A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“At present I feel like a caged animal, bound up by the luxury, comfort and respectability of my position. I can't get the training that I want without neglecting my duty.”
Source: The Diary of Beatrice Webb: Glitter Around and Darkness Within, 1873-1892
“At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only,—when fences shall be multiplied, and man-traps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road, and walking over the surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days come.”
Source: Walking
“At present", Keynes said in 1926, "everything is politics, and nothing policies.”
Source: Universal Man: The Lives of John Maynard Keynes
“At present nothing is possible except to extend the area of sanity little by little. We cannot act collectively. We can only spread our knowledge outwards from individual to individual, generation after generation.”
Source: 1984
“At present scientists do not look for alternatives simply because they do not care enough about the animals they are using.”
Source: Animal liberation: a new ethics for our treatment of animals
“At present sinners banish the remembrance and thought of death, and thus seek for peace (although they never find it) by leading a life of sin; but when they shall be in the agonies of death, about to enter into eternity, "when distress cometh upon them, they will seek for peace, and there will be none," then can they no longer fly from their evil conscience; they will seek peace, but what peace can be found by a soul laden with sins, which sting it like so many vipers?”
“At present, the ottoman was occupied by a pair of cats who eyed Alex with blasé effeteness. He stuck his hands in his pockets and eyed them back.
"Romeo and Juliet," she told him. "They used to be lovers, but since that visit to the vet they're just friends."
"Are they friendly?" he asked, stretching out a hand at Romeo's funny pushed-in face.
"They're cats," she said, grinning as Romeo turned up his nose at the outstretched hand. Juliet wasn't interested, either. They poured themselves off the furniture, then minced away.
"I think they've been talking to your friends at the restaurant," Alex said.
"They don't talk to anyone." She saw him glance at the terrarium on the windowsill. "The turtles are Tristan and Isolde, and their offspring are Heloise and Abelard."
"So where are Cleopatra and Mark Antony?" he asked.
"In a tomb in Egypt, I imagine. But you can look in the fish tank and see Bonnie and Clyde, Napoleon and Josephine, and Jane and Guildford."
He bent and peered into the lighted tank. "Fun couples. Is it a coincidence that they all ended tragically?"
"Not a coincidence, just poor judgment."
"Isn't it bad karma, naming your pets after doomed lovers?"
"I don't think they care.”
Source: Summer by the Sea
“At present the peace of the world has been preserved, not by statesmen, but by capitalists.”
Source: Benjamin Disraeli Letters: 1860-1864
“At present, the successful office-seeker is a good deal like the center of the earth; he weighs nothing himself, but draws everything else to him. There are so many societies, so many churches, so many isms, that it is almost impossible for an independent man to succeed in a political career. Candidates are forced to pretend that they are catholics with protestant proclivities, or christians with liberal tendencies, or temperance men who now and then take a glass of wine, or, that although not members of any church their wives are, and that they subscribe liberally to all. The result of all this is that we reward hypocrisy and elect men entirely destitute of real principle; and this will never change until the people become grand enough to allow each other to do their own thinking.
Our government should be entirely and purely secular. The religious views of a candidate should be kept entirely out of sight. He should not be compelled to give his opinion as to the inspiration of the bible, the propriety of infant baptism, or the immaculate conception. All these things are private and personal. The people ought to be wise enough to select as their officers men who know something of political affairs, who comprehend the present greatness, and clearly perceive the future grandeur of our country. If we were in a storm at sea, with deck wave-washed and masts strained and bent with storm, and it was necessary to reef the top sail, we certainly would not ask the brave sailor who volunteered to go aloft, what his opinion was on the five points of Calvinism. Our government has nothing to do with religion. It is neither christian nor pagan; it is secular. But as long as the people persist in voting for or against men on account of their religious views, just so long will hypocrisy hold place and power. Just so long will the candidates crawl in the dust—hide their opinions, flatter those with whom they differ, pretend to agree with those whom they despise; and just so long will honest men be trampled under foot.”
Source: Some Mistakes of Moses
“At present the universities are as uncongenial to teaching as the Mojave Desert to a clutch of Druid priests. If you want to restore a Druid priesthood, you cannot do it by offering prizes for Druid-of-the Year. If you want Druids, you must grow forests.”
“At present there are such goings-on that everything is at a standstill.”
“At present there is not a single credible established religion in the world.”
Source: The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more
“At present this horror of life is already less pronounced, and the melancholy less acute. But I still have no will, and hardly any desires, or none at all that are to do with ordinary life.”
Source: The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh
“At present we are facing two pandemics in the United States. The first is the coronavirus and the other is racism.”
“At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.”
Source: A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis
“At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product.”
“At present we can only reason of the divine justice from what we know of justice in man. When we are in other scenes, we may have truer and nobler ideas of it; but while we are in this life, we can only speak from the volume that is laid open before us.”
Source: The prose works of Alexander Pope: The major works, 1725-1744
“At present we educate people only up to the point where they can earn a living and marry; then education ceases altogether, as though a complete mental outfit had been acquired. ... Vast numbers of men and women thus spend their entire lives in complete ignorance of the most important things.”
Source: Collected Works of C.G. Jung: The development of personality
“At present we live to impede each other's satisfactions; competition, domestic life, society, what is it all but this?”
Source: The Collected Works of Florence Nightingale
“At present we’re snowed under with an irrational expansion of blind data-gathering in the sciences because there’s no rational format for any understanding of scientific creativity. At present we are also snowed under with a lot of stylishness in the arts … thin art … because there’s very little assimilation or extension into underlying form. We have artists with no scientific knowledge and scientists with no artistic knowledge, and both with no spiritual sense of gravity at all. And the result is not just bad, it is ghastly. The time for real reunification of art and technology is really long overdue.”
“At present, when people become aware of this [common metaphorical] imagery, they tend to think of it as merely a surface dressing of isolated metaphors - as a kind of optional decorative paint that is sometimes added to ideas after they are formed, so as to make them clear to outsiders. But really such symbolism is an integral part of our thought-structure. It does crucial work on all topics, not just in a few supposedly marginal areas such as religion and emotion, where symbols are known to be at home, but throughout our thinking.”
Source: The Myths We Live By
“At present, [in the desert] an exasperating clarity reigns. The sky has become less visible than water in a jar. Black peaks, spines of granite, a twisted tree are sculpted in this atmosphere basted with reflections. All that remains: a countryside of imperishable contours.”
“At present, financial crises occur, chiefly because the paper currency is redeemable in gold only.”
“At present, however, I don't think the Net is a very good medium for books, books should really be inexpensive lightweight paperbacks you can bang around.”
“At present, I am a poet trying to be a soldier. To tell the truth, I am not interested in writing nowadays, except in so far as writing is the expression of something beautiful ... The only sort of book I care to write about the war is the sort people will read after the war is over - a century after it is over.”
Source: Joyce Kilmer: Memoir and poems
“At present, I am mainly observing the physical motion of mountains, water, trees and flowers. One is everywhere reminded of similar movements in the human body, of similar impulses of joy and suffering in plants.”
Source: The art of Egon Schiele
“At present, I myself do not know of any local witches or warlocks, but there are several people who seem to have an uncanny power over food.”
“At present, intelligent people do not have their children vaccinated, nor does the law now compel them to. The result is not, as the Jennerians prophesied, the extermination of the human race by smallpox; on the contrary more people are now killed by vaccination than by smallpox.”
“At present, our country needs women's idealism and determination, perhaps more in politics than anywhere else.”
“At present, the most valuable gift which can be bestowed upon women is something to do which they can do well and worthily, and thereby maintain themselves.”
“At present, the novels which we owe to English ladies form no small part of the literary glory of our country. No class of works is more honorably distinguished for fine observation, by grace, by delicate wit, by pure moral feeling.”
“At present, the United States, with over 700 foreign military bases, navies in every ocean, a programme to militarise space, and drone bases planned for all regions of the world, is increasingly perceived in relation to its hard power diplomacy, a threat to political independence and stability for many countries.”
“At present, there can be little doubt that the whole of mankind is in mortal danger, not because we are short of scientific and technological know-how, but because we tend to use it destructively, without wisdom. More education can help us only if produces more wisdom.”
Source: SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL
“At present, too much theological thinking is very human-centered.”
“At present, when the prevailing forms of society have become hindrances to the free expression of human powers, it is precisely the abstract branches of science, mathematics and theoretical physics, which ... offer a less distorted form of knowledge than other branches of science which are interwoven with the pattern of daily life, and the practicality of which seemingly testifies to their realistic character.”
Source: Critical Theory: Selected Essays
“At President Obama's direction, the U.S Department of Agriculture is working hard to unleash the power of America's innovators and entrepreneurs to build a green energy economy.”
“At Princeton I gained a great deal of pleasure from success in my classes. knowing that I could accomplish those things, and I realized that my success was directly proportionate to the work I put in.”
“At Princeton I wrote my junior paper on Virginia Woolf, and for my senior thesis I wrote on Samuel Beckett. I wrote some about "Between the Acts" and "Mrs. Dalloway'' but mostly about "To the Lighthouse." With Beckett I focused, perversely, on his novels, "Molloy," "Malone Dies," and "The Unnamable." That's when I decided I should never write again.”
“At Qtriangle, we empower businesses with powerful eCommerce solutions—from seamless web development to effective digital marketing—turning vision into online success”
“At quite uncertain times and places,
The atoms left their heavenly path,
And by fortuitous embraces,
Engendered all that being hath.
And though they seem to cling together,
And form 'associations' here,
Yet, soon or late, they burst their tether,
And through the depths of space career.”
“At Rachel's instruction, the monkey briefly looked to his mistress, then looked back at Elliot and raised his hand.
"Hey."
"That's not the way, Haley. That's how you greet people we're close to."
Realizing his mistake, Haley got up, pointed out his butt toward Elliot, and slapped it.
" Get lost, okay?"
"That's not right either, now is it? Look closely before you greet him."
Haley scrutinized Elliot. Then he thrust his thumbs into his ears, fanned out his wriggling fingers, and stuck out his wagging tongue.
"Dummy, dummy."
"I'm sorry, Your Highness", Rachel apologized. "He's having trouble learning tricks, it seems.”
Source: Prison Life is Easy for a Villainess: Volume 2
“At Rain Man, I was 38. And before that, I had really just started working when I was 36. I was very late. So I've got time, right? As long as I stay healthy and eat right.”
“At Rainbow Cake, January's special flavors would be dark chocolate and coffee, those pick-me-ups we all needed to start the day- or a new year. To me, their toasty-toasty flavors said that even if you only had a mere handful of beans and your life went up in flames, you could still create something wonderful.
A little trial by fire could do you good. After all, if it worked so well with raw cacao and coffee beans, it could work for others, including me.”
Source: The Cake Therapist
“At Rangers you are never more than 2 defeats away from a crisis!”
“At real stripper bars women just dance—so many things
they could be checking off their lists. I guess men don’t want
to see women work? They get that at home? In my Champagne
Room the butches plant bulbs, build bookshelves, clean
basements, write checks to the ACLU, retrain
your dog.”
Source: Here All Night
“At Reed College, I learned very quickly that I didn't know nearly enough. I learned, first, that every student there was as smart as I was, and quite a few seemed smarter.”
Source: Rogue River Journal: A Winter Alone
“At Reliance Foundation schools, we lay special emphasis on value-based education, sports, and overall development of students. That is why the teacher-students ratio is kept at a healthy 1:20 so that all children get proper attention in class.”
“At religious instruction classes, I encountered The Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan, and the sincerity of the traveller in that book was overwhelming.”
“At Rest An American Soldier And Defender of the Constitution.”
“At rest, however, in the middle of everything is the sun.”
Source: Nicholas Copernicus on the revolutions