B Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with B. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“But you cannot know a place without loving it and hating it and feeling everything in between. You cannot understand a complex people by only looking at data—something inside you has to crack to let in the light so your eyes and brain and heart can adjust properly.”
“But you cannot know the glimpses I have had, you cannot know there is another, dazzling place, that seems to welcome me! I have been led to it, Helen, by someone marvellous and strange. You won't know this. They will tell you of her, and they will make her seem squalid and ordinary, they will turn my passion into something gross and wrong. You will know, that it is neither of those things. It is only love, Helen - only that.
I cannot live, and not be at her side!”
Source: Affinity
“But you cannot preserve the memory of applause; it is too volatile, too perishable. Later it would astonish me that I could not satisfactorily summon back that moment[...]No, I would remember the towel...Bo Maybank's towel. Precisely and completely and for the rest of my life. I do not know how he got to know me, but I felt his light leaps up to my face and felt the towel warm against my brow. And his face, I would remember his face as he wiped the sweat from mine, transfigured with joy for me - his face vulnerable and febrile and anonymous - as he danced on the floor below me, as he tried to reach me, as he tried to be a part of the finest moment of my life.”
Source: The Lords of Discipline
“But you cannot see very far," said Gandalf. "Neither can I. It may be your task to find the Cracks of Doom; but that quest may be for others: I do not know. At any rate you are not ready for that long road yet."
"No indeed!" said Frodo. "But in the meantime what course am I to take?"
"Towards danger; but not too rashly, nor too straight," answered the wizard.”
“But you cannot speak of any glory for happenings that are at once evil and held in dishonor.”
Source: The Seven Against Thebes
“But you cant get all hung up on details when you are trying to survive.”
“But you cant shut everyone out. I mean you have to have someone to love. . .someone to hold on to. . . someone--”
“But you can’t get to any of these truths by sitting in a field smiling beatifically, avoiding your anger and damage and grief. Your anger and damage and grief are the way to the truth. We don’t have much truth to express unless we have gone into those rooms and closets and woods and abysses that we were told not go in to. When we have gone in and looked around for a long while, just breathing and finally taking it in – then we will be able to speak in our own voice and to stay in the present moment. And that moment is home.”
“But you can’t live your life worried about dying all the time. If you do, you’re dead already.”
Source: Going Too Far
“But you certainly don't have perspective. And there's so much pressure going into that opening night because you know there's journalists, tons of acquisitions people, and the fate of your film in some ways, if not decided, is really affected by how it screens that night.”
“But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped nor tamed.”
Source: The Prophet
“But you come to a point in your life when you can't pull the trigger anymore.”
“But you comfort me, Gimli, I'm glad to have you standing nigh with your stout legs and your hard axe. I wish there were more of your kin among us. But even more would I give for a hundred good archers of Mirkwood." - Legolas”
“but you could also look at it the other way. Like you’re saying no matter how bad things are for you, I can still relate.”
Source: Just Listen
“But you could never say it all and you could never say it enough.”
Source: Here One Moment
“But you could not be where I was without experiencing many such transformations. One of your customers, one of your neighbors (let us say), is a man known to be more or less a fool, a big talker, and one day he comes into your shop and you have heard and you see that he is dying even as he is standing there looking at you, and you can see in his eyes that (whether or not he admits it) he knows it, and all of a sudden everything is changed. You seem no longer to be standing together in the center or time. Now you are on time's edge, looking off into eternity. And this man, your foolish neighbor, your friend and brother, has shed somehow the laughter that has followed him through the world, and has assumed the dignity and the strangeness of a traveler departing forever.”
Source: Jayber Crow
“But you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act.”
Source: 1984
“But you could only remake your own future, not anyone else's, and for some people that just wasn't good enough.”
Source: My Sister's Keeper: A Novel
“But you couldn’t touch this kid right now, bullets would have dodged him.”
“But you'd better make it up to me when we get back. I'll need pizza, ice cream, and lots of massages." She frowned when she caught the naughty gleam in his eyes. "Not that kind of massage. The kind where you rub my back for at least an hour and feed me chocolate and alcoholic beverages.”
Source: The Singles Table
“But you'd get arguments from all kinds of people that the Bible has got to be perfect. That God would not permit such errors to be made in the Holy Word."
"I thought God gave everyone free will. Which would presumably - and evidently - include the freedom to be incorrect when translating one language into another."
"Stop making me think. I'm believing over here.”
Source: White Night
“But you did commit,' said Mrs. Elm, evidently having heard Nora's thoughts. 'And you survived.”
Source: The Midnight Library
“But you did it. You broke away. D'ya ever think that life must be bigger than what we see here, Els?
"I do", she said.
I mean ... somewhere people our age are drinking bathtub gin and dancing to jazz music. Women are smoking in public." He sighed. "And here we are.”
Source: The Four Winds
“But you didn’t mention Orrigar I, the first king of the House of Chaldarina. He put an end to years of unrest and civil strife. Neither did you mention Ronnick II, the one who reformed the monetary system and forbade the Great Houses to mint their own coins, thus stabilizing our currency. At the time it saved Ximerion from going bankrupt.”
“I’m sorry. I told you we weren’t big—”
“It’s not that, Hemarchidas. You remembered the fighting kings, those who brought war, destruction and ephemeral glory. Or those who ended tragically. You forgot the wise administrators, those who kept the peace, those who brought prosperity. You needn’t feel embarrassed, though. So did history.”
Hemarchidas looked at his friend as if he saw him for the first time.
“So, all in all, Hemarchidas, I’d rather history forgot me.”
“But you didn't need me, did you? You'd already got yourself to safety." "Sometimes, I sleep better knowing you . . . and Niall . . ." She faltered. "Love you from a safe distance," he finished. "Yes.”
“But you do believe, don’t you," Rose implored him, "you think it’s true?"
"Of course it’s true," the Boy said. "What else could there be?" he went scornfully on. "Why," he said, "it’s the only thing that fits. These atheists, they don’t know nothing. Of course there’s Hell. Flames and damnation," he said with his eyes on the dark shifting water and the lightning and the lamps going out above the black struts of the Palace Pier, "torments."
"And Heaven too," Rose said with anxiety, while the rain fell interminably on.
"Oh, maybe," the Boy said, "maybe.”
Source: Brighton rock
“But you do have to learn, if you want to be a satirist, you can't be part of the party. Meaning, you can't go horseback riding with Jackie O in Central Park if you're going to make a joke about her that night.”
“But you do have to start young as a dancer if you're going to achieve the physical skills necessary.”
“But you do not think much about the stars. They are always there. Look at them when you have a moment.”
Source: The snake pit
“But you don't ask questions of an attic. Museums are their own justification.”
Source: Animal Dreams
“But you don’t change, or learn, or offer. You’re just you, always. You didn’t need me. And when you get where you’re going, you’ll leave, without a thought for what remains behind.”
Source: Empress of Forever
“But you don't come to Palermo to stay in minimalist hotels and eat avocado toast; you come to Palermo to be in Palermo, to drink espressos as dark and thick as crude oil, to eat tangles of toothsome spaghetti bathed in buttery sea urchins, to wander the streets at night, feeling perfectly charmed on one block, slightly concerned on the next. To get lost. After a few days, you learn to turn down one street because it smells like jasmine and honeysuckle in the morning; you learn to avoid another street because in the heat of the afternoon the air is thick with the suggestion of swordfish three days past its prime.”
Source: Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
“But you don't have to fit in to be okay. Believe me! I am the not-fitting-in world expert. I have not fit in in maybe five different countries so far. I am homelandless. I even make mistakes when I speak Bulgarian. But it's not big deal, not really. It's not the end of the world, right? It's okay.”
Source: The Cabinet of Earths
“But you don't have to my word for it that Russia and Putin are being unfairly scapegoated. Even Nadezhda Tolokonnikova- the founder of the Russian punk group Pussy Riot, whose members were imprisoned in Russia in response to their anti-government protest at an Orthodox Church- recently expressed such an opinion. As Tolokonnikova explained in an interview with David Sirota in the International Business Times, "I'm not terrified of him {Putin} at all. I don't think you have to be terrified of him. He's just a guy who claims that he has power, but I claim to have power too and you have power....If you talk here about mainstream liberal media in America, which speak a lot about Putin, I think it's just a trick....They don't really want to talk about internal American problems....They're just looking for a scapegoat and, you know, for Trump it's Muslims and Mexican workers. And for liberal media in America it is Putin.”
Source: The Plot to Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Russia
“But you don't hold yourself superior to all the judges of music?" she protested.
"No, no, not for a moment. I merely maintain my right as an individual. I have just been telling you what I think, in order to explain why the elephantine gambols of Madame Tetralani spoil the orchestra for me. The world's judges of music may all be right. But I am I, and I won't subordinate my taste to the unanimous judgment of mankind. If I don't like a thing, I don't like it, that's all; and there is no reason under the sun why I should ape a liking for it just because the majority of my fellow-creatures like it, or make believe they like it. I can't follow the fashions in the things I like or dislike.”
Source: Martin Eden
“But you don't always get what you want;,you get what you get”
Source: Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
“But you don't belong here! You're dead!" I sobbed against his chest. "Zo, babe, this is the Otherworld. It's not me who doesn't belong here-it's you.”
Source: Tempted: A House of Night Novel
“But you don't do it. Because guys like us, Red, we know there's a third choice. An alternative to staying simon-pure or bathing in the filth and the slime. It's the alternative that grown-ups all over the world pick. You balance off your walk through the hog-wallow against what it gains you. You choose the lesser of two evils and try to keep your good intentions in front of you. And I guess you judge how well you're doing by how well you sleep at night... and what your dreams are like.”
“But you don't get into a business because of personal tastes.”
“But you don't have to go up in the stands and play your foul balls. I do.”
“But you don't have your druthers in life, do you?”
“But you don't hire Ang Lee to do a typical children's movie. But it's such an interesting combination, whoever thought of getting Ang together with a comic book, that was just great.”
“But you don't let true happiness slip out of your grasp without one helluva fight.”
Source: That Perfect Someone
“But you don't need to worry. The Lord will never let his mouthpiece lead the people astray.”
Source: Look to God and live: discourses of Marion G. Romney
“But you don’t have to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.” “You don’t have to assume the worst about everyone, either. The world isn’t always out to get you.”
Source: Lock and Key
“But you failed to realize that America has only ever deemed certain heritages worth preserving. If the Lenape were forced from their ancestral home on the island of Mannahatta, the eviction of Little Syria's impoverished immigrants is no surprise, and it's hard for me to imagine that things will ever be any different.”
Source: The Thirty Names of Night
“But you felt safe.”
“What sort of safe?”
“Safe for me. Safe from harm. Every kind of safe.”
Source: The Brightest Star in the Sky
“But you finally think, there is what there is, and you have to work within those confines and just keep chipping away at your own work.”
“But you find—surprise—that you like this capitulation from her, this helpless acceding, from the most recent embodiment of all the girls over all the years who've given you nothing, not even a curious glance. Welcome to the darker side of love.”
Source: A Wild Swan: And Other Tales
“But you get past that and realize you have to let go of what you think you want. There'll be plenty of time for that later. Right now, go and be with that baby. Just play with this beautiful little boy”