B Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with B. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“But those words liveoak, pine, the somehow onomatopoeic splendor [sic] of magnolia, still flower greenly in the mind before McCarthy crushes them, and that leaf, which if ash must weigh very little, still lies heavy against the father's hand.”
Source: The Road
“But those words were only the middle of the story. There was a beginning here, too.”
Source: Just Listen: A Novel
“But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy,
Nature and Fortune join'd to make thee great:
Of Nature's gifts thou mayst with lilies boast,
And with the half-blown rose; but Fortune, O!”
Source: The Complete Works of William Shakspeare. Printed from the Text of the Most Renowned Editors, with ... Engravings, Accounts Historical and Explanatory of Each Play, a Copious and Elaborate Glossary, and the Author's Life [by C. Symmons].
“But thou must equally avoid flattering men and being viewed at them, for both are unsocial and lead to harm. And let this truth be present to thee in the excitement of anger, that to be moved by passion is not manly, but that mildness and gentleness, as they are more agreeable to human nature, so also are they more manly; and he who possesses these qualities possesses strength, nerves and courage, and not the man who is subject to fits of passion and discontent. For in the same degree in which a man's mind is nearer to freedom from all passion, in the same degree also is it nearer to strength: and as the sense of pain is a characteristic of weakness, so also is anger. For he who yields to pain and he who yields to anger, both are wounded and both submit.”
Source: Meditations
“But thou that didst appear so fair To fond imagination, Dost rival in the light of day Her delicate creation.”
Source: The Poetical works
“But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel, Making a famine where abundance lies, Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.”
Source: Poems
“But thou, my son, study to make prevail One colour in thy life, the hue of truth.”
Source: Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold (Illustrated)
“But thou, through good and evil, praise and blame,
Wilt not thou love me for myself alone?
Yes, thou wilt love me with exceeding love,
And I will tenfold all that love repay;
Still smiling, though the tender may reprove,
Still faithful, though the trusted may betray.”
“But though a funded debt is not in the first instance, an absolute increase of Capital, or an augmentation of real wealth; yet by serving as a New power in the operation of industry, it has within certain bounds a tendency to increase the real wealth of a Community, in like manner as money borrowed by a thrifty farmer, to be laid out in the improvement of his farm may, in the end, add to his Stock of real riches.”
Source: The Political Economy of the American Revolution
“But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.”
Source: Jefferson: Political Writings
“But though cognition is not an element of mental action, nor even in any real sense of the word an aspect of it, the distinction of cognition and conation has if properly defined a definite value.”
“But though empires, like all the other works of men, have all hitherto proved mortal, yet every empire aims at immortality.”
Source: An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations
“But though every created thing is, in this sense, a mystery, the word mystery cannot be applied to moral truth, any more than obscurity can be applied to light. ... Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention, that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion. Truth never envelops itself in mystery, and the mystery in which it is at any time enveloped is the work of its antagonist, and never of itself.”
Source: The Writings of Thomas Paine
“But though first love's impassioned blindness Has passed away in colder light, I still have thought of you with kindness, And shall do, till our last goodnight. The ever-rolling silent hours Will bring a time we shall not know, When our young days of gathering flowers Will be an hundred years ago.”
“But though hast come and all will surely change.”
Source: Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol
“But though I might fill the world with dragons I never had the slighest real doubt that heroes ought to fight with dragons.
I must stop to challenge many child-lovers for cruelty to children. It is quite false to say that the child dislikes the fable because it is moral. Very often he likes the moral more than the fable. Adults are reading their own weary mockery into a mind still vigorous enough to be entirely serious.”
“But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.””
“But though it cannot be reasonable not to gain happiness for fear of losing it, yet it must be confessed, that in proportion to the pleasure of possession, will be for some time our sorrow for the loss.”
Source: Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings
“But though it had prevailed against such fierce adversaries as fire and flood, it had fallen victim softly and swiftly to television in the 1960's.”
Source: The Forgotten Garden
“But though she was the mistress of her own ways and no slave to any lamp save that of her own conscience, she had a weakness: she had fallen in love with George Amberson Minafer at first sight, and no matter how she disciplined herself, she had never been able to climb out. The thing had happened to her; that was all. George had looked just the way she had always wanted someone to look—the riskiest of all the moonshine ambushes wherein tricky romance snares credulous young love. But what was fatal to Lucy was that this thing having happened to her, she could not change it. No matter what she discovered in George’s nature she was unable to take away what she had given him; and though she could think differently about him, she could not feel differently about him, for she was one of those too faithful victims of glamour. When she managed to keep the picture of George away from her mind’s eye, she did well enough; but when she let him become visible, she could not choose but love what she disdained. She was a little angel who had fallen in love with high-handed Lucifer; quite an experience, and not apt to be soon succeeded by any falling in love with a tamer party—and the unhappy truth was that George did make better men seem tame.”
Source: The Magnificent Ambersons
“But though such is our character (Oh. why should I speak of things unfit to be uttered?), the things said of us are an example of the proverb, 'The harlot reproves the chaste.' For those who have set up a market for fornication and established infamous resorts for the young for every kind of vile pleasure - who do not abstain even from males, males with males committing shocking abominations, outraging all the noblest and comeliest bodies in all sorts of ways, so dishonoring the fair workmanship of God.”
“But though that place I never gain,
Herein lies comfort for my pain:
I will be worthy of it.”
Source: Poems of Ella Wheeler Wilcox: Passion
“But though the professed aim of all scientific work is to unravel the secrets of nature, it has another effect, not less valuable, on the mind of the worker. It leaves him in possession of methods which nothing but scientific work could have led him to invent.”
Source: The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell
“But though Usury is in itself immoral, and justly condemned by every ethical code, its chief and worst defect in the particular case we are now examining, the growth of Capitalism and its increasing proletariat, is the centralization of irresponsible control over the lives of men: the putting power over the proletariat into the hands of a few who can direct the loans of currency and credit without which that proletariat could not be fed and clothed and maintained in work.”
Source: The Crisis Of Civilization
“But though you’d never starve your body to wasting and still expect to go on, you starve your heart, yet act as though you can still draw on it forever without the debt ever coming due. If you fall—when you fall, you’re going to fall like a starving man.”
Source: Beguilement
“But thought has no eyelids to close or ears to block...”
Source: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
“But thought is one thing, the deed is another, and the image of the deed still another: the wheel of causality does not roll between them.”
“But thought's the slave of life, and life time's fool.”
“But thoughtless ingratitude is the armour of the young; without it, how would they ever get through life? The old wish the young well, but they wish them ill also: they would like to eat them up, and absorb their vitality, and remain immortal themselves. Without the protection of surliness and levity, all children would be crushed by the past - the past of others, loaded on their shoulders. Selfishness is their saving grace.”
Source: The Blind Assassin: A Novel
“But thoughts don't care about truth and shit. They sit up in your mind and fuck with you whenever.”
Source: Pryor Convictions: and Other Life Sentences
“But thoughts the slave of life, and life, Time’s fool,
And Time, that takes survey of all the world,
Must have a stop.”
Source: King Henry IV, Part 1
“But thousands die without or this or that, Die, and endow a college or a cat.”
“But through experience I learned to control my body and locate the ball.”
“But through the ash and darkness I saw him. My dragon. Beautiful, terrible, fierce. The scars of his stories still evident, even in this form. I remembered the ones who'd come before me, those who had also pried open his shuttered heart. The ones who had left him. But I wasn't ready to go yet; I wouldn't leave my dragon in that dark place again to pick up the pieces of his fallen loved ones in isolation. And Ryker wouldn't let me go.
"Ryker!" I screamed as I fell. He was enormous, beating his wings and trying to rise up to meet me. One of his wings was a tattered mess, but still he pushed up, his body beginning to shift and change. He shrank and shed his scales, turning back into the human shape I'd known him in but keeping the wings that helped push him to me in a desperate gust.
My eyes were flooding, tears falling every which way in the wind as I fell. I stretched out my arms to him, and he reached up and grabbed me.
"Dani!" he growled over the wind. I was pulled into his chest, my head tucked under his chin as my hot, wet tears soaked us both. "It's over, he's dead. I told you my fire would never hurt you.”
Source: Dirty Lying Dragons
“But through world wars and a Great Depression, through painful social upheaval and a Cold War, and now through the attacks of September 11, 2001, our Nation has indeed survived.”
“But through years of myth-making and fear-sowing, Christianity meta-morphosed antichrists into a single Antichrist, an apocalyptic villain and Christian bogeyman used to scare people as much as Santa Claus is used to regulate children's behavior. After years of studying the concept, I began to realize the Antichrist is a character--a metaphor--who exists in nearly all religions under different names, and maybe there is some truth in it, a need for such a person. But from another perspective, this person could be seen as not a villain but a final hero to save people from their own ignorance. The apocalypse doesn't have to be fire and a brimstone. It could happen on a personal level.”
Source: The Long Hard Road Out of Hell
“But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!”
Source: Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None
“But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! Distrust all those who talk much of their justice!”
Source: Thus spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None
“But thus I counsel you, my friends: Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. They are people of a low sort and stock; the hangmen and the bloodhound look out of their faces. Mistrust all who talk much of their justice! Verily, their souls lack more than honey. And when they call themselves the good and the just, do not forget that they would be pharisees, if only they had-power.”
Source: The Portable Nietzsche
“But thy eternal summer shall not fade.”
“But thy strong Hours indignant work’d their wills, And beat me down and marr’d and wasted me, And tho’ they could not end me, left me maim’d To dwell in presence of immortal youth, Immortal age beside immortal youth, And all I was, in ashes. - Tithonus”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (Illustrated)
“But Tik Tok believes everything's circular, including men and women. He says nature seems to go around and around, and that we all have bits of everything.”
Source: Tiger Lily
“But till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace. Rich she shall be, that's certain; wise, or I'll none; virtuous, or I'll never cheapen her; fair, or I'll never look on her; mild, or come not near me; noble, or not I for an angel; of good discourse, and excellent musician and her hair shall be of what colour it shall please God.”
Source: Shakespeare's Lovers: A Text for Performance and Analysis
“But till we are built like angels, with hammer and chisel and pen, we will work for ourself and a woman, forever and ever, Amen.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated)
“But Time and Tide and Buttered Eggs wait for no man.”
“But time and time again, I saw the change in their eyes once they’d conquered me. Dehumanization always follows penetration.”
“But time changed all things, oxidizing friendships like old copper pots, so they no longer saw their reflection in each other’s faces.”
Source: Dreams of Falling
“But time did not work like a fairytale. So many books and movies I had read an seen had everything fall into place at the exact moment. The happy ending. The hero was ready for the final battle and won.
Life was not like that. It didn't cater to you, to the outcome you wanted. I was not ready for war, but war was ready for me.”
Source: Shadow Lands
“But time does not disclose its secrets to humankind, and the possible turned impossible.”
“But time has a way of demonstrating the most stubborn are the most intelligent.”