B Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with B. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“But the World being once fram'd, and the course of Nature establish'd, the Naturalist, (except in some few cases, where God, or Incorporeal Agents interpose), has recourse to the first Cause but for its general and ordinary Support and Influence, whereby it preserves Matter and Motion from Annihilation or Desition; and in explicating particular phenomena, considers onely the Size, Shape, Motion, (or want of it) Texture, and the resulting Qualities and Attributes of the small particles of Matter.”
Source: Boyle on Atheism
“But the world did not match the picture in my head, and instead I was with a strange, uncombed person, overlooking a sea without water and a forest without trees.”
“But the world doesn't run on logic, it runs on the seven deadly sins and the weather. - Alan Furst; Red Gold”
“But the world hinges on good fathers and those who would be the merchants of confidence.”
“But the world I wanted wasn’t the world I lived in, and if I would do nothing until I could repair every terrible thing at one, I would do nothing forever.”
Source: Spinning Silver
“But the world is a better place with Saddam Hussein gone.”
“But the world is all alike. Those that seem better than their neighbours, are only more artful.”
“But the world is ever more interdependent. Stock markets and economies rise and fall together. Confidence is the key to prosperity. Insecurity spreads like contagion. So people crave stability and order.”
Source: Tony Blair in His Own Words
“But the world is not kind to idealists... and those who fight the Good Fight don't always win.”
“But the world is out there, and it understands that the illusion of knowledge and freedom is not the same as the real thing. Eventually it will fade, and there are those who will do whatever it takes to make that happen sooner rather than later.”
“But the world is still unpredictable and still we survive by the grace of chance and the strength of our choices.”
Source: Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses
“But the world itself, as well as special attitudes, properly understood, constitute the Sufi school.”
Source: Learning how to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way
“But the world itself has no reason, and I can say so, I who have experienced it all, from the creation to the destruction.”
“But the world moves on, even when you don't want it to, even when change feels like the end of everything. It never stops.”
Source: Aftermath
“But the world moves on, even when you don’t want it to, even when change feels like the end of everything. It never stops. That’s harsh and magical and somewhat comforting because nothing is immutable, however much we want it to be. Moments cannot be caught like fossils in amber, ever- perfect,ever-beautiful. They go dark and raw, full of shadows, leaving you with the memories. And the world moves on.”
“But the world of academia is a strange, sometimes counterproductive and often sluggish place. Where one may expect it to be open and responsive to new thinking, it can be oddly conservative and resistant to radical ideas.”
Source: Wilding
“But the world of Despicable Me is such a cartoony world. It is much more Looney Tunes than I would say the Pixar world or those movies. We can get away with a little more, although I know some people responded negatively to the Iron Maiden beat in the first movie where it looks like Edith.”
“But the world turns, and even legends change; and somewhere there is a border, and sometime, perhaps, someone will decide to cross it, however well guarded its thorns may be.”
Source: The Door in the Hedge: And Other Stories
“But the world was also so constructed, owing to the nature of the Maker of it, that superior strength was found in the long run to lie with those who had the right on their side.”
“But the world, in its present state, is no place for princesses.”
“But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests. Lonely one, you are going the way to yourself! And your way goes past yourself, and past your seven devils! You will be a heretic to yourself and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and villain. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?”
“But the worst handicap we had the prohibition of naming individual units who had done the fighting.”
Source: The Pageant of the Years: An Autobiography
“But the worst of imagining things is that the time comes when you have to stop and that hurts.”
Source: The Anne of Green Gables Chronicles (Annotated Edition)
“But the writer who endures and keeps working will finally know that writing the book was something hard and glorious, for at the desk a writer must try to be free of prejudice, meanness of spirit, pettiness, and hatred; strive to be a better human being than the writer normally is, and to do this through concentration on a single word, and then another, and another. This is splendid work, as worthy and demanding as any, and the will and resilience to do it are good for the writer's soul.”
“But the writing life, it turned out, was difficult. It wasn't like you could sit down and flip a switch and crank on the ventilation system. Sometimes it didn't work, and sometimes you couldn't even find the switch.”
Source: Fifty Acres and a Poodle: A Story of Love, Livestock, and Finding Myself on a Farm
“But the years came and went without bringing the careless boy; and when they met again Wendy was a married woman, and Peter was no more to her than a little dust in the box in which she had kept her toys.”
Source: Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy) (Annotated Edition)
“But the you who you are tonight is the same you I was in love with yesterday, the same you I’ll be in love with tomorrow.”
“But the young Count insisted on the Beauty selecting a flower for him. He was waiting impatiently for her second present, the promised kiss — her first kiss.
The Beauty looked at the flowers. Once again her face was darkened by a delicate shade of sadness. Suddenly, as if prompted by some strange will, she quickly stretched out a hand, so exquisite in its naked whiteness, and plucked a many-petaled flower. Her hand hesitated, and she bowed her head, and finally with an expression of shy indecision she approached the Count and placed the flower in a buttonhole of his cloak.
The powerful and pungent scent wafted into the young Count's face, which grew pale as his head reeled in languid impotence. Indifference and tedium overcame him. He was scarcely aware of himself, he hardly noticed that the Beauty took him by the arm and led him into the house, away from the fragrances of the wondrous Garden.
In one of the rooms of the house where all was bright, white and rosy, the Count came to himself. A youthful vitality returned to his face, his black eyes were aflame with passion once again, and he felt the joy of life and the surge of desire anew. But already the inescapable lay in wait for him. A white hand, bare, slender, lay on his neck; and the fragrant kiss of the Beauty was tender, sweet, long. The two blue lightnings of her eyes flashed close to his eyes and were masked with the subtle mystery of her long eyelashes. The sinister fires of some sweet pain swirled like a whirlwind about the heart of the young Count. He raised his arms to embrace the Beauty — but with a soft cry she stepped away and softly, quietly, ran away, leaving him alone.
("The Poison Garden")”
Source: Silver Age of Russian Culture
“But the young educated adults of the 90s -- who were, of course, the children of the same impassioned infidelities and divorces Mr. Updike wrote about so beautifully -- got to watch all this brave new individualism and self-expression and sexual freedom deteriorate into the joyless and anomic self-indulgence of the Me Generation. Today's sub-40s have different horrors, prominent among which are anomie and solipsism and a peculiarly American loneliness: the prospect of dying without once having loved something more than yourself.”
“But theater, because of its nature, both text, images, multimedia effects, has a wider base of communication with an audience. That's why I call it the most social of the various art forms.”
“But theatre is always a difficult experience.”
“But Thee, but Thee, O sovereign Seer of time,
But Thee, O poets' Poet, Wisdom's Tongue,
But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love,
O perfect life in perfect labor writ,
O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest, --
What IF or YET, what mole, what flaw, what lapse,
What least defect or shadow of defect,
What rumor, tattled by an enemy,
Of inference loose, what lack of grace
Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's --
Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee,
Jesus, good Paragon, Thou Crystal Christ?”
Source: Poems of Sidney Lanier
“But their determination to banish fools foundered ultimately in the installation of absolute idiots.”
Source: The Poems of Basil Bunting
“but their eyes were as cold blue glass buttons.”
Source: Anthem
“But their intervention makes our acts to serve ever less merely the immediate claims of our instincts.”
Source: Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words
“But their truce, their wary tenderness, began to give way as winter thawed: the inevitable collapse of goodwill between two people with intertwined yet irreconcilable wishes.”
Source: Great Circle
“But then a bumblebee bumbled above us and it stole our attention the way flying things can.”
Source: Microserfs
“But then a daring evasion by a leading conveyancer, known as the Lease and Release, received judicial sanction; and commenced a successful career of more than 200 years. The Lease and Release, attributed to Serjeant Moore, was based on the fact that the Statute of Inrolments did not apply to terms of years.”
Source: A Short History of English Law: From the Earliest Times to the End of the Year 1919
“But then a tiny worm of a voice begins in her ear. You’ll never get ahead if you’re not willing to take risks. It hisses and mutters, buzzing with derision, warning of lost opportunities. The best way to achieve greatness, it says, is to be remarkable. Be assertive. Take chances.”
Source: The Engraver's Secret
“But then a warm, calloused hand grasped hers beneath the table, and she turned her head to find Chaol looking at her. He smiled slightly—and she knew he understood.
So Celaena looked at her Captain of the Guard and smiled back”
Source: Crown of Midnight
“But then acting is all about faking. We're all very good at faking things that we have no competence with.”
“But then again, can't people just not fucking suck as human beings once in awhile? Is that too much to fucking ask? Is it too much to ask that people like each other for who they are and not what they have? Am I naive about the nature of motherfuckers under Mother Nature's broken wings? Nah, fuck that. People have just as much capacity to be good as they do to be shit. It's a choice. People make choices. So they need to make better fucking choices.”
Source: You're Making Me Hate You: A Cantankerous Look at the Common Misconception That Humans Have Any Common Sense Left
“But then again, he would think, what about his life- and about Jude's life, too- wasn't it a miracle? He should have stayed in Wyoming, he should have been a ranch hand himself. Jude should have wound up - where? In prison, or in a hospital, or dead, or worse. But they hadn't. Wasn't it a miracle that someone who was basically unexceptional could life a life in which he made millions pretending to be other people, that in that life that person would fly from city to city, would spend his days having his every need fulfilled, working in which he was treated like the potentate of a small, corrupt country? Wasn't it a miracle to be adopted at thirty, to find people who loved you so much that they wanted to call you their own? Wasn't it a miracle to have survived the unsurvivable?Wasn't friendship its own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely? Wasn't this house, this beauty, this comfort, this life a miracle?”
Source: A Little Life
“But then again, I'm what all of you call an evil witch, Evil' indeed. Meanwhile you humans scuttle across the sea and land literally devouring everything even remotely edible. If only you knew- you're not that different from the more apocalyptic Elder Gods. Not really.”
Source: Part of Your World
“But then again, I was about as far from touchy-feely as you could get. Unless you’re fucking me, don’t put your hands on me.”
Source: My Life as a White Trash Zombie
“But then again, in addition to paper and cardboard...a little illuminated box, that contains thousands and thousands of stories? People aren’t fascinated by that? Really?”
“But then again maybe "I will" is nicer. It has a future in it.”
“But then again, one can’t simply dictate the demands of their heart.”
Source: God of War
“But then again...perhaps the whole human race is cursed, and I'm simply in the lower echelon and therefore lose everything first.”
“But then again, that's what the Book of Job was about to her, a cautionary tale about wanting there to be a God, wanting there to be someone who could enact what a God could enact, or who could sanction what the Devil would do. You want this, people? You want these kinds of powers? No, you don't, and here's why, and here's why it's sheer vanity to want them in any other entity. Look what sort of violence would rain down. Poor Job, sure, poor Job with his hives and his financial losses — though who needs three thousand camels? — and too bad about the kids, forgive me, they were delicious, so sweet and so cold, sure, too bad, but it's God who's the miserable bastard here. Look what he got himself up to! No good could come of that type of power; that's what the writer of the Book of Job was saying, and she knew the writer was right.”
Source: Widow: Stories