N Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with N. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Nor am I ashamed, as some are, to confess my ignorance of those matters with which I am unacquainted.”
“Nor are we the culmination of evolution, except in the sense that there has never been another species so bizarrely ingenious that it could create both iambic pentameter and plutonium.”
Source: Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind
“Nor at all can tell Whether I mean this day to end myself, Or lend an ear to Plato where he says, That men like soldiers may not quit the post Allotted by the Gods.”
“Nor aught availed him now to have built in heaven high towers; nor did he scrape by all his engines, but was headlong sent with his industrious crew to build in hell.”
“Nor aught so good but strained from that fair use,
Revolts from true birth stumbling on abuse.”
Source: Romeo and Juliet
“Nor bird nor beast
Could make me wish for anything this day,
Being old, but that the old alone might die,
And that would be against God's Providence.”
Source: The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume I: The Poems: Revised Second Edition
“Nor bring, to see me cease to live,
Some doctor full of phrase and fame,
To shake his sapient head, and give
The ill he cannot cure a name.”
“Nor can I throw a book away. I have given many away and ripped a few in half, but as with warring nations, destruction shows regard: the enemy is a power to reckon with. Throwing a book out shows contempt for an effort of the spirit. Not that I haven't tried.”
Source: Ruined By Reading: A Life in Books
“Nor can one word be chang'd but for a worse.”
Source: The Odyssey of Homer
“Nor can private counterparties restrict supplies of gold, another commodity whose derivatives are often traded over-the-counter, where central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise.”
“Nor can the Apostle mean that Eve only sinned; or that she only was Deceived, for if Adam sinned willfully and knowingly, he became the greater Transgressor.”
“Nor can they understand why a totally useless substance like gold should now, all over the world, be considered far more important than human beings, who gave it such value as it has, purely for their own convenience.”
“Nor can those motions that bring death prevail
Forever, nor eternally entomb
The welfare of the world; nor, further, can
Those motions that give birth to things and growth
Keep them forever when created there.”
Source: On the Nature of Things
“Nor can We predict happier times for religion and government from the plans of those who desire vehemently to separate the Church from the state, and to break the mutual concord between temporal authority and the priesthood. It is certain that that concord which always was favorable and beneficial for the sacred and the civil order is feared by the shameless lovers of liberty.”
“Nor can you trust in God because everything that you attempt to trust is coming from someone who is not trustworthy to begin with. So everything that you think, feel or act upon is based upon coming from someone who is untrustworthy. Therefore, you'll always be lost.”
“Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.”
“Nor could she talk as she did. But why wish to resemble her? Why? She despised Mrs. Dalloway from the bottom of her heart. She was not serious. She was not good. Her life was a tissue of vanity and deceit. Yet Doris Kilman had been overcome. She had, as a matter of fact, very nearly burst into tears when Clarissa Dalloway laughed at her.”
Source: Mrs. Dalloway
“Nor custom, nor example, nor cast numbers Of such as do offend, make less the sin.”
“Nor did Americans believe that Republicans had been waging war on minorities, women, or gays - especially given that Republicans have held the House only since 2011 and have been out of power in the Senate and presidency since 2009.”
“Nor did demons crucify Him; it is you who have crucified Him and crucify Him still, when you delight in your vices and sins.”
“Nor did he care about his childhood, for certainly I never heard him speak of it. I once questioned him about his early days and he would not answer. ‘What is the egg to the eagle?’ he asked me…”
Source: The Winter King
“Nor did he give a damn for the world either, or the universe, or heaven or hell. But he liked women.”
Source: The Brotherhood of the Grape
“Nor did he think of Celia any more, though he could sometimes remember having dreamt of her. If only he had been able to think of her, he would not have needed to dream of her.”
Source: Murphy
“Nor did I know back then that McCartney had written the song as an ode to Black women ("bird" being British slang for a pretty girl) at the pivotal moment of the civil rights struggle. That would only deepen my appreciation for "Blackbird”
Source: Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
“Nor did I need anyone's pity, but I would accept it with grace, because I have been well trained. Rudeness was a sign of weakness. Grace stemmed from power, the powere to accept anything and move on.”
“Nor did Khrushchev make any attempt at a historical or sociological analysis of the Stalinist system. Stalin had simply been a criminal and a maniac, personally to blame for all the nation's defeats and misfortunes. As to how, and in what social conditions, a blood-thirsty paranoiac could for twenty-five years exercise unlimited despotic power over a country of two hundred million inhabitants, which throughout that period had been blessed with the most progressive and democratic system of government in human history—to this enigma the speech offered no clue whatsoever.”
Source: Main Currents Of Marxism: The Founders, The Golden Age, The Breakdown
“Nor did she understand the attitude of the armed forces, most of whom came from the middle and working class and had traditionally been closer to the left than to the far right. She did not understand the state of civil war, nor did she realize that war is the soldiers’ work of art, the culmination of all their training, the gold medal of their profession. Soldiers are not made to shine in times of peace. The coup gave them a chance to put into practice what they had learned in their barracks: blind obedience, the use of arms, and other skills that soldiers can master once they silence the scruples of their hearts.”
Source: The House of the Spirits
“Nor dim nor red, like God's own head,
The glorious Sun uprist”
“Nor do apophthegms only serve for ornament and delight, but also for action and civil use, as being the edge-tools of speech which cut and penetrate the knots of business and affairs: for occasions have their revolutions, and what has once been advantageously used may be so again, either as an old thing or a new one.”
Source: Advancement of Learning: And Novum Organum
“Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once (gleich dies zusammen). What a delight this is I cannot tell ! All this inventing, this producing, takes place in a pleasing lively dream.”
“Nor do I regret that I have lived, since I have so lived that I think I was not born in vain, and I quit life as if it were an inn, not a home.”
“Nor do I take into account a danger of starting a chain reaction of a scope great enough to
destroy part or all of the planet...But it is not necessary to imagine the earth being destroyed like a nova by a stellar explosion to understand vividly the grow ing scope of atomic war and to recognize that unless another war is prevented it is likely to bring destruction on a scale never before held possible, and even now hardly conceived, and that little civilization would survive it.”
“Nor do I think that any other nation than this of Wales, nor any other language, whatever may hereafter come to pass, shall on the day of severe examination before the Supreme Judge, answer for this corner of the earth.”
“Nor do I think we came from monkeys, by the wayThat's another piece of garbage. What the hell's it based on? We couldn't've come from anything-fish, maybe, but not monkeys. I don't believe in the evolution of fish to monkeys to men. Why aren't monkeys changing into men now? It's absolute garbage. It's absolutely irrational garbage, as mad as the ones who believe the world was made only four thousand years ago, the fundamentalists.”
“Nor do piecemeal steps however well intended, even partially resolve problems that have reached a universal, global and catastrophic character. If anything, partial 'solutions' serve merely as cosmetics to conceal the deep seated nature of the ecological crisis. They thereby deflect public attention and theoretical insight from an adequate understanding of the depth and scope of the necessary changes.”
“Nor do they speak properly who say that time consumeth all things; for time is not effective, nor are bodies destroyed by it.”
Source: The Works of Sir Thomas Browne: Preface. Dr. Johnson's Life of Sir Thomas Browne. Supplementary memoir by the editor. Mrs. Lyttleton's communication to Bishop Kennet. Pseudodoxia epidemica, books I-IV
“Nor do they trust their tongue alone, but speak a language of their own; can read a nod, a shrug, a look, far better than a printed book; convey a libel in a frown, and wink a reputation down.”
“Nor do we accept, as genuine the person not characterized by this blushing bashfulness, this youthfulness of heart, this sensibility to the sentiment of suavity and self-respect. Modesty is bred of self-reverence. Fine manners are the mantle of fair minds. None are truly great without this ornament.”
Source: Tablets
“Nor do we begin to have a clear appreciation of what the increase in consumption of alcoholic beverages in wartime means in increased risk, and in loss of efficiency to the fighting and working forces of the country.”
“Nor do we merely feel these essences for one short hour no, even as these trees that whisper round a temple become soon dear as the temples self, so does the moon, the passion posey, glories infinite, Haunt us till they become a cheering light unto our souls and bound to us so fast, that wheather there be shine, or gloom o'er cast, They always must be with us, or we die.”
“Nor does Apollo keep his bow continually drawn.
[Lat., Neque semper arcum
Tendit Apollo.]”
“Nor does God whisper through the trees. His voice is not to be mistaken. When men hear it they fall to their knees and their souls are riven and they cry out to Him and there is no fear but only wildness of heart that springs from such longing.”
Source: The Crossing
“Nor does night conceal men's deeds of ill, but whatsoe'er thou dost, think that some God beholds it.”
Source: The Tragedies of Æschylos: A New Translation, with a Biographical Essay, and an Appendix of Rhymed Choral Odes
“Nor does the Anarchistic scheme furnish any code of morals to be imposed upon the individual. "Mind your own business" is its only moral law. Interference with another's business is a crime and the only crime, and as such may properly be resisted. In accordance with this view the Anarchists look upon attempts to arbitrarily suppress vice as in themselves crimes. They believe liberty and the resultant social well-being to be a sure cure for all the vices. But they recognize the right of the drunkard, the gambler, the rake, and the harlot to live their lives until they shall freely choose to abandon them.”
Source: The Individualist Anarchists: Anthology of Liberty, 1881-1908
“Nor does the idea of a moral order asserting itself against attack or want of conformity answer in full to our feelings regarding the tragic character. We do not think of Hamlet merely as failing to meet its demand, of Antony as merely sinning against it, or even of Macbeth as simply attacking it. What we feel corresponds quite as much to the idea that they are its parts, expressions, products; that in their defect or evil it is untrue to its soul of goodness, and falls into conflict and collision with itself; that, in making them suffer and waste themselves, it suffers and wastes itself; and that when, to save its life and regain peace from this intestinal struggle, it casts them out, it has lost a part of its own substance – a part more dangerous and unquiet, but far more valuable and nearer to its heart, than that which remains – a Fortinbras, a Malcolm, an Octavius. There is no tragedy in its expulsion of evil: the tragedy is that this involves the waste of good.”
Source: Shakespearean Tragedy
“Nor does the idea of a moral order asserting itself against attack or want of conformity answer in full to our feelings regarding the tragic character.”
“Nor dread nor hope attend a dying animal; a man awaits his end dreading and hoping all.”
“Nor elves, nor fays, nor magic charm, Have pow'r, or will, to work us harm; For those who dare the truth to tell, Fays, elves, and fairies, wish them well.”
Source: Forester. The Prussian vase. The good aunt. Angelina. The good French governess. Mademoiselle Panache. The knapsack
“Nor ever yet the melting rainbow's vernal-tinctur'd hues to me have shone so pleasing, as when first the hand of science pointed out the path in which the sun-beams gleaming from the west fall on the watery cloud.”
“Nor eye in a letter, nor hand in a purse, nor ear in the secret of another.”
Source: Poor Richard's Almanack: Being the Choicest Morsels of Wisdom, Written During the Years of the Almanack's Publication