A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“As for the United States' future in Afghanistan, it will be fire and hell and total defeat, God willing, as it was for their predecessors - the Soviets and, before them, the British.”
“As for the usefulness of poetry, its uses are many. It is the deification of reality.”
“As for the usefulness of poetry, its uses are many. It is the deification of reality. It should make our days holy to us. The poet should speak to all men, for a moment, of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.”
“As for the various kinds of montage photography, they are in reality not photography at all but a kind of painting in which photography is used - as pastiches of textiles are used in crazy-quilts - to form a mosaic. Whatever value the montage may have derives from painting rather than the camera.”
“As for the various religions, there's no doubt that they are very meaningful to adherents, and allow them to delude themselves into thinking there is some meaning to their lives beyond what we agree is the case. I'd never try to talk them out of the delusions, which are necessary for them to live a life that makes some sense to them. These beliefs can provide a framework for deeds that are noble or savage, and anywhere in between, and there's every reason to focus attention on the deeds and the background for them, to the extent that we can grasp it.”
“As for the vice of lust - aside from what it means for spiritual persons to fall into this vice, since my intent is to treat of the imperfections that have to be purged by means of the dark night - spiritual persons have numerous imperfections, many of which can be called spiritual lust, not because the lust is spiritual but because it proceeds from spiritual things. It happens frequently that in a person's spiritual exercises themselves, without the person being able to avoid it, impure movements will be experienced in the sensory part of the soul, and even
sometimes when the spirit is deep in prayer or when receiving the sacraments of Penance or the Eucharist. These impure feelings arise from any of three causes outside one's control.
First, they often proceed from the pleasure human nature finds in spiritual exercises. Since both the spiritual and the sensory part of the soul receive gratification from that refreshment, each part experiences delight according to its own nature and properties. The spirit, the superior part of the soul, experiences renewal and satisfaction in God; and the sense, the lower part, feels sensory gratification and delight because it is ignorant of how to get anything else, and hence takes whatever is nearest, which is the impure sensory satisfaction. It may happen that while a soul is with God in deep spiritual prayer, it will conversely passively experience sensual rebellions, movements, and acts in the senses, not without its own great displeasure.
This frequently happens at the time of Communion. Since the soul receives joy and gladness in this act of love - for the Lord grants the grace and gives himself for this reason - the sensory part also takes its share, as we said, according to its mode. Since, after all, these two parts form one individual, each one usually shares according to its mode in what the other receives. As the Philosopher says: Whatever is received, is received according to the mode of the receiver. Because in the initial stages of the spiritual life, and even more advanced ones, the sensory part of the soul is imperfect, God's spirit is frequently received in this sensory part with this same imperfection. Once the sensory part is reformed through the purgation of the dark night, it no longer has these infirmities. Then the spiritual part of the soul, rather than the sensory part, receives God's Spirit, and the soul thus receives everything
according to the mode of the Spirit.”
Source: Dark night of the soul
“As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them of course, but one cannot possibly admire them.”
“As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them. They have made private terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very bad pottage. They must also be extraordinarily stupid.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“As for the way the inner inhabitants are created, if the obliteration [of sentient beings] occurs through fire, then the life span, merit, and karma of the gods of Ābhāsvara at the second realm of concentration will be obliterated and they will meet with death. Rebirth then takes place in the celestial palace of the first realm of concentration, and the first to be born there has a large body and the notion of being the creator of that world. He is known as the ancestor of that world, the great Brahmā, who is principal. Those who are subsequently born are smaller in size; and since they think they were born based upon Brahmā's wish, they become members of his retinue.”
Source: Dudjom Lingpa's Chöd: An Ambrosia Ocean of Sublime Explanations
“As for the work ethic, I'm just the kind of guy who takes what he does seriously. I never missed a day of school, I've rarely missed work and I played all those straight games; my streak only ended when I broke my cheekbone.”
“As for the workers' movement, I find that I reach workers more easily as neighbors than I do standing outside the factory despairingly giving out a leaflet telling them to take over, say the Ford plant.”
“As for the world of fashion and celebrity, I have the usual interest in the human comedy, but the problems of depiction absorb me more.”
“As for the world of phenomena, we are inclined to believe that it is illusory, separate from reality. And we think that only by ridding ourselves of it shall we be able to reach the world of True Mind. That, too, is an error. This world of birth and death, this world of lemon trees and maple trees, is the world of reality in itself. There is no reality that exists outside of the lemon trees and the maples.”
Source: Zen Keys: A Guide to Zen Practice
“As for the writers who have influenced me they are many. Hemingway, Chandler, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, William Goldman, Flannery O'Conner, Carson McCullers, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and so many others. As a kid Kipling and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Robert E. Howard.”
“As for theatre, there's ups and downs to everything. Theatre is ephemeral. But that is part of its charm because you can always say the production was better than it was.”
“As for these 60 years, and in general more than a hundred years, we have had different periods in relations and there have been tragic pages in our history, but since 1956 when we restored diplomatic relations, regrettably, we have not had a foundation on which to build ties that would correspond to our wishes and that are currently required in bilateral cooperation with Japan.”
“As for thinking time versus writing time, well, that's up to you. But - and I wish it were otherwise - books don't get written by thinking about them, they get written by writing them. And that's when you make discoveries about what you're writing. That's when you get the happy accidents.”
“As for this young Ali, one cannot but like him. A noble-minded creature, as he shows himself, now and always afterwards; full of affection, of fiery daring. Something chivalrous in him; brave as a lion; yet with a grace, a truth and affection worthy of Christian knighthood.”
“As for this," Magnus said sliding the stele into Jace's jeans pocket, "keep it in your pants, Shadowhunter." - 219”
“As for those deserters, malcontents, radicals, incendiaries, the civil and uncivil disobedients among the young, SDS, PLP, Weathermen I and Weathermen II, the revolutionary action movement, the Black United Front, Yippies, Hippies, Yahoos, Black Panthers, Lions and Tigers alike - I would swap the whole damn zoo for a single platoon of the kind of young Americans I saw in Vietnam.”
Source: The real Spiro Agnew: commonsense quotations of a household word
“as for those of you who are complicit, it is not you that I want to destroy, but your shackles”
Source: Dziady
“As for those that carried out these attacks there are no adequate words of condemnation. Their barbarism will stand as their shame for all eternity.”
Source: Tony Blair in His Own Words
“As for those who come to the big cities and change, fanciful cities just stimulate their inner desires.”
“As for those who disbelieve, their deeds are like a mirage in a desert. The thirsty one thinks it to be water, until he comes up to it, he finds it to be nothing, but he finds Allah with him, Who will pay him his due (Hell). And Allah is Swift in taking account.”
“As for those who protest that I am robbing people of the great comfort and consolation they gain from Christianity, I can only say that Christianity includes hell, eternal torture for the vast majority of humanity, for most of your relatives and friends. . . . If I could feel that I had robbed anybody of his faith in hell, I should not be ashamed or regretful.”
Source: Why I Quit Going to Church: With Answers to Critics and Correspondents
“As for those who spite you, and seemingly just because, it's only evident that they're learning from you. Maybe you taste bad - kind of like medicine, kind of like truth - and to them, you're thought unsafe. There is flattery in being chewed out and spit up. Humans have always had a hard time digesting foreign things.”
Source: Healology
“As for those who think the Arab world promises freedom, the briefest study of its routine traditional treatment of blacks (slavery) and women (purdah) will provide relief from all illusion. If Malcolm X had been a black woman his last message to the world would have been entirely different. The brotherhood of Moslem men-all colors-may exist there, but part of the glue that holds them together is the thorough suppression of women.”
“As for those who were ashamed to declare themselves, lying low for the sake of a peaceful existence, she utterly despised such of them as had brains; they were traitors to themselves and their fellows, she insisted. For the sooner the world came to realize that fine brains very frequently went with inversion, the sooner it would have to withdraw its ban, and the sooner would cease this persecution. Persecution was always a hideous thing, breeding hideous thoughts—and such thoughts were dangerous.”
Source: The Well Of Loneliness
“As for those whose role it is to love us - I mean, relatives and in-laws (what a word)- It's a different tune. They find the right word, but it's usually the one that wounds.”
Source: The fall
“As for those wingy mysteries in divinity, and airy subtleties in religion, which have unhinged the brains of better heads, they never stretched the pia mater of mine; methinks there be not impossibilities enough in Religion for an active faith.”
“As for time, all men have it in abundance.”
Source: The Richest Man in Babylon
“As for today's music, Nicki Minaj is killing it. She's an amazing artist.”
“As for total disarmament, there are almost 50,000 nuclear weapons in the world today; even if they were banned, not all would be destroyed.”
Source: Thinking Unth 80SP
“As for two years from now... who know where it'll be. I think we'll ideally be doing a lot of the same stuff, but maybe with spell checking.”
“As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn't make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting - the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.”
“As for UFO's ... I do believe there is a dimension that we don't understand. Not sure about little green martians, though.”
“As for uniqueness, this is virtually nonexistent! And it's a shame that people think they're unique because they have a face ring, retro clothing, colorful hair, drive a certain kind of automobile or listen to some obscure musician.”
“As for us, we saw the police as a natural catastrophe— like floods, fires, earthquakes. There was nothing you could do about these things except to try and escape them. We had no analysis, no understanding that society could be changed. We simply tried to survive, as ourselves, as kamp girls, natural rebels. We did not feel that the police might not be entitled to hunt us, but accepted them as inevitable.
I was beaten up for suggesting that a woman ask for a lawyer. It was seem as a stupid— even dangerous— suggestion. Fighting back with threats of lawyers would only make the police even angrier at us. But part of me felt that what was happening was unfair and unjust, though I had no idea how things could ever be different.
Melbourne and Adelaide were exactly the same. The public lesbian scene was dangerous and difficult. There were many other New Zealand lesbians around, too. In spite of everything, I loved it. The “mateship” was amazing and close, important enough for any risk. And the freedom to be ourselves, to be real, to be queer, affirmed us.
There were private, closeted scenes too, but they were hard to find and cliquey. They were fearful of being “sprung” by kamps who were too obvious. They were mainly older middle-class women. I knew some of them, learnt many things from them— like how to behave in a nice restaurant if you are taken to dinner. But they too had no sense of anything being able to change— except for the one strange woman who danced naked to Beethoven and lent me de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. She sowed some wild ideas, more than a decade too early for them to make any sense.”
Source: Finding the Lesbians: Personal Accounts from Around the World
“As for us, during twenty years' reign, we have known much bitterness.”
“As for us, He has appointed the job of permanent unemployment. If he wanted us to work, after all, He would not have created this wine. With a skinfull of this, Sir, would you rush out to commit economics?”
Source: The Rumi Collection
“As for us, we were never concerned with the Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the "sacredness of human life." We were revolutionaries in opposition, and have remained revolutionaries in power. To make the individual sacred we must destroy the social order which crucifies him. And this problem can only be solved by blood and iron.”
“As for us, we were never concerned with the Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the sacredness of human life.”
Source: The Defence of Terrorism (Routledge Revivals): Terrorism and Communism
“As for us, we were scarcely four hundred strong, and we well remembered the word and warning...we had received to beware of entering the city of Mexico, since they would kill us as soon as they had us inside.”
“As for waxing, I've never waxed in my life and I never would. I'm extremely Welsh, so I draw the line at removing body hair.”
“As for what concerns our relations with our fellow men, the anguish in our neighbor's soul must break all precept. All that we do is a means to an end, but love is an end in itself, because God is love.”
“As for what else I want from you...' He gestured to the house behind us. 'I'll tell you tomorrow at breakfast. For now, clean yourself up. Rest.' That rage flickered in his eyes again at the dress, the hair. 'Take the stairs on the right, one level down. You room is the first door.'
'Not a dungeon cell?' Perhaps it was foolish to reveal that fear, to suggest it to him.
But Rhys half turned, brows lifting. 'You are not a prisoner, Feyre. You made a bargain, and I am calling it in. You will be my guest here with the privileges of a member of my household. None of my subjects are going to touch you, hurt you, or so much as think ill of you here.”
Source: A Court of Mist and Fury
“As for what I have done as a poet, I take no pride in whatever. Excellent poets have lived at the same time with me, poets more excellent lived before me, and others will come after me. But that in my country I am the only person who knows the truth in the difficult science of colors-of that, I say, I am not a little proud, and here have a consciousness of superiority to many.”
“As for what is not true, you will always find abundance in the newspapers.”
Source: Memoirs, Correspondence, and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Late President of the United States
“As for what it's against - the story is against those who pervert and misuse religion, or any other kind of doctrine with a holy book and a priesthood and an apparatus of power that wields unchallengeable authority, in order to dominate and suppress human freedoms.”
“As for what motivates me to better myself, I would say the friends that I keep around me and also my family. They constantly keep me in check with their words and actions, knowingly and also unknowingly.”