B Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with B. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“But now there was something eating his insides. There were worms in his stomach, creatures crawling in his intestines and spurting out of his guts. He was under the mercy of the word again.”
Source: A Road Away From Home
“But now those thoughts weren't thoughts at all, they were clouds of landed punches, and every one fell true.”
Source: Bridge of Clay
“But now to begin about the jaunt. When a'thing was put in an order, me and the guidwife, with Clemy, your lady mother, after an early breakfast, steppit into our own carriage, whereto, behind, divers trunks were strappit; and we trintlet awa down the north road, taking the airt of the south wind that blaws in Scotland. At first it was very pleasant; and I had never been much in the country in a chaise, I was diverted to see how, in a sense, the trees came to meet us, and passed, as if they had been men of business having a turn to do.
...we journeyed on with a sobriety that was heartsome without banter; for really the parks on both sides were salutory to see. The hay was mown, and the corn was verging to the yellow. The haws on the hedges, though as green as capers, were a to-look; the cherries in the gardens were over and gone; but the apples in the orchards were as damsels entering their teens.
When I was nota-beneing in this way, your grandmother consternated a great deal to Clemy, saying she never thought that I had such a beautiful taste for the poeticals, and that I was surely in a fit of the bucolicks. But I, hearing her, told her I had aye a notion of the country; only that I had soon seen fallen leaves were not coined money, which, if a man would gather, it behoved him to make his dwelling-place in the howffs and thoroughfares of the children of men.”
Source: Selected Short Stories
“But now, to deny the change requires a wilful ignorance since, if you observe bodies clothed in steel flowing over highways, or how we’ve outsourced half our memory to these devices, these exobrains we carry around, and if you note how even our most intimate relationships occur remotely, at great distances from one another, if you see all this, well, it isn’t such an original observation, dear cyborgs, to say that human and machine long ago merged inextricably.”
Source: Dear Cyborgs
“But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side”
“But now we have time. Endless time stretches before us.”
Source: Something Borrowed: A Novel
“But now we've finally taken full possession of what is rightfully ours, because everyone must feel their own pain--and as awful as that is, it's also wonderful.”
“But now well democracy has shown us that what is evil are the grosses têtes, the big heads, all big heads are greedy for money and power, they are ambitious that is the reason they are big heads and so they are at the head of the government and the result is misery for the people. They talk about cutting off the heads of the grosses têtes but now we know that there will be other grosses têtes and the will be all the same.”
“But now what? Why, now comes my master, takes me right away from my work, and my friends, and all I like, and grinds me down into the very dirt! And why? Because, he says, I forgot who I was; he says, to teach me that I am only a nigger! After all, and last of all, he comes between me and my wife, and says I shall give her up, and live with another woman. And all this your laws give him power to do, in spite of God or man. Mr. Wilson, look at it! There isn't one of all these things, that have broken the hearts of my mother and my sister, and my wife and myself, but your laws allow, and give every man power to do, in Kentucky, and none can say to him nay! Do you call these the laws of my country? Sir, I haven't any country, anymore than I have any father. But I'm going to have one. I don't want anything of your country, except to be let alone,--to go peaceably out of it; and when I get to Canada, where the laws will own me and protect me, that shall be my country, and its laws I will obey. But if any man tries to stop me, let him take care, for I am desperate. I'll fight for my liberty to the last breath I breathe. You say your fathers did it; if it was right for them, it is right for me!”
Source: Uncle Tom’s Cabin
“But now, when he thought how regularly things went on, from day to day, in the same unvarying round; how youth and beauty died, and ugly griping age lived tottering on; how crafty avarice grew rich, and manly honest hearts were poor and sad; how few they were who tenanted the stately houses, and how many of those who lay in noisome pens, or rose each day and laid them down each night, and lived and died, father and son, mother and child, race upon race, and generation upon generation, without a home to shelter them or the energies of one single man directed to their aid; how, in seeking, not a luxurious and splendid life, but the bare means of a most wretched and inadequate subsistence, there were women and children in that one town, divided into classes, numbered and estimated as regularly as the noble families and folks of great degree, and reared from infancy to drive most criminal and dreadful trades; how ignorance was punished and never taught; how jail-doors gaped, and gallows loomed, for thousands urged towards them by circumstances darkly curtaining their very cradles’ heads, and but for which they might have earned their honest bread and lived in peace; how many died in soul, and had no chance of life; how many who could scarcely go astray, be they vicious as they would, turned haughtily from the crushed and stricken wretch who could scarce do otherwise, and who would have been a greater wonder had he or she done well, than even they had they done ill; how much injustice, misery, and wrong, there was, and yet how the world rolled on, from year to year, alike careless and indifferent, and no man seeking to remedy or redress it; when he thought of all this, and selected from the mass the one slight case on which his thoughts were bent, he felt, indeed, that there was little ground for hope, and little reason why it should not form an atom in the huge aggregate of distress and sorrow, and add one small and unimportant unit to swell the great amount.”
Source: Nicholas Nickleby
“But now, when things had happened which were too appalling to think about, when his romantic love was a corpse and his cleverness a ghost, he knew where it was he wanted to lay his head.”
Source: The Unicorn
“But now with the living conditions deteriorating, and with the sure knowledge that we are slated for destruction, we have been transformed into an implacable army of liberation”
Source: Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson
“But now you know the specific cause of your difficulty with [certain tasks] and can explore ways around the overarousal they create. So there's really very little that you can't do if you find a way to do it in your own style.”
Source: The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You
“But now you're unhappy," he pointed out. "And?" I challenged. "That doesn't seem fair." He shrugged, but his eyes were still intense. I laughed without humour. "Hasn't anyone told you? Life isn't fair." "I believe I have heard that somewhere before," he agreed dryly.”
“But now, as throughout history, financial capacity and political perspicacity are inversely correlated.”
Source: The great crash, 1929
“But now, being a parent, I go home and see my son and I forget about any mistake I ever made or the reason I'm upset. I get home and my son is smiling or he comes running to me. It has just made me grow as an individual and grow as a man.”
“But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony - forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?”
“But now, I am also learning this: we can be mended. We mend each other.”
“But now, I get up every morning and go to the gym because I don't like waking up stiff or in pain and wondering if my hip is going to hurt me.”
“But now, I, August Comte, have discovered the truth. Therefore, there is no longer any need for freedom of thought or freedom of the press. I want to rule and to organize the whole country.”
“But now, instead of discussion and argument, brute force rises up to the rescue of discomfited error, and crushes truth and right into the dust. 'Might makes right,' and hoary folly totters on in her mad career escorted by armies and navies.”
Source: Christian non-resistance, in all its important bearings, illustrated and defended
“But now, like a fallen sparrow On a golden chain, I'm forever bound in shadow, A prisoner to my pain.”
“But now, more and more, its society is concerned with economy and finance.”
“But now, the final feeling... is one of gratitude that the journey was undertaken. Looking at the past has meant, for the first time, being able to let it go.”
Source: Ruth Cracknell: a biased memoir
“But now, we are becoming suspicious of the very things we have long celebrated - free markets, trade, immigration, and technological change. And all this is happening when the tide is going our way. Just as the world is opening up, America is closing down.”
Source: The Post-American World: And The Rise Of The Rest
“But now, with the last two years of touring and being on the road, I've learned that a live show should never sound like a record; a record should sound like a live show.”
“But now, you are twain, you are cloven apart Flesh of his flesh, but heart of my heart.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated)
“But nowadays everybody's a comedian, even the weather girls and continuity announcers. We laugh at everything. Not intelligently anymore, not with sudden shock, astonishment, or revelation, just relentlessly and meaninglessly. No more rain showers in the desert, just mud and drizzle everywhere, occasionally illuminated by the flash of paparazzi.”
Source: Mostly Harmless
“But nowadays I feel guilty that I am granted the immunity of the artistically gifted, having never actually achieved anything to prove myself worthy.”
Source: A Line Made By Walking
“But O the exceeding grace
Of highest God, that loves his creatures so,
And all his works with mercy doth embrace,
That blessed angels, he sends to and fro,
To serve to wicked man, to serve his wicked foe.”
Source: The Works of Edmund Spenser: With a Selection of Notes from Various Commentators; and a Glossarial Index: to which is Prefixed, Some Account of the Life of Spenser
“But O the truth, the truth. The many eyes That look on it The diverse things they see.”
Source: The Complete Works of George Meredith
“But O! what art can teach,
What human voice can reach,
The sacred organ's praise?”
“But O yet more miserable! Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave.”
Source: The Poetical Works of John Milton: With the Principal Notes of Various Commentators. To which are Added Illustrations, with Some Account of the Life of Milton
“But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes.”
“But O, Photography! as no art is,
Faithful and disappointing!”
Source: Collected Poems
“But O, sick children of the world,
Of all the many changing things
In dreary dancing past us whirled,
To the cracked tune that Chronos sings,
Words alone are certain good.”
Source: When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales
“But oars alone can ne'er prevail To reach the distant coast; The breath of Heaven must swell the sail, Or all the toil is lost.”
Source: The Poems of William Cowper
“But Obama is a cool cat. We've seen that before: when he suffered reverses he didn't react immediately. He took a couple of days to react.”
“But obligation, I eventually saw, is not the same as commitment, and it's certainly not an acceptable reason to stick with something that isn't working”
Source: The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life
“But obviously a state which becomes progressively more and more of a unity will cease to be a state at all. Plurality of numbers is natural in a state; and the farther it moves away from plurality towards unity, the less of a state it becomes and the more a household, and the household in turn an individual.”
“But obviously, things have changed in many ways since the '50s, when the show is started, in terms of sexuality, and how much access we have to images of it and information about it. But, the same problems always apply. It doesn't matter whether we know a lot more about sex now or if there's a lot more access to it. The same problems of intimacy, of dealing with other people, of connecting and being vulnerable with other people, which is what the show is ultimately about, still applies now, I think.”
“But obviously, we can't afford to make some bad long-term decisions with regard to basic commitments our country has - trade those away for some short-term assistance that may or may not be there a month from now.”
“But obviously, we're looking for all good ideas to help deal with our long-term debt problem. This is something that is going to affect our economy. It affects our kids. And we need to deal with it.”
“But Ocean was all the traditionally pleasant things a girl might like about a guy, which made his friendliness dangerous to me. I might’ve been an angry teenager, but I wasn’t also blind. I wasn’t magically immune to cute
guys, and it had not escaped my notice that Ocean was a superlative kind of good-looking. He dressed nicely. He smelled pleasant. He was very polite. But he and I seemed to come from worlds so diametrically opposed that I knew better than to allow his friendship in my life.”
Source: A Very Large Expanse of Sea
“But Odin had a trick up his sleeve. For his final question to Vafthrudnir, he asked, "And what, wise giant, did Odin whisper in the ear of Balder, before that great son of his was burned on the funeral pyre?"
Vafthrudnir became livid with rage. "Now I see who you really he said grimly, "for only Odin himself could know the answer that question." He clenched his teeth and his fists, and closed his eyes. When he opened them, however, his face had an expression of melancholy acceptance, and he said, "Now for the first time in my life I have lost a contest of lore. But my consolation will be that I lost it to Odin, the most knowledgeable being there is.”
Source: The Viking Spirit: An Introduction to Norse Mythology and Religion
“But of all footmen the lowest class is literary footmen.”
“But of all nations in the world the English are perhaps the least a nation of pure philosophers.”
Source: The English Constitution: And Other Political Essays
“But of all Nonsense, Religious Nonsense is the most nonsensical; so enough, & more than enough of it - Only, by the bye, will you, or can you tell me, my dear Cunningham, why a religioso turn of mind has always a tendency to narrow and illiberalise the heart?”
Source: Rhymer Rab: an anthology of poems and prose
“But of all other stupendous inventions, what sublimity of mind must have been his who conceived how to communicate his most secret thoughts to any other person, though very far distant either in time or place? And with no greater difficulty than the various arrangement of two dozen little signs upon paper? Let this be the seal of all the admirable inventions of man.”
“But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send, Save me, oh, save me, from the candid friend!”