A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“A few days ago I was at a private ball given by Mr Ashburnham. As my mother never goes out she entrusted me to the care of Lady Greville who did me the honour of calling for me in her way and of allowing me to sit forwards, which is a favour about which I am very indifferent especially as I know it is considered as conferring a great obligation on me. 'So Miss Maria' (said her Ladyship as she saw me advancing to the door of the carriage) 'you seem very smart tonight - My poor girls will appear quite to disadvantage by you - I only hope your mother may not have distressed herself to set you off. Have you a new gown on?'
'Yes Ma'am,' replied I with as much indifference as I could assume.
'Aye, and a fine one too I think -' (feeling it, as by her permission I seated myself by her) 'I dare say it is all very smart - But I must own, for you know I always speak my mind, that I think it was quite a needless piece of expense - Why could you not have worn your old striped one? It is not my way to find fault with people because they are poor, for I always think that they are more to be despised and pitied than blamed for it, especially if they cannot help it, but at the same time I must say that in my opinion your old striped gown would have been quite fine enough for its wearer - for to tell you the truth (( always speak my mind) I am very much afraid that one half of the people in the room will not know whether you have a gown on or not - but I suppose you intend to make your fortune tonight -: Well, the sooner the better; and I wish you success.'
'Indeed, Ma'am, I have no such intention -'
'Who ever heard a young lady own that she was a fortune-hunter?' Miss Greville laughed, but I am sure Ellen felt for me.
'Was you mother gone to bed before you left her?' said her Ladyship -
'Dear Ma'am, ' said Ellen, 'it is but nine o'clock.'
'True, Ellen, but candles cost money, and Mrs Williams is too wise to be extravagant.'
'She was just sitting down to supper, Ma'am -'
'And what had she got for Supper?' 'I did not observe.'
'Bread and cheese I suppose.' 'I should never wish for a better supper,' said Ellen. 'You have never any reason' replied her mother, 'as a better is always provided for you.' Miss Greville laughed excessively, as she constantly does at her mother's wit.”
“a few days ago she had been wandering around with a swatch of black silk tied over her eyes. Syrio was teaching her to see with her ears and her nose and her skin, she told him. Before that, he had her doing spinds and back flips. "Arya, are you certain you want to persist in this?" She nodded. "Tomorrow we're going to catch cats." "Cats." Ned sighed.”
Source: A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle: A Song of Ice and Fire Series: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, and A Feast for Crows
“A few days ago Tan Casipo said to me, 'Some people come here with so much dust in their eyes it's unbearable to talk to them.' What does that say about the monkhood? He can't tolerate people with 'dust in their eyes.' All that these monks have developed here is a safe little self-centred world which they call holy because villagers bow down to them. Living in a forest and wearing a robe doesn't make you better than anybody else.”
“A few days back someone sent me two feathers. Two bird's feathers in a sheet of note-paper with a coronet, and fastened with a seal. Sent from a place a long way off; from one who need not have sent them back at all. That amused me too, those devilish green feathers.”
Source: Pan
“A few days before finals, I sat for an hour with my friend Josh in an empty classroom. He was reviewing his applications for law school. I was choosing my courses for the next semester.
"If you were a woman," I asked, "would you still study law?"
Josh didn't look up. "If I were a woman," he said, "I wouldn't *want* to study it."
"But you've talked about nothing except law school for as long as I've known you," I said. "It's your dream, isn't it?"
"It is," he admitted. "But it wouldn't be if I were a woman. Women are made differently. They don't have this ambition. Their ambition is for children." He smiled at me as if knew what he was talking about. And I did. I smile, and for a few seconds we were in agreement.
Then: "But what if you were a woman, and somehow you felt exactly as you do now?"
Josh's eyes fixed on the wall for a moment. He was really thinking about it. Then he said, "I'd know something was wrong with me.”
Source: Educated
“A few days before the [Mr. America] contest we heard rumors about a man who had throngs of people following him along the Lake Michigan Beach front, and we couldn't imagine who could draw crowds by merely walking along the beach!”
“A few days before the club, Stevie and Erin produced the wares of their dumpster dives. New potatoes, udon noodles, shiitake mushrooms, raspberry doughnuts, baked meringues, feta cheese, frozen peas, farfalle pasta, tomato puree, tinned salmon, plus a load of day-old radishes.
"The most important part of any dumpster dive," Erin said, moving her hand expansively over the food, "is showing off what you have found."
I processed the food as she'd taught me: cleaning the packaging with diluted bleach and soaking the vegetables in a vinegar-water solution. In the large chrome restaurant kitchen, I spread it all out across the counter and thought about what I'd make. We had bought just one extra ingredient: enormous cuts of T-bone steak. We thought red meat should be a prerequisite for all Supper Clubs. An element of spontaneity had also been agreed on, with no set menu, no dietary requirements- just eat whatever's in front of you and be sure to eat it all. The plan was to spend all night at the restaurant, waiting hours between courses.
I made grilled potatoes and spiced salmon for the first course. I roasted radishes and topped them with crumbled feta for the second. Cold noodle salad with shiitake mushrooms and peas for the third, and T-bone steaks cooked rare, with a side of garlic-tomato pasta, for the main course. For dessert I made a strange sort of Eton mess, with chunks of torn doughnuts and smashed meringue covered in cream and sugar.”
Source: Supper Club
“A few days later, as I was going through the messages on my answering machine, I heard over the speaker, “I’M FREE! I’M FREE! I’M FREE!” It was the woman who had been an alcoholic for all those years, and God had set her free in an instant. When we choose to follow the prompting of the Holy Spirit, He can do more in five seconds than we can do in twenty-five years.”
Source: Upon Them All: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Purpose: True Stories to Ignite Your Faith.
“A few days later, Dad was able to walk around, but he had no appetite, and his hands still trembled. I told Mom that maybe I had made a terrible mistake, but Mom said sometimes you have to get sicker before you can get better. Within a few more days, Dad seemed almost normal, except that he d become tentative, even kind of shy. He smiled at us kids a lot and squeezed our shoulders, sometimes leaning on us to steady himself. ‘I wonder what life will be like now,’ I said to Lori. ‘The same,’ she said. ‘He tried stopping before, but it never lasted.’ ‘This time it will.’ ‘How do you know?’ ‘It’s his present to me.”
Source: The Glass Castle
“A few days later, I waited outside Dr. Brandenberg's door and realized that I was tired of excusing the medical community for "not knowing anything about multiples." MPD had been recognized as a disorder for at least a hundred years. It had been brought to the attention of the professional and public communities through Three Faces of Eve in the 1950s and again by Sybil in the 1970s. Literature related to the disorder had snowballed in the clinical journals.
I could understand that not every mental-health professional had treated a case, but I couldn't accept that mental-health professionals knew so little about it. At the very least, the doctors had access to the journals that had provided Jo with her wealth of information on the topic.”
Source: The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality
“A few days later it was the turn of the "Caviar" of the class. Three boys, Reutter, Müller and Frank, were known by this sobriquet because they kept strictly to themselves in the belief that they, and they alone among us, were destined to make their mark in the world.”
Source: The King Must Die / The Bull from the Sea
“A few days later she sent him a two page, single-spaced, typewritten letter preaching to him about the Catholic stand on premarital sex, and especially condemning the use of that horrendous tool of the devil, the seed-killing prophylactic. Don't worry. Those facetious words weren't hers. I paraphrased. This boy was more browbeaten by mommy than Norman Bates.”
Source: The Price of Dick
“A few days later, Tuesday quietly crossed our apartment as I read a book and, after a nudge against my arm, put his head on my lap. As always, I immediately checked my mental state, trying to assess what was wrong. I knew a change in my biorhythms had brought Tuesday over, because he was always monitoring me, but I couldn't figure out what it was. Breathing? Okay. Pulse? Normal. Was I glazed or distracted? Was I lost in Iraq? Was a dark period descending? I didn't think so, but I knew something must be wrong, and I was starting to worry...until I looked into Tuesday's eyes. They were staring at me softly from under those big eyebrows, and there was nothing in them but love.”
Source: Until Tuesday: A Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who Saved Him
“A few days later, I found my mother beneath the tree, motionless with excitement, her head turned toward the heavens in which she would allow human religions no place.”
“A few decades later, machines will become independent, but humans will still need machines.”
Source: Quantraz
“A few diaries could replace tons of self help books simply because their written in the first person...”
“A few Disney TV composers had me pinch-hit writing some scoring cues to picture. Disney tapped me to be the composer for the underscore and song producer for this new show called "Phineas and Ferb."There is nothing like a successful animated show to get your chops up. You have to do every style - action, adventure, romantic, suspense, spy, poignant, rock, funk, big band - delivered on a deadline.”
“A few doors away was the Baptist Church, and as I walked towards it I began to think that people didn't want me to share their church. As I walked through the Baptist door I was tense, waiting for that tap on the shoulder…but instead I was given a hymn book and welcomed into the church. I sat through the service…This up and down treatment wasn't doing my nerves much good.”
“A few drinks and the world was hers—
she wore her whiskey like a loaded gun.”
Source: Love Her Wild
“A few drinks later you're not so choosy when the closing lights strip off the shadows on this strange new flesh you've found.”
“A few drops sprinkled on the torch of love make the flame blaze the brighter.”
Source: Ivanhoe: a romance
“A few dud universes can really clutter up your basement.”
“A few fat files are better than a lot of thin ones.”
“A few feathery flakes are scattered widely through the air, and hover downward with uncertain flight, now almost alighting on the earth, now whirled again aloft into remote regions of the atmosphere.”
Source: Tales and sketches
“A few feeble words can ignite a miracle.”
“A few feet of pine boards and thousand miles of heartache gaped between them: hurts they'd given to each other, and hurts they carried all by themselves, because at some point...at some point they had become more apart than they were together. And somehow Junior could know Jean-Louise better than he knew himself, love her better than himself, and still keep his deepest pains locked away from her.
Sometimes, it occurred to him that she might do the same.”
Source: Children of Promise
“A few feet under the ground reigns so profound a silence, and yet so much tumult on the surface!”
“A few fires flickered, plumes of dark smoke marring the ruby sky.”
Source: A Court of Thorns and Roses
“A few flat clouds folded themselves like crepes over fillings of apricot sky. Pompadours of supper-time smoke billowed from chimneys, separating into girlish pigtails as the breeze combed them out, above the slate rooftops. Chestnut blossoms, weary from having been admired all day, wore faint smiles of anticipation.”
“A few fly bites cannot stop a spirited horse.”
“A few friends are real treasures, without whom, life would become meaningless.”
Source: Why the Silhouette?
“A few generations living and dying without a sky, and enclosed spaces lost the atavistic terror of premature burial.”
Source: Cibola Burn
“A few good compliments produce a wealth of good and often financial benefits.”
“A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us worthy of using it.”
Source: The substance of man
“A few Grik lunged at them, but the vast majority only wanted to get out of their way. These they left alone, conserving ammunition. It was a little disconcerting. They’d never seen so many “civilian” Grik before, and it was stunning how little fight they had in them.
“What a buncha pansies!” Silva panted, still having trouble with the heavy, wretched air. Three Grik had nearly fallen over themselves trying to clear his path when he menaced them with the Thompson. Its barrel was still smoking after a long burst he fired down a congested alley where another column of warriors was struggling to get at them. Those that followed fired into the writhing mass as well, the heavy booming of their rifles much louder than the stutter of the Thompson.
“Pansies!” Petey cawed. “Pansies! Ack! Goddamn!”
Source: Deadly Shores
“A few guys will get up there with turntables as purists, to play vinyl or whatever.”
“A few have become acquainted with Orwell’s 1984; because it is both difficult to obtain and dangerous to possess, it is known only to certain members of the Inner Party. Orwell fascinates them through his insight into details they know well, and through his use of Swiftian satire. Such a form of writing is forbidden by the New Faith because allegory, by nature manifold in meaning, would trespass beyond the prescriptions of socialist realism and the demands of the censor. Even those who know Orwell only by hearsay are amazed that a writer who never lived in Russia should have so keen a perception into its life.”
“A few heart-whole, sincere, and energetic men and women can do more in a year than a mob in a century.”
“A few hints as to the craft may be useful to budding historians. First and foremost, get writing!”
“A few honest men are better than numbers.”
“A few hours ago, the prospect of disappointing someone, especially Calla Thorn, would have sent her into a spiral of panic and self-loathing. She knew that about herself. Her therapist had pointed it out multiple times. Recognizing the pattern was supposed to be the first step to combating it, though most of the time it just meant she was panicked, full of self-loathing, AND acutely aware of how irrational it all was.”
Source: Fire with Fire
“A few hours later, the five-year-old girl who'd presented with diarrhea, weight loss, and terrible stomach cramping was throwing up a foot-long worm into a bucket and looking very pleased with herself. She spoke not a word of English but kept pointing to herself then the worm then herself and grinning. Her mother, who also spoke not a word of English, was doing the same, gesticulating wildly back and forth between daughter and worm, but her face wore the opposite expression. She was not screaming in a language Rosie knew, but she understood clear as lagoons anyway the mother's horror of his worm that had lately come out of her little girl. If they'd spoken the same language, Rosie would have laid her hand on the woman's shoulder to commiserate: Oh the things that hide secretly in our children, lying in wait, doing untold damage, yearning to be free. Alarming us beyond all measure.”
Source: This Is How It Always Is
“A few hours of mountain climbing make a blackguard and a saint two rather similar creatures.”
Source: Human, All-Too-Human: Parts One and Two
“A few hours of reading will never protect you from your own bad decisions.”
Source: Scaling Force: Dynamic Decision Making Under Threat of Violence
“A few hours spent reading a book is better than a lifetime of ignorance.”
“a few hours with Beethoven are more restful than sleep.”
“A few hours' mountain climbing make of a rogue and a saint two fairly equal creatures. Tiredness is the shortest path to equality and fraternity - and sleep finally adds to them liberty.”
Source: Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits
“A few hundred years ago there were no differences between magic and medicine.”
“A few hundred years ago, perhaps 85 or even 90 percent of humanity lived below a standard of living that today only 40 or 45 percent fail to reach. But at that earlier time only part of this poverty could have been eradicated, and this at substantial cost not only to the pleasures of the affluent, but also to their well-being and to human culture. In our time, nearly all severe poverty could be eradicated at a cost to the affluent that is truly trivial.”
“A few ideas seem to be agreed upon. Help none but those who help themselves. Educate only at schools which provide in some form for industrial education. These two points should be insisted upon. Let the normal instruction be that men must earn their own living, and that by the labor of their hands as far as may be. This is the gospel of salvation for the colored man. Let the labor not be servile, but in manly occupations like that of the carpenter, the farmer, and the blacksmith.”