A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“A fundamentalist to somebody who absolutely knows what’s right because it’s written in a holy book.”
“A fundie claimed "God invented science". All of science is tentative and approximate, also sometimes mistaken. Is that the best God can do?”
“A funeral eulogy is a belated plea for the defense delivered after the evidence is all in.”
“A funeral is for those left behind. Sometimes, one wonders if the weeping is more out of fear for ourselves than it is sympathy for the deceased.”
“A funeral is like a little game, really. You have to just play along and say the right thing and behave the right way until it’s over. Be pleasant but don’t smile too much; be sad but don’t overdo it or the family will feel worse than they already do. Be hopeful but don’t let your optimism be taken as a lack of empathy or an inability to deal with the reality. Because if anybody was to be truly honest there would be a lot of arguments, finger-pointing, tears, snot, and screaming.”
Source: The Book of Tomorrow
“A funeral is no place for secrets.”
Source: For One More Day
“A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy devices, coming now too late, now too early, by which Society would register the quick motions of man.”
Source: Howards End
“A funeral is supposed to be a way to say goodbye. You look inside yourself and find a place to put your grief, not somewhere hidden, not the top shelf or the back of a cupboard, but maybe by a window, where it can catch the light.”
Source: A Dictionary of Scoundrels
“A funeral is the final settlement of all your accounts, where people come to pay their last respects symbolically settling every deed of the departed. The size of the crowd at your funeral reflects the world's indebtedness to your deeds.”
“A funeral isn't for the dead. You'll simply be a stage set for a kind of festival maybe. And besides, you won't even be there.”
“A funny line can never exist on its own. It needs to be surrounded by mood and circumstances.”
“A funny little literary article in the hand is worth at least three Critiques of Pure Reason in the bush.”
Source: After Many a Summer Dies the Swan
“A funny person is funny only for so long, but a wit can sit down and go on being spellbinding forever.”
Source: D.V.
“A funny person is funny only for so long, but a wit can sit down and go on being spellbinding forever. One is not meant to laugh. One stays quiet and marvels. Spontaneously witty talk is without question the most fascinating entertainment there is.”
Source: D.V.
“A funny thing about tolerant people? They're really only tolerant when you agree with them.”
Source: The Joy of Hate: How to Triumph over Whiners in the Age of Phony Outrage
“A funny thing about women and machines: the combination made men curious.”
Source: The Flamethrowers: A Novel
“A funny thing, dreams. Even when your brain is convinced that it was all just imagination, you still find yourself looking around, just in case a remnant of the dream has found its way into your world and is now resting behind a curtain ready to pounce when you least expect it.”
Source: The Awakened
“A funny thing happened on the way to the election - I got to the Senate first.”
“A funny thing happened on the way to utopia: We've turned into this surveillance society and become a race of spies, where we track our kids and we track our spouses and we track our friends. I think very soon there will be an obsolescence of trust, because it's much easier to access a person's location than it is to ask - or to trust.”
“A funny thing happened post-diagnosis. They put him on drugs, things went up and down, but he lived. He lived. It was like a waiting room where they kept not calling your name.”
Source: City on Fire
“A funny thing happened to the First Amendment on its way to the public forum. According to the Supreme Court, money is now speech and corporations are now people. But when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with the political consequences of this, they’re treated as public nuisances and evicted.”
“A funny thing happens in real estate. When it comes back, it comes back up like gangbusters.”
“A funny thing happens when more than one knitter gathers in a public place. A solo knitter, presuming she is a woman, quickly fades into the backdrop like a potted palm or a quietly nursing mother. ... A single knitter is shorthand for "nothing to see here, move on."
But when knitters gather, we become incongruously conspicuous. We are a species that other people aren't used to seeing in flocks, like a cluster of Corgis, a dozen Elvis impersonators waiting for the elevator.”
Source: Knitlandia: A Knitter Sees the World
“A funny thing is that you can't search me on Twitter because Adam Levine dominates there.”
“A funny word. E-lec-tion. Say it very slowly and it sounds disgusting. But if you say it just fast enough it almost sounds real, like it might even be legitimate”
Source: The Last Librarian
“A funny yet interesting read, Will Self knowa his stuff and must do a lot of deep research.”
Source: Liver: A Fictional Organ With a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes
“A Fur Person must be adopted by catly humans, tactful, delicate, respectful, indulgent; these are fairly rare, though not as rare as might be supposed.”
Source: The Fur Person
“A furious and sustained backlash by a betrayed and angry populace, one unprepared intellectually and psychologically for collapse, will sweep aside the Democrats and most of the Republicans. A cabal of proto-fascist misfits, from Christian demagogues to simpletons like Sarah Palin to loudmouth talk-show hosts, whom we naïvely dismiss as buffoons, will find a following with promises of revenge and moral renewal. The elites, the ones with their Harvard Business School degrees and expensive vocabularies, will retreat into their sheltered enclaves of privilege and comfort.”
Source: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
“A furious Peeta hammers Haymitch with the atrocity he could become party to, but I can feel Haymitch watching me. This is the moment, then. When we find out exactly just how alike we are, and how much he truly understands me. "I'm with the Mockingjay," he says.”
Source: Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, Book 3)
“A furious researcher stumbled out of one of the lab buildings and shouted, 'I'm a scientist working on the AIDS cure. Why are you here? You are making too much noise.' It was a statement that epitomized the vast and growing rift between scientists and patients.”
Source: The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
“A further, albeit more complex, possibility is that our conscious selves might suffer from characteristic uncertainty about our true values, and gather information about them from choices we make (the Jamesian: "How do I know what I like until I see what I pick").”
Source: Neuroscience of Preference and Choice: Cognitive and Neural Mechanisms
“A further aspect I should like to discuss is what I call the practice of infinite escape clauses. I believe we developed this practice to avoid facing the conclusion that the probability of self-reproducing state is zero. This is what we must conclude from classical quantum mechanical principles as Wigner demonstrated”
“A further effort that the church can make in attempting to solve the race problem is to take the lead in social reform. It is not enough for the church to be active in the realm of ideas; it must move out into the arena of social action.”
Source: Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
“A further point is that, little by little, in the current universe, everything is slowly being named; nor does this have anything to do with the older Aristotelian universals in which the idea of a chair subsumes all its individual manifestations.”
“A further stroll among the hills brought us to what Scott pronounced the remains of a Roman camp, and as we sat upon a hillock which had once formed part of its ramparts, he pointed out the traces of the lines and bulwarks, and the praetorium, and showed a knowledge of castramentation that would not have disgraced Oldbuck himself. Indeed, various circumstances that I observed about Scott during my visit concurred to persuade me that many of the antiquarian humours of Monkbarns were taken from his own richly compounded character, and that some of the scenes and personages of that admirable novel were furnished by his own neighbourhood.”
Source: Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey
“A fusty nut with no kernel.”
Source: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
“A Futile Gesture by Stewart Stafford
Challenged to de Clair's Danse Macabre,
Sebastian counted condemned steps,
Thistle ranks awaiting duelling blood,
A powdered farce of silk and steel.
Spun, heart exposed to pistol shot,
Sebastian faced his rival, Flintlock fired,
A sharp crack counterpointed the gale,
A crimson bloom on his foe’s ribcage.
Honour preserved, whatever it meant -
Slain Baron de Clair curtsied to tilled earth,
The manservant held out his master's coat
as if death were but a pause in the day.
© 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
“A future as lonely as the surface of the moon and still just the sight of him feels like a homecoming, like a song I used to know but forgot.”
Source: How to Love
“A future that will require Corporate held Emotional Intelligence”
“A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.”
“A fájdalom, amit érzel a gyengeség, amint elhagyja a szívedet. A téveszmék elmúltának fájdalma. Nincs magasabb rendű eszme. Nincsenek istenek. Nincsenek bírák, akik ítélkeznek jó és rossz felett. Nem kérlek, hogy szeresd a valóságot. Csak azt kérem, hogy légy elég erős szembenézni vele. Semmi sincs ezen kívül. Csak a tökéletesség van, amit azzal érünk el, hogy magunk leszünk a fegyver, amely erős és könyörtelen, mint egy kard az árnyak között. Az életben nincs eredendően jó. Az élet önmagában semmi. Csak egy jelzőcölöp, ami bizonyítja, hogy ki nyer. És mi nyerünk. Mindig mi nyerünk. Semmi más nincs, csak a győzelem. Még a győzelem sem jelent semmit. Győzünk, mert veszíteni sértés. A cél nem szentesíti az eszközt. Az eszköz nem szentesíti a célt. Nincs senki, aki felé szentesíteni kellene. Nincs szentesítés. Tudod, hány embert öltem meg? … Tudtam valaha. Emlékeztem mindenki nevére, akit nem csatában öltem meg. Aztán túl sokan lettek. Már csak a számukra emlékeztem. Aztán már csak az ártatlanokra. Végül őket is elfelejtettem. Tudod, milyen büntetést kellett elszenvednem a tetteimért, a bűneimért? Semmilyet. Egy igazságos univerzum nem tűrné meg a létezésemet.”
Source: The Way of Shadows
“A fé na cultura moderna era triste: era saber que amanhã seria essencialmente igual a hoje; que o progresso consistia somente em avançar, por todos os "sempres", sobre um caminho idêntico ao que já estava sob nossos pés. Um caminho assim está mais para uma prisão que, elástica, se alonga sem nos libertar.”
Source: the Revolt of the Masses
“a fé é tão-somente um dilema de aritmética química.”
Source: A Cidade dos Sete Mares
“A G-string is a permanent self-inflicted wedgie.”
“A gadget cannot capture what a soul has experienced.”
Source: The Kingdom of God
“A gaffe in Washington is someone telling the truth, and telling the truth has never hurt me.”
“A gaffe is a politician inadvertently telling an inconvenient truth.”
“A galaxy is composed of gas and dust and stars - billions upon billions of stars. Every star may be a sun to someone.”
“A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of self-illusion.”
“A Gallagher Girl's real grades don’t come in pass or fail—they're measured in life or death.”
Source: Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy (B&N Custom Pub)