B Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with B. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“But first, for the straight people reading this book, in case you are worried, reading about LGBTQ issues and trying to make your organization diverse will not make you LGBTQ. It doesn't happen that way, darlings. If you are straight, you will remain straight. Chill!”
Source: Queeristan: LGBTQ Inclusion in the Indian Workplace
“But first I have to sew my leg back on. Properly this time, so it doesn't come apart again." She reached for her leg, her hands still shaking from residual adrenaline after their near escape. She hoped she'd be able to thread her needle.
Jack placed a hand over her arm. "Allow me," he said, and Sally's eyes widened as he carefully aligned her lower leg with the stub of her knee.
"I can do that---" she started. But Jack put a finger to her lips.
"I know you can," he said, meeting her eyes with his own. "But right now your hands are still trembling from trying to help me up and I don't want you to hurt yourself. So why don't you just rest for a second? Allow me to make myself useful for once." He wagged a playful finger at her. "You don't get to save the day every time, you know."
Sally tried to laugh, but it came out more like a choke as grateful tears began to well in her eyes. A part of her still wanted to argue, to insist she could do it herself. But then, Jack already knew that, didn't he? Even in the darkness she could see his confidence in her, reflected in his dark eyes.
Sally had always hated when Dr. Finkelstein had sewed her back together. It made her feel weak. Helpless. Yet another thing he didn't trust her to do on her own. Another way to retain control.
But Jack wasn't trying to control her, she realized. He was trying to help her. And wasn't it nice, sometimes, to lean on another? To trust that someone cared enough to do the job right?”
Source: Sally's Lament
“But first I’ve got to get another book: How to Break the [SPOILER] When Native Americans Have Had Too Much Time on Their Hands.”
Source: The Four Myths
“But first of all he is a woodsman, and you aren't a woodsman unless you have such a feeling for topography that you can look at the earth and see what it would look like without any woods or covering on it. It's something like the gift all men wish for when they or young-- or old-- of being able to look through a woman's clothes and see her body, possibly even a little of her character.”
Source: Young Men and Fire
“But, first, remember, remember, remember the signs. Say them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of the night. And whatever strange things may happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from following the signs. And secondly, I give you a warning. Here on the mountain I have spoken to you clearly: I will not often do so down in Narnia. Here on the mountain, the air is clear and your mind is clear; as you drop down into Narnia, the air will thicken. Take great care that it does not confuse your mind. And the signs which you have learned here will not look at all as you expect them to look, when you meet them there. That is why it is so important to know them by heart and pay no attention to appearances. Remember the signs and believe the signs. Nothing else matters.”
Source: The Chronicles of Narnia
“But first you have to fight, to try other ways. If your life displeases you, my lad, try to change it. Don't give in to defeat so easily. Death is the only sure defeat. It is the end of everything.”
Source: The Map of the Sky
“But first you need the theory, before you can make a profit from the practice.”
Source: Shantaram
“But first, my friends, I need you to do something for me. We have two spies in the back of the auditorium.”
Source: The Kill Order
“But first, on earth as vampire sent, Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent, Then ghastly haunt thy native place, And suck the blood of all thy race. There from thy daughter, sister, wife, At midnight drain the stream of life, Yet loathe the banquet which perforce Must feed thy livid living corse. Thy victims ere they yet expire Shall know the demon for their sire, As cursing thee, thou cursing them, Thy flowers are withered on the stem.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Lord Byron (Illustrated)
“But fish not with this melancholy bait
For this fool gudgeon, this opinion.”
“But flies an eagle flight, bold and forth on, Leaving no tract behind.”
Source: The Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare: With the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators
“But flippancy is the best of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it.”
Source: The Screwtape Letters
“But flowers feed our soul in a different way. They remind us of a God who creates beautiful things and takes notice of the tiniest detail”
“But following the only true and stedfast Teacher, the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.”
“But for 30 years, Orthodox leaders have tipped the balance between hawks and doves, and have been in a position to determine who forms a coalition and who runs the country.”
“But for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, 'Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,' can truly say to every group of Christian friends, 'You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another.' The friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others...At this feast it is He who has spread the board and it is He who has chosen the guests. it is He, we may dare to hope, who sometimes does, and always should preside. Let us not reckon without our Host.”
Source: The Four Loves
“But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of the Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends "You have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another." The Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others. They are no greater than the beauties of a thousand other men; by Friendship God opens our eyes to them. They are, like all beauties, derived from Him through the Friendship itself, so that it is His instrument for creating as well as for revealing. At this feast it is He who has spread the board and it is He who has chosen the guests. It is He, we may dare to hope, who sometimes does, and always should, preside. Let us not reckon without our Host.”
Source: The Four Loves
“But for a few phrases from his letters and an odd line or two of his verse, the poet walks gagged through his own biography.”
Source: Odd Jobs: Essays and Criticism
“But for a long time, altogether unnoticed by his comrades, there had ripened in his soul a dark contempt for mankind; contempt mingled with despair and painful, almost deadly fatigue.”
Source: Seven Who Were Hanged
“But for a long time, and probably far too long, I had a secret wish: the adolescently romantic idea that there was someone out there for me; someone I hadn't met yet who would ask me on a date and make sense of my life. I harbored the hope, I'm now embarrassed to admit, that like a girl in a Lifetime movie, I would look into someone's eyes and find a reflection of my inner life. But sometime between my teenage years and the first years in New York, that idea had pretty well evaporated. I'd grown up.”
Source: The Season of Second Chances
“But for a man, it's different. Like, separation can take years - it can take years to make divorce final. What am I supposed to do during those years? I think that's, you know it's not the *craziest* thing, but it's where a lot of rumors come from. It's frustrating.”
“But for a moment Dirk had a sense of inifinite loss and sadness that somewhere among the frenzy of information noise that daily rattled the lives of men he thought he might have heard a few notes that denoted the movements of gods.”
Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Box Set: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
“But for a mother who was submissive to the degree my mother was, it was OK to kill girls. For a father like mine, it was normal to chop off his daughters hair with sheep shears, and to beat her with a belt or a cane or tie her up in the stable all night with the cows.”
Source: Burned Alive
“But for a society built on exploitation, there is no greater threat than having no one left to oppress. And now, if nothing else is done, Syl Anagist must again find a way to fission its people into subgroupings and create reasons for conflict among them. There's not enough magic to be had just from plants and genegineered fauna; someone must suffer, if the rest are to enjoy luxury.”
“But for all its miseries, there was an unmistakable allure to the jockey's craft... Man is preoccupied with freedom yet laden with handicaps. The breadth of his activity and experience is narrowed by the limitations of his relative weak, sluggish body. The racehorse, by virtue of his awesome physical gifts, freed the jockey from himself. When a horse and a jockey flew over the tack together, there were moments in which the man's mind wedded itself to the animal's body to form something greater than the sum of both parts. The horse partook of the jockey's cunning; the jockey partook of the horse's supreme power. For the jockey, the saddle was a place of unparalled exhilaration, of transcendence.”
“But, for all that, there is a Beyond, and he who has once caught a glance of it, is like a man who has gazed at the sun —wherever he looks, everywhere he sees the image of the sun. Speak to him of finite things, and he will tell you that the Finite is impossible and meaningless without the Infinite. Speak to him of death, and he will call it birth ; speak to him of time, and he will call it the mere shadow of eternity. To us the senses seem to be the organs, the tools, the most powerful engines of knowledge ; to him they are, if not actually deceivers, at all events heavy fetters, checking the flight of the spirit. To us this earth, this life, all that we see, and hear, and touch is certain. Here, we feel, is our home, here lie our duties, here our pleasures. To him this earth is a thing that once was not, and that again will cease to be ; this life is a short dream from which we shall soon awake. Of nothing he professes greater ignorance than of what to others seems to be most certain, namely what we see, and hear, and touch ; and as to our home, wherever that may be, he knows that certainly it is not here.”
Source: India: What Can It Teach Us
“But for all those who don't want the Queen there are easily as many who don't want a President and even more who certainly would not want one if they knew who it would be. As you can readily see, I have given more thought to this subject than most and I have reached my own conclusion. God save the Queen.”
“But for another thing, there's no law of nature which says that control over capital has to be in a few hands―that's like saying that political power has to be in a few hands. Why? There wasn't a law that said that the king and the nobles had to run everything, and there isn't a law that says that corporate owners and managers have to run everything either. These are social arrangements. They developed historically, they can be changed historically”
Source: Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky
“But for anyone out there whose life is being ruined by an active addict right now, please allow me to say the one thing that I don’t think gets said strongly enough or often enough: it’s okay for you to leave them. Don’t get me wrong: Addicts are precious and suffering children of God, and they do not deserve your contempt.
But if you can ever save yourself from one—run.
It’s okay for you to leave them.
That’s what Rayya used to tell me, anyway, back when she was sober—or at least semisober. It has nothing to do with love, she said. Nothing to do with loyalty. Of course you love them, and you will always love them! But having the courage to cut off contact with an active addict is often the only way to survive their rampages—and it just might be the wake-up call that the addict needs, too.”
Source: All the Way to the River
“But for anything to be alive, it required motion : the current must run, the record must turn, a person must leave or find another path. Without movement or change, the world became nothing more than a stale copy, and this was the trouble with Ba's elegant calligraphy, his patient life, it was frozen in time.”
Source: Do Not Say We Have Nothing
“But for better or worse, I am not motivated by kindness.”
Source: Mockingjay
“But for disloyalty to her husband a wife is censured among men, and ,in her next life she is born in the womb of a jackal and tormented by diseases, the punishment of her sin.”
“But for each of us, isn't life about determining your own finish line?”
“But for every hour and a half on stage, you have a five hour long bus ride, waiting for five hours at the airport, five hours of interviews... I know, it's part of the job, but that doesn't imply I have to like it.”
“But for everyone, I think, there is always a pressure to conform, and I guess as you get older you realize it's less interesting to do that. It starts with you, though, saying, 'I know what I like doing and that's what I'm going to do.”
“But for failing love on our part, therefore is all our travail.”
Source: The Showings of Divine Love
“But for fatherhood advice, try to look your child in the eye.... Get to know their name; that becomes important when you want something. And remember to feed them. That's about all you need.”
“But for half a minute she wished it was a different sort of day, even though she knew that nothing good could come from wanting at the world.”
Source: The Slow Regard of Silent Things
“But for half a minute she wished it was a different sort of day, even though she knew that nothing good could come from wanting at the world. Even though she knew it was a wicked thing to do.”
Source: The Slow Regard of Silent Things
“But for her there was no possibility of a clear conscience, merely the weak absolution of honesty, of confession.
She could not buy into the cycle of sin and penance. She would always remember what she had done, and it would always sting. She would not be washed clean.”
Source: The Middle of Somewhere
“But for here, for now, just between us two, and for no other reason save I am me and you are you, I tell you this. I am glad, glad that you are alive. To see you take breath puts the breath back in my lungs. If there must be another my fate is twined around, I am glad it is you.”
Source: Assassin's Quest
“But, for humans at large, knowledge usually equates to empathy, and empathy leads to understanding.”
Source: Tress of the Emerald Sea
“But for I am a woman should I therefore live that I should not tell you the goodness of God?”
“But for me at any rate it was all part of dissolving the God trip or father-figure trip. Facing up to reality instead of always looking for some kind of heaven.”
“But for me I think it's just about taking that time of reflection and contemplation. That's probably my process in every decision that I make: to make sure that I spend time just with myself, and really times of silence and mediation to go through that process; and music is a big part of that as well.”
“But for me if I'm gonna read about something I'd rather read a pamphlet or the instructions to a synthesizer than a book on Buddhism.”
“But for me it's very difficult to finish music on my own. It's the fear of losing the fun. It's very easy to get a sketch of something or an idea together in a very short time, to try out something new, but to get a five minute track to play out is much harder, at least for me. When I start to construct something, it often ends in frustration.”
“But for me living without loving you is not possible,
As for the Moon to shine without the Sun is impossible.”
Source: They Loved in 2075!
“but for me sex was my girlhood dragged to death he said we were going to play then he always locked the door always chose the game when i told him to stop he said i was asking for it but what did i know about involuntary orgasms and agency and consent at age 7. 8. 9. and 10.”
Source: Home Body
“But for me the sweetest contact with God has no form. I close my eyes, look within, and enter a deep soft silence. The infinity of God's creation embraces me.”