A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Anyone who has a continuous smile on his face conceals a toughness that is almost frightening.”
Source: Walking with Garbo: conversations and recollections
“Anyone who has a dog knows that they have some very deep thoughts, that they have moods and emotions, they get their feelings hurt. It's not a far reach to give them opinions and values and long-term desires.”
“Anyone who has a simplistic idea about the Middle East, or about the conflict, doesn't get it - because there are no simple answers. And anyone who is messianic, in a right-wing way or a left-wing way, is wrong too. The way forward is a kind of cautious, commonsense approach - a cautious, humble hope. No fantasies.”
“Anyone who has accustomed himself to regard the life of any living creature as worthless is in danger of arriving also at the idea of worthless human lives.”
“Anyone who has achieved excellence in any form knows that it comes as a result of ceaseless concentration.”
“Anyone who has actually been that sad can tell you that there's nothing beautiful or literary or mysterious about depression.”
Source: My Heart and Other Black Holes
“Anyone who has actually had to take responsibility for consequences by running any kind of enterprise whether economic or academic, or even just managing a sports team is likely at some point to be chastened by either the setbacks brought on by his own mistakes or by seeing his successes followed by negative consequences that he never anticipated.”
“Anyone who has attempted to create knows the hellishness of it, which consists in the final inescapability from it. Knows that anything, however deadly humdrum to drug the senses, is preferable to it. Knows the gigantic effort to get started on the boundless, unwieldy, shapeless material; the forest of hesitations; of what to keep and what to throw out; the running-out terror and reluctance in one of finishing.”
“Anyone who has become entranced by the sound of water drops in the darkness of a ruin can attest to the extraordinary capacity of the ear to carve a volume into the void of darkness. The space traced by the ear becomes a cavity sculpted in the interior of the mind.”
“Anyone who has been given the gift of being opposite an actor who gives and gives, it just makes you better.”
“Anyone who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison. It is the people brought up in the gay intimacy of the slums who find prison so soul-destroying.”
“Anyone who has been with me from the beginning has worked from the trenches with me and they've worked really hard. People that I have brought in where I am now, they haven't worked the way that we have, they haven't lost the sleep, and you know, the blood, sweat, and tears.”
“Anyone who has begun to think, places some portion of the world in jeopardy.”
“Anyone who has breast-fed knows two things for sure: The baby wants to be fed at the most inopportune times, in the most inopportune places, and the baby will prevail.... And so the baby should, and the mom, too. Sometimes a breast is a sexual object, and sometimes it's a food delivery system, and one need not preclude nor color the other.”
“Anyone who has brought up children knows that consistency has absolutely nothing to do with discipline.”
“Anyone who has chanced like me to roam through desolate mountains and studied at length their fantastic shapes and drunk the invigorating air of their valleys can understand why I wish to describe and depict these magic scenes for others.”
“Anyone who has covered a conflict knows that silence. It is not absence. It is pressure with nowhere to go.”
Source: The Day Satoshi Returned: A Novel
“Anyone who has crossed from the district of Bolkhov into that of Zhizdra will probably have been struck by the sharp difference between the natives of the provinces of Orel and Kaluga.”
“Anyone who has dead straight hair wants curls.”
“Anyone who has declared someone else to be an idiot, a bad apple, is annoyed when it turns out in the end that he isn't.”
“Anyone who has discovered Christ must lead others to him. A great joy cannot be kept to oneself. It has to be passed on.”
Source: Heart of the Christian Life: Thoughts on the Holy Mass
“Anyone who has done the work will tell you, you will never have to tell anyone who has done the work.”
Source: Feast
“Anyone who has ever accomplished anything of any consequence, didn't know how to get what they want, they only knew that they were going to get it. You don't know how to do something, until after you've done it. Our problem is, we set goals to do what we think we can do or what we've already done. There's no inspiration in that.”
“Anyone who has ever achieved anything has been a steward of his potential.”
Source: The Tao of Jiu Jitsu
“Anyone who has ever asked for directions knows you need two crucial pieces of information to get good results: a starting point and a destination.”
“Anyone who has ever been a mother or father and is at all honest knows from experience how difficult it can be for parents to accept certain aspects of their children. It is especially painful to have to admit this if we really love our child and want to respect his or her individuality yet are unable to do so.”
Source: For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence
“Anyone who has ever been able to sustain good work has had at least one person--and often many--who have believed in him or her. We just don't get to be competent human beings without a lot of different investments from others.”
Source: You Are Special: Words of Wisdom for All Ages from a Beloved Neighbor
“Anyone who has ever been privileged to direct a film also knows that, although it can be like trying to write 'War and Peace' in a bumper car in an amusement park, when you finally get it right, there are not many joys in life that can equal the feeling.”
“Anyone who has ever changed his or her mind about something was likely not happy to hear someone disagreeing from the start of the conversation. Once we’ve changed our mind about something, we quickly forget how strongly we previously believed the other direction. No one likes to think that they were ever wrong, and likely even less, that they’ll be wrong again sometime soon.”
Source: sciVive
“Anyone who has ever experienced dehumanized life on welfare or any other confidence-shaking dependency knows that a paid job may be preferable to the dole, even when the handout is coming from a family member.”
Source: Outrageous acts and everyday rebellions
“Anyone who has ever experienced love knows that you can have too much or too little. You can have love that parches, love that defeats. You can have love measured out in the wrong proportions. It's like your sunlight and water - the wrong kind of love is just as likely to stifle hope as it is to nourish it.”
Source: The Brief History of the Dead
“Anyone who has ever had the feeling of being higher than a kite after giving a public speech is well aware of the effects of attention.”
“Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.”
“Anyone who has ever made a resolution discovers that the strength of that determination fades in time. The moment you feel that is when you should make a fresh determination. Tell yourself, “OK! I will start again from now!” If you fall down seven times, get up an eighth. Don’t give up when you feel discouraged-jus t pick yourself up and renew your determination each time.”
“Anyone who has ever made a resolution discovers that the strength of their determination fades with time. The important thing is not that your resolve never wavers, but that you don't get down on yourself when it does and throw in the towel.”
“Anyone who has ever scanned the bookshelves of a new girlfriend or boyfriend- or peeked inside his or her medicine cabinet- understands this implicitly; you can learn as much - or more - from one glance at a private space as you can from hours of exposure to a public face.”
“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.”
“Anyone who has ever studied the history of American diplomacy, especially military diplomacy, knows that you might start in a war with certain things on your mind as a purpose of what you are doing, but in the end, you found yourself fighting for entirely different things that you had never thought of before. In other words, war has a momentum of its own and it carries you away from all thoughtful intentions when you get into it. Today, if we went into Iraq, like the president would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end.”
“Anyone who has ever taken out a mortgage will be unsurprised to learn that it is, literally, a /death pledge/.”
Source: The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language
“Anyone who has ever tried to share pizza iwth roommates knows that Communism cannot ever work. If Lenin and Marx had just shard an apartment, perhaps a hundred million lives might have been spared and put to productive use making sneakers and office furniture.”
“Anyone who has ever tried to write a novel knows what an arduous task it is, undoubtedly one of the worst ways of occupying oneself. You have to remain within yourself all the time, in solitary confinement. It's a controlled psychosis, an obsessive paranoia manacled to work completely lacking in the feather pens and bustles and Venetian masks we would ordinarily associate with it, clothed instead in a butcher's apron and rubber boots, eviscerating knife in hand. You can only barely see from that writerly cellar the feet of passers-by, hear the rapping of their heels. Every so often someone stops and bends down and glances in through the window, and then you get a glimpse of a human face, maybe even exchange a few words. But ultimately the mind is so occupied with its own act, a play staged by the self ofr the self in a hasty, makeshift cabinet of curiosities peopled by author and character, narrator and reader, the person describing and the person described, that feet, shoes, heels, and faces become, sooner or later, mere components of that act.”
Source: Flights
“Anyone who has examined into the history of the theories of earth evolution must have been astounded to observe the manner in which the unique and the difficultly explainable has been made to take the place of the common and the natural in deriving the framework of these theories.”
Source: Earth Evolution and Its Facial Expression
“Anyone who has experienced a certain amount of loss in their life has empathy for those who have experienced loss.”
“Anyone who has experienced a debilitating sleep disorder knows what it is like to be the walking dead.”
“Anyone who has fallen into fornication, adultery or any other such bodily impurity, should desist from this revolting filth and cleanse himself through confession, tears, fasting and the like. For God judges unrepentant fornicators and adulterers. He condemns them, dismisses them and consigns them to hell, unquenchable fire and other never-ending punishments, saying, 'Let the impure and accursed be taken away, lest they see and enjoy the glory of the Lord' (cf. Isa. 26:10 LXX).”
Source: The homilies
“Anyone who has gazed into the nighttime sky knows that the dominant objects visible to our unaided eyes are stars.”
Source: How Old Is the Universe?
“Anyone who has genuinely seen God is deeply convicted of his or her own sin.”
Source: Billy Graham in Quotes
“Anyone who has gone through great suffering is bound to have a greater sympathy and understanding of the problems of mankind.”
“Anyone who has gone through this process knows that every month is filled with anxiety, hope, tears, frustration, crushing disappointment, and hoards of negative tests. You learn not to hope and to expect a bad turn. Each month builds on every emotion. It can pry couples apart and drive people mentally into the ground. Luckily, we have used this season to lean into each other and become closer. We have been each other’s foundation to stand on and compass to follow when we didn’t know what to do. We have had to let go of the way we thought this would go and walk into unexpected paths.”
Source: Tired Wonder: Beginnings and Endings
“Anyone who has got a book collection/library and a garden wants for nothing.”