B Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with B. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“But where does by far the bulk, the whole ambulance load, of pain really come from? Where must it come from? Isn't the true poet or painter a seer? Isn't he, actually, the only seer we have
on earth? Most apparently not the scientist, most emphatically not the psychiatrist.”
“But where does the silence that neglects her end, and where does the silence that respects her begin? The problem with silence is that it can’t speak up and say why it’s silent. And so silence collects, becomes amplified, takes on a life outside our intentions, in that silence can get misread as indifference, or avoidance, or even shame, and eventually this silence passes over into forgetting.”
Source: Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
“But where have [the Men] proved that we are not as capable of guarding ourselves from dangers, as they are of guarding us; had we the same power and advantages allowed us, which they have? (...) Are we safer under their conduct than our own? (...) There is scarce an instance in a million among Women, of one Woman of a middling capacity, who does not, or would not, govern herself better than most Men in parallel circumstances, if the circumvention, treachery, and baseness of that sex did not interfere.
(...) Most Women are ruin'd, instead of being improv'd in heart or mind under the conduct of the Men. And therefore, since we are at most in no greater safety under their government than our own, there can be no solid reason assign'd why we shou'd be subject to it.”
Source: Woman Not Inferior to Man
“But where I itty now, O my brothers, is all on my oddy knocky, where you cannot go. Tomorrow is all like sweet flowers and the turning vonny earth and the stars and the old Luna up there. ... And all that cal.”
Source: A Clockwork Orange (Restored Text)
“But where in all of this description is the essential chair? Have we yet come even close to a full description of it? Did we even mention that several hundred years ago, it wasn't a chair but a tree? Where is it now? Here? Or in memory.
We cannot even fully describe a chair and yet we say "I am." "I am...". Understand. There is no "I am." Nothing "is." Try to describe all that you are. Simultaneously discern the logical flaw in what I've just said. Now! Feel the white flame.”
Source: The Invisibles, Vol. 4: Bloody Hell in America
“But where is the antidote for lucid despair, perfectly articulated, proud, and sure? All of us are miserable, but how many know it? The consciousness of misery is too serious a disease to figure in an arithmetic of agonies or in the catalogues of the Incurable. It belittles the prestige of hell, and converts the slaughterhouses of time into idyls. What sin have you committed to be born, what crime to exist? Your suffering like your fate is without motive. To suffer, truly to suffer, is to accept the invasion of ills without the excuse of causality, as a favor of demented nature, as a negative miracle. . .”
Source: A short history of decay
“But where is what I started for so long ago? And why is it yet unfound?”
Source: Leaves of Grass
“But where love is concerned, I’d think you try to adjust and accommodate. If you are with someone you love, if you love that person so much, you’ll fit your life into a barrel, if need be.”
Source: Echoes of the Heartland
“But where only a free play of our presentational powers is to be sustained, as in the case of pleasure gardens, room decoration, all sorts of useful utensils, and so on, any regularity that has an air of constraint is [to be] avoided as much as possible. That is why the English taste in gardens, or the baroque taste in furniture, carries the imagination's freedom very far, even to the verge of the grotesque, because it is precisely this divorce from any constraint of a rule that the case is posited where taste can show its greatest perfection in designs made by the imagination.”
“But where pain was, healing could come; where loneliness was, new relationships could be formed; where rejection was, new love could be found. It was a moment. And moments changed. She would have to live through the moment to get to the next.”
“But where shall I start? The world is so vast, I shall start with the country I know best, my own. But my country is so very large, I had better start with my town. But my town, too, is large. I had best start with my street. No, my home. No, my family. Never mind, I shall start with myself.”
“But where th' extreme of vice, was ne'er agreed:
Ask where's the North? at York, 'tis on the Tweed;
In Scotland, at the Orcades; and there,
At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where:
No creature owns it in the first degree,
But thinks his neighbour farther gone than he!”
Source: An Essay on Man
“But where there is no art show, I would still be painting.”
“But where was God now, with heaven full of astronauts, and the Lord overthrown? I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don't think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray. I miss God who was my friend. I don't even know if God exists, but I do know that if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it. I have an idea that one day it might be possible, I thought once it had become possible, and that glimpse has set me wandering, trying to find the balance between earth and sky. If the servants hadn't rushed in and parted us, I might have been disappointed, might have snatched off the white samite to find a bowl of soup.
As it is, I can't settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me. There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other's names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name. Romantic love has been diluted into paperback form and has sold thousands and millions of copies. Somewhere it is still in the original, written on tablets of stone. I would cross seas and suffer sunstroke and give away all I have, but not for a man, because they want to be the destroyer and never the destroyed.”
Source: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
“But where was I to start? The world is so vast, I shall start with the country I knew best, my own. But my country is so very large. I had better start with my town. But my town, too, is large. I had best start with my street. No, my home. No, my family. Never mind, I shall start with myself.”
Source: Souls on Fire
“But where was the source of this River of Rage? High up in the lofty peaks of Guilt Mountain where Molly kept her anger in a cave called Henry.”
Source: The Squatter: An Old Castle Novel
“But where we see trash, God sees potential. The Mater Artist, with His tender touch, can rework our suffering into a pattern of good.”
Source: Coffee Shop Devos: Daily Devotional Pick-Me-Ups for Teen Girls
“But where will the Fed find another bubble?”
“But where would I go? What would I do? And who would I be in this new place? … I have thought on my earlier questions and have come up with my answers: Anywhere. Anything. And anyone.”
Source: Illusions
“But where, after all, would be the poetry of the sea were there no wild waves?”
Source: Sailing Alone Around the World
“But where, after we have made the great decision to leave the security of childhood and move on into the vastness of maturity, does anybody ever feel completely at home?”
Source: A Circle of Quiet
“But where, says some, is the King of America? I'll tell you. Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain.”
Source: Common Sense
“But whereas a puppy will cringe away or roll on its back, groveling, a little boy may cover his shyness with nonchalance, with bravado, or with secrecy. And once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even where it does not exist-or, worse, will draw it forth from people simply by expecting it.”
Source: East of Eden, And, The Wayward Bus
“But whereas Cyrus wanted his praises to be sung by all human beings, Xenophon was concerned primarily with honor from his friends.[125] Unlike Cyrus, he was not as eager for praise from incompetent judges as from competent ones. This difference helps us to understand his equanimity in the face of the most varied political fortunes: for example, the dignity and wit with which he defended himself when confronted with ingratitude and baseless hostility on the part of the very men whose lives he had saved.[126] It helps us also to understand his ability to leave political life to return to a private life. [...] Country retirement, while lacking the immediate challenges to heart and mind presented by politics at their peak, would have appealed to him as allowing more leisure for contemplation and writing—especially since that contemplation might embrace, as we know from the Anabasis that it did, his own political experiences among other things. For a man like Xenophon, the contemplative reliving of experiences was sure to be a deepening of them. It could thus have been looked forward to as promising a more profound enjoyment than the original experiences themselves, and one less mixed with pain.
[125]Cyropaedia III 2.31; Anabasis VI 1.20. 126.
[126]Anabasis VII 6.11 ff.; compare V 7.5 ff. and 8.2 ff.”
Source: History of Political Philosophy
“But whereas the story appeals to our curiosity and the plot to our intelligence, the pattern appeals to our aesthetic sense, it causes us to see the book as a whole.”
Source: Aspects Of the Novel
“But wherefore could not I pronounce 'Amen'? I had most need of blessing, and 'Amen' Stuck in my throat.”
“But, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society. It is true, I might have resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run "amok" against society; but I preferred that society should run "amok" against me, it being the desperate party.”
Source: Walden or, Life in the Woods
“But wherever I was I played baseball. That's all I lived for. When I sat up on the front seat of that covered wagon next to my father, I was wearing a baseball glove. That showed anybody who was interested where I wanted to go.”
“But wherever the truth may lie, this much is crystal-clear: our bigger-and-better society is now like a hypochondriac, so obsessed with its own economic health as to have lost the capacity to remain healthy. . . . Nothing could be more salutary at this stage than a little healthy contempt for a plethora of material blessings.”
Source: Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)
“But wherever there is man, there must be some sort of route”
“But wherever we are, we must all, in our daily lives, live up to the age-old faith that peace and freedom walk together. In too many of our cities today, the peace is not secure because freedom is incomplete." (John F. Kennedy, June 10, 1963, American University speech)”
Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1963
“But wherever you're headed when this life is over, Quinlan, that's where I want to be, too.”
Source: House of Sky and Breath
“But wherever you rode on your conquests, you left a pile of corpses as high as any mountain. Do your achievements outweigh your sins?”
Source: A Heart Divided
“But whether a couple is a man and a woman has everything to do with the meaning of marriage.”
“But whether he was happy or not was hard to say. Probably he was neither, just as a plant is neither.”
Source: Miss Lonelyhearts: & the Day of the Locust
“But whether I become a believer or remain an agnostic, my belief or disbelief must derive its source from within, not from without. I, myself, must create its symbols. The transcendental is that which produces its own form. I will never discover its secret if I do not find it in my own heart; if I do not possess it already I shall never be able to acquire it.”
Source: The Complete Writings of Oscar Wilde: What never dies
“But whether it be dream or truth, to do well is what matters. If it be truth, for truth's sake. If not, then to gain friends for the time when we awaken.”
“But whether or not you are here, you are here—because these words are for you, and they wouldn't exist if you weren't here in some way.”
Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares
“But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.”
Source: The collected works of Lysander Spooner
“But whether the resistance against government tyrants is non-violent or physically violent, the effort to overthrow state oppression qualifies as true patriotism.”
“But whether the risks to which liberty exposes us are moral or physical our right to liberty involves the right to run them. A man who is not free to risk his neck as an aviator or his soul as a heretic is not free at all; and the right to liberty begins, not at the age of 21 years but 21 seconds.”
Source: The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more
“But whether there's some grand design really matters little to me. My only hope was this: to see what might be, to believe that it should be, and then to do all I could to bring it to pass, whatever the cost.”
“But whether thus submissively or not, at least be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.”
“But whether we want to do it because we want to have people to have a different idea of who we are or not, we do it naturally. So the way we construct our narrative is different from the way we constructed it a year ago. The difference is maybe very small or it may be huge.”
“But whether you stay or go, the critical decision you can make is to stop letting your partner distort the lens of your life, always forcing his way into the
center of the picture. You deserve to have your life be about you; you are worth it.”
Source: Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men
“But which is the State's essential function, aggression or defence, few seem to know or care.”
Source: Individual liberty: selections from the writings of Benjamin R. Tucker
“But which is the stone that supports the bridge?”
“But which was the real me? Let me be perfectly honest: I was a man of many faces. (p.33)”
“But whichever form it took it brought with it, in those moments of bitter anguish, such a desperate surge of hope that it was almost untouchable, and flitted away like a golden butterfly into the bright blue sky - beautiful, unreachable and completely transistent.”
“But while capitalism may be a convenient scapegoat, it did not cause any of these problems. Indeed, whatever one wishes to call the unruly mixture of freedom and government controls that made up our economic and political system during the last three decades, one cannot call it capitalism.”