A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“As a rule, theologians know nothing of this world, and far less of the next; but they have the power of stating the most absurd propositions with faces solemn as stupidity touched by fear.
It is a part of their business to malign and vilify the Voltaires, Humes, Paines, Humboldts, Tyndalls, Haeckels, Darwins, Spencers, and Drapers, and to bow with uncovered heads before the murderers, adulterers, and persecutors of the world. They are, for the most part, engaged in poisoning the minds of the young, prejudicing children against science, teaching the astronomy and geology of the bible, and inducing all to desert the sublime standard of reason.”
Source: Some Mistakes of Moses
“As a rule there is one thing you can always count on in our job — popularity. There are plenty of disadvantages I grant you, but you are liked and respected. Ring people up any hour of the day or night, butt into their houses uninvited make them answer a string of damn fool questions when they want to do something else — they like it. Always a smile and the best of everything for the gentlemen of the Press.”
Source: Scoop
“As a rule they will refuse even to sample a foreign dish, they regard such things as garlic and olive oil with disgust, life is unliveable to them unless they have tea and puddings.”
Source: The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: As I please, 1943-1945
“As a rule we develop a borrowed European idea forward, and ... Europe develops a borrowed American idea backwards.”
Source: Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations
“As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.”
“As a rule, we don't like to feel to sad or lonely or depressed. So why do we like music (or books or movies) that evoke in us those same negative emotions? Why do we choose to experience in art the very feelings we avoid in real life?
Aristotle deals with a similar question in his analysis of tragedy. Tragedy, after all, is pretty gruesome. […] There's Sophocles's Oedipus, who blinds himself after learning that he has killed his father and slept with his mother. Why would anyone watch this stuff? Wouldn't it be sick to enjoy watching it? […] Tragedy's pleasure doesn't make us feel "good" in any straightforward sense. On the contrary, Aristotle says, the real goal of tragedy is to evoke pity and fear in the audience. Now, to speak of the pleasure of pity and fear is almost oxymoronic. But the point of bringing about these emotions is to achieve catharsis of them - a cleansing, a purification, a purging, or release. Catharsis is at the core of tragedy's appeal.”
Source: Radiohead and Philosophy: Fitter Happier More Deductive
“As a rule, we humans don’t care much about spectacle - what we care about is ecstatic understanding: in other words, cognitive ecstasy, that can be defined as electrifying cerebration of extreme psychical pleasure when we master a skill or learn something new, feeding our imagination. This ‘cogno-ecstasis’ can give us goosebumps of intellectual rapture of 'aha moment,' or puts us in motivational overdrive, otherwise known as the ‘flow state.”
Source: TECHNOCULTURE: The Rise of Man
“As a rule we perceive what we expect to perceive... The unexpected is usually not received at all.”
Source: Management
“As a rule, [populism] is done for the sake of political expediency by those who do not care about the consequences, who do not think even one step ahead, who do not want to think and do not intend to honour their commitments.”
“As a rule, adversity reveals genius and prosperity hides it”
“As a rule, all heroism is due to a lack of reflection, and thus it is necessary to maintain a mass of imbeciles. If they once understand themselves the ruling men will be lost.”
“As a rule, anyone who can tell a good story can write one, so there really need be no mistake about his qualification; such a man will be careful not to be wearisome, and to keep his point, or his catastrophe, well in hand.”
Source: Sammlung
“As a rule, anything that is pretty you avoid when on an expedition in the polar extremes. Normally anything other than white means a hazard such as a crevasse.”
“As a rule, dictatorships guarantee safe streets and terror of the doorbell. In democracy the streets may be unsafe after dark, but the most likely visitor in the early hours will be the milkman.”
“As a rule, from what I've observed, the American Captain of Industry doesn't do anything out of business hours. When he has put the cat out and locked up the office for the night, he just relapses into a state of coma from which he emerges only to start being a Captain of Industry again.”
Source: Enter Jeeves: 15 Early Stories
“As a rule, Germans shouldn't do comedy. Their last box office comedy was Nosferatu.”
“As a rule, governments monitor people.”
“As a rule, he fights well who has wrongs to redress; but vastly better fights he who, with wrongs as a spur, has also steadily before him a glorious result in prospect--a result in which he can discern balm for wounds, compensation for valor, remembrance and gratitude in the event of death.”
Source: Ben-Hur: A Story of the Christ
“As a rule, he or she who has the most information will have the greatest success in life.”
“As a rule, I always look for what others ignore.”
“As a rule, I am very careful to be shallow and conventional where depth and originality are wasted.”
Source: My dear Mr. M.: letters to G.B. MacMillan from L.M. Montgomery
“As a rule, I do not approve of messing around with coffee. No sugar, no milk, no chocolate, hazelnuts, cinnamon, no nothing.... Just drink it black, the way God does”
“As a rule, I don't enjoy being tossed into closets and having the door shut on my face, but I knew he was protecting me.”
Source: Trylle: The Complete Trilogy
“As a rule, I don't like to laugh at the misfortune of others. The exception to that rule is if it's really, really funny.”
Source: Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!: Cartoonist Explains Cloning, Blouse Monsters, Voting Machines, Romance, Monkey G ods, How to Avoid Being Mistaken for a Rodent, and More
“As a rule, I don't worry about genre. I just want to tell a good story, with characters that interest me and my readers.”
“As a rule, I think they are quite impossible. Geniuses talk so much, don't they? Such a bad habit! And they are always thinking about themselves, when I want them to be thinking about me.”
Source: The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde
“As a rule, I try to avoid the French Quarter because of the crowds, especially Bourbon Street. But hey, some people love it. A great, wild, adult thing to see is the costume competition in front of the bar Oz on Bourbon early morning on Fat Tuesday.”
“As a rule, indeed, grown-up people are fairly correct on matters of fact; it is in the higher gift of imagination that they are so sadly to seek.”
Source: The Golden Age
“As a rule, it was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.”
“As a rule, ladies of the Royal Family wear light coloured clothes because such colours are more discernible against a great crowd.”
“As a rule, large capitalists are Republicans and small capitalists are Democrats, but workingmen must remember that they are all capitalists, and that the many small ones, like the fewer large ones, are all politically supporting their class interests, and this is always and everywhere the capitalist class.”
“As a rule, man is a fool. When it's hot, he wants it cool; When its cool, he wants it hot. Always wanting, what is not.”
“As a rule, men worry more about what they can't see than about what they can.”
“As a rule, my focus is on classical music, but I love jazz. I love everything, actually.”
“As a rule, one must write a great many words before one learns to write well.”
“As a rule, one should never place form over content.”
“As a rule, only the poor are generous.”
“As a rule, only the poor are generous. Rich people can always find excellent reasons for not handing over twenty thousand francs to a relative.”
“As a rule, our largest cities are the worst governed.”
Source: Our Country
“As a rule, panics do not destroy capital; they merely reveal the extent to which it has been destroyed by its betrayal into hopelessly unproductive works.”
“As a rule, pawn endings have a forced character, and they can be worked out conclusively.”
Source: Secrets of Chess Training
“As a rule, people are afraid of truth. Each truth we discover in nature or social life, destroys the crutches on which we need to lean.”
“As a rule, prayer is answered and funds come in, but if we are kept waiting, the spiritual blessing that is the outcome is far more precious than exemption from the trial.”
“As a rule, said Holmes, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.”
Source: Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
“As a rule, so-called "positional" sacrifices are considered more difficult, and therefore more praise-worthy, than those which are based exclusively on an exact calculation of tactical possibilities.”
Source: Alexander Alekhine's Best Games: Algebraic edition
“As a rule, software systems do not work well until they have been used, and have failed repeatedly, in real applications.”
“As a rule, the man who can do all things equally well is a very mediocre individual.”
Source: Selected Writings of Elbert Hubbard ...
“As a rule, the mind, residing in a body that has become weakened by pampering, is also weak, and where there is no strength of mind there can be no strength of soul.”
Source: The Penguin Gandhi Reader
“As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is, the less mysterious it proves to be.”
Source: Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
“As a rule, the more mistakes there are in a game, the more memorable it remains, because you have suffered and worried over each mistake at the board.”