A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“And yet, strange to say, now that the truth [of natural selection] is recognized by most cultivated people...now more than ever, in the history of the world, are they doing all they can to further the survival of the unfittest.”
“And yet surely to alchemy this right is due, that it may be compared to the husbandman whereof Aesop makes the fable, that when he died he told his sons that he had left unto them gold buried under the ground in his vineyard: and they digged over the ground, gold they found none, but by reason of their stirring and digging the mould about the roots of their vines, they had a great vintage the year following: so assuredly the search and stir to make gold hath brought to light a great number of good and fruitful inventions and experiments, as well for the disclosing of nature as for the use of man's life.”
Source: The Oxford Francis Bacon IV: The Advancement of Learning
“And yet, that darkness, that violence and stark, honest way of looking at the world... There would be no secrets with her. No lies.”
“And yet that's the best way to watch television actively: with your eyes closed.”
Source: Television
“And yet the appearance of death was just as awe-inspiring in this little man as it is in a great one: a man who so recently had been walking around, moving, playing whist, signing various documents, and frequently seen amongst the officials with his beetling eyebrows and twitching eye, was now laid out on a table, and the twitch was quite gone from his left eye, although one eyebrow was still raised in an interrogative arch. As to what the deceased was asking, whether he sought to know why he had died or why he had lived--that only God can say.”
Source: Dead Souls
“And yet the artist will go on with his work without knowing in some way if any of his representations are sound or unsound. The artist knows nothing worth mentioning about the subjects he represents, and that art is a form of play, not to be taken seriously.”
“And yet the bawling voice, the black gown, the tramp of feet on the stone, the mace and the dingy felt hats somehow suggest, better than scarlet and trumpets, that the Commons are taking their seats in their own House to proceed with the business of governing their own country. Vague though our history may be, we somehow feel that we common people won this right centuries ago, and have held it for centuries past, and the mace is our mace and the Speaker is our speaker and we have no need of trumpeters and gold and scarlet to usher our representative into our own House of Commons.”
Source: The London Scene: Six Essays on London Life
“And yet, the chief deficiency I see in the sceptical movement is in its polarization: Us v. Them - the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth; that those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons; that if you're sensible, you'll listen to us; an if not, you're beyond redemption. This is unconstructive. It does not get the message across. It condemns the sceptics to permanent minority status; whereas, a compassionate approach that from the beginning acknowledges the human roots of pseudoscience and superstition might be much more widely accepted.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“And yet the motives of women are so inscrutable. You remember the woman at Margate whom I suspected for the same reason. No powder on her nose - that proved to be the correct solution. How can you build on such a quicksand? Their most trivial action may mean volumes, or their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin or a curling tongs.”
Source: The Return of Sherlock Holmes
“And yet the Nobel Prizes, in singling out individuals, have done a great deal of good in pointing up to the world as a whole and setting forth clearly goals for achievement.”
“And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.”
Source: 1984
“And yet the real success goes to those who obsess. The focus that leads you through the Dip to the other side is rewarded by a marketplace in search of the best in the world. A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner.”
“And yet the true creator is necessity, which is the mother of invention.”
“And yet the world we live in-its divisions and conflicts, its widening gap between rich and poor, its seemingly inexplicable outbursts of violence-is shaped far less by what we celebrate and mythologize than by the painful events we try to forget. Leopold's Congo is but one of those silences of history.”
Source: King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa
“And yet their wills did not yield, and they struggled on.”
Source: The Return of the King: Being the Third Part of the Lord of the Rings
“And yet there are many times when it does not make any difference what pattern one uses. One thing is certain. The more bedraggled the fly gets the better the trout like it. I think there is a reason for this. I think the bedraggled half worn out wet fly more closely imitates a nymph than a new one does. Most commercial flies are tied too bushy and full. A little trimming of wings and thinning out of hackles will often work wonders.”
“And yet there is something there. People of faith share a camaraderie that is hard to reproduce in other social circumstances, and they often display a cheerful, albeit oddly naïve, attitude.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“and yet there was cement in her soul. It had been there for a while, an early morning disease of fatigue, a bleakness and borderlessness. It brought with it amorphous longings, shapeless desires, brief imaginary glints of other lives she could be living, that over the months melded into a piercing homesickness. She scoured Nigerian websites, Nigerian pro files on Facebook, Nigerian blogs, and each click brought yet another story of a young person who had recently moved back home, clothed in American or British degrees, to start an investment company, a music production business, a fashion label, a magazine, a fast-food franchise She looked at photographs of these men and women and felt the dull ache of loss, as though they had prised open her hand and taken some thing of hers. They were living her life.”
Source: Americanah
“And yet there was something about his strength, his arrogance, his sheer size that got under my skin. He probably couldn't even spell vanilla. He was probably selfish in the sack. Probably selfish and greedy and...unsophisticated. And hung like a horse.”
“And yet—this fascination with the future has generated its own antithesis, particularly in the so-called affluent or developed societies. There is a growing disenchantment with "progress" (however this may be defined) and even a feeling that, in many directions, we have already gone too far.”
Source: Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible
“And yet this god, this old god from the Old World, somehow made her feel small. It was only for a moment, but Aphrodite blinked under the weight of his stare—his scrutiny.”
Source: The Maenad of Manhattan
“And yet this is farther than I've ever fell; You know me much too well. Funny it don't feel like we just met. It didn't take much time. Forever's more than crossed my mind, and we haven't even said 'I love you' yet.”
“And yet this same Deity says to me, resist not evil; pray for those that despitefully use you; love your enemies, but I will eternally damn mine. It seems to me that even gods should practice what they preach.”
Source: The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll
“And yet this self, contains
Tides, continents and stars―a myriad selves,
Is small and solitary as one grass-blade
Passed over by the wind
Amongst a myriad grasses on the prairie.”
“And yet to every bad there is a worse.”
Source: The Woodlanders
“And yet to reach for examples from the Holocaust, or the Jewish diaspora, has become a natural reflex when the question of ethnic or religious minorities comes up. It is a moral yardstick, yet at the same time an evasion. To be reminded of past crimes, of negligence or complicity, is never a bad thing. But it can confuse the issues at hand, or worse, bring all discussion to a halt by tarring opponents with the brush of mass murder.”
Source: Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance
“And yet
to wine, to opium even, I prefer
the elixir of your lips on which love flaunts itself;
and in the wasteland of desire
your eyes afford the wells to slake my thirst.”
Source: Les Fleurs Du Mal
“And yet today, half of all black children are aborted. Far more of the African-American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by policies of slavery”
“And yet we are but tenants. Let us assure ourselves of this, and then it will not be so hard to make room for the new administration; for shortly the great Landlord will give us notice that our lease has expired.”
“And yet we check and chide
The airy angels as they float about us,
With rules of so-called wisdom, till they grow
The same tame slaves to custom and the world.”
“And yet we constantly reclaim some part of that primal spontaneity through the youngest among us, not only through their sorrow and anger but simply through everyday discoveries, life unwrapped. To see a child touch the piano keys for the first time, to watch a small body slice through the surface of the water in a clean dive, is to experience the shock, not of the new, but of the familiar revisited as though it were strange and wonderful.”
“And yet we have brave men and women who are willing to step forward because they know what's at stake. They're willing to sacrifice their lives for this great country. What I'm asking all of you tonight is not to put on a uniform. Put on a bumper sticker.”
“And yet we have what purports, or professes, or is claimed, to be a contract—the Constitution—made eighty years ago, by men who are now all dead, and who never had any power to bind us, but which (it is claimed) has nevertheless bound three generations of men, consisting of many millions, and which (it is claimed) will be binding upon all the millions that are to come; but which nobody ever signed, sealed, delivered, witnessed, or acknowledged; and which few persons, compared with the whole number that are claimed to be bound by it, have ever read, or even seen, or ever will read, or see.”
Source: The collected works of Lysander Spooner
“And yet we knew, for a certainty, that when first emissaries of Earth went walking among the planets, Earth's other sons would be dreaming not about such expeditions but about a piece of bread.”
“And yet, what are the true joys of life? By what does a man in all sincerity measure his standard of living? For myself, I would say that the good life is a small house, a cottage, and in that cottage a hearth that will burn wood, and a lamp or two and a shelf of books.”
Source: A Countryman’s Autumn Notebook
“And yet what is Modernism? It is undefined.”
“And yet, when everything is alien the alien becomes familiar.”
Source: The Humans
“And yet when I am traveling, I am brave. I do what has to be done. When I am waiting, I only feel small and hollow and scared.”
Source: A Million Worlds with You
“And yet when i finally drifted of in that barely conscious state where logic was absent and dreams encroached i could almost hear bone's voice. he was whispering that same promise he'd made to me months ago when our relationship started and i wondered if it was a sign - and if he'd really meant it. If you run from me i'll chase you. And i'll find you.”
“And yet when you take Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, whatever, their combined killings in the name of religion -- well, that would be zero.”
“And yet, while there has been no "direct action" by the Vatican against priests who sexually abuse nuns, Father Nicholas Gruner was declared "suspended" in the Congregation for the Clergy's only public announcement concerning the "discipline" of any of the Church's 260,000 diocesan priests in 2001 - "suspended" for an offense that has never been specified, for none exists. "Suspended", in fact, for no other reason than that he has not desisted from promoting the authentic Message of Fatima. Such are the Vatican's priorities under the "new orientation" of the Catholic Church and the Secretary of State's Party Line on Fatima. (page 202)”
Source: The Devil's Final Battle: Book Two
“And yet with every wound You robbed me of a crime,
And as each blow was paid with Blood,
You paid me also each great sin with greater graces.
For even as I killed You,
You made Yourself a greater thief than any in Your company,
Stealing my sins into Your dying life,
Robbing me even of my death.”
Source: Selected Poems of Thomas Merton
“And yet with that bleak horizon before her eyes, Katerina had said the first problem was the uranium. All the children dying. It came to that: women and their children. Even women and the children who did not belong to them. It was the only force in the world resisting the centrifugal destructive rage of men.”
Source: Performance Anomalies
“And yet without labour there were no ease, no rest, so much as conceivable.”
Source: Carlyle Reader
“And yet women-good women--frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep.”
Source: Women
“And yet Xiao Li always spoke of her mother as if her image were mounted in a red-and-gold picture frame resting on a shrine in the corner of a tidy house, to be venerated and pleased at all times, like a deceased ancestor ever-present and scrutinizing her progeny.”
“And yet you are all that you have, so you must be enough. There is no other way.”
“And yet you haven’t always wanted to die.
You have had a life. There have been moments when you were having a life. Of course you don't remember too much about it; but there are photographs to prove it. This was probably happening round about the time of your adolescence, or just after. How great your appetite for life was, then! Existence seemed so rich in new possibilities. You might become a pop singer, go off to Venezuela.
More surprising still, you have had a childhood. Observe, now, a child of seven, playing with his little soldiers on the living room carpet. I want you to observe him closely. Since the divorce he no longer has a father. Only rarely does he see his mother, who occupies an important post in a cosmetics firm. And yet he plays with his little soldiers and the interest he takes in these representations of the world and of war seems very keen. He already lacks a bit of affection, that's for sure, but what an air he has of being interested in the world!”
Source: Whatever
“And yet you see the weakness of external evidence-and outward miracles; they were not sufficient to make true believers, or to make the Israelites believe that Jesus was their promised Messiah.”
“And yet you thought he was the one? Imagine a lifetime without laughter.”
Source: The Bucket List to Mend a Broken Heart