B Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with B. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“But then I think about my sister and what a shell-less turtle she was and how she wanted me to be one too. C'mon, Lennie, she used to say to me at least ten times a day. C'mon Len. And that makes me feel better, like it's her life rather than her death that is now teaching me how to be, who to be.”
Source: The Sky Is Everywhere
“But then I think, no, I wouldn’t give up twelve, thirteen, sixteen, seventeen with Peter for the world.”
Source: Always and Forever, Lara Jean
“But then, I think of the idols in my own life, the things I turn to before I turn to God. Sometimes, I am my own craftsman, crafting my way without seeking God’s way. My idols too can be “like scarecrows in a cucumber field” (10:5).”
Source: Sweeter Than Honey: A 365-Day Devotional Journey
“But then I thought, ‘I see transsexuals and they want healthy parts of their body removed in order to adjust to their idealized body image,' and so I think that was the connection for me. I saw that people wanted to have their limbs off with equally as much degree of obsession and need.””
“But then I wondered if sometimes our friendships are a bit like clothes and when they start feeling uncomfortable it's not because we've done anything wrong. It just means that we've outgrown them.”
“But then I'm one of those guys that is still a bit afraid of the telephone, its implications for conversation. I still wonder if the jukebox might be the death of live music.”
“But then if you lied to a man about his talent just because he was sitting across from you, that was the most unforgivable lie of them all, because that was telling him to go on, to continue which was the worst way for a man without real talent to waste his life, finally. But many people did just that, friends and relatives mostly.”
Source: Women
“But then in April of 1985 the dollar began a sharp decline. The dollar's trade weighted value fell 23 percent in just 12 months and by a total of 37 percent by the beginning of 1988.”
“But then in novels the most indifferent hero comes out right at last. Some god comes out of a theatrical cloud and leaves the poor devil ten thousand-a-year and a title.”
Source: Ayala's Angel
“But then, in the eyes all of them look like they had no age and knew everything in the world, anyhow.”
Source: As I Lay Dying
“But then in what way are things called good? They do not seem to be like the things that only chance to have the same name. Are goods one then by being derived from one good or by all contributing to one good, or are they rather one by analogy? Certainly as sight is in the body, so is reason in the soul, and so on in other cases.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“But then Iraq happened after September 2001 and America claimed that Al Qaeda was there, and we all know that was a lie and we now know that our own Prime Minister deceived the country terribly.”
“But then it also speaks of a group of people preaching about the righteous kingdom of God, a war of God against all wickedness, followed by a paradise earth without death - all to be realized in the twentieth century.”
Source: The 20th Century in Bible Prophecy
“But then it hasn't really been a focus of our government to make us an educated people.”
“But then it is easy, too easy, to sermonize about the dangers of paternalism and the need to take responsibility for our own lives, from the comfort of our couch in our safe and sanitary home. Aren't we, those who live in the rich world, the constant beneficiaries of a paternalism now so thoroughly embedded into the system that we hardly notice it?”
Source: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty
“But then it occured to him that any progress he had made on his quest so far he had made by accepting the help that had been offered to him.”
Source: Stardust
“But then it passed, as all things do.”
Source: And the Mountains Echoed
“But then, it’s what I always wanted. My own apartment, a car, and plenty of women. And still, goddammit, I’m lonely.”
Source: Death of a Salesman
“But then it was over too quickly and they pulled away. She knew they couldn't stand there and kiss like a couple on the run in a thriller.”
Source: Embrace the Night Eternal
“But then Jesse climbed into my arms, with those damned pink unicorn pajamas, and mumbled, “We’re gonna cuddle, and you’re gonna enjoy it,” and promptly fell asleep with his head against my chest.”
Source: Pretty Perfect
“But then jJax said, "Yet don't we always go looking for danger?"
"And we have a Metal to save," Robb added.
Talle shook her head. "Who is now a brainwashed murdering robot who wants to KILL us."
"But he didn't," Ana argued, painfully aware of the wound in her stomach. If he had wanted to kill her, he could have. He knew how. She didn't tell them what Di had whispered before he plunged the blade into her, wishing to have let her burn. That was not Di. So, she kept it to herself, a secret between her and her new scars. And that means the HIVE didn't take everything. The HIVE WON'T take everything. The Iron Kingdom isn't mine--it's ours. We're the outcasts, the rebels, the refugees--"
"And the royalty," said Jax.
"And the royalty," she agreed. "We're part of the Iron Kingdom. We're the parts no one remembers, so they'll never see us coming. Who's with me?"
Jax and Robb raised their hands without hesitation, and then Lenda, and Talle. The captain pursed her lips, blinking the stray tears out of her eyes, and then she nodded because Ana knew she just wanted to keep her safe--but now it was Ana's turn to save people.
"To the ends of the universe, darling," Siege finally replied.
Ana's heart swelled. She held tightly to Di's memory core, a lifeline glowing with hope in the dark. Once, she had not known who she could be without Di, and once she couldn't have fathomed the thought. But now she knew she carried Di with her, and Barger, and Wick, and Riggs--and Siege, and Talle, and Lenda and Robb and Jax, and Machivalle and Wynn, and Viera, and her late parents and lost brothers, tucked within the steady thrum of her heart. They were the sum of her parts that made her whole.
She was Ananke Armorov. She was the heir to the Iron Kingdom. She was a girl born in fire and raised in the stars, and she would burn against the darkness--and drive it away.”
Source: Heart of Iron
“But then life is never neat, it is made up of doors and trapdoors. You move down baroque corridors, and even when you think you know which door to open, you still need to have the courage to choose.”
Source: Submergence
“But then Macon smiled at me. "Just be yourself, Foster. That's the best thing in the world.”
Source: Close to Famous
“But then male directors also have a hard time getting their movies made... not as hard as women but it's a tough time for any movie this size. And that particular movie [The Hurt Locker] was so specific. It couldn't hurt, of course, and I'm really glad for her, but I don't know how much it will change things, if at all. The film industry is still so sexist.”
“But then Mason touches my neck, to the spot on it where the cut from that night has since healed, and I pull away. He was right, after all; it didn't leave a scar, though part of me wishes it had. At least I'd have some evidence, some justification of this permanence. Stains are even worse when you're the only one who can see them.”
“But then moments like these remind me that happiness isn't some permanent thing we're all trying to achieve in life, it's merely a thing that shows up every now and then, sometimes in tiny doses that are just substantial enough to keep us going.”
Source: Reminders of Him
“But then my mother, who's a very selfless, stoic person from a family of Marines, would tell us that what was good for our father was good for us - he would make more money; therefore, we'd be able to get better educations.”
“But then, no one really thinks they are bad, do they? Whoever we are, whatever we've done. We all have our reasons, if anyone can be bothered to listen.”
Source: Greenwich Park
“But then Nora had wobbled and backed out. Just like she had backed out of a swimming career, and a band, and a wedding. But unlike those other things, there hadn't even been a reason. Yes, she had started working at String Theory and, yes, she felt the need to tend to her parents' graves, but she knew that staying in Bedford was the worse option. And yet she picked it. Because of some strange predictive homesickness that festered alongside a depression that told her, ultimately, she didn't deserve to be happy.”
Source: The Midnight Library
“But then, not long after, in another article, Loftus writes, "We live in a strange and precarious time that resembles at its heart the hysteria and superstitious fervor of the witch trials." She took rifle lessons and to this day keeps the firing instruction sheets and targets posted above her desk. In 1996, when Psychology Today interviewed her, she burst into tears twice within the first twenty minutes, labile, lubricated, theatrical, still whip smart, talking about the blurry boundaries between fact and fiction while she herself lived in another blurry boundary, between conviction and compulsion, passion and hyperbole. "The witch hunts," she said, but the analogy is wrong, and provides us with perhaps a more accurate window into Loftus's stretched psyche than into our own times, for the witch hunts were predicated on utter nonsense, and the abuse scandals were predicated on something all too real, which Loftus seemed to forget: Women are abused. Memories do matter. Talking to her, feeling her high-flying energy the zeal that burns up the center of her life, you have to wonder, why. You are forced to ask the very kind of question Loftus most abhors: did something bad happen to her? For she herself seems driven by dissociated demons, and so I ask. What happened to you? Turns out, a lot.
(refers to Dr. Elizabeth F. Loftus)”
Source: Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century
“But then of course a philosophy is not the same thing as a style.”
“But then Oma tells me of bread, of the six hundred kinds made throughout her homeland, white and gray and black in color. Loaves heavy with pumpkin seeds. Pumpernickel. Rye. All with long, dense names like 'Sonnenblumenkernbrot' and 'Roggenmischbrot'. Each word is music to her. She has never eaten a tinned bread bagged in plastic with a little twist tie, a pride she wears all over. 'It matters,' she tells me. 'Wes Brot ich ess, des Lied ich sing.'
Whose bread I eat, his song I sing.”
Source: Stones For Bread
“but then one day Jessica went out to lunch with her and didn’t offer to pay the bill, and now they weren’t talking. Jessica’s heart clenched as she thought about it. She always paid the bill. Always. It was the one time she didn’t and supposedly that was unforgivable.”
Source: Nine Perfect Strangers
“But then one day the Lord put us together through our agent and it's been a wonderful match.”
“but then one day, you just look at them and you’re like, wow, and you want to go to their parents’ house and congratulate them on their successful mix of DNA.”
Source: Out of Left Field
“But then one is always excited by descriptions of money changing hands. It's much more fundamental than sex.”
“But then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one's personality.”
Source: The Picture Of Dorian Gray
“But then one voice arose from the babbling clamor to silence them all. It was a voice he hadn’t heard in a while. Steady and self-assured and not really worried about what bad things may or may not happen because bad things and good things seemed to always be taking turns anyway in what was really just the harmonic polyrhythm of an intrinsic symphony perpetually flowing and interweaving.”
Source: The Subtle Cause
“But then peace, peace! I am so mistrustful of it: so much afraid that it means a sort of weakness and giving in.”
Source: The Letters of D. H. Lawrence
“But then people don't read literature in order to understand; they read it because they want to re-live the feelings and sensations which they found exciting in the past. Art can be a lot of things; but in actual practice, most of it is merely the mental equivalent of alcohol and cantharides.”
Source: After Many a Summer
“But then, people usually do miss what's right in front of them.”
Source: The Last Magician
“But then," said Caliburn, "the adults are making such an almighty mess of things maybe we have to put our faith in the children, crazy and unrealistic and reckless though they are...”
Source: Twice Magic
“But then science is nothing but a series of questions that lead to more questions.”
“but then she did. she died. no more visits, no more phone calls. And without even realizing it, I began to drift, as if my roots had been pulled, as if I were floating down some side branch of a river.”
“But then she hadn’t just learned to love this summer – she had also learned how to need.”
Source: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants Complete Collection
“But then she remembered something else, just a flash: looking up at Damon’s face in the woods and feeling such—such excitement, such affinity with him. As if he understood the flame that burned inside her as nobody else ever could. As if together they could do anything they liked, conquer the world or destroy it; as if they were better than anyone else who had ever lived.
I was out of my mind, irrational, she told herself, but that little flash of memory wouldn’t go away.
And then she remembered something else: how Damon had acted later that night, how he’d kept her safe, even been gentle with her.
Stefan was looking at her, and his expression had changed from belligerence to bitter anger and fear. Part of her wanted to reassure him completely, to throw her arms around him and tell him that she was his and always would be and that nothing else mattered. Not the town, not Damon, not anything.
But she wasn’t doing it.”
Source: The Fury
“But then she was not awkward, she was slow-flowing, graceful, seductive - a seductiveness that had nothing to do with breast and hips and legs, but was an invitation to forget the world in the recesses of the body”
“But then something happened, Ray, something amazing. Something...
"That white cop sitting next to me? He took a long look at my mother when she came in, just like, absorbed her, and then without even turning to me, he just put his hand on my back, up between my neck and shoulder...
"And all he did was squeeze. Give me a little squeeze of sympathy, then rubbed that same spot with his palm for maybe two, three seconds, and that was it.
"But I swear to you, nobody, in my entire life up to that point had ever touched me with that kind of tenderness. I had never experienced a sympathetic hand like that, and Ray, it felt like lightning.
"I mean, the guy did it without thinking, I'm sure. And when dinnertime rolled around he had probably forgotten all about it. Forgot about me, too, for that matter... But I didn't forget.
"I didn't walk around thinking about it nonstop either, but something like seven years later when I was at community college? The recruiting officer for the PD came on campus for Career Day, and I didn't really like college all that much to begin with, so I took the test for the academy, scored high, quit school and never looked back.
"And usually when I tell people why I became a cop I say because it would keep Butchie and Antoine out of my life, and there's some truth in that.
"But I think the real reason was because that recruiting officer on campus that day reminded me, in some way, you know, conscious or not, of that housing cop who had sat on the bench with me when I was thirteen.
"In fact, I don't think it, I know it. As sure as I'm standing here, I know I became a cop because of him. For him. To be like him. God as my witness, Ray. The man put his hand on my back for three seconds and it rerouted my life for the next twenty-nine years.
"It's the enormity of small things... Adults, grown-ups, us, we have so much power... And sometimes when we find ourselves coming into contact with certain kinds of kids? Needy kids? We have to be ever so careful...”
“But then southern hemisphere teams are more skilful than their northern hemisphere counterparts, which means games can be easier to referee.”
“But then, staring at the label on one crate, which read
SWORD-CANE-DLUBECK SHOE TREE-HORA
SUITS (3)-HORA
ASSORTED HANDKERCHIEFS (6)-HORA
Josef felt a bloom of dread in his belly, and all at once he was certain that it was not going to matter one iota how his father and the others behaved. Orderly or chaotic, well inventoried and civil or jumbled and squabbling, the Jews of Prague were dust on the boots of the Germans, to be whisked off with an indiscriminate broom. Stoicism and an eye for detail would avail them nothing. In later years, when he remembered this moment, Josef would be tempted to think that he had suffered a premonition, looking at those mucilage-caked labels, of the horror to come. At the time it was a simpler matter. The hair stood up on the back of his neck with a prickling discharge of ions. His heart pulsed in the hollow of his throat as if someone had pressed there with a thumb. And he felt, for an instant, that he was admiring the penmanship of someone who had died.”
Source: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay