A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“And what if---what are you if the people who are supposed to love you can leave you like you're nothing?”
Source: The Unwritten Rule
“And what impels him to repeat this process at every single lesson, and, with the same remorseless insistence, to make his pupils copy it without the least alteration? He sticks to this traditional custom because he knows from experience that the preparations for working put him simultaneously in the right frame of mind for creating. The meditative repose in which he performs them gives him that vital loosening and equability of all his powers, that collectedness and presence of mind, without which no right work can be done.”
Source: Zen in the Art of Archery
“And what importance do I have in the courtroom of oblivion?”
Source: Libro de Las Preguntas
“And what in the name of all this is disturbing did you mean when you said you're going to teach me how to Kill people?"
He snickered. "You didn't really think you were going to spend the whole summer milking cows, did you?”
Source: Croak
“And what in the name of Merlin’s most baggy Y Fronts was that about?”
“And what is 'art'? - a firestorm rushing through Time, arising from no visible source and conforming to no principles of logic or causality.”
Source: The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art
“And what is a gold medal? I'd never really thought about it before Nagano. Now I realize that it's a dream to strive for. I love my silver medal, because it stands for all my dreams and all I'm still capable of fulfilling”
“And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps.”
“And what is a kiss, specifically? A pledge properly sealed, a promise seasoned to taste, a vow stamped with the immediacy of a lip, a rosy circle drawn around the verb 'to love.' A kiss is a message too intimate for the ear, infinity captured in the bee's brief visit to a flower, secular communication with an aftertaste of heaven, the pulse rising from the heart to utter its name on a lover's lip: 'Forever.”
Source: CYRANO DE BERGERAC
“And what is a man without energy? Nothing - nothing at all.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)
“And what is a stage dad, or a stage mom? It's someone who's protective. That's all.”
“And what is an angel but a ghost in drag?”
Source: Body of Work
“And what is an authentic madman? It is a man who preferred to become mad, in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor. So society has strangled in its asylums all those it wanted to get rid of or protect itself from, because they refused to become its accomplices in certain great nastinesses. For a madman is also a man whom society did not want to hear and whom it wanted to prevent from uttering certain intolerable truths.”
Source: Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings
“And what is breath? It is the carbon dioxide and oxygen that come from the metabolism of every cell in that stranger’s body. That is what you are inhaling, just as other people are inhaling your breath. So we are all constantly exchanging bits of ourselves—physical, measurable molecules from our bodies.”
Source: Synchrodestiny: Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence to Create Miracles
“And what is called history at school, and all we learn by heart there about heroes and geniuses and great deeds and fine emotions, is all nothing but a swindle invented by the schoolmasters for educational reasons to keep children occupied for a given number of years. It has always been so and always will be.”
Source: Steppenwolf
“And what is death, if not a face at peace - its artistic perfection.”
“And what is England if not a farm with soil to be tilled and vines to tend?” Ned asked. “She needs a farmer to see to her needs, and nothing else will do. That’s why our patron saint shares the same name, because the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the faith.”
Source: All Ye That Pass By: Book 1: Gone for a Soldier
“And what is enlightenment anyway but delusions we can live with?”
Source: The Gap of Time
“And what is faith, love, virtue unassayed Alone, without exterior help sustained?”
Source: The Poetical Works of Milton, Young, Gray, Beattie, and Collins
“And what is friendship but a name, A charm that lulls to sleep, A shade that follows wealth or fame, And leaves the wretch to weep?”
Source: A History of the Earth: And Animated Nature
“And what is God? Tell me that, David Menlo." All David could do was offer a helpless shrug. "I don't know." "Does it frighten you not to know?" "It would frighten me more to think that God was something I could possibly define or understand.”
Source: The Red Winter
“And what is good, Phaedrus, And what is not good— Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”
“And what is gossip anyway?Just fragments of sad accounts, maneuvered and mutilated year after year for our sinful pleasure.”
Source: Ashes, Wine and Dust
“And what is happiness, Nathan? In my experience, it's only a moment's pause here and there on what is otherwise a long and difficult road. No one can be happy all the time.”
Source: Ordinary Grace: A Novel
“And what is happy? It is a going always on. There is something better to be done than I have done, and spurred by the fair delusion of progress, I will seek to progress, to whip myself on, to more and more- to learning. Always.”
Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
“And what is hell? Can you tell me that?”
“A pit full of fire.”
“And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?”
“No, sir.”
“What must you do to avoid it?”
I deliberated a moment; my answer, when it did come, was objectionable: “I must keep in good health, and not die.”
Source: Jane Eyre
“And what is I was only supposed to burn for a certain amount of time?" I whispered. "What if I was only meant to shine for a while?"
"Then you truly don't know what stars are meant to do."
I looked at him in wonder.
"They are meant to give us hope in the face of infinity".”
Source: Love, in English
“And what is impossible to science?”
Source: The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and the Communist Manifesto
“And what is it about you and romance novels? Is it the happily ever after? Is it the man who's too good to be true? Because I assure you, we all have our flaws, even the fictional ones. But the happily ever after depends on what you put into it. The hard work, the listening instead of talking, the laughing instead of crying, the sticking it out instead of running away, the knowing that sometimes silence is best but having her wrapped in your arms can still solve a lot of problems. So, you can have you romance novels while I have my King and Follett and Patterson because I don't want to read about having that kind of love someday. I'd rather be over here trying to take a chance at it in real life.”
Source: The Player
“And what is it that you believe in, Tam?” said the Cutty Sark, smiling. “In life? In love? In happiness? You don’t even know what they really are, none of you do! You’ve been deceived, by the greatest trick of them all! Here you live, like fabricated ships in a bottle. You can see the elements around you, but you can’t feel them- can’t even touch them…” She put her hand on his cheek again, and this time he didn’t move it away. “There’s a king, and a law, and a church, and they tell you exactly who you are, what you want- what you can have, and what you can dream of! But they’re just part of the deception, can’t you see? They’re just an illusion, a child’s play-thing, ready to be washed away like sand-castles on the beach when the tide comes in. Man-made institutions can never hold out against the real world forever. Against our world. Love it, hate it, desire it, fear it- but you can’t escape it!”
Source: Tam: The Three Changelings
“And what is it you want. Savannah?" His voice was low and rough.
I waited until he looked at me again. "Isn't that obvious? I want you. If you want that, too. I mean, us."
The corners of his eyes crinkled as a slow smile enveloped his face. "How can I not want someone willing to face their fears to rescue me? Someone who challenges me and makes me laugh? Someone who helps me be better but accepts me when I'm not?"
He'd said it perfectly. "You are, too, you know." I said. "All of that, for me."
One of his hands reached out and grabbed mine.”
Source: Hearts Overboard
“And what is it, according to Plato, that philosophy is supposed to do? Nothing less than to render violence to our sense of ourselves and our world, our sense of ourselves in the world.”
“And what is it, thought I, after all! It’s only his outside; a man can be honest in any sort of skin.”
Source: Moby Dick (Illustrated & Annotated Edition)
“And what is laughter anyway? Changing the angle of vision.”
Source: Fear of Fifty: A Midlife Memoir
“And what is liberty, whose very name makes the heart beat faster and shakes the world? Is it not the union of all liberties - liberty of conscience, of education, of association, of the press, of travel, or labor, or trade?”
Source: The Law
“And what is Life? - An hour-glass on the run”
Source: Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery
“And what is life? God manifested in the material plane. For it is in Him that we live and move and have our being.”
“And what is literature, Rabo," he said, "but an insider's newsletter about affairs relating to molecules, of no importance to anything in the universe but a few molecules who have the disease called 'thought'.”
Source: Bluebeard: A Novel
“And what is love anyway but the unattainable, the reaching out toward an illusion?”
Source: Rendezvous in Black
“And what is love anyway? Love's all over the mountain where the beautiful go to die no doubt, but I cannot attach much meaning to your idea of such a long-lasting love for someone you lost sight of so long ago. Perhaps it's something you've invented now.”
Source: The Sea, The Sea
“And what is love at first sight but recognition?”
Source: The Explorer
“And what is love? I human, I have feelings. I with the man. Of course I love him. Yet, the way he love me does make me hate myself.”
Source: The Bread the Devil Knead
“And what is love, in the end?" Alabaster said, "Except the irrational desire to put evolutionary competitiveness aside in order to easy someone else's journey through life?”
Source: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
“And what is more generous than a window?”
Source: How the Light Gets In: Writing as a Spiritual Practice
“And what is more melancholy than the old apple-trees that linger about the spot where once stood a homestead, but where there is now only a ruined chimney rising our of a grassy and weed-grown cellar? They offer their fruit to every wayfarer--apples that are bitter-sweet with the moral of times vicissitude.”
Source: Mosses from an Old Manse
“And what is needed to prevent them from joining gangs was ample recreation for boys as well as girls, jobs and internships for training and money, and assistance to allow their families to live in decent homes.”
“and what is not there
is always more than there.”
Source: In the Next Galaxy
“And what is religion, you might ask. It's a technology of living.”
Source: The Salt Eaters
“And what is shamanism but philosophy with a hands-on attitude. Philosophy not made around the camp fire, but philosophy based on the acquisition of extreme experience. That's how you figure out what the world is, not by bicycling around in the burbs, but by forcing extreme experience.”
“And what is so intricate, so entangling as death? Who ever got out of a winding sheet?”
Source: The Works of John Donne: With a Memoir of His Life