B Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with B. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“But why are we attracted to symmetry?
Why do we human beings delight in seeing perfectly round planets through the lens of a telescope and six-sided snowflakes on a cold winter day?
The answer must be partly psychological.
I would claim that symmetry represents order, and we crave order in this strange universe we find ourselves in.
The search for symmetry, and the emotional pleasure we derive when we find it, must help us make sense of the the seasons and the reliability of friendships.
Symmetry is also economy.
Symmetry is simplicity.”
“But why bother?" asked Weng Kim. "That is exactly the point, Weng Kim. We are Chinese, and Chinese people do bother. Thais were still eating rice with their fingers fifty years ago, and now they use whatever the foreigners use. We have used chopsticks since ancient times; they worked better for the purpose intended than fingers did then, and better than forks and spoons do now.”
Source: Letters from Thailand
“But why bother? Why exert all this effort to focus totally on the boring prattlings of a six-year-old?
First, your willingness to do so is the best possible concrete evidence of your esteem you can give your child. If you give your child the same esteem you would give a great lecturer, then the child will know him- or herself to be valued and therefore will feel valuable. There is no better and ultimately no other way to teach your children that they are valuable people than by valuing them.
Second, the more children feel valuable, the more they will begin to say things of value. They will rise to your expectation of them.
Third, the more you listen to your child, the more you will realize that in amongst the pauses, the stutterings, the seemingly innocent chatter, your child does indeed have valuable things to say. The dictum that great wisdom comes from "the mouths of babes" is recognized as an absolute fact by anyone who truly listens to children. Listen to your child enough and you will come to realize that he or she is quite an extraordinary individual. And the more extraordinary you realize your child to be, the more you will be willing to listen. And the more you will learn.
Fourth, the more you know about your child, the more you will be able to teach. Know little about your children, and usually you will be teaching things that either they are not ready to learn or they already know and perhaps understand better than you.
Finally, the more children know that you value them, that you consider them extraordinary people, the more willing they will be to listen to you and afford you the same esteem. And the more appropriate your teaching, based on your knowledge of them, the more eager your children will be to learn from you. And the more they learn, the more extraordinary they will become. If the reader senses the cyclical character of this process, he or she is quite correct and is appreciating the truth of the reciprocity of love. Instead of a vicious downward cycle, it is a creative upward cycle of evolution and growth. Value creates value. Love begets love. Parents and child together spin forward faster and faster in the pas de deux of love.”
Source: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth
“But why can't we just order what we need? Or buy it?"
Myrnin flicked the silver ring on his right hand into the bars of his cell, setting up a metallic ringing. "None of that. Modern children are fools, slaves to the work of others, dependent for everything. Not you. You will learn how to build your tools as well as use them."
"You want me to be an engineer?"
"Is it not a useful thing for one who studies physics to understand such practical applications?"
She stared at him doubtfully. "You're not going to make me get an anvil and make my own screwdrivers or anything, are you?"
Myrnin smiled slowly. "What a good idea! I'll consider it.”
Source: Midnight Alley
“But why couldn't she tell me? Why did I have to discover-"
"Because you couldn't receive it. Because in your smallness you had not the graciousness to receive this gift. You cannot live because you have not ever looked at life. You crush loveliness on the rocks of your stinking pride. I wonder if you ever could understand.”
“But why did she come back and take her card away?" asked Miss Mackintosh. "I told Florence that Miss Mapp had heard something dreadful about her. And how did she know that Lady Deal was coming here at all? The house was taken in my name."
"That's just what we all long to find out," said Diva eagerly. "She said that somebody in London told her."
"But who?" asked Miss Mackintosh. "Florence only settled to come at lunch time that day, and she told her butler to ring up Susie and say she would be arriving."
Diva's eyes grew round and bright with inductive reasoning.
"I believe we're on the right tack," she said. "Could she have received Lady Deal's butler's message, do you think? What's your number?"
"Tilling 76," said Miss Mackintosh.
Evie gave three ecstatic little squeaks.
"Oh, that's it, that's it!" she said. "Elizabeth Mapp is Tilling 67. So careless of them, but all quite plain. And she did hear it from somebody in London. Quite true, and so dreadfully false and misleading, and so like her. Isn't it, Diva? Well, it does serve her right to be found out."
Miss Mackintosh was evidently a true Tillingite.
"How marvellous!" she said.”
Source: Miss Mapp
“But why didn't you leave? Why didn't you take my sister and go to New York?" she would say it didn't matter, that she was lucky to have my sister and me. If I pressed hard enough, she would add, "If I'd left, you never would have been born." I never had the courage to say: But you would have been born instead.”
Source: My Life on the Road
“But why didn't you just ask me?" I set down my fork and glare at her. "Because you were sleeping," She says, taking a sip if Chardonnay. "I was taking a nap, Mom. It wasn't intended to be some kind of Disney fairy-tale hundred-year snooze.”
“But why diminish your soul being run-of-the-mill at something? Mediocrity: now there is ugliness for you. Mediocrity's a hairball coughed up on the Persian carpet of Creation.”
Source: Half Asleep In Frog Pyjamas
“But why do I need others? Iris turned to him, her face slightly broken. I have you. She smiled.”
Source: Eyes of Black: An Elemental Romance
“But why do I notice everything? She thought. Why must I think? She did not want to think. She wanted to force her mind to become a blank and lie back, and accept quietly, tolerantly, whatever came.”
Source: The Years - Including a Short Biography of the Author
“But why do only unimportant things?" asked Milo, who suddenly remembered how much time he spent each day doing them. "Think of all the trouble it saves," the man explained, and his face looked as if he'd be grinning an evil grin--if he could grin at all. "If you only do the easy and useless jobs, you'll never have to worry about the important ones which are so difficult. You just won't have the time. For there's always something to do to keep you from what you really should be doing, and if it weren't for that dreadful magic staff, you'd never know how much time you were wasting.”
“But why do some people support [the heretics]?" "Because it serves their purposes, which concern the faith rarely, and more often the conquest of power." "Is that why the church of Rome accuses all its adversaries of heresy?" "That is why, and that is also why it recognizes as orthodoxy any heresy it can bring back under its own control or must accept because the heresy has become too strong.”
Source: The Name of the Rose
“But why do you delay? Come, do what you will.”
“But why do you have to keep your distance from me, why can’t you see me, talk to me like a real person…like Drew, not some kind of distant non-friend.”
“Non-friend?” Drew smiled drily at my choice of words. “I like the sound of that better than ‘friends’, Summer. It probably describes us best.” - Perfect Summer”
Source: Perfect Summer
“But why do you want to talk to me?' He is going to say: 'Because you look so kind,' or 'Because you look so beautiful and kind,' or, subtly, 'Because you look as if you'll understand....' He says: 'Because I think you won't betray me.' I had meant to get this mean to talk to me and tell me all about it, and then be so devastatingly English that perhaps I should manage to hurt him a little in return for all the many times I've been hurt.... 'Because I think you won't betray me, because I think you won't betray me....' Now it won't be so easy.”
“But why does it have to be you? Any of you?! Let Dumbledore fight, if he’s so powerful as everyone says. Why does he need kids to help him?”
Source: All The Young Dudes - Volume Three: ‘Til the End
“But why does it matter what we call it, as long as there is concerted action to respond to and prevent such crimes? It matters because if we really want to fix something that is broken, if we want to heal these fractures in our society, then we need to understand their causes. If we do not, then we will forever continue to place giant sticking plasters over the wounds left by this violence, trying to bandage over losses that can never be replaced. As long as this violence continues, it is obviously the case that we do have to address the symptoms, but my argument is that we must also address the causes if we want a long-term reduction or even, perhaps, the eventual eradication of male violence against women.”
“But why doesn't the Gospel ever say that Christ laughed?" I asked, for no good reason. "Is Jorge right?" "Legions of scholars have wondered whether Christ laughed. The question doesn't interest me much. I believe he never laughed, because, omniscient as the son of God had to be, he knew how we Christians would behave. . . .”
Source: Name of the Rose
“But why, everybody asks, am I not blessed by fortune (or at least not as blessed as I would like to be)? Why have I not been favored like others who are less deserving? No one believes their misfortunes are attributable to any shortcomings of their own; that is why they must find a culprit.”
Source: The Prague Cemetery
“But why give a man something it's so hard to earn? In that respect women are really thick. They're the daughters of rigidity. They need a man to feel secure but they don't realize that the one thing they should be afraid of is men. They don't know how to run their lives. They have to sacrifice themselves for the sake of someone else. Whores are the worst, patron, believe me. They throw their lives away working for some pimp, smile when he beats them, feel proud when he's well dressed, with his gold teeth and rings on his fingers, and when he goes off and takes up with a woman half their age they forgive him everything because 'he's a man.”
Source: The House of the Spirits
“But why had he always felt so strongly the magnetic pull of home, why had he thought so much about it and remembered it with such blazing accuracy, if it did not matter, and if this little town, and the immortal hills around it, was not the only home he had on earth? He did not know. All that he knew was that the years flow by like water, and that one day men come home again.”
Source: You Can't Go Home Again
“But why have you dear English Jew whose forefathers fought to enter the country of Johnny Mill, the Stuart with a little heart, saunter in Haridwar, no pubs or fish and chips' counters here, only Ganga-Jal, -the holy ale- Quaff it for the spirit and carry it to the banks of Thames in a holy grail.”
Source: Life... Love... Kumbh...
“But why," he said with animation, "do the English not read their own great literature?"
Victor laughed triumphantly, and said, "Because at school they are made to hate it.”
Source: A Man Divided
“But why I cry out against Rubens is because he painted undressed people instead of naked ones.”
“But why is it still there? Why is it there at all?" I flipped my palm over several times, shook it, but the faint blue tattoo was still there. "You can see it, right? Like right now, you can see it?"
"Yes. It hasn't faded." Seth leaned forward, catching my hand. "Stop shaking it like it's a damn Etch-A-Sketch. That doesn't make them disappear.”
Source: Pure
“But why is it that if you imagine a baby who smells of milk, for example, you can't help smiling? Why is there such an agreement around the world about what is or isn't a foul smell? Who decided what smells bad? Is it impossible that somewhere in this world there are people who, if they sat next to a homeless fellow they'd get the urge to snuggle up to him, but if they sat next to a baby they'd get an urge to kill it?”
Source: In the Miso Soup
“But why is it that in music, anything more than 5 years old - apart from a few hits - is never played on radio to the young public?”
“But why look back at all? Why turn your eyes to your shadow, when, by looking upward, you see your rainbow in the same direction?”
Source: Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals
“But why?” Maddie sounded like someone who had been waiting her entire life to ask that question. She looked like someone who would wait a lifetime more for an answer.”
Source: Not If I Save You First
“But why must choices always lie along a linear spectrum with two poles instead of say among a sphere of possibilities”
“But why must everything have a practical application? I'd been such a diligent soldier for years - working, producing, never missing a deadline, taking care of my loved ones, my gums and my credit record, voting, etc. Is this lifetime supposed to be only about duty? In this dark period of loss, did I need any justification for learning Italian other than that it was the only thing I could imagine bringing me any pleasure right now?”
Source: Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything
“But why must the system go to such lengths to block our empathy? Why all the psychological acrobatics? The answer is simple: because we care about animals, and we don't want them to suffer. And because we eat them. Our values and behaviors are incongruent, and this incongruence causes us a certain degree of moral discomfort. In order to alleviate this discomfort, we have three choices: we can change our values to match our behaviors, we can change our behaviors to match our values, or we can change our perception of our behaviors so that they appear to match our values. It is around this third option that our schema of meat is shaped. As long as we neither value unnecessary animal suffering nor stop eating animals, our schema will distort our perceptions of animals and the meat we eat, so that we feel comfortable enough to consume them. And the system that constructs our schema of meat equips us with the means by which to do this.”
Source: Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism
“But… why pain? Couldn’t you give something else? Like… joy?”
“It’s a balance. If it were something easy to give, it would be meaningless.”
Karou said, “You really think joy is easier to come by than pain? Which have you had more of?”
He gave her a long look. “That’s a good point. But I didn’t create the system.”
Source: Daughter of Smoke & Bone
“But why people need privacy? Why privacy is important? In China, every family live together, grandparents, parents, daughter, son and their relatives too. Eat together and share everything, talk about everything. Privacy make people lonely. Privacy make family fallen apart.”
“But why's she got to go to the library?'
'Because that's what Hermione does,' said Ron, shrugging. 'When in doubt, go to the library.”
Source: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
“But why should 1299 CE be considered the founding date of the empire? – there were no famous battles, no declarations of independence or storming of a bastille. The simplest explanations are often the most convincing: that year corresponds to the years 699–700 in the Islamic calendar. By rare mathematical coincidence, the centuries turned at the same time in both the Christian and Islamic calendars. What more auspicious year to mark the founding of an empire that spanned Europe and the Middle East?”
Source: Osman's Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire
“But why should a religious person be interested in a work like Heidegger's that many regard as the epitome of nihilism? For a start, because Heidegger forces us in a way that few philosophers do to really think through the seriousness and all-encompassing nature of our mortality.”
“But why should I cast myself in the ancient female part of victim of men's plots and passions?”
Source: A Lifetime Burning
“But why should I read what somebody else thinks of my life when I know the real story?”
“But why should I run for office and lose what little influence I have?”
“But why should life after death prove the truth of religion, any more than life before death does? It may 'prove' that man is a spirit, but even an agnostic can believe that by deciding that he is more than a mere machine.”
Source: Poltergeist!
“But why should she not announce to the family that she was going to change, was in the process of changing? She could not. They would see it as a claim on their attention, their compassion. (...) (That was not how people changed; they didn't change themselves: you got changed by being made to live through something, and then you found yourselve changed.)”
Source: The Summer Before the Dark
“But why should the daffodils and tulips
Get all the praise and blessings?
My rebirth goes unnoticed- I am worthy
Of smiles and dazzled cries of worship.”
Source: Coffins & Rhinestones
“But why should we hear about body bags and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?”
“But why should we not place implicit confidence in God and rely upon His word of promise? Is anything too hard for the Lord? Has His word of promise ever failed? Then let us not entertain any unbelieving suspicions of His future care of us. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but not so His promises.”
Source: The Life of Elijah
“But why should you care what people will say? All you have to do is please yourself.”
Source: Ayn Rand Reader
“But why shouldn't I thank someone for doing me a service?" he heard Lillian ask with genuine perplexity. "It's polite to say thank you, isn't it?"
"You should no more thank a servant than you would thank a horse for allowing you to ride it, or a table for bearing the dishes you place upon it."
"Well, we're not discussing animals or inanimate objects, are we? A footman is a person."
"No," the countess said coldly. "A footman is a servant."
"And a servant is a person," Lillian said stubbornly.
The elderly woman sighed in exasperation. "Whatever your view of a footman is, you must not thank him at dinner. Servants neither expect nor desire such condescension, and if you insist on putting them in the awkward position of having to respond to your remarks, they will think badly of you... as will everyone else. Do not insult me with that vapid stare, Miss Bowman! You come from a family of means- surely you employed servants at your New York residence!"
"Yes," Lillian acknowledged pertly, "but we talked to ours.”
Source: It Happened One Autumn
“But why shouldn't I thank someone for doing me a service?" he heard Lillian ask with genuine perplexity. "It's polite to say thank you, isn't it?"
"You should no more thank a servant than you would think a horse for allowing you to ride it, or a table for bearing the dishes you place upon it."
"Well, we're not discussing animals or inanimate objects, are we? A footman is a person."
"No," the countess said coldly. "A footman is a servant."
"And a servant is a person," Lillian said stubbornly.
The elderly woman sighed in exasperation. "Whatever your view of a footman is, you must not thank him at dinner. Servants neither expect nor desire such condescension, and if you insist on putting them in the awkward position of having to respond to your remarks, they will think badly of you... as will everyone else. Do not insult me with that vapid stare, Miss Bowman! You come from a family of means- surely you employed servants at your New York residence!"
"Yes," Lillian acknowledged pertly, "but we talked to ours.”
Source: It Happened One Autumn
“But why shouldn't I speak out? Don't you speak out in this country?”