O Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with O. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“On the first day of middle school I wore high-heeled shoes that you weren't allowed to wear. I remember being so embarrassed because in every class I went to they kept pointing out that I couldn't wear these shoes. I wanted to call my mom and have her bring me new shoes!”
“On the first day of November last year, sacred to many religious calendars but especially the Celtic, I went for a walk among bare oaks and birch. Nothing much was going on. Scarlet sumac had passed and the bees were dead. The pond had slicked overnight into that shiny and deceptive glaze of delusion, first ice. It made me remember sakes and conjure a vision of myself skimming backward on one foot, the other extended; the arms become wings. Minnesota girls know that this is not a difficult maneuver if one's limber and practices even a little after school before the boys claim the rink for hockey. I think I can still do it - one thinks many foolish things when November's bright sun skips over the entrancing first freeze.
A flock of sparrows reels through the air looking more like a flying net than seventy conscious birds, a black veil thrown on the wind. When one sparrow dodges, the whole net swerves, dips: one mind. Am I part of anything like that?
Maybe not. The last few years of my life have been characterized by stripping away, one by one, loves and communities that sustain the soul. A young colleague, new to my English department, recently asked me who I hang around with at school. "Nobody," I had to say, feeling briefly ashamed. This solitude is one of the surprises of middle age, especially if one's youth has been rich in love and friendship and children. If you do your job right, children leave home; few communities can stand an individual's most pitiful, amateur truth telling. So the soul must stand in her own meager feathers and learn to fly - or simply take hopeful jumps into the wind.
In the Christian calendar, November 1 is the Feast of All Saints, a day honoring not only those who are known and recognized as enlightened souls, but more especially the unknowns, saints who walk beside us unrecognized down the millennia. In Buddhism, we honor the bodhisattvas - saints - who refuse enlightenment and return willingly to the wheel of karma to help other beings. Similarly, in Judaism, anonymous holy men pray the world from its well-merited destruction. We never know who is walking beside us, who is our spiritual teacher. That one - who annoys you so - pretends for a day that he's the one, your personal Obi Wan Kenobi. The first of November is a splendid, subversive holiday.
Imagine a hectic procession of revelers - the half-mad bag lady; a mumbling, scarred janitor whose ravaged face made the children turn away; the austere, unsmiling mother superior who seemed with great focus and clarity to do harm; a haunted music teacher, survivor of Auschwitz. I bring them before my mind's eye, these old firends of my soul, awakening to dance their day. Crazy saints; but who knows what was home in the heart? This is the feast of those who tried to take the path, so clumsily that no one knew or notice, the feast, indeed, of most of us.
It's an ugly woods, I was saying to myself, padding along a trail where other walkers had broken ground before me. And then I found an extraordinary bouquet. Someone had bound an offering of dry seed pods, yew, lyme grass, red berries, and brown fern and laid it on the path: "nothing special," as Buddhists say, meaning "everything." Gathered to formality, each dry stalk proclaimed a slant, an attitude, infinite shades of neutral.
All contemplative acts, silences, poems, honor the world this way. Brought together by the eye of love, a milkweed pod, a twig, allow us to see how things have been all along. A feast of being.”
Source: The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd
“On the first day of school, my father told me I'd be the most popular girl and everyone would love me and want to be my friend. It wasn't so, but it gave me an enormous amount of confidence.”
“On the first day the lord gave you television, on the next he delivered a couch, tell me how do you explain all this content If the universe wanted you out and about?”
“On the first feature, everything's new. No matter what you're doing, it's a new experience, and you don't really have control over it, in a way, because you just don't know how things work.”
“On the first few albums the songs would grow into strange shapes.”
“On the first landing, Langdon came face-to-face with a bronze bust of Masonic luminary Albert Pike, along with the engraving of his most famous quote: What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.”
Source: The Lost Symbol
“On the first movie we got good reviews, but we were still dealing with genre stuff. It's going away. Judge the movie - is it a good one or a bad one? We know we made a great movie and it's being judged for just being a good film.”
“On the first night it was on telly, Channel 4 had 17 complaints.”
“On the first occasion Mrs Papagay had met her, there had been a discussion of the process of grief, and Mrs Jesse had nodded sagely, "I know that. I have felt that,' like a kind of tragic chorus. 'I have felt everything; I know everything. I don’t want any new emotion. I know what it is to feel like a stoan.”
Source: Angels and Insects
“On the first of May, with my comrades of the catechism class, I laid lilac, chamomile and rose before the altar of the Virgin, and returned full of pride to show my blessed posy. My mother laughed her irreverent laugh and, looking at my bunch of flowers, which was bringing the may-bug into the sitting-room right under the lamp, she said: Do you suppose it wasn't already blessed before?”
“On the first one, X-Men: First Class, it would be James McAvoy, Nicholas Hoult and I. I'd basically inhale, there would be a red flashing light, and then the stuff at the end of the hallway would just blow up. It really felt like I could do those things, but, sadly, I can't. It was a lot of fun; I got to play a superhero that I was familiar with since I was a kid. It doesn't really get much better than that.”
“On the first page of the Bible there is an instance of how literalism is but an invitation to transcend the image to which literalism points. That first page is not geology, biology or paleontology; it is high religion. For there we are told who we are in terms of our constititutive text. And if we could understand that, we would worrying about whether the antelopes or the cantaloupes came in a certain order.”
“On the first tee I kept telling myself, "Trust yourself, you can do it."”
“On the flagship Weight of the Wheel:
“You’d have to ask medical,” said Two Foam.
“Someone ask medical,” said Mahit. “I can’t talk to anyone. I’m not a citizen.” And she smiled, terrifying and far too beautiful with all those teeth exposed, gesturing to her entire lack of cloudhook.”
Source: A Desolation Called Peace
“On the flat expanse of pancake ice, War stood by the Pale Rider’s side. Though their forms did not touch, their shadows intertwined, black on black, in a smoky caress.
“Knew you’d come,” Death said cheerfully.
She smiled, and that slow motion of her lips hinted at many things. “The White Rider divided, and the world on the brink of destruction. How could I stay away?”
“I could set my watch by you.”
“You don’t have a watch.” Her smile broadened into a grin. “An hourglass, maybe . . .”
“Please, not another joke about a scythe . . .”
She mimed zipping her mouth shut.
A pause, as they listened to the sounds of the boy healing and the man summoning doom.
“I like him,” War said.
Even though she hadn’t specified whether she meant the boy or the man, Death smiled and nodded. “Me too.”
“You like everyone.”
“Well, yes.”
The two shared a quiet laugh, their voices mingling in perfect harmony.
A longer pause, and then War asked, “What of Famine?”
“What of her? She’s not mine. Not yet, anyway. She will be soon enough.”
The Red Rider slid him a look. “That’s cold, even for you.”
“Eh, just practical.” A shrug. “Everyone comes to me eventually. It’s the journey that makes it interesting.”
“Such a people person!”
He flashed her a grin. “My best quality.”
“Oh,” said War, sliding her gloved hand into his pale one, “I can think of others that are better.”
Source: Loss
“On the flat tax, the more you compress the tax rates, the more you untax where the income is really made, at the top of the pyramid.”
“On the Flight Deck this afternoon, a young plane captain, his mind obviously preoccupied with other matters, walked directly in front of an F-8 intake as the bird was turning up. He was instantly sucked off his feet and pulled down into the jet turbine tunnel. Fortunately, someone saw it happen and frantically signaled for the pilot to cut his engine. Once silenced, two squadron crew members crawled into the intake to rescue the dumb shit or what was left of him. They found his body wrapped around the generator hump directly in front of the turbine blades. He had miraculously avoided being chopped to pieces like steak in a meat grinder.”
Source: God, Bombs & Viet Nam: Based on the Diary of a 20-Year-Old Navy Enlisted Man in the Vietnam Air War - 1967
“On the flip side, I enjoy covering the Arab world, I've spent my entire career here in the Middle East, but I would never call myself a war correspondent.”
“On the flip side, I've also had to struggle with saying "yes." Before I did this research and before I had my own breakdown and spiritual awakening around this work, my motto was, "Don't do anything that you're already not great at doing." Which I think is the way the majority of adults in our culture live. Authenticity is also about the courage and the vulnerability to say, "Yeah, I'll try it. I feel pretty uncomfortable and I feel a little vulnerable, but I'll try it!"”
“On the flip side, no one has any idea who the hell I am. I felt like I had to prove myself to them. On any new project I'm working on, the first week is nerve-wracking, but especially with these people that I admire so much and who I just want to be equal with.”
“On the flip side, when we connect our work with a greater sense of purpose and calling beyond the paycheck, we begin to see the kind of flourishing that we were called to create.”
“On the floor beside the spare pillow that had tumbled from the bed in her sleep was a single yellow flower. Five heart-shaped petals. As fresh and as pure as if it were in full bloom in a summer meadow.
Drowsy and mind-fogged, she crept downstairs to look for a book on Irish wildflowers. It took her a while to find anything that resembled the yellow flower, but eventually she found an image and description that matched: "Cinquefoil, a flower renowned for its healing properties and a flower also said to be favored by fairy folk. Meanings associated with it include money, protection, sleep, prophetic dreams, and beloved daughter.”
Source: The Cottingley Secret
“On the floor I am more at ease.”
Source: Jackson Pollock. Englische Ausgabe.
“On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting.”
Source: Jackson Pollock. Englische Ausgabe.
“On the floor, and hanging on to the bar, squatted an old man, immobile as an object. His years had reduced and polished him as water does a stone or the generations of men do a sentence.”
Source: A Personal Anthology
“On the flow path, we are drawn forward by fire; by powerful hedonic instincts; by our deep need for autonomy, mastery, and purpose deeply fulfilled; by dizzyingly feel-good neurochemistry; by a spectrum of joy beyond common ken; by the undeniable presence of our most authentic selves; by a cognitive imperative to make meaning from experience; by the search engine that is evolution and its need for innovation; and by the simplest of truths: life is long and we’re all scared and, in flow, at least for a little while, we’re not.”
Source: The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance
“On the following morning the little hut on the Alm opened wide its doors and windows as if to drink up the early sunshine. Days went by. The warmth of the spring sun woke up first the little blue gentians - those with a white star in the center; then, one by one, all the other lovely flowers opened their petals. There were jonquils and red primroses and little golden rockroses with thorns on the edge of their petals. They all bloomed in their brightest colors while Peter watched the miracle taking place, as he had watched it every spring since he could remember. He had never quite seen the beauty of it, however, until Heidi had come to show him.”
Source: Heidi Grows Up
“On the football field I keep my emotions tied up inside. But when I'm with family, I let them out.”
“On the foreign policy front, Barack Obama is not a confrontational man. He stayed away from all confrontations, and you can look and see what happened overseas. It's a mess everywhere. So he made major mistakes, major policy mistakes. Those mistakes are not going to be forgiven by history.”
“On the foreign policy side, there's the risk of being too spontaneous and too disruptive where you end up doing more harm than damage. And figuring out that balance is where having strong people around you matters.”
“On the four aces doom'd to roll.”
Source: The poetical works of Charles Churchill: with memoir, critical dissertation, and explanatory notes / by the Rev. George Gilfillan
“On the fourth day of July following, a party of about two hundred Indians attacked Boonsborough, killed one man, and wounded two.”
Source: The discovery, settlement and present state of Kentucky, and an introduction to the topography and natural history of that ... country. Also colonel Daniel Boon's narrative of the wars of Kentucky
“On the fourth day of telecommuting, I realized that clothes are totally unnecessary.”
Source: The Dilbert principle: a cubicle's-eye view of bosses, meetings, management fads & other workplace afflictions
“On the fourth day, we came upon a cavern with a perfectly still pool that gave the illusion of a night sky, its depths sparkling with tiny luminescent fish.
Mal and I were slightly ahead of the others. He dipped his hand in, then yelped and drew back. “They bite.”
“Serves you right,” I said. “‘Oh, look, a dark lake full of something shiny. Let me put my hand in it.’”
“I can’t help being delicious,” he said, that familiar cocky grin flashing across his face like light over water. Then he seemed to catch himself. He shouldered his pack, and I knew he was about to move away from me.
I wasn’t sure where the words came from: “You didn’t fail me, Mal.”
He wiped his damp hand on his thigh. “We both know better.”
“We’re going to be traveling together for who knows how long. Eventually, you’re going to have to talk to me.”
“I’m talking to you right now.”
“See? Is this so terrible?”
“It wouldn’t be,” he said, gazing at me steadily, “if all I wanted to do was talk.”
My cheeks heated. You don’t want this, I told myself. But I felt my edges curl like a piece of paper held too close to fire. “Mal—”
“I need to keep you safe, Alina, to stay focused on what matters. I can’t do that if . . .” He let out a long breath. “You were meant for more than me, and I’ll die fighting to give it to you. But please don’t ask me to pretend it’s easy.”
He plunged ahead into the next cave.
I looked down into the glittering pond, the whorls of light in the water still settling after Mal’s brief touch. I could hear the others making their noisy way through the cavern.
“Oncat scratches me all the time,” said Harshaw as he ambled up beside me.
“Oh?” I asked hollowly.
“Funny thing is, she likes to stay close.”
“Are you being profound, Harshaw?”
“Actually, I was wondering, if I ate enough of those fish, would I start to glow?”
I shook my head. Of course one of the last living Inferni would have to be insane. I fell into step with the others and headed into the next tunnel.
“Come on, Harshaw,” I called over my shoulder.
Then the first explosion hit.”
Source: Ruin and Rising
“On the free market, everyone earns according to his productive value in satisfying consumer desires. Under statist distribution, everyone earns in proportion to the amount he can plunder from the producers.”
Source: Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, Scholar's Edition
“On the freeway of life, Lisa Watson was stuck at the entrance ramp, trapped behind a cautious old lady in a Buick.”
Source: Caviar Dreams
“On the front flap, the reader was informed that the Testamento geometrico was really three books, 'each independent, but functionally correlated by the sweep of the whole,' and then it said 'this work representing the final distillation of Dieste's reflections and research on Space, the notion of which is involved in any methodical discussion of the fundamentals of Geometry.”
Source: 2666
“On the fundamental dignity of the human person, there can be no relenting!”
“On the future of the U.S., or of Western civilization in general, I tend to be quite pessimistic. I would say that today I see most of the symptoms of societies on the brink of collapse, not just in the U.S., but in the tightly interconnected societies of Western civilization - now essentially world civilization.”
“On the gallows tree, all men are brothers.”
Source: George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones 5-Book Boxed Set (Song of Ice and Fire Series): A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and and A Dance with Dragons
“On the Gang of Eight bill, there was no provisions really for extra scrutiny or safety for refugees. At the time the bill came up, two Iraqi refugees came to my home town, Bowling Green, Kentucky. Their fingerprints were on a bomb from Iraq. They were in the database, but we didn't pick them up.”
“On the geological time scale, a human lifetime is reduced to a brevity that is too inhibiting to think about deep time. ... Geologists ... see the unbelievable swiftness with which one evolving species on the Earth has learned to reach into the dirt of some tropical island and fling 747s across the sky ... Seeing a race unaware of its own instantaneousness in time, they can reel off all the species that have come and gone, with emphasis on those that have specialized themselves to death.”
“On the geometric level, we see certain physical elements repeated endlessly, combined in an almost endless variety of combinations. It is puzzling to realize that the elements, which seem like elementary building blocks, keep varying, and are different every time that they occur. If the elements are different every time that they occur, evidently then, it cannot be the elements themselves which are repeating in a building or town; these so-called elements cannot be the ultimate "atomic" constituents of space.”
“On the ghosts in Moorehawke & Into The Grey/Taken Away:
The ghosts ...are symbolic of those unresolved moments in history that linger, and affect the next generation. Sometimes this happens without that generation ever really knowing the truth of what has come before. This is so true of war, I think, where we are often only left the stories that the previous generation wanted us to hear... How much harder would the truth be to deny were it lingering about as an actual manifestation of the past?”
“On the girl's brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.”
Source: Little Bee: A Novel
“On the Glass-Steagall thing, like I said, if you could demonstrate to me that it was a mistake, I'd be glad to look at the evidence. But I can't blame [the Republicans]. This wasn't something they forced me into. I really believed that given the level of oversight of banks and their ability to have more patient capital, if you made it possible for [banks] to go into the investment banking business as continental European investment banks could always do, that it might give us a more stable source of long-term investment.”
“On the golf course, a man may be the dogged victim of inexorable fate, be struck down by an appalling stroke of tragedy, become the hero of unbelievable melodrama, or the clown in a side-splitting comedy.”
“On the good ship Lollipop Its a sweet trip To the candy shop Where bon-bon's play, On the sunny beach Of peppermint bay Lemonade stands, Everywhere Crackerjack bands, Fill the air, And there you are, Happy landings on a chocolate bar. See the sugar bowl Do a tootsie roll In a big bad devils food cake, If you eat too much, Oh, oh, You'll awake, With a tummy ache.”
“On The Good Side of Government (Sonnet 2199)
How to be on the good side of government,
this is a manual for the monkeys -
never question, never reason, never doubt,
be a good little patriot, blind to atrocity.
Foster no conviction on human rights,
memorize the moral parameters set by the state,
and remember, it's not about morality or ethics,
it's about licking the boots of office idiots.
Use music and movies as propaganda machine,
for the government's favorite god 'n religion,
never make art about correcting social ill,
but about maintaining fanatical superstition.
However, well aware of all the dangers,
if you still dare to stand as human -
I salute you, o brave beacon of life,
there is hope yet for human civilization!”
Source: The God Sonnets: Naskar Art of Theology