B Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with B. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“But what about "time"? After all it is not a bundle in which past, future and present are wrapped up together. Time is not a cage in which the "no longer now," the "not yet now," and the "now" are cooped up together. How do matters stand with "time"? They stand thus: time goes. And it goes in that it passes away. The passing of time is, of course, a coming, but a coming which goes, in passing away. What comes in time never comes to stay, but to go. What comes in time always bears beforehand the mark of going past and passing away. This is why everything temporal is regarded simply as what is transitory.”
Source: What is called thinking?
“But what about you? Have you prayed about your own ancestors’ work? Set aside those things in your life that don’t really matter. Decide to do something that will have eternal consequences. Perhaps you have been prompted to look for ancestors but feel you are not a genealogist. Can you see that you don’t have to be anymore? It all begins with love and a sincere desire to help those beyond the veil who can’t help themselves. Check around. There will be someone in your area who can help you have success.”
“But what after all, behind appearances, is this seeming mystery? We can see that it is the Consciousness which had lost itself returning again to itself, emerging out of its giant self-forgetfulness, slowly, painfully, as a Life that is would be sentient, half-sentient, dimly sentient, wholly sentient and finally struggles to be more than sentient, to be again divinely selfconscious, free, infinite, immortal.”
“But what all the violence of the feudal institutions could never have effected, the silent and insensible operation of foreign commerce and manufactures gradually brought about.”
Source: The Wealth of Nations: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
“But what am I? An infant crying in the night: An infant crying for the light: And with no language but a cry.”
“But what an mortal man do to secure his own salvation?" Mortal man can do just what God bids him do. Be can repent and believe. He can arise and follow Christ as Matthew did.”
“But what answer? Well that the soul-for she was conscious of a movement in her of some creature beating its way about her and trying to escape which momentarily she called the soul-is by nature unmated, a widow bird; a bird perched aloof on that tree.”
Source: A Summing Up
“But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead man is, after a while. And since a dead man has no substance unless one has actually seen him dead, a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination.”
Source: The Plague
“But what are facts, really, except things we’ve already proven? There could be lots of almost-facts out there, still waiting for proof.”
Source: Intruders at Rivermead Manor: A Kit Mystery
“But what are loyalty and caring really worth?" "To me? Everything.”
“But what are our stories if not the mirrors we hold up to our fears?”
“But what are pity, conscience, or fear To the brazen pair, compared With the living sorcery Of their hot embraces?”
“But what are we going to do?" Colonel Cathcart exclaimed with distress. "The others are all waiting outside."
"Why don't we give him a medal?" Colonel Korn proposed.
"For going around twice? What can we give him a medal for?"
"For goung around twice," Colonel Korn answered with a reflective, self-satisfied smile. "After all, I suppose it did take a lot of courage to go over the target a second time with no other planes around to divert the antiaircraft fire. And he did hit the bridge. You know, that might be the answer—to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That's a trick that never seems to fail.”
Source: Catch-22
“But what are wishes, compared with longings?”
Source: The diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner
“But what are years, what are months!" he would exclaim. "Why count the days, when even one day is enough for man to know all happiness.”
Source: The Brothers Karamazov: A Novel in Four Parts With Epilogue
“But what are you going to do about the people who are cursed with both hearts and brains?”
“But what aren't you doing already? What more can you possibly do?’
‘I guess he means the team stuff’, I said. ‘The bonding. The camaraderie I've never really been –‘.
‘Don't start judging yourself’, she said sharply. ‘Don't start seeing yourself in the light of those kinds of standards.’
‘No, but it's true. There's always been the part of work I've struggled with, the unquestioning side. The feeling of joining in. I've always tried to do it at this kind of remove. Maybe what he's saying is –‘
‘Of course you've done it at a remove. How else are you supposed to do it and still be you?’
‘But maybe those days are gone’, I said. ‘Maybe I have to accept that. Maybe there just won't be those kind of jobs anymore - the ones where you can roll out of bed and staggering without speaking to anyone and keep your head down and just do it, you know? maybe this is what work is, now’
[…]
‘Definitely. Simple tasks can be automated. They've already almost got the machine learning to do what you do. It's about what else a human can bring to the table, which is, literally, their humanity.’
It was possible, I realised, to imagine. A semi-global future in which the bulk of paid human employment would revolve not around hard skills, but around the messy, blurry business of interpersonal success. A new divide would open up, between the well liked, The easy to get along with, and the awkward, The rude, the unfriendly. I pictured the encampment on which I had lived, filled not as it was then, with migrants, unfortunates, hard drinkers, the out of luck. But instead, the abrasive, the poorly adjusted, the excessively reserved and painfully shy. (p.136-7)”
Source: Come Join Our Disease
“But what bear could resist ripe strawberries as a break from the ocean's wrack line smorgasbord of half-dead hermit crabs and rotting salmon carcasses?”
Source: Light Years: Memoir of a Modern Lighthouse Keeper
“But what began in 1941 was a process of destruction not planned in advance, not organized centrally by any agency. There was no blueprint and there was no budget for destructive measures. They were taken step by step, one step at a time. Thus came about not so much a plan being carried out, but an incredible meeting of minds, a consensus - mind reading by a far-flung bureaucracy.”
“But what can a decent man speak of with most pleasure? Answer: Of himself. Well, so I will talk about myself.”
Source: White Nights and Other Stories
“But what can a man see of a library being one day in it?”
Source: James Boswell: the journal of his German and Swiss travels, 1764
“But what can be done, the one who loves must share the fate of the one he loves.”
Source: The Master and Margarita
“But what can be done, the one who loves must share the fate of the who is loved.”
“But what can you say in a letter?”
“But what captured him was a light in the river
folding open and open
blood, heart and stones
shimmering like the Milky Way.”
Source: She Had Some Horses
“But what choice does it have? As long as Israel is perceived by its enemies to be vulnerable, many Arabs and radical Muslims will continue to make Israelis kill them... When Israeli soldiers kill Arabs by accident, they mourn—and it causes psychological damage to those soldiers, and to all of Israeli society. The wars the Arab states have instigated are bloody and cruel, and a heavy price is paid by Israel, even when it wins. And win it must, because one loss means the loss of Israel.”
Source: The Case for a Larger Israel
“But what club wouldn't welcome the chance to strengthen their side, what club would turn down the resources Chelsea have?”
“But what could I do? Be stupid for a while? I wasn't sure I knew how, even after so many years of careful observation.”
Source: Darkly Dreaming Dexter
“But what could I lose by continuing that had not already been lost?”
Source: Let It Snow: Three Holiday Stories
“But what could you do? Only keep going. People kept going; they had been doing it for thousands of years. You took the kindness offered, letting it seep as far in as it could go, and the remaining dark crevices you carried around with you, knowing that over time they might change into something almost bearable.”
Source: Amy & Isabelle
“But what counter-insurgency really comes down to is the protection of the capitalists back in America, their property and their privileges. U.S. national security, as preached by U.S. leaders, is the security of the capitalist class in the US, not the security of the rest of the people.”
“But what Dakota most enjoyed about the beginning of winter was the crispness of the air (that practically demanded the wearing of knits) and the way that tough New Yorkers - on the street, in elevators, in subways - were suddenly willing to risk a smile. To make a connection with a stranger. To finally see one another after strenuously avoiding eye contact all year.”
Source: Knit the Season
“But what Davenport had been born into had taken so much from her, leaving her with just the wickedest and the worst. Her father had given her life, and then taken every scrap of joy or freedom, and even now that he was dead, all he had left her with was a deep, abiding hatred for what she was.”
“But what did I have to be embarrassed about? It wasn't my fault. The only person who should have been embarrassed by his behavior was the man who had violated me. Why was I carrying around his shame for him? Why are women always running around picking up men's shame like dirty socks.”
Source: Hold On, But Don't Hold Still
“But what did it mean to find me, a slave, dreaming amid those books?”
Source: The Water Dancer
“But what did she want? Mostly she wanted to be loved and left alone. Not sequentially, but simultaneously. Love me. And leave me the fuck alone.”
Source: Bad Ideas: A Novel
“But what difference does it make who spoke the words? They were uttered for the world.”
“But what difference does it make? ... When you're mixed, you see how absurd this business of race is.”
“But what do I care, for love will be over so soon,
Let my heart have its say and my mind stand idly by,
For my mind is proud and strong enough to be silent,
It is my heart that makes my songs, not I.”
Source: Flame and Shadow
“But what do I have? The things I'm told and the things I tell, that's all. And as far as I know, that never yet made anyone fly.”
Source: The Storyteller: A Novel
“But what do they get by the change? One dog sated with meat is replaced by a hungrier dog who bites nearer the bone. Out goes the man grown fat with honor, and in comes a hungry and a lean man.”
Source: Wolf Hall
“But what do we do when both our worlds are dark?
We do what you said. We both go out and see it. We defy the dark. When we might want to bury our heads under a pile of blankets and shut the world out—we venture into that very world. Climb a hill, a rise, a peak. Find the moon when it's big and full. And we look it full in the face. Midnight my time, ten o'clock yours, next full moon.”
Source: Born of Gilded Mountains
“But what do we know of the heart nearest to our own? What do we know of our own heart?”
Source: Jan Vedder's Wife
“But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties and obligations ... This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution.”
“But what do you believe? I don't just mean religion. What are you sure of?" "That once I was not and that now I am. That one day I shall no longer be.”
Source: The Children of Men
“But what do you do when trauma distorts love into something cloying and fraught? Unresolved ghosts just grow stronger across generations, destroying children with the very things their parents swore to save them from.”
Source: Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir
“But what do you say if you're asked a direct question and you can't tell the truth and you can't tell a lie?'
'You say “how very interesting” and change the subject.”
Source: 10 Lb. Penalty
“But what does he do to qualify as a sonovabitch?” Jenny asked. “Make me”, I replied. “Beg pardon?” “Make me”, I repeated. Her eyes widened like saucers. “You mean like incest?” she asked. “Don’t give me your family problems, Jen. I have enough of my own.” “Like what, Oliver?” she asked, “like just what is it he makes you do?” “The ‘right things’”, I said. “What’s wrong with the ‘right things’?” she asked, delighting in the apparent paradox.”
“But what does he profit if the man gains the world but loses his soul?”
“But what does interest me is the notion that if you do a lot of work it means there's a potential for other people to understand that a lot of things are possible with a sustained effort and that the broadening of experiences is possible and I think that's all art can be.”