B Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with B. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Before tomorrow, make a list of your traits. Make YOUR list - who you are and why. Then ask yourself this question: where did it come from? Are you the way you are because it is what you want... or what they want? Are you a product of your imagination or someone else's? Think about it.”
“Before too long I was playing badly out in some bars around Memphis, but as soon as I learned a few chords I started writing my own stuff.”
“Before too long, the bottle of whisky lies empty on the grass in front of us and Mike appears to have talked himself out. In the silence that follows, Mike begins hiccupping with the most intense seriousness and mental concentration, and I realise that he’s thoroughly, disgracefully drunk.
‘Come on,’ I say, helping him to his feet. ‘I think we’ve had enough excitement for one evening.’
I manage to get him up, but then he sways up against the castle wall, and does not seem keen to move.
‘D’you think, perchance, we could call a taxi?’
‘We’re half a mile from any road, Mike. Come on. Get moving.’
‘A horse!’ Mike shouts. ‘My kingdom for a horse.’
‘Yes, yes,’ I say. ‘Come along now. Here’s my arm. Got my arm? Got it?’
‘Or a donkey,’ Mike says. ‘My kingdom for a donkey.’
‘Oh, come on,’ I say. ‘Grab my arm.’
‘Arm of the law!’ Mike shouts. ‘Quite right, Colonel. Hup. two three four. And March!’
But Mike, in spite of saying this, does not himself march. ‘D’you think February can March?’ he asks, turning to me. ‘I don’t know, but I think April May.’ He follows this with a snort of laughter so violent that it propels him away from the wall. I catch him and, taking advantage of the forward momentum, begin the journey homewards. ‘My kingdom,’ Mike says, returning to his earlier point. ‘Wouldn’t get much for it now, state the country’s in.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Good point.’
‘Tories,’ Mike says. ‘String ‘em up.’
‘Yes, yes,’ I say, soothingly. ‘Tories.’
‘Bunch of crim’nals,’ Mike says, misanthropically. ‘String ‘em all up.’
And with that, he drops his head and is silent for the remainder of the journey.”
Source: A Matter of Life and Death
“Before too long, the sex that had previously dominated our relationship became less urgent, and it wasn’t unheard of for us to postpone it in favour of a new series on Netflix or a quick snooze on the sofa. Dinnertime moved from the kitchen table to the living room sofa, where conversation was quickly replaced by the Channel 4 News. We stopped bothering to suppress our farts and gave up timing our toilet breaks so we wouldn’t inflict our smells on one another. Phone calls to friends grew longer and more frequent, and when we left the flat alone for a night out with mates we secretly rejoiced at the promise of a few hours of freedom. This isn’t to say that things were any worse than before; it was just no longer the free ride that we’d enjoyed during those first heady months of our relationship.”
“before touching my face
kill the chickens
while i sleep”
Source: Turn Around, BRXGHT XYXS
“Before touching your lips I want to touch your heart, and before conquering your body I want to conquer your love.”
“Before Trump, conservatives seeking to appeal to Latinos typically embraced the politics of conservative multiculturalism. Politicians such as George W. Bush reached out to Latino voters by showing a familiarity with their language and history, emphasizing the values of diversity and inclusion. Depicting Latinos as a distinct and valuable part of America’s democratic mosaic, conservative multiculturalism connected Latino culture to Republican values, emphasizing conservative approaches to faith, patriotism and the traditional family.
Trump, by contrast, knows nothing of the history of Latinos in the United States and rarely even pretends to find value in Latinos’ distinct identities. Rather than offering his non-White voters recognition, Trump has offered them multiracial whiteness.”
“Before trying a novel I wrote a couple of plays.”
“Before Turner there was no fog in London.”
“Before turning down the lamp, Lara paused to take one last glance at her husband. He was like some magnificent slumbering beast, all his alertness and vitality temporarily banked, his claws sheathed. But on the morrow he would be back in his usual form, mocking, argumentative, charming... and he would resume his efforts to seduce her.
What unnerved her was the realization that in some small way she was actually looking forward to it.”
Source: Stranger in My Arms
“Before turning pro, I would never have just left my skates sitting in the locker room unattended.”
“Before turning to those moral and mental aspects of the matter which present the greatest difficulties, let the inquirer begin by mastering more elementary problems.”
Source: A Study in Scarlet
“Before two years of age, human interaction and physical interaction with books and print are the best entry into the world of oral and written language and internalized knowledge, the building blocks of the later reading circuit.”
Source: Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World
“Before undergoing a surgical operation, arrange your temporal affairs. You may live.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)
“Before us is mighty, so to speak, transformative and preparatory work. From a period which is creative, immediate and elemental, we must proceed to a period which is critical, conscious and cultural. These are the two worlds between which exists the entire abyss. The contemporary generation has the misfortune of being born between these two worlds, before this abyss. Herein is explained its frailty, diseased anxiety, hungry search for new ideals and a certain fateful impotency in all of its efforts. The best youth and vigor of talent is not expended on vital creativity but on an internal destructiveness and struggle with the past, on the passage across the abyss to that land, to that shore, to the frontiers of a free and divine idealism. How many people are perishing in this passage or are losing their strength irrevocably!...
("On The Reasons For The Decline And On The New Tendencies In Contemporary Literature")”
Source: Silver Age of Russian Culture
“Before us lay a painful road, And guidance have I sought in duteous love From Wisdom's heavenly Father. Hence hath flowed Patience, with trust that, whatsoe'er the way Each takes in this high matter, all may move Cheered with the prospect of a brighter day.”
“Before us lie two paths - honesty and dishonesty. The shortsighted embark on the dishonest path; the wise on the honest. For the wise know the truth; in helping others we help ourselves; and in hurting others we hurt ourselves. Character overshadows money, and trust rises above fame. Honesty is still the best policy.”
“Before us, the sun slips down over verdant city streets. A world of green and orange and yellow, of eucalypt, myrtle, oak, cedar,cypress, plane, willow, dogwood, frangipani, maple, acacia, palm, pine, elm, apple, boat, mahogany, jacaranda, cottonwood, sycamore, alder, ash, grevillea, chestnut, poplar, birch, on streets, on football ovals, growing from abandoned cars and front yards and cafes and train stations.”
Source: Arborescence
“Before using a fine word, make a place for it.”
Source: Pensées and letters of Joseph Joubert
“Before vampires were aesthetically appealing, they were physical anomalies and ostracized outsiders whom we banished to the dark, and they didn't have the appeal that they do now.”
“Before Van realized it, he was walking her back toward her stairs. He didn't stop kissing her, he wouldn't. The last thing he wanted was for her to change her mind. He managed to get her to the upstairs hallway before she pulled her mouth away. "What are you doing?" she panted out.
"Taking you to your bed."
"Forget it."
And Van, if he were a crying man, would be sobbing. Until uptight Irene Conridge added, "The wall. Use the Wall.”
Source: When He Was Bad
“Before Vatican II, in theology, as in other areas, the discipline was fixed. After the council there has been a revolution - a chaotic revolution - with free discussion on everything. There is now no common theology or philosophy as there was before.”
“Before VCRs, people used to decorate the tops of their TVs with family photos.”
Source: Lucky Days
“Before Venus, censorious; before Mars, timid.”
Source: Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations
“Before verse can be human again it must learn to be brutal.”
Source: Playboy of the Western World and Other Plays
“Before visiting Staten Island, I'd never met a day laborer. To me, a city girl who knew undocumented men mostly as restaurant workers, day laborers seemed like an almost mythical archetype, groups of brown men huddled at the crack of dawn on street corners next to truck rental lots and hardware superstores and lumberyards. Historically, legislators and immigration advocates have parted the sea of the undocumented with a splintered staff—working brown men and women on one side and academically achieving young brown people on the other, one a parasitic blight, the other heroic dreamers.”
Source: The Undocumented Americans
“Before walk the bold walk shake your ankle to make sure that it feet enough to putting you on your destination.”
“Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.”
Source: A Dream Too Wild: Emerson Meditations for Every Day of the Year
“Before we announced Judge Merric Garland, people were saying they would not even deign to meet with him. And we're also aware that early in the week, when the Congress comes back, in fact, Senator Collins, the Republican from Maine, has agreed to meet with Judge Garland up in the Senate.”
“Before we apply Joshua to our lives, we need to make sure which side of the Jordan we are living on. Militarism invites God's wrath.”
Source: Fight: A Christian Case for Non-Violence
“Before we are citizens, we are children, and it is as children that we come to understand freedom and authority, liberty and duty.”
“Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion.”
“Before we aspire after theoretical perfection in the amelioration of our political state, it is necessary that we possess those advantages which we have been cheated of, and which the experience of modern times has proved that nations even under the present conditions are susceptible.”
Source: The Major Works
“Before we became criminals. Before we became ghosts.”
Source: We Were Liars
“Before we become too arrogant with the most deadly of the seven deadly sins, the sin of pride, let us remember that the two great wars of this century, wars which cost twenty million dead, were fought between Christian nations praying to the same God.”
Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard M. Nixon, 1972
“Before We Begin
Is Your Bug A nice clean original car that looks almost like it
left the showroom yesterday?
P.S. All work should be carried out in consultation with a reliable workshop manual with regard to torque settings, gaps, procedures, sequences disassembly, reassembly, where to hide the leftover parts, etc. I will accept no responsibility for anything resulting from
you or anybody else trying anything as described in this document whatsoever – but if it works or you end up with some amusing stories to tell someone else’s grandchildren, please feel free to drop me a line. (No death threats please.)
Sincerely,
Christina Engela”
Source: Bugspray
“Before we begin to investigate that, let us try to realize what we do know, so as to make the most of it, and to separate the essential from the accidental.”
Source: The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist - a Sherlock Holmes Short Story
“Before we blame we should first see whether we cannot excuse.”
“Before we can aspire to guide the destinies of India, we shall have to adopt the habit of fearlessness.”
Source: The Gandhi Reader: A Sourcebook of His Life and Writings
“Before we can be cured we must want to be cured. Those who really wish for help will get it; but for many modern people even the wish is difficult.”
Source: The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics
“Before we can be cured, we must want to be cured.”
Source: The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics
“Before we can be grafted into Him, we must be stripped of our self-sufficiency and ego.”
Source: Humble Roots: How Humility Grounds and Nourishes Your Soul
“Before we can begin to see the cross as something done FOR us, leading us to faith and worship, we have to see it as something done BY us, leading us to repentance. Only the man or woman who is prepared to own his share in the guilt of the cross may claim his share in its grace.”
“Before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us, we have to see it as something done by us.”
Source: The cross
“Before we can bloom into the most beautiful expression of the lotus we’re meant to be, it helps to focus on our point of attraction in the world: the way we love and care for ourselves.”
Source: InstaGrateful: Finding Your Bliss in a Social Media World
“Before we can bring happiness to others, we first must be happy ourselves; nor will happiness abide within us unless we confer it on others. If there be a smile upon our lips, those around us will soon smile too; and our happiness will become the truer and deeper as we see that these others are happy. "It is not seemly that I, who, willingly, have brought sorrow to none, should permit myself to be sad," said Marcus Aurelius, in one of his noblest passages.”
Source: Wisdom and Destiny
“Before we can build a stable civilization worthy of humanity as a whole, it is necessary that each historical civilization should become conscious of its limitations and it's unworthiness to become the ideal civilization of the world.”
Source: Kalki: Or, The Future of Civilization
“Before we can build the world we want to live in, we have to imagine it.”
“Before we can change anything in our life, we have to recognize that this is the way it is meant to be right now. For me, acceptance has become what I call the long sigh of the soul. It's the closed eyes in prayer, perhaps even the quiet tears. It's "all right," as in "All right, You lead, I'll follow." And it's "all right" as in "Everything is going to turn out all right." This is simply part of the journey.”
“Before we can change the world, we have to change ourselves. We can do it by focusing, concentrating, meditating, and self-realizing.”