N Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with N. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Not that she means anything by it, he knows. This is simply her lifelong habit of moderation at work, her need to tamp everything down to the routine, the modest, the tepid everyday. He understands the whole concept of boundaries, but there’s a point where this mania for normalizing turns toxic.”
Source: Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
“Not that she needs to mesmerize anyone in particular. She only needs to stop stuttering while her new family stares at her.”
Source: The High Auction
“Not that she objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven, quantities of books. All sorts of books.”
Source: Quartet
“Not that she really wanted to mess with a pregnant woman. There was too much similarity between them and pit bulls for her liking.”
Source: No Place to Run
“Not that she's a political animal, she's just an ordinary woman, but as a woman she's of the view that you don't bring children into the world to have them shot.”
Source: Every Man Dies Alone
“Not that she was looking for a particular boy to speak to, of course. She was just looking.”
“Not that she wasn't hot - she was super, mega, hot - but not.. approachable. Like, not even the Rock would dare to whistle at her, if you know what I mean.”
Source: Twilight / Life and Death
“Not that smart. Not that hot. Not that nice. Not that funny. That's me: I'm not that.”
Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson
“not that some things aren’t maybe best forgotten, at a
certain point at least, I’ve reached that point in my own life
where there’s so much I’d rather not remember, that
to be asked to do so can seem a cruelty, almost; bad enough,
some days, that there’s memory at all”
“Not that that mystical stuff's necessarily true: The only thing that's capital-T true is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it.”
Source: This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
“Not that that's my goal, but when you're very wealthy and very famous, you can have a lot more decisions in what you do. You have a lot more opportunity. You can maybe even not work for a few years. It puts you in a great position to make some decisions. You're not always taking every job that comes and that kind of thing.”
“Not that that's the goal, but sometimes these funny insights can also be deeply profound.”
“Not that the incredulous person doesn't believe in anything. It's just that he doesn't believe in everything. Or he believes in one thing at a time. He believes a second thing only if it somehow follows from the first thing. He is nearsighted and methodical, avoiding wide horizons. If two things don't fit, but you believe both of them, thinking that somewhere, hidden, there must be a third thing that connects them, that's credulity.”
Source: Foucault’s Pendulum
“Not that the incredulous person doesn't believe in anything. It's just that he doesn't believe in everything.”
Source: Foucault's Pendulum
“Not that the Lord minded about the killings. Why, His Book was full of killings.”
“Not that the moderns are born with more wit than their predecessors, but, finding the world better furnished at their coming into it, they have more leisure for new thoughts, more light to direct them, and more hints to work upon.”
Source: Essays upon several moral subjects
“Not that the path was smooth and pothole free. But still, it was my path, and like me, it was bound to be unique." -Zoey”
“Not that the propositions of geometry are only approximately true, but that they remain absolutely true in regard to that Euclidean space which has been so long regarded as being the physical space of our experience.”
“Not that the Red Indian will ever possess the broad lands of America. At least I presume not. But his ghost will.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)
“Not that the study is not important. A Jewish rabbi I once studies with would often say, 'For us Jews studying the bible is more important than obeying it because if you don't understand it rightly you will obey it wrongly and your obedience will be disobedience.
This is also true.”
Source: Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading
“Not that there is anything wrong with confessional songwriting, there are plenty of people that do that I admire. I think it is great; it just isn't how I do things.”
“Not that there's anything wrong with just lying around on your back.
In it's way, rotting is interesting too, as we will see.
It's just that there are other ways to spend your time as a cadaver.”
Source: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
“Not that there's anything wrong with that.”
“Not that they were that anxious to see Ronnie as President; they were afraid if he didn't get elected, he'd go back to acting.”
“Not that they were there to have fun—although with Kingsley Martin around, fun was never far from the agenda.”
“Not that this woman would need chains to capture a man's attention under normal circumstances. Her milky skin,soft eyes,and that mad riot of reddish-gold corkscrew curls that gave her a pixie-like appearance would see to the task.”
Source: Stealing the Preacher
“Not that time alone with Ingrid was something to wish away. She'd chosen him. Given herself to him, and even though he couldn't claim her in the human way, she was still his. Passing the day and night in the quiet town home was giving him a taste of his fantasy, sweet as meringue and just as easily dissolved.”
Source: The Wondrous and the Wicked
“Not that we expect anything less of Lord Bourne- husband or not, he remains a rogue! And that which we call a rogue, by any other name would scandalize as sweet!"
"Oh, for heaven's sake." Penelope did roll her eyes at that, looking to Michael, who looked... pleased. "You're complimented?"
He turned innocent eyes on her. "Should I not be?"
"Well," Philippa added thoughtfully, "anything Shakespearean must be at least a vague compliment."
"Precisely," Michael said, gifting Pippa with a smile that made Penelope more than a little envious of her younger sister.”
Source: A Rogue by Any Other Name
“Not that we must always partake of [God's feast] solemnly. "God who made good laughter" forbid. It is one of the difficult and delightful subtleties of life that we must deeply acknowledge certain things to be serious and yet retain the power and will to treat them often as lightly as a game.”
Source: The Four Loves
“Not that which is inspires the creation, but that which may be; not the actual, but the possible.”
“Not that you lied to me, but that I no longer believe you has shaken me”
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
“Not that you need to be a saint to have visions worth talking about. The most effective prescription, I suspect, is to be a disciplined sinner. Perfection, as Valery noted, is work.”
“Not the absorption capacity of the land, but the creative ability of a people, is the true yardstick with which we can measure the immigration potentialities of the land.”
“Not the “be yourself” line. I loathe that line. As if Myself and Tic have met before and gotten along, so all I have to do is make sure Myself is there this time. So illogical.”
Source: The Distance Between Us
“Not the bee upon the blossom, In the pride o' sunny noon; Not the little sporting fairy, All beneath the simmer moon; Not the poet, in the moment Fancy lightens in his e'e, Kens the pleasure, feels the rapture, That thy presence gi'es to me.”
Source: The Works of Robert Burns: With Dr. Currie's Memoir of the Poet, and an Essay on His Genius and Character
“Not the beginning, but the End.
Not the First, but The Last.
Only Never Quit!”
“Not the brightest gem in the jewelry shop, but you've got to admire his single-minded dedication to drug abuse.”
Source: Looking For Alaska Special 10th Anniversary Edition
“Not the bureaucrat's stamp on the folder of our fate. But a knot nonetheless, and not of our making.”
Source: Space, in Chains
“Not the challenges necessarily, but the way in which you get ready because your technique has improved over the years and you perhaps know how to be more economical than perhaps you used to be when you tried to work perhaps too hard.”
“Not the children of the rich or of the powerful only, but of all
alike,
boys and girls, both noble and ignoble, rich and poor, in all cities
and
towns, villages and hamlets, should be sent to school.
Education is indeed necessary for all, and this is evident if we
consider
the different degrees of ability. No one doubts that those who are
stupid
need instruction, that they may shake off their natural dullness. But
in
reality those who are clever need it far more, since an active mind, if
not occupied with useful things, will busy itself with what is useless,
curious, and pernicious.”
“Not the children of the rich or of the powerful only, but of all alike, boys and girls, both noble and ignoble, rich and poor, in all cities and towns, villages and hamlets, should be sent to school”
“Not the Christian religion only, but nature herself, cries out against the state of slavery.”
“Not the cold that had made him believe he was dying, and not the way Talasyn’s touch had channeled warmth into his veins like salvation.
Because she was not his salvation.
He had let her get too close. She would be his undoing. Light and shadow couldn’t exist together without one destroying the other.”
Source: A Monsoon Rising
“Not the demon anus!”
Source: The Night Eaters, Vol. 1: She Eats the Night
“Not The Done Thing by Stewart Stafford
Pass the strawberry conserve here,
Layer some cream on top,
This is how one eats scones, my dear,
We’re not pigs feeding in a trough.
Pinky raised when you sip tea,
No slurping sounds escaping your mouth,
Cucumber sandwiches in tiny triangles,
Crusts of bread all cut out.
Drawing room dramas over cordials ensue,
Gossip exchanged with finest manners,
Secrets kept as the cabal breaks up,
The public face flew on their banners.
© 2021, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
“Not the excuses but exercises build the body.”
Source: Rep By Rep
“Not the eyes, but the heart sees the beauty.”
“Not the first half you might have expected, even though the score might suggest that it was”
“Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end.”
Source: The Renaissance
“Not the Happiness but the Consequence of Happiness
He wakes up in the silence of the winter woods,
the silence of birds not singing, knowing he will
not hear his voice all day. He remembers what
the brown owl sounded like while he was sleeping.
The man wakes in the frigid morning thinking
about women. Not with desire so much as with a sense
of what is not. The January silence is the sound
of his feet in the snow, a squirrel scolding,
or the scraping calls of a single blue jay.
Something of him dances there, apart and gravely mute.
Many days in the woods he wonders what it is
that he has for so long hunted down. We go hand
in hand, he thinks, into the dark pleasure,
but we are rewarded alone, just as we are married
into aloneness. He walks the paths doing the strange
mathematics of the brain, multiplying the spirit.
He thinks of caressing her feet as she kept dying.
For the last four hours, watching her gradually stop
as the hospital slept. Remembers the stunning
coldness of her head when he kissed her just after.
There is light or more light, darkness and less darkness.
It is, he decides, a quality without definition.
How strange to discover that one lives with the heart
as one lives with a wife. Even after many years,
nobody knows what she is like. The heart has
a life of its own. It gets free of us, escapes,
is ambitiously unfaithful. Dies out unaccountably
after eight years, blooms unnecessarily and too late.
Like the arbitrary silence in the white woods,
leaving tracks in the snow he cannot recognize.”
Source: Refusing Heaven: Poems