piece with his rule, measured its length and breadth, and verified its correctness.”
Source: James Nasmyth, Engineer: An Autobiography
“Among the many things that made the Professor an excellent teacher was the fact that he wasn't afraid to say 'we don't know.' For the Professor, there was no shame in admitting you didn't have the answer, it was a necessary step toward the truth. It was as important to teach us about the unknown or the unknowable as it was to teach us what had already been safely proven.”
Source: The Housekeeper and the Professor
“Among the many things that Man is capable of, one is self-destruction.”
Source: Super Dense Crush Load: The Story of Man Redux
“Among the many things that profoundly impress me about the Dalai Lama, quite high up on the list is his ability to say "I don't know". I've often wished that other people in prominent positions wouldn't feel the compulsion to have an answer for everything and would feel equally free to say "I don't know." It's a sign of wisdom to know that you don't know and a sign of stupidity to think that you know everything. I admire it enormously in him, and wonder why so few people in leading positions reach that stage.”
“Among the many vital jobs to be done, the nation must not only radically readjust its attitude toward the Negro in the compelling present, but must incorporate in its planning some compensatory consideration for the handicaps he has inherited from the past. It is impossible to create a formula for the future which does not take into account that our society has been doing something special against the Negro for hundreds of years. How then can he be absorbed into the mainstream of American life if we do not do something special for him now, in order to balance the equation and equip him to compete on a just and equal basis?
Whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man is entered at the starting line in a race three hundred years after another man, the first would have to perform some impossible feat in order to catch up with his fellow runner.”
Source: Why We Can't Wait
“Among the many worlds which man did not receive as a gift of nature, but which he created with his own mind, the world of books is the greatest. Every child, scrawling his first letters on his slate and attempting to read for the first time, in so doing, enters an artificial and complicated world; to know the laws and rules of this world completely and to practice them perfectly, no single human life is long enough. Without words, without writing, and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity. And if anyone wants to try to enclose in a small space in a single house or single room, the history of the human spirit and to make it his own, he can only do this in the form of a collection of books.”
Source: My Belief
“Among the masked dandies of Edwardian comedy, Max Beerbohm is the most happily armored by a deep and almost innocent love of himself as a work of art.”
Source: A Man of Letters: Selected Essays
“Among the men who fought on Iwo Jima, uncommon valor was a common virtue.”
“Among the millions of nerve cells that clothe parts of the brain there runs a thread. It is the thread of time, the thread that has run through each succeeding wakeful hour of the individual.”
“Among the minor, yet striking characteristics of mathematics, may be mentioned the fleshless and skeletal build of its propositions; the peculiar difficulty, complication, and stress of its reasonings; the perfect exactitude of its results; their broad universality; their practical infallibility.”
Source: Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce
“Among the monsters, I am well hidden; who looks for a leaf in a forest?”
Source: Nights at the circus
“Among the more irritating consequences of our flagrantly religious society is the special dispensation that mainstream religions receive. We all may talk about religion as a powerful social force, but unlike other similarly powerful institutions, religion is not to be questioned, criticized or mocked.”
“Among the more outspoken and intrepid travelers emerged the paradox of the antifeminist feminist: women who saw no need to change the legal status, as they had never met an obstacle they could not overcome.”
Source: Dreaming of East: Western Women and the Exotic Allure of the Orient
“Among the more troubling trends of twenty-first-century American politics is the normalization of every election as the existential one, the one upon whose results rests the very survival of American democracy. In one way or another, there is some truth to this claim. Almost without fail, whatever deranged position sat on the periphery of the Republican Party a decade ago now resides in the center. Does anyone truly believe the same party, in another decade's time, will be more moderate and reasonable?”
Source: One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
“Among the Mormons, things temporal have always been important along with things eternal, for salvation in this world and the next is seen as one and the same continuing process of endless growth. Building Zion, a literal Kingdom of God on earth, has therefore meant an identity of religious and economic values: in the daily affairs of the Kingdom, Latter-day Saint scriptures call for unity, welfare, and economic independence.”
“Among the most accessible of writers on this subject is the systems theorist Ervin Laszlo. Many of his seminal ideas, articulated with the average reader in mind, come together in his description of the ‘Akashic field’, the interactive realm of quantum fluctuations, culminating in a supercoherent state empowering all structures in creation, whether atoms, organisms, or galaxies. Laszlo goes on to raise a crucial question, central to the deliberations of this book. ‘Could it be that our consciousness is linked with other consciousnesses through an inter-connecting Akashic field, much as galaxies are linked in the cosmos quanta in the microworld, and organisms in the world of the living?’ The link with contemporary brain studies is informatively reviewed by Wallace.”
Source: Ancestral Grace: Meeting God in Our Human Story
“Among the most compelling truths in some of the early photographs is their implication of silence.”
Source: Why People Photograph: Selected Essays and Reviews
“Among the most disheartening and dangerous of . . . advisors, you will often find those closest to you, your dearest friends, members of your own family, perhaps, loving, anxious, and knowing nothing whatever . . .”
Source: Mrs. Fiske: Her Views on Actors, Acting, and the Problems of Production
“Among the most famous of these Supreme Court cases of exercise of political power I believe are the cases of Roe V. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, two 1973 cases based on false statements which created a constitutional right to abortion.”
“Among the most inestimable of our blessings is that ... of liberty to worship our Creator in the way we think most agreeable to His will; a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government and yet proved by our experience to be its best support.”
Source: The Real Thomas Jefferson
“Among the most joyful people I have known have been some who seem to have had no human reason for joy. The sweet fragrance of Christ has shown through their lives.”
“Among the most remarkable features characterizing Zen we find these: spirituality, directness of expression, disregard of form or conventionalism, and frequently an almost wanton delight in going astray from respectability.”
“Among the most striking things that I have learned is how much we have in common. I've sat down with people everywhere, discussing what was in their hearts and on their minds. And it doesn't take long to find commonality, which is often overlooked, ignored, dismissed, and rejected otherwise.”
“Among the most urgent political priorities of our age is the separation of economy and state.”
“Among the most valuable but least appreciated experiences parenthood can provide are the opportunities it offers for exploring, reliving, and resolving one's own childhood problems in the context of one's relation to one's child.”
“Among the multitudes will be found many who cannot discriminate between what is merely wanted and what is needed, what is necessary for bare subsistence and what is indispensable for the sake of the freedom and clarity of one's higher powers.”
“Among the myrtles the mantids moved, lightly, carefully, swaying slightly, the quintessence of evil. They were lank and green, with chinless faces and monstrous globular eyes, frosty gold, with an expression of intense, predatory madness in them. The crooked arms, with their fringes of sharp teeth, would be raised in mock supplication to the insect world, so humble, so fervent, trembling slightly when a butterfly flew too close.”
“Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.”
Source: Samuel Adams: selections from his writings
“Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; second, to liberty; third, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of ... the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature. All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and ernter into another.... Now what liberty can there be where property is taken away without consent?”
“Among the New Hollanders whom we were thus engaged with, there was one who by his appearance and carriage, as well in the morning as this afternoon, seemed to be the chief of them, and a kind of prince or captain among them.”
Source: A New Voyage Round the World
“Among the notable things about fire is that it also requires oxygen to burn - exactly like its enemy, life. Thereby are life and flames so often compared.”
“Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.”
Source: The Federalist
“Among the numerous luxuries of the table...coffee may be considered as one of the most valuable. It excites cheerfulness without intoxication; and the pleasing flow of spirits which it occasions...is never followed by sadness, languor or debility.”
“Among the numerous pleasures of Vienna the hotel evenings are famous. During supper Strauss or Lanner play waltzes...After every waltz they get huge applause; and if they play a Quodlibet, or jumble of opera, song and dance, the hearers are so overjoyed that they don't know what to do with themselves. It shows the corrupt taste of the Viennese public.”
“Among the numerous requisites that must concur to complete an author, few are of more importance than an early entrance into the living world. The seed of knowledge may be planted in solitude, but must be cultivated in public. Argumentation may be taught in colleges, and theories formed in retirement; but the artifice of embellishment and the powers of attraction can be gained only by a general converse.”
Source: Selected poetry and prose
“Among the numerous stratagems by which pride endeavors to recommend folly to regard, there is scarcely one that meets with less success than affectation, or a perpetual disguise of the real character by fictitious appearances.”
Source: The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An Essay on His Life and Genius
“Among the older records, we find chapter after chapter of which we can read the characters, and make out their meaning: and as we approach the period of man's creation, our book becomes more clear, and nature seems to speak to us in language so like our own, that we easily comprehend it. But just as we begin to enter on the history of physical changes going on before our eyes, and in which we ourselves bear a part, our chronicle seems to fail us-a leaf has been torn out from nature's record, and the succession of events is almost hidden from our eyes.”
Source: A complete guide to the Lakes, comprising minute directions for the tourist, with mr. Wordsworth's Description of the scenery of the country, &c. and Three letters upon the geology of the Lake district, by prof. Sedgwick
“Among the organizational means that humans have used to commit aggression against each other, those recognized as governments have been by far the most harmful. However they have not been the only institutional instruments of aggression. Other institutions – churches, corporations, groups such as the mafia and the narco-cartels, etc. – have also committed aggression on a scale that exceeds the individual capacity for evil. Although they did not call themselves governments, one could say they acted governmentally. Meanwhile, though rarely, some governments have mostly left people in peace. Therefore I say that government is as government does.”
“Among the papers and refuse swirled about by the wind were a few verses of La Bella Gigugin transformed into a kind a f Arab wail, a fare to which any gay tune sung in Sicily is bound to succumb.”
Source: The Leopard
“Among the people, it was believed, as late as the present century, that spirits were imprisoned in statues. The statue of Neptune by Ammanati in the fountain of the Piazza della Signoria is called 'Il Biancone' or 'The Great White Man' by the poor people, who used to say that he was the mighty river god of the Arno tuned into statue because, like Michelangelo, he spurned the love of women. When the full moon shines on him, so the story goes, he comes to life and walks about the Piazza conversing with the other statues. Michelangelo's 'David', before it became a statue, used to be known as 'The Giant'. It was a great block of marble eighteen feet high that had been spoiled by Agostino di Duccio; personified by popular fancy, it lay for forty years in the workshops of the Cathedral, until Michelangelo made the Giant-Killer, that is, into a patriotic image of a small country defeating its larger foes. Giants, it was related, had built the great Etruscan stone wall of Fiesole, and many stories were told in Florence of beautiful maidens being turned into pure white marble statues.”