B Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with B. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“But I can tell you what I believe: When tens of thousands of innocent souls have perished in Darfur-when 11 million children are without health insurance-when our colossal debt subjects our economic future to the whims of Asian bankers-no one can tell me that faith demands this Senate spend its time arguing over a handful of judges. No one with those priorities can use my faith to intimidate me.”
“But I can tell you what your folly and injustice will compel us to do. It will compel us to be free from your domination, and more self-reliant than we have been.”
Source: Memoirs, with special reference to secession and the Civil War
“But I can think of nothing on earth so beautiful as the final haul on Halloween night, which, for me, was ten to fifteen pounds of candy, a riot of colored wrappers and hopeful fonts,snub-nosed chocolate bars and SweeTARTS, the seductive rattle of Jujyfruits and Good & Plenty and lollipopsticks all akimbo, the foli ends of mini LifeSavers packs twinkling like dimes, and a thick sugary perfume rising up from the pillowcase.”
Source: Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America
“But I can't and don't ever want to write bell-yanking confetti-tossing hat-throwing poems.”
“But I can't confront the doubts I have. I can't admit that maybe the past was bad, and so, for the sake of momentum I'm condemning the future to death so it can match the past.”
“But I can't find anybody. That's the problem. I don't know
where they are. I mean, I've got an idea that there must be someone to play with. If I was going
to play properly, I should need some really good people.”
“But I can't listen to music too often. It affects your nerves, makes you want to say stupid, nice things, and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell.”
“But I can't really say there is too much modern music that I'm blown away by at this moment”
“But I can't say that I didn't like John Hammond's performances often better than the originals.”
“But I can't take responsibility for criminal conduct of somebody inside the company.”
“But I cannot accept a vision of You as an engineer who spends His days maintaining the machine of morality. I cannot take the idea of You as an optimizer, introducing evil into human affairs in an attempt to create the best of all possible worlds. I cannot bear this cold mathematician's God who sees all the universe as nothing more than an elaborate problem to be solved. Such a world is a world with no meaning, one in which one history is no more or less preferable to any other.”
Source: Version Control
“But I cannot always run, and each time I am forced to squarely confront my grief – when I read the death certificate, when I draft a death announcement – I feel a shimmering panic. In such moments, I notice a curious physical reaction: my body begins to shake, fingers tap uncontrollably, one leg bobbing. I am unable to quiet myself until I look away. How do people walk around functioning in the world after losing a beloved father?”
Source: Notes on Grief
“But I cannot be worrying-worrying all the time about the truth. I have to worry about the truth that can be lived with. And that is the difference between losing your marbles drinking the salty sea, or swallowing the stuff from the streams. My Niece-of-Shame believes in the talking cure, eh?" says Alsana, with something of a grin. "Talk, talk, talk and it will be better. Be honest, slice open your heart and spread the red stuff around. But the past is made of more than words, dearie. We married old men, you see? These bumps"--Alsana pats them both --"they will always have daddy-long-legs for fathers. One leg in the present, one in the past. No talking will change this. Their roots will always be tangled. And roots get dug up. Just look in my garden - birds at the coriander every bloody day...”
Source: White Teeth
“But I cannot believe her mad. Reckless she is, and immodest, and sometimes I fear for her soul. But she is only herself; she is not mad.”
Source: The Girl in the Tower
“But I cannot bring myself to believe that I was intended for a musician, because it seems so small a business in comparison with other things which, it seems to me, I might do. Question here: 'What is the province of music in the economy of the world?”
Source: Poems of Sidney Lanier
“But I cannot forget that, at other times I have been deceived in sleep by similar illusions; and, attentively considering those cases, I perceive so clearly that there exist no certain marks by which the state of waking can ever be distinguished from sleep, that I feel greatly astonished; and in amazement I almost persuade myself that I am now dreaming.”
Source: The Rationalists: Descartes: Discourse on Method & Meditations; Spinoza: Ethics; Leibniz: Monadolo gy & Discourse on Metaphysics
“But I cannot forgive those who did not care about more than their own glory or well-being. They thought they were civilized. They were despicable. Damn them all.”
Source: The Volcano Lover
“But I cannot love her as I did, because she is not open, because she withholds what matters, because she makes me, with her pride or her madness, live a lie.”
Source: Possession
“But I cannot recite, even thus rudely, laws of the intellect, without remembering that lofty and sequestered class of men who have been its prophets and oracles, the high-priesthood of the pure reason, the Trismegisti, the expounders of the principles of thought from age to age.”
Source: The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson
“But I cannot say such a thing to the students, for it would ruin their dreams. And of course, children are children through their dreams. Children only become monsters when all the dreams fade away.”
Source: Dawn of the Firebird
“But I care about the reader, and I'm trying to keep the reader's attention for as long as I can.”
“But I certainly know a lot of people that existed at that level and are always kind of pining for more, always thinking that the next big break, the next opportunity, the big role are just around the corner of the next audition.”
“But I certainly made mistakes, for which I regret, I think most human beings in their lifetime make mistakes, mine ended up in two years prison - two very remarkable years from which I learnt a lot.”
“But I cheered myself up slightly with the rationalization that all new relationships - even the fictional ones - have obstacles to overcome in the beginning. I would not give up hope on this one. Not yet.”
Source: Everyone Worth Knowing
“But I comforted myself with the thought that the reward for every discomfort I suffered for God was a spiritual blessing.”
Source: From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life
“But I confess that "my mind to me a kingdom is" - not! Rather it is a fantastical republic, daily troubled by more revolutions than ever occurred in South America.”
Source: Gleanings in Buddha-Fields (Annotated Edition)
“But I contend that if we're providing total medical coverage for every man, woman, and child in Iraq, shouldn't we at least be doing the same thing for every man, woman, and child in the United States?”
“But I contend that the disgusting behavior of many of their alleged 'holy men' relieves us of any intellectual obligation to take the stuff seriously. No amount of sanctimonious rationalization can make such behavior anything but pathological.”
“But I could also start F1 or rallying. I love rallying much more.”
“But I could always tell in her eyes if she got really pissed at me, and her eyes were still pretty smiley”
“But I could be wrong.”
“But I could hear Mitzi nearby. She was still upstairs. If she saw me reading the comic book, she’d run downstairs and tell Dad for sure. Mitzi’s hobby is being a snitch.”
Source: Attack of the Mutant
“But I could never have done it,' he objected, 'without everyone else's help.'
'That may be true,' said Reason gravely, 'but you had the courage to try; and what you can do is often simply a question of what you will do.”
Source: The phantom tollbooth
“But I could never have done it," he objected, "without everyone else's help." "That may be true," said Reason gravely,"but you had the courage to try; and what you can do is often simply a matter of what you will do.”
Source: The phantom tollbooth
“But I could never make a judgement that something was obscene.”
“But I could tell thee of other things, Inglés, and do not doubt what thou simply cannot see nor cannot hear. Thou canst not hear what a dog hears. Nor canst thou smell what a dog smells. But already thou hast experienced a little of what can happen to man.”
Source: For Whom the Bell Tolls
“But I couldn’t comprehend this making friends business. My friends had always made me.”
Source: Wasted Words: The College Daze
“But I couldn't cry them, those tears, and I felt that I was drowning in a sorrow that was bigger than the heart that tried to hold it.”
Source: Shantaram
“But I couldn't even remember last night's anxieties. They were completely overshadowed by what followed them and seemed to belong to a segment of time to which I had no access whatsoever.”
Source: Call Me by Your Name
“But I couldn’t help thinking—Who the hell eats bats? Probably nothing.”
Source: Feeling Lucky
“But I couldn't cut that whole septic tank scene out because the audience liked it so much. So I sort of fell right back into getting a cheap laugh, but I still loved it.”
“But I couldn't draw as fast as she requested. Thus, I tried to create the worst abomination of a comic that I could, so as to make her not want comics anymore. That abomination, my friends, was Happy Noodle Boy.”
“But I couldn't ever make that dream happen. It just came on its own, the way dreams do.”
Source: The Miseducation of Cameron Post
“But I couldn't help myself, couldn't help the way I felt as I recalled the bliss and rush of a vampire's bite.”
Source: Vampire Academy
“But i couldn't. Was nowhere near ready for a committed relationship, and it wouldn't be fair. I needed time - to become the right man for a woman like you.”
“But I’d been traveling for years. I wanted to say, going somewhere isn’t the point. The point is finding somewhere to stay.”
“But I'd begun, slowly, to understand that complex post-traumatic stress disorder, or cPTSD, was different. It was particularly difficult to treat, because - like a flat landscape - it didn't offer a significant landmark, an event, that you could focus on and work with. Complex post-traumatic stress, according to the psychiatrist Judith Lewis Herman, is the result of 'prolonged, repeated trauma,' rather than individual traumatic events. It's what happens when you're born into a world, shaped by a world, where there's no safety, ever. When the people who should take care of you are, instead, scary and unreliable, and when you live years and years without the belief that escape is possible.
When you come from a world like this, when all your muscles are trained to tension and suspicion, normal life feels unbearable. It doesn't make sense, getting up, going to class, eating lunch, returning home, sleeping. You don't trust it. It doesn't feel real. And unreality can hurt more than pain.”
Source: A Flat Place: Moving Through Empty Landscapes, Naming Complex Trauma
“But I’d never be one to blame the sun for setting me on fire if I was the one insistent on moving too close
And I’d be a fool just like you if I thought it could dim itself to match the lust you maimed right into love”
Source: I tell myself, it's the enticing lull of the moon and her shadow
“But I’d never, like, actually danced at one. I was usually one of the guys playing basketball in the corner.”
Source: The Titan’s Curse
“But I dare not think too far into the future on the risk that I'll miss the present.”