A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“A great man may be the personification and type of the epoch for which God destines him, but he is never its creator.”
“A great man may commence life in a hovel.”
“A great man may not do great things but they do ordinary things greatly.”
“A Great Man must be motivated by the dynamics of a social purpose and must act as the scourge and the scavenger of society. These are the elements which distinguish an eminent man from the Great Man, and constitute his title deeds to respect and reverence.”
“A great man need not be virtuous, nor his opinions right, but he must have a firm mind, a distinctive luminous character.”
Source: Winds of Doctrine: Studies in Contemporary Opinion
“A great man once wrote, "Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and blows up the bonfire." If only I were as eloquent as Mr. de la Rochefoucauld...I miss you, I miss you, I miss you. And I want you. And I need your kiss. And your touch on my skin like a man needs water. Always.”
Source: On Folly Beach
“A great man represents a great ganglion in the nerves of society, or to vary the figure, a strategic point in the campaign of history, and part of his greatness consists in his being there.”
“A great man scarcely knows how he dines, how he dresses; but without railing or precision, his living is natural and poetic.”
Source: Emerson's Essays: Top Essays
“A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.”
“A great man stands on God. A small man on a great man.”
“A great man wears a crown of greatness on his head and takes it with him everywhere he goes. He wears it with grace, whether in boardrooms or humble homes. His crown symbolizes a great sense of purpose.”
Source: A Man of Valour: Idioms and Epigrams
“A great man who is vicious will be a great example of vice and a rich man who is not generous will be merely a miserly beggar, for the possessor of wealth is not made happy by possessing it but by spending it, and not by spending it as he pleases but by knowing how to spend it well.”
Source: Don Quixote
“A great man's greatest good luck is to die at the right time.”
Source: The Passionate State of Mind
“A great man's manias must be respected, because the time required to combat them is too precious to waste.”
“A great man, tender of heart, strong of nerve, boundless patience and broadest sympathy, with no motive apart from his country.”
“A great man, who was convinced that the truths of political and moral science are capable of the same certainty as those that form the system of physical science, even in those branches like astronomy that seem to approximate mathematical certainty. He cherished this belief, for it led to the consoling hope that humanity would inevitably make progress toward a state of happiness and improved character even as it has already done in its knowledge of the truth.”
“A great manager without a great team is just a manager.”
“A great many a drop of water will create a creek.”
“A great many college graduates come here thinking of lawyers as social engineers arguing the great Constitutional issues.”
“A great many complimentary things have been said about the faculty of memory, and if you look in a good quotation book you will find them neatly arranged.”
“A great many film stars perched on unstable ravine edges in the canyon systems of Los Angeles will, like the cemeteries there, eventually slide down to join their unfortunate fellows in the canyon floors, with mud, cars, and embalmed or living film stars in one glorious muddy mass. We should not lend our talents to creating such spectacular catastrophes.”
“A great many men - some comparatively small men now - if put in the right position, would be Luthers and Columbuses.”
“A great many men are mad, and no one knows it. They do not know it themselves”
Source: The Secret Adversary (Diversion Classics)
“A great many men's gratitude is nothing but a secret desire to hook in more valuable kindnesses hereafter.”
“A great many of the epic fantasies, from The Lord of the Rings onward, are about war, but to my mind, a lot of it doesn't really deal honestly with the consequences of war, what war does to us, as a society, what war does to us, as individuals, and the struggle for power, in the same way, and what we're fighting for.”
“A great many of those who 'debunk' traditional...values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process”
“A great many of us have confused change with progress.”
“A great many of us must move from words to acts - from words of dissent to acts of disobedience.”
“A great many people (not you) do now seem to think that the mere state of being worried is in itself meritorious. I don’t think it is. We must, if it so happens, give our lives for others: but even while we’re doing it, I think we’re meant to enjoy Our Lord and, in Him, our friends, our food, our sleep, our jokes, and the birds’ song and the frosty sunrise.”
“A great many people are trying to make peace, but that has already been done. God has not left it for us to do; all we have to do is to enter into it.”
“A great many people confuse attention with admiration, they think a stunt is an achievement and misbehavior a declaration of independence.”
Source: Ain't Enough to Look Human
“A great many people do not have the right to their own opinion because they don't know what they are talking about.”
Source: Andy Rooney: 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit
“A great many people experience the movement from one century to the next, but a minuscule number of people experience the movement from one millennium to the next.”
“A great many people fall in love with or feel attracted to a person who offers the least possibility of a harmonious union.”
Source: The Challenge of Marriage
“A great many people go after success simply for the shiny prizes it brings...And nowhere is it pursued more ardently than in the city of New York.”
“A great many people have come up to me and asked how I manage to get so much work done and still keep looking so dissipated.”
“A great many people in Los Angeles are on special diets that restrict their intake of synthetic foods. The reason for this appears to be a widely held belief that organically grown fruits and vegetables make the cocaine work faster.”
Source: The Fran Lebowitz Reader
“A great many people mistake opinions for thought.”
“A great many people mistake opinions for thoughts.”
“A great many people never really discover themselves until ruin stares them in the face. They do not seem to know how to bring out their reserves until they are overtaken by an overwhelming disaster, or until the sight of their blighted prospects and of the wreck of their homes and happiness stirs them to the very center of their beings.... There is something in defeat which puts new determination into a man of mettle.”
Source: The Optimistic Life
“A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed keeping rabbits.”
“A great many people seem to think writing poetry is worthwhile, even though it pays next to nothing and is not as widely read as it should be.”
“A great many people think that polysyllables are a sign of intelligence and refinement so they think they will impress others with their command of obscure words.”
“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”
“A great many people who spend their time mourning over the brevity of life could make it seem longer if they did a little more work.”
Source: Archy does his part
“A great many people wonder why it was that Christ did not come at once to Martha and Mary, whom He loved, whenever He heard of their affliction. It was to try them, and it is the same with His dealings toward us. If He seems not to come to us in our affliction, it is only to test us.”
“A great many people, and more all the time, live their entire lives without ever once sleeping out under the stars.”
“A great many persons are able to become Members of this House without losing their insignificance.”
“A great many political speeches are literary parricides; they kill their fathers.”
“A great many quite good plays could be performed with rhythmic howls in the place of dialogue and lose almost nothing by the change.”
Source: The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews