A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“At school, your tests only have one right answer and you might get zero or half points if you put the wrong answer. But in what we call ''the real world'', things aren't so black and white, so you should think about things for yourself and express them in words or pictures. This is how you comminicate with people, with other people.”
“At school, a careers adviser asked me what I wanted to be, and I said 'fashion journalist,' so writing for 'Vogue' has provided me with the opportunity to fulfill a dream.”
“At school, even in kindergarten, you teach us how to behave in the world. You teach us to not fight with others, to work things out, to respect others, to clean up our mess, not to hurt other creatures, to share - not be greedy: then why do you go out and do the things you tell us not to do?”
“At school, I always wanted to belong to a gang, and no one would have me. So I'd have make my own gang, but with everybody else's leftovers.”
“At school, I basically wear one pair of jeans and sneakers for months on end.”
“At school, I decided I wanted to be a director and then I went out and spent the rest of my adult life trying to be a director. It was really clear to me. So in that sense I was very lucky.”
“At school, I enjoyed playing the bassoon. I was in the orchestra and played the melody when the other boys sang hymns at prayers time.”
“At school, I was the classroom clown - I was always being thrown out for being naughty. Before I left, a teacher called me in and suggested I became an actor.”
“At school, I was this tomboy kid who just loved to hang out with her friends and learn curse words, trying to fit in with the cool kids and defending all the kids who got picked on.”
“At school, new ideas are thrust at you every day. Out in the world, you'll have to find your inner motivation to seek for new ideas on your own.”
“At school, new ideas are thrust at you every day. Out in the world, you’ll have to find the inner motivation to search for new ideas on your own. With any luck at all, you’ll never need to take an idea and squeeze a punchline out of it, but as bright, creative people, you’ll be called upon to generate ideas and solutions all your lives. Letting your mind play is the best way to solve problems.”
“At school, nobody thought I was smart and I became smart. Nobody wanted to be my friend and then I had lots of friends.”
“At school, our classroom had a small rodent zoo consisting of two rabbits, three hamsters, a litter of baby gerbils and a guinea pig. At first, I’d thought the teacher was raising snack food, which impressed me, being the first sign of intelligence she’d shown. Soon, though, I’d figured out the animals’ true purpose and left them alone, though I would never understand the appeal of petting and coddling perfectly good food.”
Source: Men of the Otherworld
“At school, there was an annual school disco and I'd be standing in my bedroom wondering what to wear for hours on end. Eventually I'd arrive at a decision that was just the most ridiculous costume you could have ever devised - I think it was probably knitted Christmas jumpers on top of buttoned-up white shirts.”
“At school, when kids are being encouraged to get the one right answer and fill in that bubble, people can do things that enable their children to solve problems in multiple ways: "Can you think of different ways to make the bed?" It costs nothing, and the child is learning, "I have good ideas, I can be creative, and I can show you that I have confidence."”
“At sea a fellow comes out. Salt water is like wine, in that respect.”
Source: Correspondence
“At sea, I was the captain. I was important, and I had a role. I ran the show. At home, I was the swab. I did the shit work, almost always unappreciated. I loved my family, but man did I hate being on land all the time. I tried my best, I honestly did. I really stepped up my game around the house to be the best dad and partner I could be. It just was never good enough. With no offshore fishing and encouragement at home, part of me was dead inside, the part that made me who I am. I missed my boat daily. Flashbacks were a constant. I daydreamed of foaming schools of tuna while washing bubbly dishes. I saw mahi mahi boldly charging baits as I folded brightly colored laundry. When I went jogging and my heart started pumping, I saw huge marlin going wild on the gaffs. Everything reminded me of the boat. I most likely honestly had post-traumatic stress from the whole ordeal”
Source: Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
“At sea let the British their neighbours defy —
The French shall have frigates to traverse the sky.”
“At sea, navigators need to know how fast their vessel is moving through the water. Prior to the GPS, this was done with a nautical instrument known as a log. The devise that was attached to the handrail around the stern of the ship was known as a taffrail log. These instruments consisted of an impeller, or rotator made of brass, usually with four blades, a reading dial accurately calibrated, and a line that connected the two parts. As the impeller was dragged through the sea it rotated, turning the dial that registered the ships speed in knots, which equal one nautical mile per hour. The taffrail log usually registered the ships speed in knots, and tenths of a knot….. The earliest known taffrail log, also known as patent log, was designed in 1688 by an Englishman, Humphry Cole. Taffrail logs were later manufactured by the Lionel Corporation, perhaps better known for the manufacturing of model trains. They remained in business from 1900 to 1995, producing “Taffrail Logs” for the US Navy during World War II.”
“At sea, the darker the night the closer you will get to your past. The music you decide to play is the radio dial of your history. Van Morrison’s “Have I Told You Lately” played as I stared at the setting moon. This is a song that always transports me to a New Hampshire backroad of my youth. Her name was Katie. She was tall, blond, and wore the girl next door look like an angel. She was smart, funny, and kind. She infatuated me from the moment I met her at Wentworth Marina. She was the daughter of two well-to-do doctors from upstate New York. It was her plan to sail around the world, and she wanted me to join her. “Just to mate” she would always say with a wink.
She told me, “Pull over, pull over. I love this song. We have to dance.” So I found myself with goosebumps despite dancing in
the warmth of the summer air. The sky around us filled with the flashing luminance of fireflies, and it seemed like we were dancing in the heavens above. You could almost touch the music as it drifted out of my truck windows. I will never forget the look in those crystal-blue eyes as we danced to that song alongside my Dodge Ram pickup. Little did I know it would be the last night I would ever get to look into them again.”
Source: Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
“At sea, I feel comfortable and I come to rest.”
“At sea, I learned how little a person needs, not how much.”
“At Seabury House, headquarters of the Episcopal church, David was asked the touchiest question of all--the one that in the past had led to more ill-will toward the Pentecostals than any other. He'd been talking to a group of clergymen for thirty minutes or so about the Pentecostal experience when one of the priests stood up suddenly and said with some asperity, "Mr. du Plessis, are you telling us that you Pentecostals have the truth, and we other churches do not?"
David admits he prayed fast. "No," he said. "That is not what I mean." He cast about for a way to express the difference Pentecostals feel exists between their church and others--a feeling so often misunderstood--and suddenly he found himself thinking about an appliance he and his wife had bought when they moved to their Dallas home.
"We both have the truth," he said. "You know, when my wife and I moved to America, we bought a marvelous device called a Deepfreeze, and there we keep some rather fine Texas beef.
"Now, my wife can take one of those steaks out and lay it, frozen solid, on the table. It's steak all right, no question of that. You and I can sit around and analyze it: we can discuss its lineage, its age, what part of the steer it comes from. We can weigh it and list its nutritive values.
"But if my wife puts that steak on the fire, something different begins to happen. My little boy smells it from way out in the yard and comes shouting: 'Gee, Mom, that smells good! I want some!'
"Gentlemen," said David, "that is the difference between our ways of handling the same truth. You have yours on ice; we have ours on fire.”
Source: They Speak with Other Tongues: A Skeptic Investigates This Life-Changing Gift
“At seventeen dreams DO satisfy because you think the realities are waiting for you farther on.”
Source: The Anne of Green Gables Chronicles (Annotated Edition)
“At seventeen, he has grown tall, towering over me, lithe and finely muscled. His hair catches the moonlight, warm gold threaded with platinum, bangs parting around small goat horns, eyes of shocking amber, and a constellation of freckles across his nose. He has a trickster's mouth and the swagger of someone used to people doing what he wanted.”
Source: The Stolen Heir
“At seventeen I'm waiting for my life to actually begin. I'm afraid I'll wake up tomorrow eighty years old and I WILL STILL BE WAITING.”
“At seventeen most people get their ears pierced or get a tattoo or something slightly taboo. That is what I love about Rodrigo Garcia, he's not conventional. He's someone who sees people in extraordinary ways, and forgives them for being such.”
“At seventeen, the smallest crises took on tremendous proportions; someone else's thoughts could take root in the loam of your own mind; having someone accept you became as vital as oxygen. Adults, light years away from this, rolled their eyes and smirked "this too shall pass" - as if adolescence was a disease like chicken pox, something that everyone recalled as a mild nuisance, completely forgettingone how painful it had been at the time.”
Source: The Pact
“At seventeen the young woman had worked out how to improve her future prospects; she would seduce the Prince.”
Source: The Emperor
“At seventy, I could follow the dictates of my own heart; for what I desired no longer overstepped the boundaries of right.”
Source: The Analects of Confucius
“At seventy-four I'm getting minor raves on my looks, but I'm caught in the middle. Who knows what seventy-four looks like? Who cares? But if I'd listened to my friends, I could now lie and say I'm eighty-four. For eighty-four, the way I look is spectacular.”
Source: Myself Among Others
“At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.”
“At seventy-three I learned a little about the real structure of animals, plants, birds, fishes and insects. Consequently when I am eighty I'll have made more progress. At ninety I'll have penetrated the mystery of things. At a hundred I shall have reached something marvellous, but when I am a hundred and ten everything I do, the smallest dot, will be alive.”
“At SGI board meetings... Jim Clark's face would get red and he'd start shouting that an investor and board member had cheated him and his engineers.”
“At Shea Stadium, I saw the top of the mountain.”
“At Shree Bachchhala Devi Higher Secondary School, I learned that education is not about grades — it’s about discovering purpose and questioning everything.”
Source: The Digital Voice of Nepal: A Journey of Roshan Shrestha
“At Silicon Valley, I'm extremely sympathetic to the revolutionary response. I not only agree with it emotionally. I agree with it practically. And the only thing I disagree with is, I don't think Donald Trump is that. Trump is blow it up for no good reason at all. You want to actually do revolution with a target, with an idea, with building a new system.”
“At six
I lived in a graveyard full of dolls,
avoiding myself,
my body, the suspect
in its grotesque house.”
“At six, Daisy slid the stuffed figs and the pastry-wrapped goat cheese purses into the oven, crammed her feet into a pair of navy-blue high heels, and put a giant straw hat with a navy-blue ribbon on her head. The theme of the party was the Kentucky Derby, even though the Derby itself wasn't until May. At least it had made the menu easy: mint julep punch and bourbon slushies, fried chicken sliders served on biscuits, with hot honey, tea sandwiches with Benedictine spread, bite-sized hot browns, the signature sandwich of Louisville, and miniature Derby pies for dessert.”
Source: That Summer
“At six o'clock we cleaned our cells,
At seven all was still,
But the sough and swing of a mighty wing
The prison seemed to fill,
For the Lord of Death with icy breath
Had entered in to kill.”
Source: The Soul of Man, and Prison Writings
“At sixteen I get drafted. When I read the draft notice, I cry. Not because I'm a coward - I'm not afraid of anyone. But I don't want to kill or be killed.”
Source: Kinski Uncut: The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski
“At sixteen I was like: "I need to get an album out now!" - even though I was only sixteen. I was always in a little bit of a rush to be an adult.”
“At sixteen I was stupid, confused and indecisive. At twenty-five I was wise, self-confident, prepossessing and assertive. At forty-five I am stupid, confused, insecure and indecisive. Who would have supposed that maturity is only a short break in adolescence?”
“At sixteen, poets think that if they publish in a magazine that will be it. When it happens, it is not it. Then they think it will be it when they publish in Poetry. No. The New Yorker? No. A book? Good reviews? The Something Prize? A Guggenheim? The National Book Award? The Nobel? No, no, no, no, no, no. Flying back from Stockholm, the Laureate knows that nothing will make it certain. The Laureate sighs.”
Source: Essays After Eighty
“At sixteen, you still think you can escape from your father. You aren't listening to his voice speaking through your mouth, you don't see how your gestures already mirror his; you don't see him in the way you hold your body, in the way you sign your name. You don't hear his whisper in your blood.”
Source: East, West
“At sixteen, I was a funny, skinny little thing, all eyelashes and legs. And then, suddenly people told me it was gorgeous. I thought they had gone mad.”
“At sixteen, Sabina took moon baths, first of all, because everyone else took sun baths, and second, she admitted, because she had been told it was dangerous.”
“At sixteen, the adolescent knows about suffering because he himself has suffered, but he barely knows that other beings also suffer.”
Source: Emile: selections
“At sixty a man has passed most of the reefs and whirlpools....That man has awakened to a new youth....Ergo, he is young.”
“At sixty I, Dionysios, lie in my grave.
I was from Tarsos,
I never married and wish my father had not.”