A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“A man may have spent his life among the great ones of the earth, who to him have been merely boring relatives or tedious acquaintances because a familiarity engendered in the cradle had stripped them of all glamour in his eyes.”
Source: In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV: Sodom and Gomorrah (A Modern Library E-Book)
“A man may have strong humanitarian and democratic principles, but if he happens to have been brought up as a bath-taking, shirt-changing lover of fresh air, he will have to overcome certain physical repugnance before he can bring himself to put those principles into practice.”
“A man may have the best of wealth, cars and fame. But there is nothing more precious in life that he will get than a woman's heart.”
“A man may have to die for our country: but no man must, in any exclusive sense, live for his country. He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself.”
Source: Virtue and Vice: A Dictionary of the Good Life
“A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.”
Source: Theological Manuscripts: Selected and Edited with an Introd. by H. McLachlan
“A man may indeed be an honest man; but the folly of sacrifice, of virginity, of devotedness, of martyrdom, arises only from faith in the folly of the Cross.”
Source: The Life of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque
“A man may just as soon read the Scripture without eyes, as understand the spirit of it without grace.”
“A man may lack everything but tact and conviction and still be a forcible speaker; but without these nothing will avail... Fluency, grace, logical order, and the like, are merely the decorative surface of oratory.”
Source: Human Nature and the Social Order
“A man may learn from his Bible to be a more thorough gentleman than if he had been brought up in all the drawing-rooms in London.”
Source: The Water Babies
“A man may learn wisdom even from a foe.”
“A man may live long, and die at last in ignorance of many truths, which his mind was capable of knowing, and that with certainty.”
Source: Philosophical Works: Preliminary discourse by the editor. On the conduct of the understanding. An essay concerning human understanding
“A man may live to be as old as Methuselah,’ said Mr. Filer, ‘and may labour all his life for the benefit of such people as those; and may heap up facts on figures, facts on figures, facts on figures, mountains high and dry; and he can no more hope to persuade ’em that they have no right or business to be married, than he can hope to persuade ’em that they have no earthly right or business to be born. And that we know they haven’t. We reduced it to a mathematical certainty long ago!”
Source: The Chimes
“A man may lose the good things of this life against his will; but if he loses the eternal blessings, he does so with his own consent.”
“A man may love a woman perfectly, and yet by no means ignorantly maintain a thousand women have not larger eyes. Enough that she alone has looked at him with eyes that, large or small, have won his soul.”
Source: Poetical works
“A man may make a misanthrope of himself, but he is never one by nature.”
Source: The Unseen Friend
“A man may manifest and communicate his joy, but he should conceal and smother his grief as much as possible.”
“A man may not achieve everything he has dreamed, but he will never achieve anything great without having dreamed it first.”
“A man may not always be what he appears to be, but what he appears to be is always a significant part of what he is.”
Source: In the service of their country: war resisters in prison
“A man may not be miserable in misery, if he delights in music.”
“A man may not be sad in misery, if he sings.”
“A man may not believe in the supernatural, [...] but be plagued by phantoms nonetheless. Regret is the ghost that never rests. It rattles its chains and whispers its doleful complaint in one's ear at all hours, until one's dying day, and one cannot help but listen.”
Source: Sherlock Holmes & The Three Winter Terrors
“A man may not know misery, if he delights himself in music.”
“A man may not transgress the bounds of major morals, but may make errors in minor morals.”
Source: Lun Yü
“A man may own a ship, but unless he is captain of a crew he goes where the ship goes.”
“A man may perform astonishing feats and comprehend a vast amount of knowledge, and yet have no understanding of himself. But suffering directs a man to look within. If it succeeds, then there, within him, is the beginning of his learning.”
“A man may plan as much as he wants to, but nothing of consequence is likely to come of it until the magician circumstance steps in and takes the matter off his hands.”
Source: Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations
“A man may plant a tree for a number of reasons. Perhaps he likes trees. Perhaps he wants shelter. Or perhaps he knows that someday he may need the firewood.”
Source: Runemarks
“A man may publish anything which twelve of his countrymen think not blamable.”
“A man may quarrel with himself alone; that is, by controverting his better instincts and knowledge when brought face to face with temptation.”
“A man may run, but none has escaped his fate. Yet.”
Source: Dark Age
“A man may say, "From now on I'm going to speak the truth." But the truth hears him and runs away and hides before he's even done speaking.”
“A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears: see how yond justice rails upon yon simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?”
“A man may see straight and clearly and yet become impatient or doubtful when the market takes its time about doing as he figured it must do. That is why so many men in Wall Street, who are not at all in the sucker class, not even in the third grade, nevertheless lose money. The market does not beat them. They beat themselves, because though they have brains they cannot sit tight.”
“A man may sink by such slow degrees that, long after he is a devil, he may go on being a good churchman or a good dissenter and thinking himself a good Christian.”
Source: Unspoken Sermons
“A man may smile and bid you hail Yet wish you to the devil; But when a good dog wags his tail, You know he's on the level.”
“A man may speak very well in the House of Commons, and fail very completely in the House of Lords. There are two distinct styles requisite: I intend, in the course of my career, if I have time, to give a specimen of both.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Benjamin Disraeli (Illustrated)
“A man may stand for the justice of God, but a woman stands for His Mercy.”
“A man may study because his brain is hungry for knowledge, even Bible knowledge. But he prays because his soul is hungry for God.”
“A man may surely be allowed to take a glass of wine by his own fireside.”
“A man may take care of a furnace for twenty-five years and still forget to duck his head when he starts going down the cellar stairs.”
Source: Chips Off the Old Benchley
“A man may take his own life for many reasons, and it is impossible to make a general statement; but whenever suicide is a gesture—done, that is, to impress or influence or embarrass others—it is always, so it seems to me, a sign of immaturity and muddled thinking. However much we may admire the fortitude of this Vietnamese monk, the wisdom of his action remains very much in doubt. I do not know the details of the provocation offered by the Catholic Head of State, but the monk appears to have killed himself 'fighting for the cause of Buddhism'. Certainly this action is infinitely more honourable than the setting fire to churches and the crowning of statues that seem to be the favoured methods of giving battle in this country; but it does not follow that it is any the less misguided.”
“A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, but then fail all the more completely because he drinks.”
Source: All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays
“A man may take to drink because he feels himself to he a
failure, and then fail all the more completely because he
drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the
English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because
our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language
makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”
Source: All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays
“A man may think an untruth as well as speak one.”
Source: The Works of the Late ... Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Collected by Thomas Moore, Etc
“A man may twist as he pleases, and do what he pleases, but he inevitably comes back to the track to which nature has destined him.”
Source: The auto-biography of Goethe: Truth and poetry: from my life
“A man may welcome his beloved with circumstance, but a woman's love and her concern for his well-being are discreet.”
“A man may well be condemned, not for doing something, but for doing nothing.”
“A man may well bring a horse to water but he cannot make him drink.”
Source: The Proverbs, Epigrams, and Miscellanies of John Heywood ...
“A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.”
“A man may write himself out of reputation when nobody else can do it.”
Source: Citizen Paine: Thomas Paine's Thoughts on Man, Government, Society, and Religion