A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“At certain junctures in the course of existence, unique moments occur when everyone and everything, even the most distant stars, combine to bring about something that could not have happened before and will never happen again. Few people know how to take advantage of these critical moments, unfortunately, and they often pass unnoticed. When someone does recognize them, however, great things happen in the world.”
“At certain moments of intense personal grief, capturing images was for me the only way to comprehend later what was happening.”
“At certain moments, words are nothing; it is the
tone in which they are uttered.”
“At certain periods of history it is only poetry that is capable of dealing with reality by condensing it into something graspable, something that otherwise wouldn't be retained by the mind.”
“At certain periods of life, we live years of emotion in a few weeks, and look back on those times as on great gaps between the old life and the new.”
Source: The History of Henry Esmond, Esq: A Colonel in the Service of Her Majesty Q. Anne. Written by Himself
“At certain point, you realize it's easy to play music for the rest of your life: just don't sell your guitar. Maybe you get a day job, but as long as you have a guitar, you can play.”
“At certain points if your life, you like doing more. I'm not sure what causes it or for what reasons; you just do it.”
“At certain times and in certain schools it is orthodox to be a rebel; and in general it is a very poor class that does not contain at least three pupils who can be counted on to oppose the teachers authority and loudly and persistently to question everything he says.”
Source: THE ART OF TEACHING
“At certain times each year, we journalists do almost nothing except apply for the Pulitzers and several dozen other major prizes. During these times you could walk right into most newsrooms and commit a multiple axe murder naked, and it wouldn't get reported in the paper because the reporters and editors would all be too busy filling out prize applications.”
“At certain times I like sex - like after a cigarette.”
“At certain times in the revolutionary struggle, the difficulties outweigh the favorable conditions and so constitute the principal aspect of the contradiction and the favorable conditions constitute the secondary aspect. But through their efforts the revolutionaries can overcome the difficulties step by step and open up a favorable new situation, thus a difficult situation yields place to a favorable one.”
Source: Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works
“At certain times you really feel as though you have to do something.”
“At certain times, a silent mind is very important, but 'silent' does not mean closed. The silent mind is an alert, awakened mind; a mind seeking the nature of reality.”
Source: When the Chocolate Runs Out
“At certain times, men regard poetry merely as a bright flame, but to women it was, and always will be, a warm fire.”
“At Chadham High, the safest place to be gay was in the closet.”
Source: Light in Endless Darkness
“At cheaper and nearer seats of Learning parents with slender incomes may place their sons in a course of education putting them on a level with the sons of the Richest.”
Source: 1816-1828
“At Chelsea, a sacking is just another day at the office.”
“At Chicago Hope they have a technical staff that works real hard to make that O.R. as realistic as possible.”
“At childhood’s end, the houses petered out
into playing fields, the factory, allotments
kept, like mistresses, by kneeling married men,
the silent railway line, the hermit’s caravan,
till you came at last to the edge of the woods.
It was there that I first clapped eyes on the wolf.
He stood in a clearing, reading his verse out loud
in his wolfy drawl, a paperback in his hairy paw,
red wine staining his bearded jaw. What big ears
he had! What big eyes he had! What teeth!
In the interval, I made quite sure he spotted me,
sweet sixteen, never been, babe, waif, and bought me a drink,
my first. You might ask why. Here’s why. Poetry.
The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the woods,
away from home, to a dark tangled thorny place
lit by the eyes of owls. I crawled in his wake,
my stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red from my blazer
snagged on twig and branch, murder clues. I lost both shoes
but got there, wolf’s lair, better beware. Lesson one that night,
breath of the wolf in my ear, was the love poem.
I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, for
what little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf?
Then I slid from between his heavy matted paws
and went in search of a living bird – white dove –
which flew, straight, from my hands to his hope mouth.
One bite, dead. How nice, breakfast in bed, he said,
licking his chops. As soon as he slept, I crept to the back
of the lair, where a whole wall was crimson, gold, aglow with books.
Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head,
warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood.
But then I was young – and it took ten years
in the woods to tell that a mushroom
stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birds
are the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolf
howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out,
season after season, same rhyme, same reason. I took an axe
to a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmon
to see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolf
as he slept, one chop, scrotum to throat, and saw
the glistening, virgin white of my grandmother’s bones.
I filled his old belly with stones. I stitched him up.
Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone.
Little Red-Cap”
Source: The World's Wife
“At Christmas A man is at his finest towards the finish of the year; He is almost what he should be when the Christmas season's here; Then he's thinking more of others than he's thought the months before, And the laughter of his children is a joy worth toiling for. He is less a selfish creature than at any other time; When the Christmas spirit rules him he comes close to the sublime.”
“At Christmas, all roads lead home.”
“At Christmas I no more desire a rose
Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled mirth;
But like of each thing that in season grows.”
“At Christmas parties games were rough, no doubt,
And one shy little guest might be left out;
But let's be fair: while children of her age
Were cast as elves and fairies on the stage
That she'd helped paint for the school pantomime,
My gentle girl appeared as Mother Time,
A bent charwoman with a slop pail and broom,
And like a fool I sobbed in the men's room.”
Source: Pale fire
“At Christmas play and make good cheer, for Christmas comes but once a year.”
“At Christmas time I sat on Santa's lap. His fly was open ! Boy what a present he gave me !”
“At Christmas time we couldn't afford tinsel, so we'd wait till grandpa sneezed.”
“At Christmas you can get real bargains. I saw one item marked down ten dollars. It was a yacht.”
“At Christmas, 'It's a Wonderful Life' makes me cry in exactly the same places every time, even though I know it's coming.”
“At Christmas, I am always struck by how the spirit of togetherness lies also at the heart of the Christmas story. A young mother and a dutiful father with their baby were joined by poor shepherds and visitors from afar. They came with their gifts to worship the Christ child.”
“At Christmas, I no more desire a rose.”
“At Christmas, individuals are apportioned their roles in the family script - you're either the funny one or the sensitive one; or you either do the cooking or the washing up. And those roles aren't easy to change.”
“At Christmas-tide the open hand
Scatters its bounty o'er sea and land,
And none are left to grieve alone,
For Love is heaven and claims its own.”
“At Christmastime, whenever I feel overwhelmed and a little out of sorts, all I have to do is think of my father and the things he'd be doing if he were here – and I smile.”
“At church, during communion, they give out free wine. Whoa! Talk about a great place to drink and meet women.”
Source: There are Two Typos of People in This World: Those Who Can Edit and Those Who Can't
“At church, she told us they ate one cracker and took one swallow of red wine and the rest of the time there was a man talking. She did not know exactly what he said, but he said it for a long time. Sometimes, just to give her hands something to do, she would pick up the heavy book in front of her seat and open it. Even though she didn't understand everything they were singing, she moved her lips anyway. It was just like that at the citizenship ceremony. Whether or not you understood the oath you made, you had to move your lips.
After a while, for some reason she seemed to lose interest in going. She didn't say why.”
Source: How to Pronounce Knife: Stories
“At Cisco, I made every decision based on what was good for the company, and that pretty much ruined my marriage and my health.”
“At Clearview, we believe that every student deserves a chance to shine on the global stage.”
“At Clochemerle, the greater number of the men put up with their wives, and the great majority of the women with their husbands. If this hardly amounted to adoration, in the majority of homes at any rate the men and women found each other very nearly endurable.”
Source: Clochemerle
“At CNN, our view is that good journalism equals good business.”
“At cocktail parties, I played the part of a successful businessman's wife to perfection. I smiled, I made polite chit-chat, and I dressed the part. Denial and rationalization were two of my most effective tools in working my way through our social obligations. I believed that playing the roles of wife and mother were the least I could do to help support Tom's career.
During the day, I was a puzzle with innumerable pieces. One piece made my family a nourishing breakfast. Another piece ferried the kids to school and to soccer practice. A third piece managed to trip to the grocery store. There was also a piece that wanted to sleep for eighteen hours a day and the piece that woke up shaking from yet another nightmare. And there was the piece that attended business functions and actually fooled people into thinking I might have something constructive to offer.
I was a circus performer traversing the tightwire, and I could fall off into a vortex devoid of reality at any moment. There was, and had been for a very long time, an intense sense of despair. A self-deprecating voice inside told me I had no chance of getting better. I lived in an emotional black hole.
p20-21, talking about dissociative identity disorder (formerly multiple personality disorder).”
Source: Wholeness: My Healing Journey from Ritual Abuse
“At college age, you can tell who is best at taking tests and going to school, but you can't tell who the best people are. That worries the hell out of me.”
“At college I'd seen my dead frog's limbs twitch under some applied stimulus or other - seen, but hadn't believed. Didn't dream of thinking beyond or around what I saw.”
Source: Collected Prose
“At college my three main interests were - in descending order of importance - a steady supply of recreational drugs, a 2-S draft deferment, and overthrowing the Nixon administration.”
“At college, and perhaps for a year afterwards, they had believed in literature, had believed in Beauty and in personal expression as an absolute end. When they lost this belief, they lost everything.”
Source: Miss Lonelyhearts: & the Day of the Locust
“At college, I felt frustrated thinking three years was a long time and I just wanted a job but afterwards I was in employment the whole time. I got into a theatre company and started doing stand-up gigs for cash, so I lived hand-to-mouth, but there was always enough to pay the bills.”
“At Columbia there's no performing arts department, so I was searching for it everywhere I could, and I took some photography classes and I ended up becoming fascinated with Eastern Religion, and ultimately it seemed to encompass the more abstract mind that I have.”
“At Columbus Circle, a juggler wearing a trench cloak and top hat, who is usually at this location afternoons and who calls himself Stretch Man, performs in front of a small, uninterested crowd; though I smell prey, and he seems worthy of my wrath, I move on in search of a less dorky target. Though if he'd been a mime, odds are he'd already be dead.”
“At commencement you wear your square-shaped mortarboards.My hope is that from time to time you will let your minds be bold, and wear sombreros.”
“At communion we ought to ask for the remedy of the vice to which we feel ourselves most inclined.”
Source: The Maxims and Sayings of St Philip Neri
“At conception I had the soul of an Egyptian,
at birth I had the soul of an Ethiopian,
at death I had the soul of an African,
and at resurrection I had the soul of God.
At conception, I was a citizen of creation.
At labor, I was a citizen of the world.
At delivery, I was a citizen of the universe,
and at death, I became a citizen of Heaven.”