B Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with B. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“But of all the animals, man holds the fate of the world in his hands.”
“But of all the instances of error arising from this physical fancy, the worst is that we have before us: the habit of exhaustively describing a social sickness, and then propounding a social drug.”
Source: What's Wrong with the World
“But of all the views of this law [universal education] none is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty.”
“But of all the water's secrets, he saw today only a single one-one that struck his soul. He saw that this water flowed and flowed, it was constantly flowing, and yet it was always there; it was always eternally the same and yet new at every moment! Oh, to be able to grasp this, to understand this!”
“But of all the women, Éowyn is the strongest, quite frankly, because of her weakness: she's only human. She has no special powers, no immortality, only her innate grit and drive to be something more than just a shield-maiden. And nothing whatsoever will stay her on her course. In the end, she, and her faithful companion Merry, take down the Witch King HIMSELF! She kills the one servant of Sauron that no man can kill; she kills Fear itself in what is arguably the most dramatic moment in the books. I think it is significant that the embodiment of Fear in The Lord of the Rings is slain by a woman. In fact, only a woman is capable of doing so.”
Source: Be a Hobbit, Save the Earth: the Guide to Sustainable Shire Living
“But of, but what, but whether, but who, but nevertheless, but insofar, but why, but otherwise, but even if-”
Source: Winkie
“But, of course, as everyone knows who has ever heard a piece of gossip, we do not “own” the facts of our lives at all. This ownership passes out of our hands at birth, at the moment we are first observed. The organs of publicity that have proliferated in our time are only an extension and a magnification of society’s fundamental and incorrigible nosiness. Our business is everybody’s business, should anybody wish to make it so. The concept of privacy is a sort of screen to hide the fact that almost none is possible in a social universe. In any struggle between the public’s inviolable right to be diverted and an individual’s wish to be left alone, the public almost always prevails. After we are dead, the pretense that we may somehow be protected against the world’s careless malice is abandoned. The branch of the law that putatively protects our good name against libel and slander withdraws from us indifferently. The dead cannot be libelled or slandered. They are without legal recourse..”
Source: The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
“But of course I love my Japanese fans and the show must go on, no matter the daily aftershocks or husband kidnappings! It's not right but it's okay”
“But of course in my world nothing is political. And everything's about policy and governance. And maybe a bit of politics.”
“But of course it makes sense because we are Third Worlders and Third Worlders are forward-looking, we like things to be new, because our best is still ahead, while in the West their best is already past and so they have to make a fetish of that past.Remember this is our newly middle-class world. We haven’t completed the first cycle of prosperity, before going back to the beginning again, to drink milk from the cow’s udder.”
Source: Americanah
“But of course it was an American paper. The Americans always go one better on any kinds of beastliness, whether it is ice-cream soda, racketeering, or theosophy.”
Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying
“But of course it's always gonna be Suicide, our fingerprints, ya know? You can't ever get rid of that.”
“But of course it's different now, the blues is no longer blues, it's green now.”
“But of course the mountains inside us are meant to be climbed and conquered by us. You have to do it, no one else can do it for you.
It is how well you walk through the fire.”
“But, of course, the real villain is Wagner. He has done more than any man in the nineteenth century towards the muddling of arts. I do feel that music is in a very serious state just now, though extraordinarily interesting. Every now and then in history there do come these terrible geniuses, like Wagner, who stir up all the wells of thought at once. For a moment it’s splendid. Such a splash as never was. But afterwards—such a lot of mud; and the wells—as it were, they communicate with each other too easily now, and not one of them will run quite clear. That’s what Wagner’s done.”
Source: Howard's End
“But of course, the universe does not conspire to put you in one place rather than another.”
Source: An Abundance of Katherines
“But of course there is always a hamartia and yours is that oh, my God, even though you HAD FREAKING CANCER you give money to a company in exchange for the chance to acquire YET MORE CANCER.”
Source: An Abundance of Katherines
“But of course there's no logic to San Francisco generally, a city built with putty and pipe cleaners, rubber cement and colored construction paper. It's the work of fairies, elves, happy children with new crayons”
Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
“But of course these are scientists. Tell them to leave something alone, and all they want to do is poke it with a stick.”
Source: Shades of Earth
“But of course, time didn't work like that. And memory is but a television show of your own life, a movie screen that you can play witness to, but not interact with, change to course of, redirect.”
“But of course, we would not grieve if we did not love.
(Elizabeth: The Unseen Queen)”
“But of course what really threatens the scofflaw is not the just society but the decaying one. It is here that he finds himself becoming slowly indistinguishable from the citizenry.”
Source: The Passenger
“But of course when people watch morning television, Terry, it's a very different animal. You know, they're running around, they're getting their kids ready for school, they're probably doing eight million things, they're brushing their teeth.”
“But of course you can have your cake and eat it, too - if you decide to to bake a second cake. And you may well find that baking two cakes does not take twice the work of baking one.”
Source: The Economic Illusion: False Choices Between Prosperity and Social Justice
“But, of course, you might be asking yourself, 'Am I a feminist? I might not be. I don't know! I still don't know what it is! I'm too knackered and confused to work it out. That curtain pole really still isn't up! I don't have time to work out if I am a women's libber! There seems to be a lot to it. WHAT DOES IT MEAN?'
I understand.
So here is the quick way of working out if you're a feminist. Put your hand in your pants.
a) Do you have a vagina? and
b) Do you want to be in charge of it?
If you said 'yes' to both, then congratulations! You're a feminist.”
Source: How to Be a Woman
“But of course, now we're told we're in recovery but this sure doesn't feel like a recovery to more than 9 percent of the Americans out there who are unemployed, or the 16 percent of the African-Americans, 11 percent of Hispanics in the same position, or the millions who can only find part-time work or those who have even stopped looking for a job.”
“But of course, there's no rest for the wicked, which I certainly am; as I said, no rest for the wicked.”
“But of course, what the eagle does not realize is that it is participating in a very crude form of natural selection.One day a tortoise will learn how to fly.”
Source: Small Gods: (Discworld Novel 13)
“But of love I know only that mixture of desire, affection, and intelligence that binds me to this or that creature.”
Source: The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
“But of Paris it can be said that the right bank of the Seine belongs to the world, and the left bank to France.”
Source: The Complete Stories
“But of that instant I knew my wife was right, knew that I had made a grave mistake. In that moment I sensed the leech that Anaïs had tried to get rid of. I saw the spoiled child, the man who had never done an honest stroke of work in his life, the destitute individual who was too proud to beg openly but was not above milking a friend dry. I knew it all, felt it all, and already foresaw the end.”
Source: Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
“But of the heaven which is above the heavens, what earthly poet ever did or ever will sing worthily?”
Source: Plato: The Complete Works: From the greatest Greek philosopher, known for The Republic, Symposium, Apology, Phaedrus, Laws, Crito, Phaedo, Timaeus, Meno, Euthyphro, Gorgias, Parmenides, Protagoras, Statesman and Critias
“But of the seven deadly sins, wrath is the healthiest - next only to lust.”
Source: Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast
“But of works of art little can be said.”
Source: Memories, Portraits, Essays and Records (Annotated Edition)
“But often life asks much of you, and you either honor life by answering with all your heart, or you cower your way into your grave.”
Source: Hinterland
“But often times, I feel like I'm so blessed, it's not fair. That what I'm doing is not contributing to the good of the world.”
“But often, in the world’s most crowded streets, But often, in the din of strife, There rises an unspeakable desire After the knowledge of our buried life; A thirst to spend our fire and restless force In tracking out our true, original course; A longing to inquire Into the mystery of this heart which beats So wild, so deep in us—to know Whence our lives come and where they go.”
Source: Dover Beach and Other Poems
“But often, it's easier to resist temptation with distraction, or to be so inculcated in doing the right thing that it's automatic, outside the frontal cortex's portfolio - Then it isn't the harder thing, it's the only thing you can do.”
“But oftentimes I'm asked, why? Why do you care what happens outside of America?”
“But oftner the nights were clear, marvellously lit. Darkness was a pale lustrous gloom. Sometimes the north was silver clear, so luminous that through the filigree of leaf and sapling its glow pierced burning, as though the light were a patterned loveliness standing out against the background of the trees. Later the glow dulled and the trees became the pattern against the background of the light. The hushed world took her in. Tranqil, surrendered, she became one with the vast quiet night. A puddock sprawled noiselessly towards her, a bat swooped, tracing gigantic patterns upon the sky, a corncrake scraighed, on and on through the night, monotonous and forgotten as one forgets the monotony of the sea's roar; and when the soft wind was in the south-west, the sound of the river, running among its stony rapids below the ferry, floated up and over her like a tide. She fell asleep to its running and wakened to listen for it; and heard it as one hears the breathing of another.”
Source: The Quarry Wood
“But oh my dear, I am tired of being Alice in Wonderland. Does it sound ungrateful? It is. Only I do get tired.”
Source: Alice I Have Been: A Novel
“But, oh, sweet holy Lord, I would ride that one-legged pony all the way around the corral.”
Source: The Fault in Our Stars
“But oh the heavy change, now thou art gone, Now thou art gone and never must return!”
“But oh, the perils of leadership in a species so anxious to be told what to do. How little they knew of what they created by their demands. Leaders made mistakes. And those mistakes, amplified by the numbers who followed without questioning, moved inevitably toward great disasters.”
Source: Chapterhouse: Dune
“But oh — time has become such a torture, a slow torture. One tries to capture a piece of time that lies ahead and is full of light . . . but thinking about that just makes this awful black time even blacker.”
Source: The Green Knight
“But, oh, when gloomy doubts prevail,
I fear to call thee mine;
The springs of comfort seem to fail,
And all my hopes decline.
Yet, gracious God, where shall I flee?
Thou art my only trust;
And still my soul would cleave to thee,
Though prostrate in the dust.”
“But oh! as to embrace me she inclin'd, I wak'd, she fled, and day brought back my night.”
Source: The poetical works of John Milton: with notes of various authors, principally from the editions of Thomas Newton, Charles Dunster and Thomas Warton ; to which is prefixed Newton's life of Milton
“But oh! each visitation
Suspends what nature gave me any my birth,
My shaping spirit of Imagination.”
“But oh! the blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as one's most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.”
“But oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day,
If your Snark be a Boojum! for then
You will softly and suddenly vanish away,
And never be met with again!”