B Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with B. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“But what does it matter?" Verne said. "The rules and codes were artificial. They were good only as long as they could be enforced. Now there's no one to enforce them. So they don't have any meaning. They were just conventions. Don't confuse them with innate moral laws. They were just rules, nothing more. Man made. They came, now they're gone again. The yuks will have their own rules.”
Source: Gather yourselves together
“But what does it mean to be on God's side? I believe it starts with focusing on the common good - not just in politics, but in all the decisions we make in our personal, family, vocational, financial, communal, and, public lives. That old but always new ethic simply says we must care for more than just ourselves or our own group. We must care for our neighbor as well, and for the health of the life we share with one another. It echoes a very basic tenet of Christianity and other faiths - love your neighbor as yourself - still the most transformational ethic in history.”
“But what does it mean, the plague? It's life, that's all.”
“But what does that mean, to "identify" as a gril? Just because you feel like you´re a girl doesn´t mean that you really are”
Source: None of the Above
“But what does that say about aspirational living? Hey, you moved into a big house and you made it...except you didn't. There's this idea that you will be safe if you just get famous enough, successful enough, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, move into the right neighborhood, do all these things to fully assimilate into the America people have been sold on. We all bought in, and we keep thinking if we just get over this mountain of assimilation, on the other side is a pot of gold. Or maybe a unicorn, perhaps a leprechaun. Any of those is as plausible as the acceptance of the wholeness of me. But there's just another mountain on the other side. And someone will be ready to tell you, "Don't be breathing hard. You need to make this look easy.”
Source: We're Going to Need More Wine
“But what doesn’t die is the love we give to others. There is no end to that.”
Source: Small Acts of Amazing Courage
“But what else can I do, other than to plead with you like this? Other than to write down my story, our story, to show you that what you've done . . . to make you realize that what you did wasn't fair, wasn't right.”
Source: Stolen
“But what else can that hypothetical actor-filmmaker do? How does he find meaningful human connection in a world of people who falsely believe they are already connected to him?”
Source: The Answers
“But what else can we do when we're so weak? We invest hours each day, months each year, years each lifetime in something over which we have no control; it is any wonder then, that we are reduced to creating ingenious but bizarre liturgies designed to give us the illusion that we are powerful after all, just as every other primitive community has done when faced with a deep and apparently impenetrable mystery?”
“But what enhanced for Kublai every event or piece of news reported by his inarticulate informer was the space that remained around it, a void not filled with words. The descriptions of cities Marco Polo visited had this virtue: you could wander through them in thought, become lost, stop and enjoy the cool air, or run off.”
Source: Invisible Cities
“But what even is truth? Because we all have different perceptions and those perceptions shape our truths. And two contradicting things can be true at once.”
Source: Nobody Knows But You
“But what exceeds all wonders, I have discovered four new planets and observed their proper and particular motions, different among themselves and from the motions of all the other stars; and these new planets move about another very large star [Jupiter] like Venus and Mercury, and perchance the other known planets, move about the Sun. As soon as this tract, which I shall send to all the philosophers and mathematicians as an announcement, is finished, I shall send a copy to the Most Serene Grand Duke, together with an excellent spyglass, so that he can verify all these truths.”
“But what first motivated me wasn't anything I read. I just got mad seeing the machines ripping up the woods.”
“But what force in the galaxy is stronger than she is?" "Indifference." Jerusha surprised herself with the answer. "Indifference, Gundhalinu, is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hate don't stand a chance against it. It lets neglect and decay and monstrous injustice go unchecked. It doesn't act, it allows. And that's what gives it so much power.”
“But what Freud showed us… was that nothing can be grasped, destroyed, or burnt, except in a symbolic way, as one says, in effigie, in absentia.”
Source: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis
“But what goes on in my life outside of the game should be my business.”
“But what good are scars if they do not ache?
And what good are eyes if they do not weep?
What good is desire if it does not hurt?
What good is a passion if it stays ‘sleep?”
Source: Of Endeavours Blue
“But what good is the popular opinion, if the lot of us just process like minions?”
Source: Healology
“But what had happened, had happened, and it was no longer possible to right anything.”
“But what had lasting significance were not the miracles themselves but Jesus' love. Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from the dead, and a few years later, Lazarus died again. Jesus healed the sick, but eventually caught some other disease. He fed the ten thousands, and the next day they were hungry again. But we remember his love. It wasn't that Jesus healed a leper but that he touched a leper, because no one touched lepers.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“But what had really happened? It was still unclear. Was it possible nothing of any significance had ever happened between us and our ending was just the sad process of realizing this?”
Source: The Answers
“But what happens to the girl with no positive parental examples?
What happens to the girl with the cold mother who
conditioned herself to bury her emotions?
And what happens to the girl with the father who
is an example of who not to marry?”
“But what happens when her beauty is torn from her like a cover from a book? Will he care to read her then, although her pages speak of nothing but love for him?”
“But what happens when there’s a ripple in the flow and it turns out to be more than you can handle?”
“But what has happened is that emotional evolution has not caught up with our economics. We are still haunted by the outdated myth that women need men.”
Source: Just Another Number
“But what have I, but what have I, my friend,
To give you, what can you receive from me?
Only the friendship and the sympathy
Of one about to reach her journey's end.”
Source: The Waste Land and Other Poems
“But what he didn't understand was that this dreamland was preferable, walking through this life half-sleeping, everything at arm's length or farther away. I understood those mermaids. I didn't care if they sang to me. All I wanted was to block out all the human voices as they called me name again and again, pulling me upward into light, to drown.”
“But what he does behind closed doors could get him fired and me expelled.”
Source: Professor's Secret Baby
“But what he hadn’t expected was that when everyone feared him and flattered him, Lan WangJi scolded him right in his face; when everyone spurned him and loathed him, Lan WangJi stood by his side.”
Source: 魔道祖师 [Mó Dào Zǔ Shī]
“But what he said was true enough: I had recently destroyed a perfectly good set of wire braces by straightening them to pick a lock. Father had grumbled, of course, but had made another appointment to have me netted and dragged back up to London, to that third-floor ironmonger's shop in Farringdon Street, where I would be strapped to a board like Boris Karloff as various bits of ironmongery were shoved into my mouth, screwed in, and bolted to my gums.”
Source: The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag
“But what humans forget, cells remember. The body, that elephant”
Source: Middlesex
“But what, I ask, was life really like? What hard evidence do we have for what we might want to know about women's lives? No evidence means no real knowledge.”
Source: Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times
“But what I attach great importance to is observation of the movement of colors. It is only in this way that I have found the laws of complementary contrast and the simultaneity of those colors that nourish the rhythm of my vision. There I find the representative essence — which does not arise from a system or an a priori theory.”
“But what I believe is that if a person's individual rights or right to be a part of our economic system is violated under statute, we aggressively go after it. But we don't issue mandates to businesses that you've got to do this and you've got to do that.”
“But what I can do is paint you a picture of what you’ll never see when you’re with a guy who’s really into you: You’ll never see you staring maniacally at your phone, willing it to ring. You’ll never see you ruining an evening with friends because you’re calling for your messages every fifteen seconds. You’ll never see you hating yourself for calling him when you know you shouldn’t have. What you will see is you being treated so well that no phone antics will be necessary. You’ll be too busy being adored.”
Source: He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys
“But what I care most about is when the reader is finished with my work they can say, I don't know the particulars, but I know that emotion.”
“But what I could see out of the corner of my eye made me think of two lovely bundles of silk floating along a stream. In a moment they were hovering on the walkway in front of me, where they sank down and smoothed their kimono across their knees.”
“But what I did know was that I loved a girl. And I knew I loved her in a way I'd never, ever recover from. I knew I loved her to the very core of myself. And I knew she loved me back.”
“But what I did sense was an emptiness like a black hole inside of him, and there was no predicting what might emerge from a place like that.”
Source: In the Miso Soup
“But what I didn’t understand, never paused for a moment to consider, is that cocoons are inherently temporary, too tight a space in which to grow.”
Source: The Family Plot
“But what I didn't recognize when I was much younger was this sort of...when you're on, when you're really on, go at it.”
“But what I didnt want to have happen, and I made this clear to Jeremy (Florida AD), if I am able to go coach, I want to coach at one place, the University of Florida. It would be a travesty, it would be ridiculous to all of a sudden come back and get the feeling back, get the health back, feel good again and then all of a sudden go throw some other colors on my shirt and go coach? I dont want to do that. I have too much love for this University and these players and for what weve built.”
“But what I do believe is that if you're a girl who was born in Homsea, a girl who lives in a nothing kind of house with an ordinary kind of family, then you can't know everything about the world and that it's probably good to keep an open mind about things, just in case.”
“But what I do I do because I like to do.”
Source: A Clockwork Orange (Restored Text)
“But what I failed to see was that the reward wasn’t so much about finding love with another person but rather finding love within myself.”
Source: Stupid Love
“But what I found most interesting was that Aaron had apparently found a way to pass the time without her. Beside him, holding his hand, was a Moroi girl who looked about eleven but had to be older, unless he'd become a pedophile during our absence.”
Source: Vampire Academy: The Complete Collection
“But what I hate most is women always having to be passive … Why? Why are we always the ones running away and you are the ones chasing after us? Why is it always that we surrender and you take the spoils? Why is it that even in the way you beg, there is dominance, and pity in the way we refuse?”
Source: Kürk Mantolu Madonna
“But what I hope for from a book - either one that I write or one that I read - is transparency. I want the story to shine through. I don't want to think of the writer.”
“But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you. I love you. With all my heart, I love you.”
“But what I kept wondering about is this: that first second when she felt her skirt burning, what did she think? Before she knew it was candles, did she think she'd done it herself? With the amazing turns of her hips, and the warmth of the music inside her, did she believe, for even one glorious second, that her passion had arrived?”
Source: The Girl in the Flammable Skirt