Quotessence
Home / Quotes / A Quotes

A Quotes

Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.

All A Quotes

“As I drank, I saw Srebrenica spread out before me from halfway up the hill, coated with a thick winter fog. Snow dusted the hills surrounding us, hugging the town in its icy embrace. Conifer trees dotted the hills, their branches looking muted from the snow covering them. Snow covered all the roofs in the valley, giving everything a white and still appearance. We felt frozen in time, abandoned and forsaken, which was a true reflection of our internal state. “The government should create a new tourism campaign. Srebrenica, the place where time kneels between mountains.” Ramo waved his hands out to the terrain before us. After we got our breath back from laughing, I passed the bottle to him. My cheeks flushed as he placed his lips over the spout where my lips had been. He finished drinking and handed me the bottle. Our fingers touched, sparks flying.”

“As I drift back into sleep, I can't help thinking that it's a wonderful thing to be right about the world. To weigh the evidence, always incomplete, and correctly intuit the whole, to see the world in a grain of sand, to recognize its beauty, its simplicity, its truth. It's as close as we get to God in this life, and reside in the glow of such brief flashes of understanding, fully awake, sometimes for two or three seconds, at peace with our existence. And then back to sleep we go.”

“As I drifted along with my bodiless invisibility, I felt myself more and more becoming an empty, floating shape, seeing without being seen and walking without the interference of those grosser creatures who shared my world. It was not an experience completely without interest or even pleasure. The clown's shibboleth of "here we are again" took on a new meaning for me as I felt myself a novitiate of a more rarified order of harlequinry. ("The Last Feast Of The Harlequin")”

“As I entered this world, I would leave behind the nurturing of my family and my home, but in another sense I would take their protection with me. The lessons I had learned, the feelings of groundedness and belonging that have been woven into my character there, would be my companions on the journey.”

“As I experience it, appreciation of beauty is access to the soul. With beauty in our lives, we walk and carry ourselves more lightly and with a different look in our eyes. To look into the eyes of someone beholding beauty is to look through the windows of the soul. Anytime we catch a glimpse of soul, beauty is there; anytime we catch our breath and feel "How beautiful!," the soul is present.”

“As I explain at some length in 'The Crystal Sun' this particular angle, which we can call the 'golden angle,' is the precise value of the acute angle of of a right-angled 'golden triangle' that embodies the golden mean proportion .... The Danish art historian Else Kielland established with conclusive and absolutely overwhelming evidence and analysis that this angle was the basis for all Egyptian art and architecture. She did this in her monumental work 'Geometry in Egyptian Art' ..... The King's Chamber inside the Great Pyramid embodies no fewer than eight occurrences of the golden angle, and the coffer in the chamber embodies yet more.”

“As I explain in 'What It Means to be an Anarcho-Capitalist', to be an anarchist simply means you oppose aggression, and you realize the state necessarily commits aggression. If you are not an anarchist, it means you either condone aggression, or think the state does not necessarily commit aggression. As you say you are not an anarchist, can you please tell us which one describes you? Are you in favor of aggression (like socialists and criminals are)? Or, do you think the state does not commit aggression (like children brainwashed by government schools think)?”

“As I express my gratitude, I become more deeply aware of it. And the greater my awareness, the greater my need to express it. What happens here is a spiraling ascent, a process of growth in ever expanding circles around a steady center.”

“As I fall asleep, I think about Ginny and the look she gave me at church, and it makes me feel that familiar sinking in my gut-the way I've felt every time I've seen Nader McMillan in the hall since I was seven. He didn't even need to say anything to me. Just his existence would make me fell powerless and stupid. The difference, I guess, is that he gained his power by humiliating me. Thurns out when someone you actually give a shit about turns on you, it's even more powerful.”

“As I focus on diligent joy, I also keep remembering a simple idea my friend Darcey told me once -- that all the sorrow and trouble of this world is caused by unhappy people. Not only in the big global Hitler-'n'-Stalin picture, but also on the smallest personal level. Even in my own life, I can see exactly where my episodes of unhappiness have brought suffering or distress or (at the very least) inconvenience to those around me. The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people.”

“As I followed Elsie back along the riverbank, I brushed my fingertips against the silky catkins on the willow trees and wished Daddy had failed the medical examination too. I stopped now and then to collect interesting-looking pebbles that clacked together satisfyingly in my pockets, and to pick the pretty wildflowers: stitchwort and ragwort, silverweed and harebell, lady's purse and cinquefoil. Elsie told me their names. As we walked, I repeated them over and over so I wouldn't forget them, storing them away like precious gems to admire again later, in private.”

“As I followed Margo's directions through the maze of one-way streets, we saw a few people sleeping on the sidewalk or sitting on benches, but nobody was moving. Margo rolled down the window, and I felt the thick air blow across my face, warmer than night ought to be. I glanced over and saw strands of her hair blowing all around her face. Even though I could see her there, I felt entirely alone among these big and empty buildings, like I'd survived the apocalypse and the world had been given to me, this whole and amazing and endless world, mine for the exploring.”

“As I found out back in the reservation, fear can suppress sexual desires, but it can also arouse them. It’s a strange paradox.” “Yes, I see,” Kier said. “I’m afraid of you too … a little. Sometimes it deprives me of potency, but more often this fear, hmm … terribly excites me. Of course, it looks different from your side. I would like you to trust me more, in bed, in particular.”

“as I gazed up at the full moon rising through the trees and wondered how another month had passed, and I said out loud to that satellite—that desolate rock that does nothing but orbit and reflect light and drive the tides—-I said look how far I have come, I am still here, I have survived the worst of it, I woke up laughing last night, when was the last time that happened, and when the moon answered back with its wild silence I realized too late I was never talking to the moon at all, that when I speak to an empty place, I am always speaking to you.”

“As I get considerably beyond the biblical allotment of three score years and ten, I feel with increasing intensity that I can express my gratitude for still being around on the oxygen-side of the earth's crust only by not standing pat on what I have hitherto known and loved. While oxygen lasts, there are still new things to love, especially if compassion is a form of love.”

“As I get older I can see the patterns, the ugly corporate face behind the great machine. The sad and over competitive urge to be "loved or liked" on social media platforms exploited by their creators to create a frenzy of human need & desperate want. The system is an absolute con constantly exposing it's users (victims) to self identification and gratification only if they can collect enough followers to make themselves feel popular or complete. Instagram for example is an absolute shit show offering you the opportunity to purchase more exposure and get more likes. I'm sorry but ... is this really the 21st century? Are we becoming an " advanced" civilization? No. This is the inevitable "white noise" of capitalist conformity playing upon human desires & emotions just looking to make another mil. And its disgusting.”