Quotessence
Home / Quotes / A Quotes

A Quotes

Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.

All A Quotes

“And there's wordplay and there's rhythms and you have to be able to get the poetry out of it. You have to be able to sell my jokes. And if you're talking about somebody like Sam Jackson, they do that. Sam Jackson can do that. Sam Jackson can turn it into the spoken word that it was always meant to be and he can sell my jokes. And Christopher Walken can do it and a lot of people can do it, all right.”

“And there, row upon row, with the soft gleam of flowers opened at morning, with the light of this June sun glowing through a faint skin of dust, would stand the dandelion wine. Peer through it at the wintry day - the snow melted to grass, the trees were reinhabitated with bird, leaf, and blossoms like a continent of butterflies breathing on the wind. And peering through, color sky from iron to blue. Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass, a tiny glass of course, the smallest tingling sip for children; change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in”

“And therefore I am come amongst you at this time, not as for my recreation or sport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die amongst you all; to lay down, for my God, and for my kingdom, and for my people, my honour and my blood, even the dust. I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart of a king, and of a king of England, too.”

“And therefore in geometry (which is the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind), men begin at settling the significations of their words; which settling of significations, they call definitions, and place them in the beginning of their reckoning.”

“And therefore the responsibility of raising the challenge is typically in the hands of those who recognize that they have a subordinate status. It's very hard to recognize that. I mean, people lived, you know, for millennia without recognizing that they are being subordinated in systems of power. I mean, it's true of women, for example, or slaves, you know. I mean, most slave societies were accepted by the slaves as legitimate and, in fact, necessary. And the same is true of, for example, people have jobs today in our society, almost without exception, they consider it legitimate for them to be in a position where they have to rent themselves in order to survive. That's certainly not obvious, you know. And in fact, if you go back a century ago, it was not only considered not obvious but it was considered outlandish by American working people. I'm not talking about Marxists or socialists, or anybody like that, but say, millhands in Lowell, Massachusetts, who never heard of socialism, who regarded it as a form of slavery, and were complaining that they had not fought the Civil War to replace chattel slavery by wage labor and that therefore, those who work in the mills ought to own them because that's the republican rights that we won in the American Revolution, and so on and so forth. So, you know, it's not obvious, but by now, I think, enough indoctrination and propaganda have taken place so people do regard that form of subordination to external authority as legitimate. Whether they should is another question, but the fact is they do, just as for most of history, women have accepted a subordinate role as correct and proper and so on. And slaves did, and people living in, say, feudal societies. In a feudal society, people had a place, you know, some kind of rule, and quite typically the societies were stable because people regarded those structures as legitimate. The same is true of religious structures, and I mean, throughout human life, there's a whole variety of systems of authority, and oppression, and domination, and so on, which are usually accepted as legitimate by the people subordinated to them. When they don't, you have struggles and revolutions, and sometimes changes, and sometimes brutality, and so on.”

“And therefore you who think so basely of the gospel and the professors of it, because at present their peace and comfort is not come, know it is on the way to them, and comes to stay everlastingly with them; whereas your peace is going from you every moment, and is sure to leave you without any hope of returning to you again. Look not how the Christian begins, but ends. The Spirit of God by his convictions comes into the soul with some terrors, but it closeth with peace and joy.”

“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”

“And these explanations of the sacred scriptures are delivered by mystic expressions in allegories, for the whole of the law appears to these men to resemble a living animal, and its express commandments seem to be the body, and the invisible meaning concealed under and lying beneath the plain words resembles the soul, in which the rational soul begins most excellently to contemplate what belongs to itself, as in a mirror, beholding in these very words the exceeding beauty of the sentiments, and unfolding and explaining the symbols, and bringing the secret meaning naked to the light to all who are able by the light of a slight intimation to perceive what is unseen by what is visible.”

“And these great natural rights may be reduced to three principal or primary articles: the right of personal security; the right of personal liberty; and the right of private property; because as there is no other known method of compulsion, or of abridging man's natural free will, but by an infringement or diminution of one or other of these important rights, the preservation of these, inviolate, may justly be said to include the preservation of our civil immunities in their largest and most extensive sense.”