B Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with B. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“But how could he have, when women themselves had suddenly gone insane, were rejecting the direction, the protection, that their menfolk offered them, were recklessly plunging off on their own into unknown and unspeakable depths?”
Source: Arrival of the Snake-Woman and Other Stories
“But how could I want such a grey and cloudy day of a life, now that I've seen a rainbow?”
Source: Lady’s Knight
“But how could losing what you never had compete with losing your everything?”
Source: Medusa's Sisters
“But how could Sam be in a parade at the Happiest Place on Earth one week, and his own funeral procession the next?”
Source: A Widow's Awakening
“But how could you have been so calm when that cop was treating you that way?" She hadn't been able to keep the question inside.
He had laughed then, as though she'd made the most tasteless of jokes. A sound so harsh it had gouged out everything she had been up until that moment. "Maybe because I don't have a 'U.S. Attorney brother' card to pull."
She'd deserved that. "So you just let them do what they want?"
"Yes! I'm not keen on the idea of a bullet in my head, or finding my arse dumped in jail. I have a sister who needs medical care and has absolutely no one to take care of her if I disappear. So, yes, they can do whatever the bloody hell they want."
After that she'd stayed quiet.”
Source: Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors
“But how could you live and have no story to tell?”
“But how did I murder her? Is that how men do murders? Do men go to commit a murder as I went then? I will tell you some day how I went! Did I murder the old woman? I murdered myself, not her! I crushed myself once for all, for ever.… But it was the devil that killed that old woman, not I. Enough, enough, Sonia, enough! Let me be!”
Source: Crime and Punishment
“But how did she make you agree?' I demand. 'She had no power. She could pretend to be me, but she couldn't force you-'
He puts his head in his long-fingered hands. 'She didn't have to command me, Jude. She didn't have to use any magic. I trust you. I trusted you.'
And I trusted Taryn.”
Source: The Wicked King
“But how did you come burning down like a wild needle, knowing just where my heart was?”
Source: West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems
“But how did you know that it was Stacy?”
“There wasn’t a green light flashing, that’s for sure,” he said. “Mostly, I felt I’d met a person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. That I didn’t need to look any further.””
“But how can you be sure?” I persisted.
“You can’t. There’s not just one person in the world who’s your type. There’s a whole group with the same likes and dislikes. But you want to spend your whole life looking for all of them? You just feel that everything’s right. You’re at peace with yourself.”
Source: Now I'll Tell You Everything
“But how did you know where we were?" Annabeth asked. Advanced planning, my dear. I figured you would wash up near Miami if you made it out of the Sea of Monsters alive. Almost everything strange washes up near Miami.”
“But how difficult it can be to gain the desired full point against an opponent of inferior strength, when this is demanded by the tournament position!”
“But how do European railways manage without them? How do they continue to convey millions of travellers and mountains of luggage across a continent? If companies owning railways have been able to agree, why should railway workers, who would take possession of railways, not agree likewise? And if the Petersburg-Warsaw Company and that of Paris-Belfort can act in harmony, without giving themselves the luxury of a common commander, why, in the midst of our societies, consisting of groups of free workers, should we need a Government?”
“But how do I explain that I am freezing to death if not seen by you?”
Source: My Friends
“But how do I get to having to write a book?... It was a mother who bore me, not an inkwell!”
“But how do they get inside?" "They fly," Jace said, and indicated the upper floors of the building. [...] "We don't fly," Clary felt impelled to point out. "No," Jace agreed. "We don't fly. We break and enter." He started across the street toward the hotel. "Flying sounds like more fun," Clary said, hurrying to catch up with him. "Right now everything sounds like more fun.”
Source: Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instrument Series (4 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass; City of Fallen Angels
“But how do we even get to the land of the dead?” I asked. “I mean…without dying.”
Source: The Kane Chronicles, The, Book One: Red Pyramid
“But how do we know it's working properly?'
'The green light is on.' said Jack.”
Source: Edith and the Owls: The Curiosity Collection
“But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade?”
Source: The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World
“But how do we live with these secrets locked within us? How do we tie our shoes, brush our hair, drink coffee, wash the dishes, and go to sleep, pretending everything is fine? How do we laugh and feel happiness despite the buried things growing inside? How can we do that day after day?”
Source: I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
“But how do you differentiate between going to bed in the evening and having sex, and having ‘kinky’ sex? It’s a perfectly valid question... kink is anything that deviates from the ‘normal’ and is especially personal. What makes you kinky is what makes you kinky.”
Source: The Kynk 101 Handbook
“But how do you ever know that you know a person?”
Source: The Pilot's Wife
“But how do you know He *doesn't* want us to have it—the cross, I mean? I bet He’s just waiting for one of us to go and find it—just at this moment when it’s most needed. Just at this moment when everyone is forgetting it and chattering about the hypostatic union, there’s a solid chunk of wood waiting for them to have their silly heads knocked against. I’m going off to find it,”
Source: Helena
“But how do you know I’m the one?”, she asked. “Because if somehow I were to know I would leave this world tomorrow, you would be the one I would wish to dream of tonight.”
Source: Feast
“But how do you see you?" she asked.
"Ever read The Brothers Karamazov?" I asked.
"Once, a long time ago."
"Well, toward the end, Alyosha is speaking to a young student named Kolya Krasotkin. And he says, Kolya, you're going to have a miserable future. But overall, you'll have a happy life."
Two beers down, I hesitated before opening my third.
"When I first read that, I didn't know what Alyosha meant," I said. "How was it possible for a life of misery to be happy overall? But then I understood, that misery could be limited to the future."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Neither do I," I said. "Not yet.”
Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“But how do you wait for heaven
And who has that much time
And how do you keep your feet on the ground
When you know, that you were born, you were born to fly”
“But how does it feel to plug into a system that's say, a million times as smart as a person.”
“But how entirely I live in my imagination; how completely depend upon spurts of thought, coming as I walk, as I sit; things churning up in my mind and so making a perpetual pageant, which is to be my happiness.”
Source: A Writer's Diary
“But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?”
Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
“But how he acts, and what he says, and what he does, and who he is, they don't line up anymore, and the lie is in that not lining up, the lie is in not being what she needs but pretending that he is. No one says a word, and she sees it every minute they have together.”
“But how? How can you just get over these things, darling?...You've had so much strife but you're always happy. How do you do it?'
'I choose to...I can leave myself to rot in the past, spend my time hating people for what happened, like my father did, or I can forgive and forget.'
'But it's not that easy.'
He smiled that Frank smile. 'Oh, but my treasure, it is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things...I would have to make a list, a very, very long list and make sure I hated the people on it the right amount. That I did a proper job of hating, too: very Teutonic! No' - his voice became sober- 'we always have a choice. All of us.”
Source: The Light Between Oceans
“But how is it now? All we get is orders; and the laws go out of the state. Them legislators set up there at Austin and don't do nothing but makes laws against kerosene oil and schoolbooks being brought into the state. I reckon they was afraid some man would go home some evening after work and light up and get an education and go to work and make laws to repeal aforesaid laws.”
Source: Sixes and Sevens: Ghost Story Collections
“But how is one to make a scientist understand that there is something unalterably deranged about differential calculus, quantum theory, or the obscene and so inanely liturgical ordeals of the precession of the equinoxes.”
Source: Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings
“But how is the artist to protect himself against the corruption of the age which besets him on all sides?”
Source: Schiller: Aesthetic education
“But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.”
Source: The Law
“But how little we know what would make paradise for our neighbours! We judge from our own desires, and our neighbours themselves are not always open enough even to throw out a hint of theirs.”
Source: Four Novels of George Eliot
“But how many chose to ignore the direct attack they laid on what is fed to all of us as 'life,' with its well-defined roads to factory and pool-hall, to work and pleasure, both organized, both shells, both a continuation of existence by forced means, in the shadow of life?”
Source: The Situationists and the City: A Reader
“But how many moments are already past!
Ah! who thinks of those that are past?”
“But how many people lighted the path for me? That’s the evolution of basketball. There’s no way I could have played the way I played if I didn’t watch David Thompson and guys prior to me. There’s no way Kobe could have played the way he’s played without watching me play. So, you know, that’s the evolution of basketball. You cannot change that.”
“But how much better, in any case, to wonder than not to wonder, to dance with astonishment and go spinning in praise, than not to know enough to dance or praise at all; to be blessed with more imagination than you might know at the given moment what to do with than to be cursed with too little to give you -- and other people -- any trouble.”
“But how much can human beings know each other? Aren't all of them cut off, really? Each alone in a big, dark, empty universe? We only trick ourselves when we think that someone else is there. In the end, in the cold lonely end, it's only us, by ourselves, in the blackness. Are you there, Robb? How do I know? Will you die with me, Robb? Will we be together then? Are we together now?.........
It's not enough anymore. I'm scared. Suddenly I'm scared.”
Source: A Song for Lya
“But how nice it would be to know that some good Yankee woman - And there must be SOME good Yankee women. I don’t care what people say, they can’t all be bad! How nice it would be to know that they pulled weeds off our men’s graves and brought flowers to them, even if they were enemies. If Charlie were dead in the North it would comfort me to know that someone - And I don’t care what you ladies think of me,” her voice broke again, “I will withdraw from both clubs and I’ll — I’ll pull up every weed off every Yankee’s grave I can find and I’ll plant flowers, too — and — I just dare anyone to stop me!”
Source: Gone with the wind
“But how odd that in this heathen nation of empty pews, where churches' bare, ruined choirs are converted into luxury loft living, a Labour government - yes, a Labour government - is deliberately creating a huge expansion of faith schools.”
“But how ridiculous that I should bereft simply because I couldn’t spend hours in my world of make-believe! Wasn’t the reality of my life interesting enough? This is surely the time to let go of grievances, I told myself sternly. What good does it do to dwell on them? Brooding on a nest of grudges will only hatch more grief.”
“But how right is it to kill a man for something that is in his soul?”
Source: The Miniaturist
“But how shall I get ideas? ''Keep your wits open! Observe! Observe! Study! Study! But above all, Think! Think! And when a noble image is indelibly impressed upon the mind - Act!”
Source: Rising in the World, Or Architects of Fate
“But how shall we educate men to goodness, to a sense of one another, to a love of truth? And more urgently, how shall we do this in a bad time?”
Source: America is hard to find
“But how shall we excuse the supine inattention of the Pagan and philosophic world to those evidences which were presented by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their senses? During the age of Christ, of his apostles, and their first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed by innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised, daemons were expelled, and the laws of Nature were frequently suspended for the benefit of the church.”
Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“But how sins could be forgiven, how Jesus could have taken them upon himself with death and then come to life again, how they could somehow partake of a world beyond the physical one she so loved…those were the things that belonged to faith. Those were the things science couldn’t explain, and didn’t need to.”
Source: The Nature of a Lady
“But how to be present to another? Our hearts are so hard. We are so insensitive to the suffering of others. We must pray the Holy Spirit to change our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh so that we may give life, for love is giving of life and liberty. By our confidence in another we can bring forth new aspirations and a taste for life in him. We can help the miserable person to live, to progress and to grow. And he will only begin to want to live when he has been told by our gestures, words, the tone of our voice, our look, our whole being that it is important that he live.”
Source: Eruption to Hope