A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“A good word costs as little as a bad one, and is worth more.”
Source: Moral and religious aphorisms collected from the manuscript papers of the reverend and learned Doctor Whichcote; and published in 1703, by Dr. Jeffery. Now re-published, with very large additions, ... by Samuel Salter, ... To which are added, Eight letter
“A good word is an easy obligation; but not to speak ill requires only our silence, which costs us nothing.”
Source: The Beauties of Dr. John Tillotson, Carefullet Selected from His Works [and] Containing His Admirable System of Early Education, Thoughts on Religion, Atheism and Infidelity, the Immortality of the Soul, Etc: To which are Prefixed Some of His Arguments for the Truth and Belief of the Christian Religion
“A good word maketh the heart glad.”
“A good work can be communicated across languages ... [provided one does not] fall into the trap of narrow-minded nationalistic or chauvinistic thinking.”
“A good work culture and work environment is very crucial in helping your employees to put their best foot forward.”
Source: 17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure
“A good work ethic is not so much a concern for hard work but rather one for responsibility. There have been a great many men and women who have in fact used work or hustle or selfish ambition as an escape from real responsibility, an escape from purpose. In matters such as these, the hard worker is just as dysfunctional as the sloth.”
“A good work is a partnership between you and nature... Nature will help you every step of the way.”
Source: I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was: How to Discover What You Really Want and How to Get It
“A good worker knows how to be seen, yet remain invisible. They achieved invisibility by never showing up how good they are. But some people hate it & jealousy is evident.”
“A good working definition of fanaticism is that you are so convinced of your views and policies that you are sure that anyone who opposed them must be either stupid and decieved or have some ulterior motive. We are today a nation where almost everyone in the public eye displays fanaticism with every utterance.”
“A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.”
Source: Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
“A good worship session needs to have some quiet intimate moments as much as those high anthemic moments. Too much of both is bad. If there are no valleys, there would be no mountains.”
“A good writer - and I think it's this way with actors too - even if you have two lines, you have to do the same complete work as if you're number one on the call sheet. If you get in an elevator and somebody gets on, rides two floors and gets off, that person has a reality that goes back to when they were born. They have memories, they have people, they have a life. They are doing something right now that the camera is on them in their space. We live in our own close-up all the time.”
“A good writer always works at the impossible.”
Source: Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters
“A good writer always works at the impossible.There is another kind who pulls in his horizons, drops his mind as one lowers rifle sights.”
Source: Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters
“A good writer can set a thriller anywhere and make it convincing: the trick is to evoke the setting in such a way that it highlights the crime or unsettles the reader.”
“A good writer can simulate a page torn out of somebody's diary, and give you every little voyeuristic thrill you might get from that, but actually tell you a broader story. I think it's a noble idea that it's cathartic to open a vein for everybody to see, but ultimately, you're just getting blood everywhere and making a mess. I like the idea that there are deeper and more meaningful things to talk about than your own misery. But at the same time, there's something really interesting about skirting that line and making it seem like you're doing that.”
“A good writer can watch a cat pad across the street and know what it is to be pounced upon by a Bengal tiger.”
“A good writer cannot avoid having social consciousness. I don't mean this about small pieces of writing, but about a big book. If it's a big book, there has to be more than one undertow.”
“A good writer does not receive anywhere near the number of poison-pen letters that is commonly assumed. Among a hundred jackassesthere are not ten who will admit to being jackasses, and at most one who will put it in writing.”
Source: Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms
“A good writer does not write as people write, but as he writes.”
“A good writer gets better only by learning to cut, to remove the ornamental, the descriptive, the narrative, and especially the deeply felt and meaningful. What remains? The story remains.”
Source: On directing film
“A good writer is also an avid reader. A good reader is also a vivid dreamer. A good dreamer is also a good learner. And a good learner is definitely a good listener. A good listener is always looking to what the heart speaks. A spoken heart talks directly to a silent soul. And a silent soul is most of the time in pace with a peaceful thought. A peaceful thought is also a good writer...”
Source: The Tao of Physical and Spiritual
“A good writer is always a people watcher.”
“A good writer is an expert on nothing except himself. And on that subject, if he is wise, he holds his tongue.”
“A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.”
“A good writer is not someone who knows how to write- but how to rewrite”
“A good writer is not, per se, a good book critic. No more so than a good drunk is automatically a good bartender.”
“A good writer is one you can read without breaking a sweat.”
“A good writer knew when not to write. Anybody could type. Not that I was a good typist; also I couldn't spell and I didn't know grammar. But I knew when not to write. It was like fucking. You had to rest the godhead now and then.”
Source: Women
“A good writer must be like the birds of a dark forest; you can't see them, but you can hear their mysterious and wise voices!”
“A good writer must have more than vin rosé in his veins, use more than Chablis for ink.”
“A good writer
never tells your secrets,
they tell their own.
They sacrifice themselves
and surrender you.”
Source: Ink Blot in a Poet's Bloodstream
“A good writer of history is a guy who is suspicious.”
“A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.”
Source: Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits
“A good writer preserves an air of freedom in his prose, so that the reader won't know how a story will end - even if he's reading a history book.”
“A good writer refuses to be socialized. He insists on his own version of things, his own consciousness. And by doing so he draws the reader's eye from its usual groove into a new way of seeing things.”
“A good writer sells out everybody he knows, sooner or later.”
Source: A Bigamist's Daughter
“A good writer should be able to communicate to the reader, 'I know your life. I know what you have truly experienced. It’s not right or wrong. It’s survival. It’s making mistakes, and trying to redeem yourself. It’s imperfections, and trying to make yourself better. It’s outrages, and crimes, and insults, which often are not righted, which you have to fix yourself, in your own mind, in your own heart, so that you are not poisoned'.”
Source: Crossing Borders: Personal Essays
“A good writer should be able to write comedic work that made you laugh, and scary stuff that made you scared, and fantasy or science fiction that imbued you with a sense of wonder, and mainstream journalism that gave you clear and concise information in a way that you wanted it.”
“a good writer should draw the reader in by starting in the middle of the story with a hook, then go back and fill in what happened before the hook. Once you have the reader hooked, you can write whatever you want as you slowly reel them in.”
Source: Peak
“A good writer wants from us — or has no right to ask more than — intelligence, good faith and time.”
“A good writer writes with a camera, not a pen.”
“A good year for me is when me and my family are in good health. I'm just lucky to have good years doing something I like to do.”
“A good youth ought to have a fear of God, to be subject to his parents, to give honor to his elders, to preserve his purity; he ought not to despise humility, but should love forbearance and modesty. All these are an ornament to youthful years.”
“A good zoo," Stella said, "is a large domain. A wild cage. A safe place to be. It has room to roam and humans who don't hurt." She pauses, considering her words. "A good zoo is how humans make amends.”
“A good, all-loving god would not destroy his creations no matter how they act. He tells parents to love their children unconditionally. I say 'you first, God.'”
“A good, finished scandal, fully armed and equipped, such as circulates in the world, is rarely the production of a single individual, or even of a single coterie. It sees the light in one; is rocked and nurtured in another; is petted, developed, and attains its growth in a third; and receives its finishing touches only after passing through a multitude of hands. It is a child that can count a host of fathers--all ready to disown it.”
“A good, quick, small team can beat a big, slow team any time.”
“A good, real, unrestrained, hearty laugh is a sort of glorified internal massage, performed rapidly and automatically. It manipulates and revitalizes corners and unexplored crannies of the system that are unresponsive to most other exercise methods. With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.”
“A good, stinky French cheese or a good Stilton. These are things I really, really love. Dessert I can obviously live without.”