B Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with B. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“But it is obvious that our fathers, whose efforts have planted these great and prosperous cities along the once lonely trails of our own broad land, received all the fundamentals of civilization as a heritage from their European ancestors.”
“But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.”
Source: A Wizard of Earthsea
“But it is only in epic tragedies that gloom is unrelieved. In real life tragedy and comedy are so intermingled that when one is most wretched ridiculous things happen to make one laugh in spite of oneself.”
“But it is only people who have plenty of money who can despise it. To the rest of us it is important. It can at least put food in our stomachs clothes on our backs, and it can at least feed our dreams.”
Source: Slightly Sinful
“But it is only since I have ceased to live that I think of these things and the other things. It is in the tranquillity of decomposition that I remember the long confused emotion which was my life, and that I judge it, as it is said that God will judge me, and with no less impertinence. To decompose is to live too, I know, I know, don't torment me, but one sometimes forgets.”
Source: Molloy
“But it is possible that, in the days ahead, these years we have lived through may eventually be thought of simply as a period of disturbance and regression”
“But it is possible, it is possible: the old grief, by a great mystery of human life, gradually passes into quiet, tender joy; instead of young, ebullient blood comes a mild, serene old age: I bless the sun's rising each day and my heart sings to it as before, but now I love its setting even more, its long slanting rays, and with them quiet, mild, tender memories, dear images from the whole of a long and blessed life--and over all is God's truth, moving, reconciling, all-forgiving!”
“But it is precisely at those moments when the glass seems to be ‘set fair’ that Fate invariably decides to take a hand.”
“But it is precisely in these moments of difficulty that we have the opportunity to discover something extraordinary within ourselves. We have the chance to tap into a reservoir of inner strength and resilience that we didn't even know existed.”
Source: Paradigm Shift: Change Your Mindset and Live the Life of Your Dreams
“But it is pretty to see what money will do.”
“But it is really, really fun to just change it up some and to absolutely be a very small spoke on a big wheel, and to just be a part of that and contribute to something that people can enjoy.”
“But it is recognized that punishment for the abuse of the liberty accorded to the press is essential to the protection of the public, and that the common law rules that subject the libeler to responsibility for the public offense, as well as for the private injury, are not abolished by the protection extended in our constitutions. The law of criminal libel rests upon that secure foundation. There is also the conceded authority of courts to punish for contempt when publications directly tend to prevent the proper discharge of judicial functions.”
“But it is said by the sages that he who desires all, loses all.”
Source: Sword Catcher
“But it is said that certain memorable lines or phrases cannot be expressed in any other language. Yet it should also be said that while at times we must lose, at others we gain, and the good translator will take advantage of the text, improving upon the weaker lines of the original, while doing his best with the best. More important, it is forgotten that translation provides an opportunity for languages to interact upon each other, for one tongue to alter and enrich the possibilities of expression in another. In the past some translated works have changed both literary language and tradition: notably the Petrarchan sonnet, Luther's Bible, Judith Gautier's haiku. Milton went as naturally to the King James Version for vocabulary as Shakespeare turned to Holinshed for plots; when Rimbaud's Illuminations were translated into English, the tradition of our literature was expanded to the extent that diction and subject never before found in English were presented to us.
In a word, the quality of a work in translation is dependent on the translator's skills. His forgery is not necessarily better or worse than the original or than other works in his own language; it is only necessarily different—and here the difference, if new and striking, may extend the verbal and thematic borders of his own literature. And as a corollary to his work the new poem may also be seen as an essay into literary criticism, a reading, a creative explication de texte.”
Source: Ancient Greek Lyrics
“But it is said that certain memorable lines or phrases cannot be expressed in any other language. Yet it should also be said that while at times we must lose, at others we gain, and the good translator will take advantage of the text, improving upon the weaker lines of the original, while doing his best with the best. More important, it is forgotten that translation provides an opportunity for languages to interact upon each other, for one tongue to alter and enrich the possibilities of expression in another. In the past some translated works have changed both literary language and tradition: notably the Petrarchan sonnet, Luther's Bible, Judith Gautier's haiku. Milton went as naturally to the King James Version for vocabulary as Shakespeare turned to Holinshed for plots; when Rimbaud's Illuminationswere translated into English, the tradition of our literature was expanded to the extent that diction and subject never before found in English were presented to us.
In a word, the quality of a work in translation is dependent on the translator's skills. His forgery is not necessarily better or worse than the original or than other works in his own language; it is only necessarily different—and here the difference, if new and striking, may extend the verbal and thematic borders of his own literature. And as a corollary to his work the new poem may also be seen as an essay into literary criticism, a reading, a creative explication de texte.”
Source: Ancient Greek Lyrics
“But it is the bane of psychology to suppose that where results are similar, processes must be the same. Psychologists are too apt to reason as geometers would, if the latter were to say that the diameter of a circle is the same thing as its semi-circumference, because, forsooth, they terminate in the same two points.”
Source: The Principles of Psychology
“But it is the best thing that we have for bringing the countries of Europe around the same table and for forging compromises so that people here can live in peace, freedom and prosperity. In a world which is growing closer together all the time, we can only survive and influence the rules if we join forces. We will miss the presence of the United Kingdom at this table.”
“But it is the children I have to come back to, my children Elisabeth, Caroline, Theodore, my joy, my pride, my loves. If I had not broken the law and aborted that life nobody wanted, they would have been aborted by a cruel, bigoted, and senseless law. They would never have been born. This thought I cannot bear. I beg you to see what it is that we must save, and not to let the bigots and misogynists take it away from us again. Save what we won: our children. You who are young, before it's too late, save your children.”
Source: Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016
“But it is the fear, not the writing that defeats me. Everything is not a masterpiece.”
Source: Things I Should Have Told My Daughter: Lies, Lessons & Love Affairs
“But it is the grace of the Gospel, which is so hard for the pious to understand, that it confronts us with the truth and says: You are a sinner, a great, desperate sinner; now come, as the sinner that you are, to God who loves you. He wants you as you are; He does not want anything from you, a sacrifice, a work; He wants you alone.”
Source: Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community
“But it is the knowledge of how contingent my unease is, how dependent on a baby that wails beneath my window one day and does not wail the next, that brings the worst shame to me, the greatest indifference to annihilation. I know somewhat too much; and from this knowledge, once one has been infected, there seems to be no recovering. I ought never to have taken my lantern to see what was going on in the hut by the granary. On the other hand, there was no way, once I had picked up the lantern, for me to put it down again. The knot loops in upon itself; I cannot find the end.”
Source: Waiting for the Barbarians: A Novel
“But it is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths which distinguishes us from mere animals, and gives us reason and the sciences, raising us to knowledge of ourselves and God. It is this in us which we call the rational soul or mind.”
“But it is the mark of all movements, however well-intentioned, that their pioneers tend, by much lashing of themselves into excitement, to lose sight of the obvious.”
“But it is the nature of life that no emotion is meant to last forever.”
Source: The Wild
“But it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he has Cassius note, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves.”
Source: The Fault in Our Stars
“But it is the province of religion, of philosophy, of pure poetry only, to go beyond life, beyond time, into eternity.”
Source: Cinq Mars
“But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthword, downword, into the dark, the deep - into evil.”
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
“But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeketh to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthward, downward, into the dark and deep — into the evil.”
“But it is true that some magazines have a policy to show only a certain amount of black girls on their covers. Naomi is right. It's not fair, and I wish it would change.”
“But it is true that sometimes an enveloping darkness aids one to clearer vision; as in a panorama building, for example, where the obscurity about the entrance prepares one better for the climax, and gives the scene depicted a more real and vivid appearance.”
“But it is very foolish to ask questions about any young ladies — about any three sisters just grown up; for one knows, without being told, exactly what they are — all very accomplished and pleasing, and one very pretty. There is a beauty in every family. — It is a regular thing”
Source: Jane Austen Collection: illustrated - 6 eBooks and 140+ illustrations
“But it is when the storm rages that we fully understand the courage the lighthouse represents. When the sea becomes a tempestuous beast, the lighthouse transforms to an urgent beacon signaling the way toward shelter, courageously defying the elements.”
Source: The Lighthouse Effect: How Ordinary People Can Have an Extraordinary Impact in the World
“But it is with a different kind of spell that art deludes you ... it leads you to pay religious honor and worship to images and pictures.”
Source: Exhortation to the Heathen
“But it is wonderful what mischief may be done by only two words”
Source: Rob Roy
“But it is written that it is better to burn one city than to curse the darkness.”
Source: Four for tomorrow
“But it isn’t so much a matter of what you do as a parent; it’s who you are.”
Source: Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
“But it isn't easy,' said Pooh. 'Because Poetry and Hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you. And all you can do is to go where they can find you.”
Source: The House at Pooh Corner
“But it isn't only the terror everywhere, and the fear of being conscious of it, that freezes people. It's more than that. People know they are in a society dead or dying. They are refusing emotion because at the end of very emotion are property, money, power. They work and despise their work, and so freeze themselves. They love but know that it's a half- love or a twisted love, and so they freeze themselves.”
Source: The Golden Notebook
“But it isn’t a rough draft either. The one I turned in several months ago was rough. There were some bad plot holes, some logical inconsistencies, pacing problems, and not nearly enough lesbian unicorns.”
“But it just comes down to trying to get the work out there and however the team fits together then that's the way it sort of plays into itself.”
“But it kills me, this fascination with celebrities' personal lives.”
“But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears - dissolution, disappearance.”
Source: White Teeth
“But it makes you wonder, doesn't it? Just how normal are we? Just who are the people we nod our hellos to as we pass on the street? A rather good question to ask - particularly in The Twilight Zone.”
“But it may be asked, could a man of real honor give his hand to one woman, while his heart was in the possession of another? In most cases of a similar description this question may be easily answered: in the present one, general conclusions, drawn from received opinions, will probably prove erroneous.”
Source: Stella of the North
“But it may be one of our best markets in the long term because when the Japanese society embraces a brand it is a very deep connection, so we're willing to make that investment knowing that it's not the quick route to success that might be in other countries.”
“But it may be that I betrayed myself. Since Dorcastle, my ability to supress my emotions has diminished. I know feelings are showing, not in ways which commons might see, but clearly enough for Mages to spot. My elders could well have decided that I am ruined, that my contact with you has corrupted me beyond correction." ...
"What does it take to corrupt a Mage, anyway?"
"I told you. They thought that you had attempted to seduce me. Perhaps they thought that you had already succeeded despite my denials that such a thing had happened."
Once again Mari stared at him, her face darkening. "I was under the impression that your elders thought I would try that at some future point. What did you tell them to make them think that I had already put my moves on you? Or that I had already hooked you?"
"Hooked?" Alain asked.
"Ensnared." Mari got the word out between clenched teeth.
"I told them nothing. That is the illusion they wished to believe, not thinking there could be any other reason for a female Mechanic to seek my company." Alain paused in thought. "A young and attractive female Mechanic, that is."
"Oh right. The one with all those physical charms."
"Yes," Alain agreed.
She gasped a laugh. "I was being sarcastic again, Alain. I hope that isn't the only reason you've been attracted to me. Not the only reason anyway."
"You are very pleasant to look upon," Alain said, and Mari's face flushed again. Had he angered her? "But my elders were foolish to think physical desire alone could corrupt me. It should not be possible with all of my training, but I found that a single shadow was by far the most important part of the world illusion. That is what doomed me, so my elders were correct in thinking that you had altered my thinking. Not with your body or other physical temptation, but with who you were and the things you did." Alain made another effort to bend his lips into a smile. "I will never be able to return to what I was before I met you.”
Source: The Hidden Masters of Marandur
“But it may be that the only reason childhood memories act on us so strongly is that, being the most remote we possess, they are the worst remembered and so offer the least resistance to that process by which we mold them nearer and nearer to an ideal which is fundamentally artistic, or at least nonfactual; so it may be that some of these events I describe never occurred at all, but only should have, and that others had not the shades and flavors—for example, of jealousy or antiquity or shame—that I have later unconsciously chosen to give them.”
Source: Peace
“But it may be very important that there is somewhere in a culture where people must pay to listen to the mad, rather than the other way around.”
Source: Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life
“But it might have started way later than I think without my noticing anything at all. You see someone, but you don't really see him, he's in the wings. Or you notice him, but nothing clicks, nothing "catches," and before you're even aware of a presence, or of something troubling you, the six weeks that were offered you have almost passed and he's either already gone or just about to leave, and you're basically scrambling to come to terms with something, which, unbeknownst to you, has been brewing for weeks under your very nose and bears all the symptoms of what you're forced to call I 'want'.”
Source: Call Me by Your Name
“But it might not have mattered, it was love at first sight, they'd always said that, and some people were meant to find each other, no matter what...
Does anyone ever fall in love that way anymore? Without hesitation, without terror? Or is everyone else like Benny?
And does every couple keep secrets this big from their own children?”
Source: Black Cake