B Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with B. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“But what if I make a mistake?' Will asked. Gilan threw back his head and laughed. 'A mistake? One mistake? You should be so lucky. You'll make dozens! I made four or five on my first day alone! Of course you'll make mistakes. Just don't make any of them twice. If you do mess things up, don't try to hide it. Don't try to rationalize it. Recognize it and admit it and learn from it. We never stop learning, none of us.”
“But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yea the very fiend himself— that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved— what then?”
“But what if I were another kind of man? What if I were the sort to have taken advantage of our unusual situation? You must realize, Miss Amberley, that had I wished, I might have done almost anything to you by now."
A startled laugh escaped her lips. "Are you saying you might have murdered me in my bed? Do not be ridiculous, my lord."
"I wasn't thinking about murder, but beds would definitely have been involved.”
Source: Tempted by His Kiss
“But, what if it's not a mistake? What if it's true?"
"Well then, my angel... you'll be a very rich woman indeed.”
Source: The Family Upstairs
“But what if it were you? What if you were stuffed in a human body and let loose on this planet only to find yourself lost among your own kind? What if you were such a good person that you tried to save the life that you'd taken that you almost died trying to get her back to her family? What if you then found yourself surrounded by violent aliens who hated you and tried to hurt you and tried to murder you over and over again? What if you just kept doing whatever you could to save and heal people despite that? Wouldn't you deserve a life too? Wouldn't you have earned that much?”
“But what if music is what escapes when a heart breaks?”
Source: The Sky Is Everywhere
“But what if one day there is no video store?' Nora thought about Mrs. Elm, panicking at the computer, and the flickering lights in the library. 'What if one day you disappear for good? Before you have found a life to settle in?'
He shrugged, 'Then I will die. And it means I would have died anyway. In the life I lived before, I kind of like being a slider. I like imperfection. I like keeping death as an option. I like never having to settle.'
'I think my situation is different. I think my death is more imminent. If I don't find a life to live in pretty soon, I think I'll be gone for good.”
Source: The Midnight Library
“But what if pleasure and pain should be so closely connected that he who wants the greatest possible amount of the one must also have the greatest possible amount of the other, that he who wants to experience the "heavenly high jubilation," must also be ready to be "sorrowful unto death"?”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Illustrated): Friedrich Nietzsche
“But what if Shakespeare― and Hamlet― were asking the wrong question? What if the real question is not whether to be, but how to be?”
“But what if that’s not true? What if”—his voice cracked—“what if God had no intentions about us at all?”
Source: Omphalos
“But what if the capture of the young calf had never occurred? Tilikum might still be swimming free in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, chasing his cherished herring, perhaps alongside his mother. He might be surrounded by siblings, nieces, and nephews, and his grandmother might still be leading the pod.
An oceanic Tilikum would be gliding through his boundless home with fearless power and majestic grace, his fin erect, his teeth intact, his interactions with humans minimal and nonlethal. There would be no need for gelatin or Tagamet, antibiotics or isolation.
And of course, if Tilikum had never been wrenched away from his family and friends, entirely for the amusement of humans, the family and friends of Keltie Byrne, Daniel Dukes, and Dawn Brancheau might not be grieving to this day.
Tilikum was trying to tell us something. It was time to listen.”
“But what if the devil is just a woman who was banished to hell to stoke the flames as punishment for standing up to him?”
Source: The Witch Doesn't Burn in This One
“But what if the great secret insider-trading truth is that you don't ever get over the biggest losses in your life? Is that good news, bad news, or both?
The good news is that if you don't seal up your heart with caulking compound, and instead stay permeable, people stay alive inside you, and maybe outside you, too, forever.
This is also the bad news, not because your heart will continue to hurt forever, but because grief is so frowned upon, so hard for even intimate bystanders to witness, that you will think you must be crazy for not getting over it. You think it's best to keep this a secret, even if it cuts you off from certain aspects of life, like, say, the truth of your heart, and all that is real.
The pain does grow less acute, but the insidious palace lie that we will get over crushing losses means that our emotional GPS can never find true north, as it is based on maps that no longer mention the most important places we have been to.”
Source: Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair by Anne Lamott
“But what if the monsters come?"
"Fancy." Kit looked away from the drama to stare at her sister, surprised. "We are the monsters.”
Source: Slice of Cherry
“But what if the story should quit while it’s ahead?” “How do you know unless you give the story another chance?”
Source: What If It's Us
“But what if the weapons we healthcare providers employ are inadequate to help patients in their fight? Is it possible that we are missing a key component to our understanding and treatment of illness?”
“But what if they ask about us? I thought. What if this falls apart?”
Source: The Insatiable: A sinister tale of an elusive mastermind
“But what if things aren’t what they seem? As you said, there is no truth in the Digital Sea.” “Eventually we must cling to some reality,” Mekena said. “Even if we are not sure it is the most real. One can wait for a whole lifetime for the reality we want and miss the one we have in our hands.”
Source: The Digital Sea
“But what if time worked the other way around?
What if what his adolescent self had felt then was the ghost of his present one, sitting here on a sagging bench, beckoning him into his future?”
Source: City on Fire
“But what if we are dealing with fools?”
“But what if we took it one step further and made an effort to actually transform our pain into something beautiful? What if we went full out and made an effort to transform other people’s pain into something beautiful?”
“But what if what the working class—white, black, Hispanic, etc.— needs most isn’t a check from the government but inclusion in community? And what if the most accessible form of community—the church—is under constant assault by both culture and the government? And finally, what if the elites frowning upon the deplorable poor won’t include them in their community, citing their deplorability?”
Source: Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse
“But what if you are a smart girl in love? All because I was a book nerd didn’t mean, I didn’t feel, I didn’t want. Shylock had cried out in excess of pain, “If you prick me do I not bleed!” But a book nerd is not allowed to be human, to say “you make me melt” and still have her mind want something else entirely?”
Source: The Innocent: A Myth
“But what if you discover that the price of purpose is to render invisible so many other things?”
Source: Acceptance: A Novel
“But what if you simply don't have a solid self to return to—if the way you are is seen as basically broken? And what if you can't conceive of "normal" or "healthy" because pain and loneliness are all you remember?”
“But what if you're wrong?
What if there's more?
What if there's hope you never dreamed of hoping for?
What if you jump?
And just close your eyes?
What if the arms that catch you, catch you by surprise?
What if He's more than enough?
What if it's love?”
“But what if your fire is not burning well or, worse, has gone out? Without inner fire, you have no light, no heat, no desire... there's only one way out - and that's through the dark woods. You must change your life.”
Source: Stoking the Creative Fires: 9 Ways to Rekindle Passion and Imagination
“But what if your first love is a story of darkness, of broken trust, of heartache?”
Source: Winter Hearts
“But what if your kid runs into the street in front of a car? Don't you have to use Method I?" ... If a child develops a habit of running into the street, a parent might first try to talk to the child about the dangers of cars, walk her around the edge of the yard, and tell her that anything beyond is not safe, show her a picture of a child hit by a car, build a fence around the yard, or watch her when she is playing in the front yard for a couple of days, reminding her each time she goes beyond the limits. Even if I took the punishment approach, I would never risk my child's life on the assumption that punishment alone would keep her from going into the street. I would want to employ more certain methods in any event.”
Source: Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children
“But what if your obsession has nothing to do with drugs or thrills or money? What if what you want most in the world is to recapture the way life was a week, a month, a year ago-and you are willing to do whatever it takes?”
Source: Perfect Match
“But what if...what if you sincerely believed something was true, but you were dead wrong? What if you were so stubbornly sure that you were right, that you wouldn’t even consider the truth? Would the truth be silenced, or would it try to break through?”
“But what is a dream, Conor O'Malley? the monster said, bending down so it's face was close to Conor's. Who is to say that it is not everything else that is the dream?”
Source: A Monster Calls
“But what is a soul? Does it even exist? Is it just a pretty name we give to the concept of sentience, or is it something that transcends science? And if it is, are we imbued with one at birth, or is a soul something we build ourselves? Can we inherit a soul? And if we can, does that mean we can also inherit the absence of one?”
“but what is a soul in comparison with a night’s pleasure?”
Source: Desperate Measures
“But what is after all the happiness of mere power? There is a greater happiness possible than to be lord of heaven and earth; that is the happiness of being truly loved.”
Source: Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn
“But what is all this fear of and opposition to Oblivion? What is the matter with the soft Darkness, the Dreamless Sleep?”
Source: James Thurber: Writings & Drawings (including The Secret Life of Walter Mitty)
“But what is art other than revealing human nature?”
“But what is classification but the perceiving that these objects are not chaotic, and are not foreign, but have a law which is also the law of the human mind?”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)
“But what is coffee, but a noxious berry, Born to keep used-up Londoners awake?”
Source: Verses and Translations
“But what is courage? In a world saturated with images of action-figure bravado, we may mistakenly believe that courage is the absence of fear. Instead, it is the capacity to think, speak, and act despite our fear and shame.”
Source: The Dance of Fear: Rising Above Anxiety, Fear, and Shame to Be Your Best and Bravest Self
“But what is criticism? Criticism is purely destructive; anyone can destroy, but not everyone can build up.”
Source: Of Human Bondage (人性枷鎖)
“But what is devotion, eh? Taking what is offered with both hands. That’s devotion.”
“But what is drama? Broadly speaking, it is whatever by imitative action rouses interest or gives pleasure.”
“But what is freedom? Freedom from what? There is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else.”
Source: Anthem
“But what is frightening is not the thought of the unknown: it is the thought that there may not be an unknown, only an end.”
Source: Now and at the Hour of Our Death
“But what is great can only begin great.”
Source: An Introduction to Metaphysics
“But what is grief, if not love perservering”
“But what is grief, if not love persevering?”
“But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?”
Source: Lyrical and Critical Essays
“But what is happiness? If we consider what the function of man is, we find that happiness is a virtuous activity of the soul.”