B Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with B. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“But from another, deeper perspective: we shouldn't involve outselves in lines of development where the ultimate victory condition is emulating dead people. There's no appeal in that. It's bad for us. That kind of inherent mournfulness is just not a good way to be human.”
“But from each crime are born bullets that will one day seek out in you where the heart lies.”
Source: Residence on Earth
“but from here on
I want more crazy mourning, more howl, more keening
-from "A Woman Dead in Her Forties”
Source: The Dream of a Common Language
“But from that moment on, Hermione Granger became their friend. Because there are somethings you can't go through in life and become friends, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.”
“But from the beginning, I knew that in a world where destiny was dead, I was destined, forever, to love him. Even though he didn't - though he couldn't - ever love me back.”
Source: Delirium Stories: Hana, Annabel, Raven and Alex
“But from the good health of the mind comes that which is dear to all and the object of prayer-happiness.”
“But from the height where we were I could see, on the other side of the ravine that hid the stream, a whole part of the forest quivering as though shaken by a cruel fear, and the tops of the trees suddenly tilting, and falling like feathers; and then I saw them, packed closely against one another, the great gray shapes I knew so well. I thought: Soon there will be no more room in the modem world for such need of space, for such royal clumsiness, such magnificent freedom. And I could not help smiling, as I did each time I saw them, with relief, as though the sight of them reassured me about an essential presence. In this age of impotence, this age of taboos, of slavery, inhibitions, and almost physiological submission, when man is triumphing over his most ancient truths and renouncing his deepest needs, it always seemed to me, as I listened to the earth’s most ancient thunder, that we had not yet been finally cut off from our sources, that we had not yet lost ourselves forever, that we had not yet been once for all castrated and enslaved, that we were not yet altogether subdued.”
Source: The Roots of Heaven
“But from the hoop's bewitching round, Her very shoe has power to wound.”
“But from the moment George Bush decided to overthrow Saddam, the people who were going to benefit here were the Shia, who are 60 percent of the population. So if you were ever going to have an election, then the Shia would take over.”
“But from the moment he had pointed his gun at her they both knew it was love.”
Source: The Last Devil to Die
“But from the perspective of the aging parent, there is no major difference between four and fifteen, except that when your child is four, his motoring privileges are restricted to little toy Fisher-Price vehicles which are unlikely (although I would not totally rule it out in America) to sue you.”
Source: Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus
“But from the texture of the very human heart arises the strongest argument in behalf of the persecuted creatures. Within us there exists a rooted repugnance to the spilling of blood; a repugnance which yields only to custom, and which even the most inveterate custom can never entirely overcome. Hence the ungracious task of shedding the tide of life for the gluttony of our table, has, in every country, been committed to the lowest class of men; and their profession is, in every country, an object of abhorrence. On the carcase we feed, without remorse, because the dying struggles of the butchered creature are secluded from our sight; because his cries pierce not our ear; because his agonising shrieks sink not into our soul: but were we forced, with our own hands, to assassinate the animals whom we devour, who is there amongst us that would not throw down, with detestation, the knife; and, rather than embrue his hands in the murder of the lamb, consent, for ever, to forego the favourite repast? What then shall we say? Vainly planted in our breast, is this abhorrence of cruelty, this sympathetic affection for every animal?”
Source: The Cry of Nature; Or, an Appeal to Mercy and to Justice, on Behalf of the Persecuted Animals
“But from the time I was very little, it was something I would do all the time, just sing, dance and act. So it wasn't something that was fake or contrived as I got older.”
“But from this earth, this grave, this dust, My God shall raise me up, I trust.”
Source: Poems
“But from what I can see all around me today, that America is fading fast, if it's not already gone.”
“But frost, like the crystallized dreams of autumn, began to coat the clearing with its sugar glaze.”
Source: Redemption
“But froward Fortune and perverse, Whan high estatis she doth reverse, And maketh hem to tumble doun Of hir whele, with sodeyn tourn.”
“But fuck, I was going to love them. I didn’t care about being perfect. I just wanted to be everything my father wasn’t. I wanted this with her a million more times, and no matter all the shit that still lived inside me, I already knew I was better than him.”
Source: Conclave
“But full sequencing? No. Very hard to interpret. At some point probably we'll all have that opportunity but most of what's there will be stuff that we don't know what to say much about. So it's a great research tool, but for clinical purposes to advise somebody to practice better health maintenance, it's not necessarily gonna be a big one for a while.”
“But fundamentally the reason for my not writing is the vague feeling that I have so much and such extremely important things to say to you that no amount of free time would be free enough to gather together all the strength required for it. And this is how it is.”
Source: Letters to Milena
“But fundamentally, I don't think of it as an alien-invasion movie; everybody's here, kind of, right? So, I think it's probably more of an action-adventure picture, if I actually had to qualify it.”
“But Gale is not one to keep secrets from me. "Katniss, there is no District Twelve."”
“But gamblers know how a man can sit for almost twenty-four hours at cards, without looking to right, or to left.”
“But games always cover something deep and intense, else there would be no excitement in them, no pleasure, no power to stir us.”
“But gardening is none of that, really. Strip away the gadgets and the techniques, the books and the magazines and the soil test kits, and what you're left with, at the end of the day, is this: a stretch of freshly turned dirt, a handful of seeds scratched into the surface, and a marker to remember where they went. It is at the same time an incredibly brave and an incredibly simple thing to do, entrusting your seeds to the earth and waiting for them to rise up out of the ground to meet you.”
Source: From the Ground Up: The Story of a First Garden
“But Gemma, you could change the world."
"That should take far more than my power," I say.
"True. But change needn't happen all at once. It can be small gestures."
"Moments. Do you understand?" He's looking at me differently now, though I cannot say how. I only know I need to look away...
We pass by the pools, where the mud larks sift. And for only a few seconds, I let the magic loose again.
"Oi! By all the saints!" a boy cries from the river.
"Gone off the dock?" an old woman calls. The mud larks break into cackles.
"'S not a rock!" he shouts. He races out of the fog, cradling something in his palm. Curiosity gets the better of the others. They crowd about trying to see. In his palm is a smattering of rubies. "We're rich mates! It's a hot bath and a full belly for every one of us!"
Kartik eyes me suspiciously. "That was a strange stroke of good fortune."
"Yes it was."
"I don't suppose that was your doing."
"I'm not sure I don't know what you mean," I say.
And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time.”
Source: The Sweet Far Thing
“But generally speaking, I felt to engage in the political process was to sully oneself to such a degree that whatever came out wasn't worth the trouble put in.”
“But generally speaking, I tend to be quiet and introspective.”
“But generally speaking, people weren't fired, art jobs were very hard to get, so something really calamitous had to happen to a person who was working there in order for you to find a space.”
“But generosity of spirit is not enough: our responses must be grounded in wisdom. The headless heart may lead to outcomes little better than the heartless head. So we need to be a little more specific about what generosity of spirit implies. What shoud it mean in the context of Syria, and, by extension, what should it mean more widely in the global context of refugees?”
Source: Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System
“But genius, and even great talent, springs less from seeds of intellect and social refinement superior to those of other people than from the faculty of transforming and transposing them. To heat a liquid with an electric lamp requires not the strongest lamp possible, but one of which the current can cease to illuminate, can be diverted so as to give heat instead of light. To mount the skies it is not necessary to have the most powerful of motors, one must have a motor which, instead of continuing to run along the earth's surface, intersecting with a vertical line the horizontal line which it began by following, is capable of converting its speed into lifting power. Similarly, the men who produce works of genius are not those who live in the most delicate atmosphere, whose conversation is the most brilliant or their culture the most extensive, but those who have had the power, ceasing suddenly to live only for themselves, to transform their personality into a sort of mirror, in such a way that their life, however mediocre it may be socially and even, in a sense, intellectually, is reflected by it, genius consisting in reflecting power and not int he intrinsic quality of the scene reflected.”
Source: Within a Budding Grove, Part 2
“But genius looks forward: the eyes of men are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates.”
Source: Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems
“But gentlemen, as long as I am an American Citizen, and as long as American blood runs in these veins, I shall hold myself at liberty to speak, to write, and to publish whatever I please on any subject.”
Source: Lovejoy: Martyr to Freedom
“But Geology carries the day: it is like the pleasure of gambling, speculating, on first arriving, what the rocks may be; I often mentally cry out 3 to 1 Tertiary against primitive; but the latter have hitherto won all the bets.”
Source: The Correspondence of Charles Darwin: 1821-1836
“But George Lucas is carrying about Black actors, about Black men, about Black history, which really incorporates and tells all of history. You can't take one race out without eliminating every other race if you're going to tell the story of the human race.”
“But germs are the most common snowflake starters and lie at the heart of 85 percent of all flakes.2
So next time you gaze at a lovely snowstorm, inform your favorite germophobe or hypochondriac that living bacteria sit shivering in most of those untold billions of flakes. Then hand him or her a snow cone or organize a catch-a-snowflake-on-your-tongue party.
Once the ice-forming process is started, more molecules join the party, and the crystal grows. It can ultimately become either a snowflake or a rough granule of ice called by the odd name graupel. A snowflake contains ten quintillion water molecules. That’s ten million trillion. Ten snowflakes—which can fit on your thumb tip—have the same number of molecules as there are grains of sand on the earth. Or stars in the visible universe. How many flakes, how many molecules fashioned the snowy landscape I was observing as I drove east? It numbed the brain.”
“But getting the mind right when things are not going ideally is the key to athletic excellence. Good perspective in the face of adversity qualifies as “mental toughness” — the coin of the realm for elite athletes.”
Source: The Mental Keys to Hitting: A Handbook of Strategies for Performance Enhancement
“But Gideon was experiencing one powerful emotion: being sick of everyone’s shit.”
Source: Gideon the Ninth
“But girlfriend sounded stupid, considering the way he felt. No. He needed, not wanted, needed her to be his wife.”
Source: Rock Crush and Roll
“But girls willing to share your bed don't equal girls willing to put up with your random crap moods, listen to your exhaustive legal opinions, or support your life's goals the way someone who loves you would.”
Source: Easy
“But give me more credit than that. Someone else may have dealt the hand, but I picked it up off the table, I played every card, and I had my reasons.”
“But give thanks, at least, that you still have Frost's poems; and when you feel the need of solitude, retreat to the companionship of moon, water, hills and trees. Retreat, he reminds us, should not be confused with escape. And take these poems along for good luck!”
“But give up my business? The same business I'd built from the ground up with my own two hands and designer Louis Vuittons? The same business for which I'd sacrificed blood, sweat, and tears? Well, maybe not sweat and tears, but there was blood. Lots of blood. Give it up? Not likely. Besides, what else would I do? I totally should've gone to Hogwarts when I had the chance.”
Source: Third Grave Dead Ahead
“But giving fear free rein makes it hard to live a life. You're afraid of rebuilding, because it will collapse—but then you're just existing in wreckage.”
Source: The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life
“But giving in to revenge will not release the bitterness. Revenge only feeds the hate until it grows like mold, turning your heart black.”
Source: Foremost
“But giving up's easy. You know what's hard? To believe in your own worth, to know you've got something special in you even if nobody else can see it. Even when you can't.”
“But Gladiator is one of my favourite adventures because I really loved going into the world. I loved creating the world to the degree where you could almost smell it.”
“But glittering prizes and endless compromises, Shatter the illusion of integrity...”
“But go on, valiant champion; you die not as a fool, though the apostate, unfaithful, and lukewarm ministers and professors of this generation think and say so.”
“But God also helped those who helped themselves, and presumably expected the chosen to bring warm clothing, water purification tablets, basic medication, a weapon such as the bronze knives that were selling these days, possibly a tent - in short, to bring some common sense to the party.”
Source: The Long Earth