B Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with B. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”
Source: The Origins of Totalitarianism
“Before me a scholarly man, of European culture, head of a literary department in one of the great universities of the West. He speaks of it with bitterness, as do almost all his colleagues. Culture is not what it was and he has not the slightest regard for mass culture. He comes from New York and, deep down, he despises California, his colleagues and the decline of standards. He gets 60-80,000 dollars a year and does not have many students or friends. He has lots of ideas, is sincere, proud and awkward. His secret is his python. I see him plunge his gloved hand into its glass case and stroke the reptile's head, which shoots out a voracious tongue and uncoils itself, still famished though it has just devoured a rat. We discuss the diet of snakes. A tortoise slumbers by the fireside in the glow of an artificial wood fire. It is Sunday in Santa Monica. Towards four, the sun drives away the mists of the Pacific. But the snake knows neither night nor day; he is immortal and poisonous and, in the words of the poet, he dreams on the hills of the sky. Which is something his master does not do, he whose reptilian brain identifies with the snake's, and who stares long and hard into his face, even though ordinarily he is incapable of looking people straight in the eye. A perverse couple, the somnambulism of the intellectual mingling with the inner night of the reptile.”
Source: Cool memories
“Before me, before us—did you ever—were you ever in love?’
He paused for a while then shrugged. ‘I thought I was a couple of times at my last school—the usual crushes.’
‘Yeah, I really don’t want to hear it,’ I said, backtracking like crazy. ‘You’re going to tell me they were blond and beautiful size zeros.”
Source: Summer
“Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
("Byzantium")”
Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
“Before me floats an image, man or shade, / Shade more than man, more image than a shade.”
Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats
“Before me is the abyss. How can I leap across it? And if I do not leap, how shall I ever be able to reach God?”
“Before me lies a mass of shapeless days,
Unseparated atoms, and I must
Sort them apart and live them. Sifted dust
Covers the formless heap. Reprieves, delays,
There are none, ever. As a monk who prays
The sliding beads asunder, so I thrust
Each tasteless particle aside, and just
Begin again the task which never stays.
And I have known a glory of great suns,
When days flashed by, pulsing with joy and fire!
Drunk bubbled wine in goblets of desire,
And felt the whipped blood laughing as it runs!
Spilt is that liquor, my too hasty hand
Threw down the cup, and did not understand.”
“Before me no one would have dared dress in black”
“Before me now there is only one real fact -- Death. The truth I have been seeking -- this truth is Death. Yet Death is also a seeker. Forever seeking me. So -- we have met at last. And I am prepared. I am at peace. Because I will conquer death with death.”
“Before me things created were none, save things Eternal, and eternal I endure. All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”
Source: The divine comedy
“Before Me you are a slug in the sun. You are privy to a great Becoming and you recognize nothing. You are an ant in the after-birth.It is in your nature to do one thing correctly: before Me you rightly tremble. Fear is not what you owe Me, Lounds, you and the other pismires. You owe Me awe.”
Source: Red Dragon
“Before me, even as behind, God is, and all is well.”
Source: The complete poetical works of John Greenleaf Whittier
“Before me, my grandfathers, my uncles and my father were all boxers because Native Americans had to box in boarding schools. But in my time, when I grew up in Lawton Oklahoma, we didn't have boxing. I was a wrestler.”
“Before me, sprinters retired at 23 or 24. I run because I still like it, I can make a living, and I feel I was born to do it. And because people tell me I can't do it.”
“Before me, there were no moonsaults, there were no Litacanranas!”
“Before Medicare, nearly half of American seniors were forced to go without coverage because insurance companies were reluctant to insure them - making the chances of having health insurance as a senior the same as getting tails on a coin flip.”
“Before meeting you, I didn't know what it was like to feel lonely. I never even considered myself to be alone. That's because when you feel lonely, it means that there is someone for you to miss.”
“Before meeting you, I was praying to find you.. the thought of you, that prayer in particular was enough to cheer me up no matter how sad I was. Now, you are here before my eyes, do you know how I feel? I feel as if I am flying in my dreams. I have witnessed the miracle of my life.. You are a miracle, my miracle, you are an angel from heaven. Without you, I wouldn't have known the magic of life, I would have rejected life itself. I love you!”
Source: Norina Luciano
“before memory. We like to think of ourselves as emerging from this primordial fog with our characters fully formed, like Aphrodite rising perfect from the sea foam. But thanks to increasing research into the development of the brain, we know this is not the case. We are born with a brain half-formed—more like a muddy lump of clay than a divine Olympian. As the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott put it, “There is no such thing as a baby.” The development of our personalities doesn’t take place in isolation, but in relationship with others—we are shaped and completed by unseen, unremembered forces; namely, our parents.
This is frightening, for obvious reasons. Who knows what indignities we suffered, what torments and abuses, in this land before memory? Our character was formed without our even knowing it. In my case, I grew up feeling edgy, afraid; anxious. This anxiety seemed to predate my existence and exist independently of me. But I suspect it originated in my relationship with my father, around whom I was never safe.”
Source: The Silent Patient
“Before men can find peace and harmony within themselves they must first fall in love with their country.”
“Before men ever wrote in clay they cast their words in verse and line, rythymbound in poets' minds, defying time and age.”
“Before Michael Caine you had to have been in the RAF to be an actor.”
“Before Midnight is one of the years best movies. Full to the brim with humor, heartbreak, and ravishing romance. Richard Linklater directs with ardor and artistry. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy shine brilliantly. Heads up, Oscar. This ones a keeper.”
“Before minimizing your home office, clarify in your own mind how you want it to work. Are you running a business out of there? Is it just for processing the household accounts? Do you want it to be inspirational, encouraging creativity and dreaming, or would you rather keep it sparse and utilitarian? Is it a retreat where you like to read a book or sip a drink- more of a den than a mere office? Is it for the whole family or just the parents?”
Source: The Minimalist Home: A Room-by-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life
“Before misbehaving any woman don't forget that your mother is also a woman.”
“Before misbehaving with any woman don't forget that your mother is also a woman.”
“Before mobile phones, I used to call my parents from a phone box and reverse the charges.”
“Before modern man can gain control over the forces that now threaten his very existence, he must resume possession of himself. This sets the chief mission for the city of the future: that of creating a visible regional and civic structure, designed to make man at home with his deeper self and his larger world, attached to images of human nature and love.”
“Before modern times there was Walking, but not the perfection of Walking, because there was no tea.”
Source: CLIO A MUSE AND OTHER ESSAYS
“Before modernity
Growth was only for living creatures
With limited features
But these days
Even things can blossom
With the magic of packaging
Trees with start of spring
Objects with getting packed
And I with being with you
We can all flourish
As simple as that”
Source: Plastic Panther
“Before money or anything else. Money cannot buy it...Because a man I do not trust could not get money from me on all the bonds in Christendom.”
“Before most people start boasting about their family tree, they already have done a good pruning job.”
“Before Mozart, all ambition turns to despair.”
“Before MTV, if you put out an album that sold 50,000 copies, your band could afford not to have day jobs for a while. That meant you could stick around, put out another album or two. Maybe it would be the second or third album where you'd make the statement you'd been trying to make all along.”
“Before music there was silence and the duet format allows you to build from the silence in a very special way.”
“Before music videos first came out, you’d listen to a song with headphones on, sitting in a beanbag chair with your eyes closed, and you’d come up with your own visions, these things that came from within. Then all of a sudden, sometimes even the very first time you heard a song, it was with these visual images attached, and it robbed you of any form of self-expression.”
“Before my accident I was a little too... selfish and self-absorbed and for me, to now be at the place where I can kinda give back and inspire people. I'm blessed. I'm really blessed.”
“Before my accidents, there were ten thousands things I could do. I could spend the rest of my life dwelling on the things that I had lost, but instead I chose to focus on the nine thousand I still had left.”
“Before my birth there was infinite time, and after my death, inexhaustible time. I never thought of it before: I'd been living luminously between two eternities of darkness.”
Source: My Name Is Red
“Before my book, the most common assessment of Eleanor Marx is "Yes, she's great but basically she's in the shadow of her father." Absolute bollocks. She fought him, she resisted, and she was not a kind of trocadateur of his ideas.”
“Before my commercial career, I never played for more than an audience of 99 seats somewhere in downtown New York, but occasionally someone would recognize me in the subway and say, "Oh, I saw you in that play, you were really great in that," or "the director was really something." It becomes a conversation. When people spot me on the street from my work in commercials, there's nowhere for the conversation to go. Obviously I'm an actor and I can't.”
“Before my commercial success, I had difficulty doing what I wanted, but my sincere short films always won prizes in festivals. So I was ready for larger successes.”
“Before my death I hope to obtain my life.”
“Before my diagnosis [cancer] I was a competitor but not a fierce competitor. When I was diagnosed, that turned me into a fighter.”
“Before my encounter with Thomist philosophy through Maritain, I had almost reached the same conclusions through the logical development of my work, intuition and thought, but what a great sense of joy I felt upon discovering, in Maritain, the confirmation of certain thought patterns, certain ways of clarifying these to myself and to others.”
“Before my eyes are many miserable scenes, the suffering of others and myself forces my hands to move. I become a machine for writing.”
“Before my eyes, I saw proof that success breeds success and, indeed, the rich do get richer. Their web of friends and associates was the most potent club the people I caddied for had in their bags. Poverty, I realized, wasn't only a lack of financial resources; it was isolation from the kind of people who could help you make more of yourself.”
“Before my father's grave, I sit alone.
Upon some sheets of grimy paper, I write
My tale, the most dreaded of known tales,
A tale whose grisly facts poured out
Across the plains of vast Arabia.”
Source: The Massacre of Heartbreak Morrow
“Before my father would open up a karate school in a particular neighborhood, he'd clean up the block - kick all the drug dealers and gang bangers off the block. My father was very clear: 'I've got guns too, and I'll kill you just as much as a rival gang would.' And he meant it. He was a man of many facets and complexities.”
“Before my first child was born, I had nothing going on professionally really, and it's been a very blessed period of creativity for me since he arrived. It's very surreal. It's almost as if the babies are out there pulling strings somewhere, deciding what kind of life they want to be born into.”