H Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with H. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“How strange is the force of imagination! it represents things as if they were actually present to us; we consider them so, and to a heart like mine, this is death. I know not where to hide myself from you.”
Source: The Letters of Madame De Sevigne to Her Daughter and Friends
“How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people — first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.”
Source: Ideas and Opinions
“How strange it is beholding this,
and, very confident,
proclaim that such magnificence
occurred by accident.”
“How strange it is that life must be nearly over, before one fully learns to live!”
Source: Old Rose and Silver
“How strange it is that people of honest feelings and sensibilty, who would not take advantage of a man born without arms or legs or eyes—how such people think nothing of abusing a man with low intelligence.”
Source: Algernon, Charlie, and I: A Writer's Journey
“How strange it is that Socrates, after having made the children common, should hinder lovers from carnal intercourse only, but should permit love and familiarities between father and son or between brother and brother, than which nothing can be more unseemly, since even without them love of this sort is improper. How strange, too, to forbid intercourse for no other reason than the violence of the pleasure, as though the relationship of father and son or of brothers with one another made no difference.”
Source: Aristotle's Politics: Writings from the Complete Works: Politics, Economics, Constitution of Athens
“How strange it is that we of the present day are constantly praising that past age which our fathers abused, and as constantly abusing that present age, which our children will praise.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“How strange it is that when I was a child I tried to be like a grownup, yet as soon as I ceased to be a child I often longed to be like one.”
Source: Childhood, Boyhood, Youth
“How strange it is to be a continent away from ¨home¨ and you don't know where ¨home¨ is anyhow and all the ¨home¨ you've got is in your head.
[letter to Neal Cassady, Jan. 8, 1951]”
Source: Jack Kerouac Selected Letters 1940-1956
“How strange it is to be anything at all.”
“How strange it is to be human. For a short moment we are conscious of the glories of life then we become silent again. Perhaps there is more. Look more deeply into the matter.”
“How strange it is to have a sister, Valerie thought. Someone you might have been.”
Source: Red Riding Hood
“How strange it is to see with how much passion People see things only in their own fashion!”
Source: Tartuffe and Other Plays
“How strange it is, Anna. Yesterday, I have filed in my mind as a good day, notwithstanding it was filled with mortal illness and the grieving of the recently bereft. Yet it is a good day, for the simple fact that no one died upon it. We are brought to a sorry state, that we measure what is good by such a shortened yardstick.”
Source: Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague
“How strange it is, our little procession of life! The child says, "When I am a big boy." But what is that? The big boy says, "When I grow up." And then, grown up, he says, "When I get married." But to be married, what is that after all? The thought changes to "When I'm able to retire." And then, when retirement comes, he looks back over the landscape traversed; a cold wind seems to sweep over it; somehow he has missed it all, and it is gone.”
Source: Feast of Stephen
“How strange it is, sometimes, which conversations or events stays with us while so much else melts as fast as April snow.”
Source: A Thousand Days in Venice: An Unexpected Romance
“How strange it is, that a fool or knave, with riches, should be treated with more respect by the world, than a good man, or a wise man in poverty!”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe (Illustrated)
“How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn't they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for a little while? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something we all hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise?”
Source: White Noise: Text and Criticism
“How strange it seems that education, in practice, so often means suppression: that instead of leading the mind outward to the light of day it crowds things in upon it that darken and weary it.”
Source: The Public Papers
“How strange it was, I thought, that when the tiny though thousandfold beauties of the Earth disappeared and the immeasurable beauty of outer space rose in the distant quiet splendor of light, man and the greatest number of other creatures were supposed to be asleep! Was it because we were only permitted to catch a fleeting glimpse of those great bodies and then only in the mysterious time of a dream world, those great bodies about which man had only the slightest knowledge but perhaps one day would be permitted to examine more closely? Or was it permitted for the great majority of people to gaze at the starry firmament only in brief, sleepless moments so that the splendor wouldn't become mundane, so that the greatness wouldn't be diminished?”
Source: Indian Summer
“How strange it was that a dream, once realized, could quickly turn mundane.”
Source: Astonish Me: A novel
“How strange it was that the music people favored defined them in so many ways—what they liked, what they rejected, what stuck with them from their school years, what they kept, what they burned into memory, what they let go. How was it that what they heard in a single decade—for most, their second on the planet—encoded a set of remembrances that stayed with them forever? It was simply commercial output, a business after all, nothing more than that—song factories a few years removed from Tin Pan Alley. It wasn’t Beethoven or Mozart, but it was glue—happy and sad, lived and imagined, the soundtrack of youth became the soundtrack of peoples’ lives.”
Source: From Nothing
“How strange it would be if the final theory were to be discovered in our lifetimes! The discovery of the final laws of nature will mark a discontinuity in human intellectual history, the sharpest that has occurred since the beginning of modern science in the seventeenth century. Can we now imagine what that would be like?”
Source: Dreams of a Final Theory
“How strange life is, how fickle! How little is needed for one to be ruined or saved!”
Source: The Necklace and Other Stories
“How strange now, looks the life he makes us lead; So free we seem, so fettered fast we are!”
“How strange or odd some'er I bear myself,
As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on.”
Source: Hamlet
“How strange perspective is. When you are far away from an object, you can't see its true size. When you come face to face with obstacles in life, you can recognize how large they have loomed. Everything in my viewpoint has been tainted by my pain . . .”
Source: Blue Moon
“How strange, Royce thought, that, after emerging victorious from more than a hundred real battles, the greatest moment of triumph he had ever known had come to him on a mock battlefield where he'd stood alone, unhorsed, and defeated. This morning, his life had seemed as bleak as death. Tonight, he held joy in his arms. Someone or something—fate or fortune or Jenny's God—had looked down upon him this morning and seen his anguish. And, for some reason, Jenny had been given back to him.
Closing his eyes, Royce brushed a kiss against her smooth forehead. Thank you, he thought.
And in his heart, he could have sworn he heard a voice answer, You're welcome.”
Source: A Kingdom of Dreams
“How strange that as I'm dying, you're calmly alive.”
Source: This Outcast Generation and Luminous Moss
“How strange, that bad soil, if the gods send rain and sun,
Bears a rich crop, while good soil, starved of what it needs,
Is barren; but man's nature is ingrained - the bad
Is never anything but bad, and the good man
Is good: misfortune cannot warp his character,
His goodness will endure.”
Source: Hecuba
“How strange that excision – female circumcision, with several languages using the same term for both kinds of mutilation – of little girls should revolt the westerner but excite no disapproval when it is performed on little boys. Consensus on the point seems absolute. But ask your interlocutor to think about the validity of this surgical procedure, which consists of removing a healthy part of a nonconsenting child’s body on nonmedical grounds – the legal definition of… mutilation.”
“How strange that in my thoughts I should accept of myself that as a woman, I was a charge, belonging to another, not permitted to come and go unaccounted for.”
Source: The Ultimate Religion
“How strange that instead of taking his heart, I'm hoping he takes mine.”
Source: To Kill a Kingdom
“How strange that my mother should have brought me into this world just to witness other people's crimes and sins.”
Source: Sessiz Ev
“How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!”
Source: The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson
“How strange that some people cannot believe in both the Book of Nature and the Book of God.”
“How strange that something so simple could have been instrumental in my decision to ruin one of my most relationships and friendships, and damage another.”
“How strange that the nature of life is change, yet the nature of human beings is to resist change”
Source: Broken Open: How difficult times can help us grow
“How strange that the nature of life is change, yet the nature of human beings is to resist change. And how ironic that the difficult times we fear might ruin us are the very ones that can break us open and help us blossom into who we were meant to be.”
“How strange that the world should change because of words, and words change because of the world”
“How strange that the young should always think the world is against them - when in fact that is the only time it is for them.”
Source: Aperçus: The Aphorisms of Mignon McLaughlin
“How strange that we can go from friends to inseparable to hateful then casual all in one lifetime.”
Source: Ignite Me
“How strange that we should ordinarily feel compelled to hide our wounds when we are all wounded! Community requires the ability to expose our wounds and weaknesses to our fellow creatures. It also requires the ability to be affected by the wounds of others... But even more important is the love that arises among us when we share, both ways, our woundedness.”
“How strange that we should ordinarily feel compelled to hide our wounds when we are all wounded.”
Source: The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace
“How strange the feelings when it was not your name anymore that appeared as that person's favorite.”
“How strange this fear of death is! We are never frightened at a sunset.”
“How strange, thought Perdu, that one laugh can wipe away so much hardship and suffering. A single laugh. And the years flow together and…away.”
Source: The Little Paris Bookshop
“How strange to feel something so close to mercy, whatever that was, and stranger still that it should be found in here of all places, at the end of a road of ruined houses by a toxic river. That among a pile of salvaged trash, he would come closest to all he ever wanted to be: a consciousness sitting under a light-bulb reading his days away, warm and alone, alone and yet, somehow, still somebody's son.”
Source: The Emperor of Gladness
“How strange to have failed as a social creature—even criminals do not fail that way—they are the law's "Loyal Opposition," so to speak. But the insane are always mere guests on earth, eternal strangers carrying around broken decalogues that they cannot read.”
Source: A Life in Letters
“How strange to have the power to literally transform yourself into other people, and yet be so unable to put yourself in their place.”
Source: Clockwork Angel