A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”
“A slave is someone who sits down, and waits for someone to free them.”
“A slave, Marcus Cato said, should be working when he is not sleeping. It does not matter whether his work in itself is good in itself—for slaves, at least. This sentiment still survives, and it has piled up mountains of useless drudgery.
I believe that this instinct to perpetuate useless work is, at bottom, simply fear of the mob. The mob (the thought runs) are such low animals that they would be dangerous if they had leisure; it is safer to keep them too busy to think”
Source: Down and Out in Paris and London
“A slave, Marcus Cato said, should be working when he is not sleeping. It does not matter whether his work in itself is good in itself—for slaves, at least. This sentiment still survives, and it has piled up mountains of useless drudgery.
I believe that this instinct to perpetuate useless work is, at bottom, simply fear of the mob. The mob (the thought runs) are such low animals that they would be dangerous if they had leisure; it is safer to keep them too busy to think. A rich man who happens to be intellectually honest, if he is questioned about the improvement of working conditions, usually says something like this:
"We know that poverty is unpleasant; in fact, since it is so remote, we rather enjoy harrowing ourselves with the thought of its unpleasantness. But don’t expect us to do anything about it. We are sorry fort you lower classes, just as we are sorry for a cat with the mange, of your condition. We feel that you are much safer as you are. The present state of affairs suits us, and we are not going to take the risk of setting you free, even by an extra hour a day. So, dear brothers, since evidently you must sweat to pay for our trips to Italy, sweat and be damned to you.”
This is particularly the attitude of intelligent, cultivated people; one can read the substance if it in a hundred essays. Very few cultivated people have less than (say) four hundred pounds a year, and naturally they side with the rich, because they imagine that any liberty conceded to the poor is a threat to their own liberty. foreseeing some dismal Marxian Utopia as the alternative, the educated man prefers to keep things as they are. Possibly he does not like his fellow-rich very much, but he supposes that even the vulgarest of them are less inimical to his pleasures, more his kind of people, than the poor, and that he had better stand by them. It is this fear of a supposedly dangerous mob that makes nearly all intelligent people conservative in their opinions.
Fear of the mob is a superstitious fear. It is based on the idea that there is some mysterious, fundamental difference between rich and poor, as though they were two different races, like negroes and white men. But in reality there is no such difference. The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothings else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Everyone who has mixed on equal terms with the poor knows this quite well. But the trouble is that intelligent, cultivated people, the very people who might be expected to have liberal opinions, never do mix with the poor. For what do the majority of educated people know about poverty? In my copy of Villon’s poems the editor has actually thought it necessary to explain the line “Ne pain ne voyent qu'aux fenestres” by a footnote; so remote is even hunger from the educated man’s experience. From this ignorance a superstitious fear of the mob results quite naturally. The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day’s liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. “Anything,” he thinks, “any injustice, sooner than let that mob loose.”
Source: Down and Out in Paris and London
“A slave, Marcus Cato said, should be working when he is not sleeping. It does not matter whether his work is needed or not, he must work, because work in itself is good – for slaves at least. This sentiment still survives, and it has piled up mountains of useless drudgery”
Source: Down and Out in Paris and London
“A slave stands infront of Allah on two occasions. The first during salah, and secondly on the Day of Judgment. Whoseover stands correctly in the first, the second standing will be made easier for him. And whosoever, disregards the first standing, the second standing will be extremely difficult.”
“A slave that acknowledges its enslavement is halfway to its liberation.”
“A slave to his hearts mistakes.”
Source: The School for Good and Evil
“A slave turns the other cheek because he must,” he said, “but a free man has a duty to do what he can to make the world better. If not, why should he have freedom?”
Source: A Patchwork Of Moonlight And Shadow
“A slave's life is mostly composed of patience and study. Yes, study. If not with actual books, then following the example of greater, senior slaves. Or learning every nuance of their owner's character, so that they can more completely and seamlessly offer themselves at the right time and in the right manner.”
“A slave's soul has no worth, my brothers; it lacks strength to tread on this great earth with gallantry and freedom. I pity the poor slaves, they're nought but airy mist, a light breeze scatters them, a fragrance knocks them down; it's only just they crawl on the earth on hands and knees. Today I'll write a hymn to God and pray for this great grace.”
Source: The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel
“A slave- holder, who has decided to abolish slavery, does not consult his slaves whether they desire freedom or not.”
Source: The Wit and Wisdom of Gandhi
“A slave-holder cannot hold a slave without putting himself or his deputy in the cage for holding the slave.”
Source: Glorious Thoughts of Gandhi: Being a Treasury of about Ten Thousand Valuable and Inspiring Thougths of Mahatma Gandhi, Classified Under Four Hundred Subjects
“A slavish bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the mind”
Source: A vindication of the rights of woman: with strictures on political and moral subjects
“A slavish concern for the composition of words is the sign of a bankrupt intellect. Be gone, odious wasp! You smell of decayed syllables.”
“A sleep without dreams, after a rough day of toil, is what we covet most; and yet
How clay shrinks back from more quiescent clay!
The very Suicide that pays his debt at once without installments
(an old way of paying debts, which creditors regret)
Lets out impatiently his rushing breath, less from disgust of life than dread of death.”
Source: DON JUAN
“A sleeping bag is a tortilla for a human.”
“A sleeping bear had been awoken.”
“A sleeping cat is ever alert.”
“A sleeping man holds in a circle around him the thread of the hours, the order of years and of worlds. He consults them instinctively upon awaking and in one second reads in them the point of the earth that he occupies, the time past until his arousal; but their ranks can be mingled or broken.”
“A sleeping man would miss the best of the evening, and the moonrise as well.”
Source: Lonesome Dove
“A sleeping nation and occupied the one that keeps its intellectuals at home and puts its fools on the field.”
“A sleeping pill will never take the place of a clear conscience.”
“A sleeping sailor makes no gains but a heavy weight upon the ship.”
Source: X Captain Ruik's Adventure
“A sleepy master makes his servant a Lowt.”
Source: The Complete Works of George Herbert: Prose
“A sleepy smile pulled at my lips as I rolled onto my stomach, stretching my legs out and pointing my toes. The sheets slipped over my bare skin and ended up somewhere at the foot of my bed. There was either a perverted ghost in my bedroom or Cam was wide awake.”
“A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of friends.”
Source: The Quotable George Washington: The Wisdom of an American Patriot
“A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man, that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of his friends, and that the most liberal professions of good will are very far from being the surest marks of it. I should be happy that my own experience had afforded fewer examples of the little dependence to be placed upon them.”
Source: The Life of General Washington: First President of the United States
“A slew of cognitive traits predisposes us to faith.”
“A slice of hot, buttered toast is the perfect meal. It's not too much and not too little, and it gives you just the right buzz.”
“A slice of pie without cheese is like a kiss without a squeeze.”
“A slick BMW 5-Series pulls right by the traffic light. As the car comes to a halt, a bunch of kids, street kids, go to work. One of them, a young boy no more than eight years old kisses the BMW emblem on the hood. The driver, drenched in apathy, doesn’t even look up. Another kid comes by the side, begging the beamer’s owner for some cash. Everybody in Tehran knows that to pay these kids is bringing Slumdog Millionaire’s silver screen to the silver smog city.”
Source: Tajrish
“A slick way to outfigure a person is to get him figuring you figure he's figuring you're figuring he'll figure you aren't really figuring what you want him to figure you figure.”
“A slight breeze would make the leaves dance and the sun’s rays would flicker through the branches and throw beautiful patterns of shadow and light on the ground.”
Source: The Listening Tree: Befriending Nature
“A slight daily unconscious luxury is hardly ever wanting to the dwellers in civilization; like the gentle air of a genial climate, it is a perpetual minute enjoyment.”
Source: Literary studies ; Religious and metaphysical essays ; Letters on the French coup d'état
“A slight failing in one virtue is enough to put all the others to sleep.”
Source: The life of Saint Teresa of Jesus
“A slight sabre-cut will separate my head from my body, like the spring flower which the Master of the garden gathers for His pleasure. We are all flowers planted on this earth, which God plucks in His own good time: some a little sooner, some a little later. Father and son may we meet in Paradise. I, poor little moth, go first. Adieu.”
“A slight shift in perspective changes everything.”
Source: Pursuing Timeless Agility: the Path to Lasting Agile Transformation
“A slight smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.”
Source: The Midnight Library
“A slight touch of friendly malice and amusement towards those we love keeps our affections for them from turning flat.”
“A slight wind shakes the seed-pods
my thoughts are spent
as the black seeds.”
Source: Collected Poems 1912-1944
“A slighted woman knows no bounds.”
Source: The mistake: a comedy
“A slightest thought that ‘I know something’ will bring in unawareness again.”
Source: Adjust Everywhere
“A slightly different version of the argument--this is really the core of Max Weber's reflections on the subject--is that a bureaucracy, once created, will immediately move to make itself indispensable to anyone trying to wield power, no matter what they wish to do with it. The chief way to do this is always by attempting to monopolize access to certain key types of information.”
“A slightly modified version of the Serenity Prayer: Lord, grant me the serenity to ignore the assholes I cannot avoid; The luck to avoid the ones I can; And the self-awareness not to be one myself”
Source: Adulting: How to Become a Grown-up in 468 Easy(ish) Steps
“A slip of the foot is better than a slip of the tongue.”
“A slip of the foot may injure your body, but a slip of the tongue will injure your bond.”
Source: Wealth of Words
“A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over.”
Source: The Way to Wealth and Poor Richard's Almanac
“A slither to my right. It reminded me that people weren’t the only danger out here. Hopefully, what I thought were silent steps were thunderous to the desert snakes.”
Source: The Prisoner of Acre
“A sloppy performance in a photograph is as distressing as a sloppy performance in music.”