A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“And what of that curious craving for religion which so often went hand in hand with inversion? Many such people were deeply religious, and this surely was one of their bitterest problems. They believed, and believing they craved a blessing on what to some of them seemed very sacred—a faithful and deeply devoted union. But the Church's blessing was not for them. Faithful they might be, leading orderly lives, harming no one, and yet the Church turned away; her blessings were strictly reserved for the normal.”
Source: The Well Of Loneliness
“And what of the dead? I own that I thought of myself, at times, almost as dead. Are they not locked below ground in chambers smaller than mine was, in their millions of millions? There is no category of human activity in which the dead do not outnumber the living many times over. Most beautiful children are dead. Most soldiers, most cowards. The fairest women and the most learned men – all are dead. Their bodies repose in caskets, in sarcophagi, beneath arches of rude stone, everywhere under the earth. Their spirits haunt our minds, ears pressed to the bones of our foreheads. Who can say how intently they listen as we speak, or for what word?”
Source: The Citadel of the Autarch
“And what of the dead? They lie without shoes in the stone boats. They are more like stone than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.”
Source: Selected Poems of Anne Sexton
“And what of this new book the whole world makes such a rout about?--Oh ! 'tis out of all plumb, my lord,--quite an irregular thing!”
Source: The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
“And what of this young woman beside him, whom he had loved devotedly for four years and still did love? She had given him more than Elizabeth ever could: months of unflawed relationship, unquestioning trust (which he was now betraying in thought) . Oh nonsense! What man did not at some time or another glance elsewhere? And who could complain if it remained at a glance? (Chance was a fine thing).”
Source: Jeremy Poldark
“And what opens one heart opens many.”
Source: Pure Colour
“And what other kind of man would you want leading you into battle?” he says, reading my Noise. “What other kind of man is suitable for war?”
A monster, I think, remembering what Ben told me once. War makes monsters of men.
“Wrong,” says the Mayor. “It’s war that makes us men in the first place. Until there’s war, we are only children.”
Another blast of the horn comes roaring down at us, so loud it nearly takes our heads off and it puts the army off its stride for a second or two.
We look up the road to the bottom of the hill. We see Spackle torches gathering there to meet us.
“Ready to grow up, Todd?” the Mayor asks.”
Source: Monsters of Men
“And what part of me will begin
To forget you first; the sudden
Pains that shoot to my bruised palms
As I think of you in the cover of the dark,
Or the invisible hand
Clutching at my heart, as it knocks against its savage cage,
Or my still swollen lips
As they remember the touch of your gentle fingertips?”
Source: Those Imperfect Strokes
“And what percentage of people take up the option to die off?’ She looked at me, her glance telling me to be calm. ‘Oh, a hundred per cent, of course. Over many thousands of years, calculated by old time, of course. But yes, everyone takes the option, sooner or later.’
‘So it’s just like the first time round? You always die in the end?’
‘Yes, except don’t forget the quality of life here is much better. People die when they decide they’ve had enough, not before. The second time round it’s altogether more satisfying because it’s willed.’ She paused, then added, ‘As I say, we cater for what people want.’
I hadn’t been blaming her. I’m not that sort. I just wanted to find out how the system worked. ‘So … even people, religious people, who come here to worship God throughout eternity … they end up throwing in the towel after a few years, hundred years, thousand years?’
‘Certainly. As I said, there are still a few Old Heaveners around, but their numbers are diminishing all the time.”
Source: A History of the World in 10½ Chapters
“And what physicians say about disease is applicable here: that at the beginning a disease is easy to cure but difficult to diagnose; but as time passes, not having been recognized or treated at the outset, it becomes easy to diagnose but difficult to cure. The same thing occurs in affairs of state; for by recognizing from afar the diseases that are spreading in the state (which is a gift given only to the prudent ruler), they can be cured quickly; but when, not having been recognized, they are not recognized and are left to grow to the extent that everyone recognizes them, there is no longer any cure.”
“and what precisely is this shining”
Source: Falling Awake
“And what renders him so unmarriageable?” Eloise asked. Francesca leveled a serious stare at her older sister. Eloise was mad if she thought she should set her cap for Michael. “Well?” Eloise prodded. “He could never remain faithful to one woman,” Fran-cesca said, “and I doubt you‟d be willing to put up with infidelities.” “No,” Eloise murmured, “not unless he‟d be willing to put up with severe bodily injury.”
Source: When he was wicked
“And what reservoir is more inexhaustible than the love of a
heart like hers?—a love born as naturally and unconsciously as
life itself—that, when discovered, changes existence by a sudden
kaleidoscopic turn, compelling all within and without to pass at once
into new arrangement and combination—that inspires heroic, patient
effort, self-denial, and even self-sacrifice.”
Source: A Young Girl's Wooing
“And what ‘role’ would I have here, captain?” my eyes fluttered. “I’m sure we could find something for you,” his voice was quiet and wispy as he pressed his lips into mine slowly. I closed my eyes and let him embrace me, his hand weaved its way into my hair, and he pulled me closer. I put one hand on his shoulder and with the other I reached behind myself to grab something off of his desk. Clunk. The sound the rum bottle made as it collided with his head was uncomfortably loud.”
Source: First Voyage: Book 1 of the Sky Sailor Trilogy
“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?”
“And what rules of economy dictate that a boy without a foot is more whole than a girl without a tongue?”
“And what’s a healer’s touch like?” she asked, working quickly to push the needle through and tie off another knot, closing his wound with each stitch.
“Light as a feather. Like this.”
He moved his hand from her arm to her breast. His fingertips brushed the bared skin above her bodice in teasing strokes. She held herself still, beguiled by the sensation. She’d never have guessed her body would react so to a man. She should be afraid, she knew, but her only fear was that he’d stop.
His touch moved down, between the stiff boning of her bodice and the soft, thin chemise, circling her nipple slowly through the cloth of her undergarment.
Oh, how he made her ache. He tormented that needy skin with his nearness. She fought the urge to squirm into his touch. When he finally flicked a nail over it, a jolt of wickedness shot from her breast to her womb.”
Source: Sins of the Highlander
“And what's above all... above us... Who is God!?
- Who are the aliens... who are the people which ignore us!?”
Source: Code
“And what's care?
What's coldness?
Why you are so foolish of your freedom?
...
Merely an illusion... programmed.....”
Source: Deeper Level C#N
“And what’s even more fucked up is that you totally have it in your power to make things better. Like, in all of history, there has literally never been a group of people better equipped to avert catastrophe than the billionaires alive today. The technology you have access to, and the resources, and the money, and the influence, and the connections—literally, no one in history has ever been more powerful. Ever.’
‘Yes. We’re like gods,’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘But gods can be capricious, Mira. They don’t always do what you want them to. They move in mysterious ways.”
Source: Birnam Wood
“And what's God if not a puppeteer...one who makes us dance...one who craves and demands attention?”
Source: The Empty Man #1
“And what's the irony?
...
In the end... we call the enemy friends... the fake people again friends... should I continue here with the words?”
“And what’s wrong with buying and selling?”
... “Nothing. In its place, nothing at all. A simple and necessary thing. But only a small thing in a man’s life - not his whole existence - not an end in itself - not a way of life or a source of one’s beliefs. And this is what it has become. A tragic joke, to make a religion of it... This is spiritual death. Where is there room here for what is good and beautiful, for time to re-formulate the eternal questions, for study of man’s conduct? A savage who worships a tree lives a richer life.”
Source: Under the Ribs of Death
“And what shall he suffer who slays him who of all men, as they say, is his own best friend? I mean the suicide, who deprives himself by violence of his appointed share of life. Not because the law of the state requires him. Nor yet under the compulsion of some painful and inevitable misfortune which has come upon him. Nor because he has had to suffer from irremediable and intolerable shame, but who from sloth or want of manliness imposes upon himself an unjust penalty.”
Source: The Complete Plato
“And what shall I tell you, lady, of the natural secrets I have discovered while cooking? And I often say, when observing these details: had Aristotle prepared victuals, he would have written more.”
“And what shall we know of this life on earth after death? The dissolution of our timebound form in eternity brings no loss of meaning. Rather, does the little finger know itself a member of the hand.”
“And what shall we say of the man Christ Jesus? Who, that loves his brother, would not, upheld by the love of Christ, and with a dim hope that in the far-off time there might be some help for him, arise from the company of the blessed, and walk down into the dismal regions of despair, to sit with the last, the only unredeemed, the Judas of his race, and be himself more blessed in the pains of hell, than in the glories of heaven? Who, in the midst of the golden harps and the white wings, knowing that one of his kind, one miserable brother in the old-world-time when men were taught to love their neighbor as themselves, was howling unheeded far below in the vaults of the creation, who, I say, would not feel that he must arise, that he had no choice, that, awful as it was, he must gird his loins, and go down into the smoke and the darkness and the fire, traveling the weary and fearful road into the far country to find his brother?—who, I mean, that had the mind of Christ, that had the love of the Father?”
Source: Unspoken Sermons: Series I, II, III
“And what should they know of England who only England know?”
“And what sort of choice is fall in love with me, or you’re a pig?”
“Justice.” Lizzie twirled a lock of hair around her little finger.”
Source: Witches Monstrous
“And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.”
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray (Diversion Classics)
“And what strange voices they have! Sometimes like the complaining of small children; sometimes like the noise of lambs.”
Source: Complete Essays: 1920-1925
“And what terrifies me is that we're entering a phase where if you start to speak about this as something that can be understood historically - without any sympathy - you are going to be thought of as unpatriotic, and you are going to be forbidden. It's very dangerous. It is precisely incumbent on every citizen to quite understand the world we're living in and the history we are a part of and we are forming as a superpower.”
“And what the hell am I, Xaden? I’m a fucking weapon.”
Source: Fourth Wing
“And what the hell does that even mean? Why would you serve food for thoughgs, and what kind of food? If you serve spinach, do you get healthy thoughts? If it's ice cream and candy, it is fun thoughts? Why do we say stupid things?”
Source: Concealed in Death
“And what the music elicits—in me, in most everyone who hears it and takes to it—is a strangely comforting, sensual melancholy, a gentle sadness, the kind that comes with soft rain. It’s the same for all truly great dark art. There’s a pleasure in seeing our shadows paraded beautifully. It’s liberating to find them so prettily decked out, a sort of reverse Halloween.”
Source: Torment Saint: The Life of Elliott Smith
“And what the people but a herd confus'd,
A miscellaneous rabble, who extol
Things vulgar, and, well weigh'd, scarce worth the praise?
They praise, and they admire, they know not what;
And know not whom, but as one leads the other;
And what delight to be by such extoll'd,
To live upon their tongues, and be their talk,
Of whom to be disprais'd were no small praise?”
Source: Milton's Poetical Works
“and what the picture is in reality is this spirit, that’s what a picture really is, neither matter nor soul but both parts at the same time and together they make up what I think of as spirit, and maybe that’s why my good paintings, yes, all good paintings, have something to do with what I, what Christians, call The Holy Spirit, because all good art has this spirit, good pictures, good poems, good music, and what makes it good is not the material, not matter, and it’s not the content, the idea, the thought, no, what makes it good is just this unity of matter and form and soul that becomes spirit, that’s what culture is, probably, he says, it’s probably just one person being like another person that creates a culture, for example wearing a suit and tie, while what art is, yes, art is everyone just being like themselves, and totally themselves”
Source: Septology
“And what the sharp old medic suggested to the Pentagon sent shivers down their spines and set the alarm bells ringing all the way to the White House”
Source: The Devil's Trinity
“And what, then, is worthy, if not life?”
Source: The Most Precious Gift: A myth of gods and humans
“And what they believe in real life is complicated. Theodor Koch-Grunberg wrote in his diary that indigenous peoples in the Amazon see these outsiders following in each other's footsteps as the same person, a single soul traversing across several lives. They also see time as something that doesn't proceed inexorably into the future.”
“And what they dare to dream of, date to do.”
“And what this ECW is doing is educating you people once again that there IS wrestling, spelt W-R-E-S-T-L-I-N-G, out there.”
“And what this is, I realize, is life. I don't want it. I want my parents and I have for weeks. I've been trying to claw my way back to them, and now I am so close and he is telling me not to.”
Source: Insurgent
“And what unity is to be had, at a time when orchestras are dying out, and when opera houses are about to close their doors; what's going to come next - when nothing new in music, for the orchestra, is truly lasting: pieces are performed once, and then they're thrown away.”
“And what was dancing but fucking with your clothes on?”
Source: Every Part of You: Resists Me
“And what was it about the dark that made her question things she’d never questioned before, in the day.”
Source: Bitterblue
“And what was the cost of this Jim Crow? Not merely that the precious words "America" and "freedom" became suspect in the eyes of the world, but more than that. It cost us lives. Lives of white men, of Frenchmen, Russians and Chinese-because there were many battles in this war when replacements were needed. But the American rule of war was "No Negroes allowed on the front lines" until the 92d finally got there.
I listened to the Axis radio. Tokyo Rose said, and she quoted American sources, that Negroes were good enough to serve in the American Army, but they weren't good enough to pitch in the American Big League baseball. And they broadcast this not only to our own troops but also to the billion and a half colored peoples of the earth.”
Source: Why I Left America and Other Essays
“And what was to become of what he had taken from her? He had dashed her heart to the ground and danced on it with combat boots. Did he sit in that seditious palace day after day and not even bother to scrape it off of his soles with a passing thought of her?”
“And what was your title again? The Silver Saviour?"
"Fitting. I know how much you like silvers.”
Source: Powerless
“And what we both really love to do is reading. We always carry some books around with us, which we usually devour in our spare time, and ever since we’ve been friends, we’ve often done it together.”
Source: Returning Home to Her