A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“At the very moment that humans discovered the scale of the universe and found that their most unconstrained fancies were in fact dwarfed by the true dimensions of even the Milky Way Galaxy, they took steps that ensured that their descendants would be unable to see the stars at all. For a million years humans had grown up with a personal daily knowledge of the vault of heaven. In the last few thousand years they began building and emigrating to the cities. In the last few decades, a major fraction of the human population has abandoned a rustic way of life. As technology developed and the cities were polluted, the nights became starless. New generations grew to maturity wholly ignorant of the sky that had transfixed their ancestors and that had stimulated the modern age of science and technology. Without even noticing, just as astronomy entered a golden age most people cut themselves off from the sky, a cosmic isolationism that ended only with the dawn of space exploration.”
Source: Contact
“At the very moment when people underestimate you is when you can make a breakthrough.”
“At the very moment when someone is beginning to take philosophy seriously, the whole world believes the opposite.”
“At the very opposite of these eccentricities, the chiefly urban character of derive, in touch with those centres of possibilities and meanings that are the metropolises transformed by industry, would correspond to Marx's sentence: 'Men can see nothing around them that is not their own image; everything speaks to them of themselves. Their very landscape is alive.”
Source: The Situationists and the City: A Reader
“At the very outset I have to tell you that truth is what it is. You cannot mold it, you cannot change it. It is always the same. It has been the same, it is the same, it will be the same. But to say that we know the truth and that we have the truth is really a self-deception. If you had known the absolute truth there would have been no problems and everybody would have said the same thing. There would be no discussions, no arguments, no fights and wars. But when we don't know the absolute truth then we can find out our own mental conceptions as the truth. But this mind is so limited.”
“At the very outset I want to say how the people of America appreciate the steadfast support of the people of Morocco, the leadership of Morocco in our war against terrorism.”
“At the very point of vulnerability is where the surrender takes place-that is where the god enters. The god comes through the wound.”
Source: Conscious Femininity: Interviews with Marion Woodman
“At the very point that I’ve taken something for granted, I have at that same moment taken it to its grave. And if I look around, I realize I’ve cultivated quite a cemetery.”
“At the very point that we compromise our morals, we have in that instant killed them. And therefore, we become the assassin of the very morals that we claimed to defend.”
“At the very point where images cease, philosophy begins.”
Source: Narcissus and Goldmund
“At the very simplest, I think as Van Gogh said and St Francis would have said, we must find nature. Just to be in the presence of nature your feelings and 'little seedlings' start to awake. So if we disassociate ourselves from God we cut nature out, too. More and more we turn nature into a commodity, into eco-tourism. But we must integrate it into the way people live every day.”
“At the very smallest wheel of our reasoning it is possible for a handful of questions to break the bank of our answers.”
Source: Juan de Mairena
“At the very thought he felt a tendency to tremble.”
Source: The Message To The Planet
“At the very time that Congress is considering a Bush administration request to equip our troops in Iraq with vehicles that are more resistant to roadside bombs, its leadership is fighting for a proposal that would have the opposite effect on roads here at home: a measure sought by environmentalists that would force automakers to make vehicles sold domestically much lighter and, thus, more vulnerable in collisions.”
“At the very top state institutions, like UCLA, Berkeley and the University of Texas, however, the trend of downward minority enrollment remains persistent and discouraging.”
“At the very worst, if I have a short-lived career, at least I could say I sparked a change - that I inspired some leniency in what people accept in hip-hop. And if I have a very long career and can be gyrating in a leotard at 35, that would be great.”
“At the violet hour, when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a taxi throbbing waiting I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives.”
“At the vital point of truth, we all become a conscientious objector.”
“At the voting booth and with our dollars, each action matters.”
Source: Conscious Cures: Soulutions to 21st Century Pandemics
“At the W.M. Keck Observatory on the very high altitude summit of Mauna Kea, there was no routine monitoring of mental functioning, blood oxygen levels, blood pressure or heart rate of summit workers.”
“At the W.M. Keck Observatory on the very high altitude summit of Mauna Kea, there was no routine monitoring of mental functioning, blood oxygen levels, blood pressure or heart rate of workers.”
“at the wedding the ceremony and the reception is for the bride, the honeymoon is for the groom, the food is for the guest, the money is for the vendors, and the empty bank account is for the parents”
“At the weekend, my husband would experiment with smoking bacon on blocks of bricks in the garden, or caramelising kilos of onions at a time, or making curry from scratch. The sort of cooking that men do when it’s a hobby for them, in other words. And it’s fun, all that, because it’s an experiment, a special activity you do when you have the time, and that you don’t mind spending money on.”
Source: Butter
“At the weekend, one of the paparazzi left their lunch box filled with half-eaten pasta salad on my doorstep: it was like a little warning, you know? 'We have been here.'”
“At the weekends I usually have around 50 kids running around in my back garden. They are all friends of my kids. I know all their names. We have barbecues, put up tents, and play soccer. I love it.”
“At the weekends when the two of you played badminton in the yard and the shuttlecock inevitably flew over the wall and onto the building site, your game of rock-paper-scissors to decide which of you would go and fetch it never failed to make me smile.”
Source: Human Acts
“At the West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, the dolphins developed stress-induced ulcers. Shopping malls are enough to drive most individuals insane, given enough time spent in them. For Edmonton’s dolphins, though, there was no escape. Every day was the same. Shows were performed twice a day. The water tanks never got any larger. The light always remained artificial. The crowds of shoppers never stopped coming. The enervating elevator music never stopped playing. So it was hardly surprising that all four of the mall’s dolphins suffered from stress-related afflictions.”
Source: Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance
“At the wheel of his slow car, Bob Arctor forgot theoretical matters and did a rerun of a moment that had impressed them all: the dainty and elegant straight girl in her turtleneck sweater and bell-bottoms and trippy boobs who wanted them to murder a great harmless bug that in fact did good by wiping out mosquitoes - and in a year in which an outbreak of encephalitis had been anticipated in Orange County - and when they saw what it was and explained, she had said words that became for them their parody evil-wall-motto, to be feared and despised:
IF I HAD KNOWN IT WAS HARMLESS I WOULD HAVE KILLED IT MYSELF.”
“At the White House, everybody works for the same person. They're all part of the same company. But on Capitol Hill, they're all independent contractors. They all work for themselves. That's a formula for getting news.”
“At the White House, they caught another fence jumper earlier today. It was Obama trying to get out.”
“At the window he sits and looks out, musing on the river, a little brown hen duck paddling upstream among the windwaves close to the far bank. What he has understood lies behind him like a road in the woods. He is a wilderness looking out at the wild.”
Source: New Collected Poems
“At the wondrous moment you were born, as you took your first breath, a great celebration was held in the heavens and twelve magnificent gifts were granted to you.”
Source: The Twelve Gifts of Birth: A Glyph Award-Winning Picture Book Celebrating Innate Dignity and Hope for All Ages
“At the word sacrifice, something sparked in the Fate's cold eyes. He held the girl tighter, carrying her in his bloodstained arms as he stood and started down the ancient hall.
'What are you doing?' A crack of alarm showed in the queen's implacable face.
'I'm going to fix this.' He continued marching forward, holding the girl close as he carried her back through the arch.
The angels who'd been guarding it now wept. They cried tears of stone as the Fate set the girl at their feet and began wrenching stone after stone from the arch.
'Jacks of the Hollow,' warned the queen. 'Those arch stones can only be used one time to go back. They were not created for infinite trips to the past.'
'I know,' Jacks growled. 'I'm going to go back and stop your son from killing her.'
The queen's face fell. For a moment, she looked as old as the years she'd spent lying in suspended state. 'This is not a small mistake to fix. If you do this, Time will take something equally valuable from you.'
The Fate gave the queen a look more vicious than any curse. 'There is nothing of equal value to me.”
Source: The Ballad of Never After
“At the word witch, we imagine the horrible old crones from Macbeth. But the cruel trials witches suffered teach us the opposite. Many perished precisely because they were young and beautiful.”
Source: Anthology of Black Humor
“At the working man’s house, hunger looks in but dares not enter.”
Source: Memoirs of the Life and Writings of (the Same), Continued to the Time of His Death by William Temple Franklin. - London, H. Colburn 1818
“At the World Cup and even now at the Confederations Cup, our security provisions will ensure the greatest level of protection possible for all those participating - both inside and outside the stadiums.”
“At the World Cup, there is a constant risk that you might find a bag or some object that has been left behind, and no one is quite sure what it is. To bring in a full bomb-disposal team for each item can be very time-consuming. The PackBot can go over rough terrain, climb stairs, pick things up, and also be operated from a safe distance.”
“At the World Food Programme we have recognized what a valuable tool food aid can be in changing behaviour. In so many poorer countries food is money, food is power.”
“At the worst it was eight hours of makeup, and I couldn't sit down; I was in this crouched position. [on the traumas of being an actor in full make up]”
“At the worst possible moment, the most painful, darkest moment when you can't take it anymore and you are afraid, that is when a feeling of peace and comfort will come over you, and it's like nothing you've ever felt.”
Source: My Name Is Memory
“At the worst possible moment, when your fund is down because cheap things have gotten cheaper, you need to have capital, to have clients who will actually love the phone call and-most of the time, if not all the time-add, rather than subtract, capital.”
“At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.”
Source: A Casual Commentary
“At the young age of thirty-two, retirement is not much of a consideration, but when considering a thirty-year transaction it should be.”
Source: Navigating the Mortgage Maze: The Simple Truth About Financing Your Home
“At the young, delicate age of 14, just two years older than her own Ionna was now, Yevt became an adult and swore to Party allegiance. It was the first of many such lies over the years to come.”
Source: Sunflowers Beneath the Snow
“At the zoo, I stood in front of the primate cage listening to a woman marvel at how “presidential” the four-hundred-pound gorilla looked sitting astride a shorn oaken limb, keeping a watchful eye over his caged brood. When her boyfriend, his finger tapping the informational placard, pointed out the “presidential” silverback’s name coincidentally was Baraka, the woman laughed aloud, until she saw me, the other four-hundred-pound gorilla in the room, stuffing something that might have been the last of a Big Stick Popsicle or a Chiquita banana in my mouth.”
Source: The Sellout
“At the zoo, I stood in front of the primate cage listening to a woman marvel at how “presidential” the four-hundred-pound gorilla looked sitting astride a shorn oaken limb, keeping a watchful eye over his caged brood. When her boyfriend, his finger tapping the informational placard, pointed out the “presidential” silverback’s name coincidentally was Baraka, the woman laughed aloud, until she saw me, the other four-hundred-pound gorilla in the room, stuffing something that might have been the last of a Big Stick Popsicle or a Chiquita banana in my mouth. Then she became disconsolate, crying and apologizing for having spoken her mind and my having been born. “Some of my best friends are monkeys,” she said accidentally. It was my turn to laugh. I understood where she was coming from. This whole city’s a Freudian slip of the tongue, a concrete hard-on for America’s deeds and misdeeds. Slavery? Manifest Destiny? Laverne & Shirley? Standing by idly while Germany tried to kill every Jew in Europe? Why some of my best friends are the Museum of African Art, the Holocaust Museum, the Museum of the American Indian, the National Museum of Women in the Arts. And furthermore, I’ll have you know, my sister’s daughter is married to an orangutan.”
Source: The Sellout
“At the Zoo? Me? A quiet, orderly person who knows that early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise?”
“At thee seaside all is narrow horizontals, the world reduced to a few long straight lines pressed between earth and sky.”
Source: The Sea
“At their best, at their most creative, science and engineering are attributes of liberty-noble expressions of man's God-given right to investigate and explore the universe without fear of social or political or religious reprisals.”
“At their best, religious and spiritual communities help us discover this pure and naked spiritual encounter. At their worst, they simply make us more ashamed, pressuring us to cover up more, pushing us to further enhance our image with the best designer labels and latest spiritual fads, weighing us down with layer upon layer of heavy, uncomfortable, pretentious, well-starched religiosity.”