B Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with B. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“But we cannot rely on foreign help indefinitely.”
“But we cannot rely on memorials and museums alone. We can tell ourselves we will never forget and we likely won't. But we need to make sure that we teach history to those who never had the opportunity to remember in the first place.”
“But we cannot sit and stare at our wounds forever; instead, we must strive to deepen them and allow them to bleed freely to alleviate the pain”
“But we cannot unbraid the story of another person’s life and take out all the parts that don’t suit our purposes and put forth only the ones that do.”
Source: State of Wonder
“But we can’t control the environment; all we can control is the way we react to it.”
“But we comforted ourselves with what we really meant to say, which was: "I don't normally feel this good about what I'm doing." Measure the hope of that moment, that feeling. Everything else will be measured against it.”
Source: The Lover's Dictionary: A Novel
“But we'd only had so many nights together, and the notebook had so many pages, and the world was never going to get bigger.”
Source: The Secret Year
“But we danced, under wigs and between unfinished walls, through broken promises and around empty cupboards.”
Source: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
“But we did conclude that Ray had actually killed Dr. King pursuant to his theory that he was going to be able to get hold of that money. He had learned of this offer through his ties in the Missouri State Penitentiary.”
“But we did see the process develop. I remember going to the Rocket Pictures base and they had something like 40 people there, drawing. They didn't know what the characters looked like yet and I remember on the walls seeing 30 or 40 different versions of Juliet. So, it was then that I realised that someone's got to come in and make some really executive decisions.”
“But we didn't love each other," he said matter-of-factly. It upset her to hear him say it. Someone should love her. Even her children-- they needed her, but she was the one who did the loving.”
Source: Three Masquerades: Novellas
“But we didn't, not in the moonlight, or by the phosphorescent lanterns of lightning bugs in your back yard, not beneath the constellations we couldn't see, let alone decipher, or in the dark glow that replaced the real darkness of night, a darkness already stolen from us, not with the skyline rising behind us while a city gradually decayed, not in the heat of summer while a Cold War raged, despite the freedom of youth and the license of first love-because of fate, karma, luck, what does it matter?-we made not doing it a wonder, and yet we didn't, we didn't, we never did.”
Source: I Sailed with Magellan
“But we discovered that, although I liked publishing, the commercial side meant nothing at all to me.”
“But we disposable women have to be realistic in this life, you know. Else we get itchy and discontented and start contemplating the kitchen knife and wondering whether it wouldn't look nicer between someone's shoulder-blades.”
Source: The Taste of Sorrow
“But we do have confidence in our institutions. We are not Russia. We have an executive that is constrained. We have a legislature that is real. We have a press that is free. We have courts that are independent. This is not Russia.”
“But we do have something we never had before: we have the added pressure of time. We can no longer wait around for the ideal opportunity. If we have not achieved our early dreams, we must either find new ones or see what we can salvage from the old. If we have accomplished what we set out to do in our youth, then we need not weep like Alexander the Great that we have no more worlds to conquer. There is clearly much left to be done, and whatever else we are going to do, we had better get on with it.”
Source: Everything to Gain: Making the Most of the Rest of Your Life
“But we do need a breather. We do need knowledge. And perhaps in a thousand years we might pick smaller cliffs to jump off. The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. They’re Caesar’s praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, ‘Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.’ Most of us can’t rush around, talk to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven’t time, money or that many friends. The things you’re looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book.”
Source: Fahrenheit 451
“But we do not choose our deaths. The Norns do that at the foot of Yggdrasil and I imagined one of those three Fates holding the shears above my thread. She was ready to cut, and all that mattered now was to keep tight hold of my sword so that the winged women would take me to Valhalla's feasting-hall.”
Source: Death of Kings
“But we do not merely protest; we make renewed demand for freedom in that vast kingdom of the human spirit where freedom has ever had the right to dwell:the expressing of thought to unstuffed ears; the dreaming of dreams by untwisted souls.”
“But we do now receive a certain portion of His Spirit, tending towards perfection, and preparing us for incorruption, being little by little accustomed to receive and bear God”
“But we don't do things like that!" said Vimes. "You can't go around arresting the Thieves' Guild. I mean, we'd be at it all day!”
Source: Guards! Guards!
“But we don’t merely meet each other as unique individuals or in healthy social circumstances. We meet each other in the current atmosphere of disconnection and distrust. We meet each other as members of groups. We meet each other embedded in systems of power in which some groups have more and some groups have less. We meet each other in a society in which members of the red team and members of the blue team often stand apart and glare across metaphorical walls with bitterness and incomprehension. Our encounters are shaped by our historical inheritances—the legacies of slavery, elitism, sexism, prejudice, bigotry, and economic and social domination. You can’t get to know another person while pretending not to see ideology, class, race, faith, identity, or any of the other fraught social categories.
These days, if you want to know someone well, you have to see the person in front of you as a distinct and never-to-be repeated individual. But you’ve also got to see that person as a member of their groups. And you’ve also got to see their social location—the way some people are insiders and other people are outsiders, how some sit on the top of society and some are marginalized to the fringes. The trick is to be able to see each person on these three levels all at once.”
Source: How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
“But we don’t pray to change the world (or, in this case, the cactus); we pray to change ourselves, and so I continue my supplications—my begging and protestations—in the hopes that I may alter my own perception of this bitter flavor.”
Source: Death Valley
“But we don’t run on facts. We run on stories about things. About people.”
Source: Babylon’s Ashes
“But we don't have a right to force anyone to abandon their faith. It is one of the foundational commitments of who we are as Americans to respect diversity.”
“But we don't have an example of a democratic society existing in a socialist economy - which is the only real alternative to capitalism in the modern world.”
“But we don’t need more gimmicks and gadgets; all we need do is reimagine the way we travel. If we truly want to know the secret of soulful travel, we need to believe that there is something sacred waiting to be discovered in virtually every journey.”
“But we don’t remember those lives. We can’t read our diaries.’ ‘It doesn’t matter. We are where we are, however we got here. What matters is where we go next.’ ‘But can we choose that?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘We’re Dead. Can we really choose anything?’ ‘Maybe. If we want to bad enough.”
Source: Warm Bodies: A Novel
“But we either believe in democracy or we don't. If we do, then, we must say categorically, without qualification, that no restraint from the any democratic processes, other than by the ordinary law of the land, should be allowed. If you believe in democracy, you must believe in it unconditionally. If you believe that men should be free, then, they should have the right of free association, of free speech, of free publication. Then, no law should permit those democratic processes to be set at nought.”
“But we fall only that we might rise, Alfred. All of us fall; all of us, as you say, screw up. Falling is not important. It is how we get up after the fall that's important.”
Source: The extraordinary adventures of Alfred Kropp
“But we fear him for you, dear. You are so young and inexperienced, you have lived among such nice people, that you cannot realise what men can be — how they can take a brutal pleasure in insulting a woman whom her sex does not protect and rally round.”
Source: A Room with a View
“But we get accustomed to mental as well as bodily pain, without, for all that, losing our sensibility to it. It becomes a habit of our lives, and we cease to imagine a condition of perfect ease as possible for us. Desire is chastened into submission, and we are contented with our day when we have been able to bear our grief in silence and act as if we were not suffering.”
Source: Adam Bede
“But we glared into each other's eyes like men who have ruined each other already, and who only wait to make the full disaster known”
Source: Fatal Throne
“But we go out as a band because we enjoy each others company, first of all. And its the payoff for me, to go out and play my art and still play guitar, which is my life.”
“But we got up there and decided to stick to this mix of power chords and funk and that's where it really started for us. In having the courage to take that decision. To take a gamble not just with our music but our lives”
“But we had - I think if you look at law enforcement 10 years ago, if you look at the challenges, the FBI was focused excessively on what was happening in the United States.”
“But we had a fantastic coach, Simon Clifford, who runs a British football youth game which teaches Brazilian techniques; which is what we wanted to incorporate into the film. And some of those things we eventually got in.”
“But we had a pretty diversified portfolio of businesses around the world and things tended to offset each other. But one or two years ago, we had a lot of things happening at the same time.”
“But we had with us, to keep and to care for, more than five hundred bruised bodies of men- men made in the image of God, marred by the hand of man and must we say in the name of God? And where is the reckoning for such things? And who is answerable? One might almost shrink from the sound of his own voice, which had launched into the palpitating air words of order- do we call it? - fraught with such ruin. Was it God's command we heard or His forgiveness we must forever implore?”
“But we hav always resisted slavery. Our constant resistance was central to bringing about slavery's end. I came here not only to recover then history of this resistance, but also to specifically find the women whose stories had been written out of slave revolts. After reading every scrap of every story about slave revolts, I came across ones that included women, but only if I read between the lines.”
Source: Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts
“But we have a war of ideals and ideas, and that is to sell democracy.”
“But we have achieved at least two important things. Afghanistan is no longer a safe haven for international terrorists. We have a strong Afghan army, which is fighting the terrorists and Taliban. And the second thing is that they are able to do that without us being there to conduct the combat operations.”
“But we have been taught to see before our eyes have found out a way of seeing for themselves.”
Source: The collected works of Arthur Symons
“But we have been to the Pole and we shall die like gentlemen. I regret only for the women we leave behind.”
Source: Journals: Captain Scott's Last Expedition
“But we have created a society that does not allow opportunities for those people to take care of themselves because we have denied them those opportunities.”
“But we have gone so far in the direction of over treating terminal patients that we've failed to recognize when we're doing more harm than good.”
“But we have, if not our understanding, our own experience, and it feels to me sealed, inviolable, ours. We have a last, deep week together, because Wally is not on morphine yet, because he has just enough awareness, just enough ability to communicate with me. I’m with him almost all day and night- little breaks, for swimming, for walking the dogs. Outside it snows and snows, deeper and deeper; we seem to live in a circle of lamplight. I rub his feet, make him hot cider. All week I feel like we’re taking one another in, looking and looking. I tell him I love him and he says I love you, babe, and then when it’s too hard for him to speak he smiles back at me with the little crooked smile he can manage now, and I know what it means. I play music for him, the most encompassing and quiet I can find: Couperin, Vivaldi, the British soprano Lesley Garret singing arias he loved, especially the duet from Lakme: music of freedom, diving, floating. How can this be written? Shouldn’t these sentences simply be smithereened apart, broken in a hurricane?
All that afternoon he looks out at us though a little space in his eyes, but I know he sees and registers: I know that he’s loving us, actively; if I know nothing else about this man, after nearly thirteen years, I know that. I bring all the animals, and then I sit there myself, all afternoon, the lamps on. The afternoon’s so quiet and deep it seems almost to ring, like chimes, a cold, struck bell. I sit into the evening, when he closes his eyes.
There is an inaudible roaring, a rush beneath the surface of things, beneath the surface of Wally, who has now almost no surface- as if I could see into him, into the great hurrying current, that energy, that forward motion which is life going on.
I was never this close to anyone in my life. His living’s so deep and absolute that it pulls me close to that interior current, so far inside his life. And my own. I know I am going to be more afraid than I have ever been, but right now I am not afraid. I am face to face with the deepest movement in the world, the point of my love’s deepest reality- where he is most himself, even if that self empties out into no one, swift river hurrying into the tumble of rivers, out of individuality, into the great rushing whirlwind of currents. All the love in the world goes with you.”
Source: Heaven's Coast: A Memoir
“But we have inherited a vast number of social ills which never came from Nature. They are the complicated products of all the tinkering, muddling, and blundering of social doctors in the past.”
Source: What Social Classes Owe to Each Other
“But we have no [Marian] apparitions cautioning the Church against, say, accepting the delusion of an Earth-centered Universe, or warning it of complicity with Nazi Germany — two matters of considerable moral as well as historical import....
Not a single saint criticized the practice of torturing and burning “witches” and heretics. Why not? Were they unaware of what was going on? Could they not grasp its evil? And why is [the Virgin] Mary always admonishing the poor peasant to inform the authorities? Why doesn’t she admonish the authorities herself? Or the King? Or the Pope?”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“But we have not used our waters well. Our major rivers are defiled by noxious debris. Pollutants from cities and industries kill the fish in our streams. Many waterways are covered with oil slicks and contain growths of algae that destroy productive life and make the water unfit for recreation. "Polluted Water-No Swimming" has become a familiar sign on too many beaches and rivers. A lake that has served many generations of men now can be destroyed by man in less than one generation.”