O Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with O. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Once released from life, having lost it in such violence, I couldn’t calculate my steps. I didn’t have time for contemplation. In violence it is the getting out that you concentrate on. When you begin to go over the edge, life receding from you as a boat recedes inevitably from the shore, you hold on to death tightly, like a rope that will transport you, and you swing out on it, hoping to land away from where you are.”
“ONCE remove the old arena of theological quarrels, and you will throw open the whole world to the most horrible, the most hopeless, the most endless, the most truly interminable quarrels; the untheological quarrels.”
“Once renunciation and the awakened mind have been fully realized, the way to Buddhahood is clear. Liberation is complete and such liberated beings are then Bodhisattvas and Buddhas: "enlightened ones," or "empty dwellers." Their usefulness to others both before and after their physical death, is impossible to conceive. They are nothing but useful energy leading to liberation for all beings still caught in conditioned existence.”
“Once returned to his own home, Anders wondered whether the rifle actually made him safer, for he felt he was all alone, and it was better to be nonconfrontational than to stand up to trouble, and he imagined that somehow people were more likely to come for him if they found out he was armed, even though they would not find out, even though so many folks were armed, he just had this sense that it was essential not to be seen as a threat, for to be seen as a threat, as dark as he was, was to risk one day being obliterated.”
Source: The Last White Man
“Once risks are identified, they must be assessed in terms of their likelihood and potential impact. This allows the company to prioritize risks and allocate resources accordingly.”
Source: Board Room Blitz: Mastering the Art of Corporate Governance
“Once rituals do become static and repetitive, the element of excitement inspired by them can diminish.”
“once ruffle-skirted
vanity table where I primped
at thirteen, opening
drawers to a private
chaos of eyeshadows
lavender teal sky-blue,
swarms of hair pins
pony tail fasteners,
stashes of powders,
colonies of tiny
lipsticks (p.39)”
Source: The Still Position: A Verse Memoir of My Mother's Death
“Once Sally gets an idea in her head, there's not much room for too much else...”
“Once scientists and scholars invest parts of their career in support of a paradigm, it becomes a sort of a self-betrayal to abandon it.”
Source: The astronomical code of the Ṛgveda
“Once scouting fully opens its doors to all who desire the same experience that so fully enriched me as a young person, I will be happy to reconsider a role on the advisory board.”
“Once self-killing is an acceptable answer, how do you logically limit it to the dying? What about the disabled, who may live longer and suffer more?”
“Once sent out, a word takes wings beyond recall.”
“Once serious political dialogue has begun, the international community can assume that we have achieved genuine progress along the road to real democratisation.”
“Once settled arguments about women’s emancipation, individual rights, religious freedom, sexual freedom, animal rights, and freedom of speech are up for debate again in Europe.”
Source: Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights
“Once Seung Sahn Soen-sa and a student of his attended a talk at a Zen center in California. The Dharma teacher spoke about Bodhidharma. After the talk, someone asked him "What's the difference between Bodhidharma's sitting in Sorim for nine years and your sitting here now?"
The Dharma teacher said, "About five thousand miles."
The questioner said, "Is that all?"
The Dharma teacher said, "Give or take a few miles."
Later on, Soen-sa asked his student, "What do you think of these answers?"
"Not bad, not good. But the dog runs after the bone."
"How would you answer?"
"I'd say, 'Why do you make a difference?' "
Soen-sa said, "Not bad. Now you ask me."
"What's the difference between Bodhidharma's sitting in Sorim for nine years and your sitting here now?"
"Don't you know?"
"I'm listening."
"Bodhidharma sat in Sorim for nine years. I am sitting here now."
The student smiled.”
Source: Dropping Ashes on the Buddha: The Teachings of Zen Master Seung Sahn
“Once, several years ago, [GM] tried to stamp out bureaucracy--and ended up appointing a committee to oversee how many committee meetings should be held. (Quoting Sharon Terlep, The Wall Street Journal, "GM's Plodding Culture Vexes Its Impatient CEO," April 7, 2010)”
Source: Kill the Company
“Once sex rears its ugly 'ead it's time to steer clear.”
“Once, Shakuni had been evil and bent on revenge. He'd gotten himself cursed. But maybe curses weren't all that terrible, because he'd saved their lives, not only once, but twice. Maybe he wasn't all bad or even all good. He was just... human. In pigeon form.
"People change," said Aru.”
“Once shame touches your being at any point, even the most distant nerve is implicated, whether you know it or not; any fleeting encounter or random thought will rake up the anguish and add to it.”
Source: The Post-office Girl
“Once sharpen by situation, you will find strength.”
“Once, she asked, 'Can you remind me of this tomorrow?' He smiled and replied, 'I'd rather be your everlasting reminder than just a leftover memory.' And that's how their story began.”
“Once she called to invite me to a concert of Liszt piano concertos. The soloist was a famous South American pianist. I cleared my schedule and went with her to the concert hall at Ueno Park. The performance was brilliant. The soloist's technique was outstanding, the music both delicate and deep, and the pianist's heated emotions were there for all to feel. Still, even with my eyes closed, the music didn't sweep me away. A thin curtain stood between myself and pianist, and no matter how much I might try, I couldn't get to the other side. When I told Shimamoto this after the concert, she agreed.
"But what was wrong with the performance?" she asked. "I thought it was wonderful."
"Don't you remember?" I said. "The record we used to listen to, at the end of the second movement there was this tiny scratch you could hear. Putchi! Putchi! Somehow, without that scratch, I can't get into the music!"
Shimamoto laughed. "I wouldn't exactly call that art appreciation."
"This has nothing to do with art. Let a bald vulture eat that up, for all I care. I don't care what anybody says; I like that scratch!"
"Maybe you're right," she admitted. "But what's this about a bald vulture? Regular vultures I know about--they eat corpses. But bald vultures?"
In the train on the way home, I explained the difference in great detail.The difference in where they are born, their call, their mating periods. "The bald vulture lives by devouring art. The regular vulture lives by devouring the corpses of unknown people. They're completely different."
"You're a strange one!" She laughed. And there in the train seat, ever so slightly, she moved her shoulder to touch mine. The one and only time in the past two months our bodies touched.”
Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun
“Once she'd graduated from Ever After High, she'd open her own chain of bakeries. She'd publish cookbooks and create an entire line of gourmet treats under her label, Ginger's Goodies. By sharing her talents on a larger scale, she'd help make the world a happier place. For Ginger Breadhouse believed, with every ounce, gram, and sprinkle of her soul, that good food was one of the secret ingredients to happiness. Whether in times of celebration or sadness, beautifully prepared goodies had the power to bring people together.”
Source: Kiss and Spell
“Once she’d lifted the bat out of the cage, the younger woman turned slowly, lifted her hands high, then said, “Time to go home, little one” as she opened her hands.
The bat hesitated for a moment, as if unclear it was free to go, then it fluttered away. The people watched by headlamp as the bat circled them twice, before disappearing into the sky.
All the while, the older man with the camera had been positioning himself to record the moment. His photo caught the young scientist silhouetted on one side of the image, the dark outline of the island on the other side, just as the bat took flight into the orange sunrise glowing across the water.”
Source: Bat Cave: A Fable of Epidemic Proportions
“Once she exclaimed, "But I always thought that sorceresses were evil!" "What do you mean 'evil'?" Lynet has never considered the question. "You know," she said, after a moment, "unfriendly to people." "People!" repeated Morgana derisively. "As if humans were all that mattered. Just once I'd like to see people judged by how friendly they are to sorceresses.”
“Once she finished scuffling with her brothers, Arnaaluk yawned, resting her haunches in the grass. As she looked to the rising sun following the short summer night, Kiviaq huddled next to her. The two wolves gazed on the stunning panorama. Closeness beamed over them like the warmth of the sun's rays on a cool morning.”
Source: The Yukon Wolf
“Once, she had been her parents' daughter. Then great, unlucky Ias's wife. Her children's mother. At the last, her mother's keeper. Well, I am none of these things now. Who am I, when I am not surrounded by the walls of my life?”
Source: Paladin of Souls
“Once she had believed that connection meant sameness, consensus, harmony. Having everything in common. And now she understood that the opposite was true: that connection was more valuable--more remarkable--for the fact of differences. Friendship didn't require blunting the richness of yourself to find common ground. Sometimes it was that, but it was also appreciating another person, in all their particularity.”
Source: Real Americans
“Once she had flicked to the last page, she saw one of her very last regrets — 'I was bad at looking after Voltaire' — slowly disappear from the page. The letters fading like retreating strangers in a fog.”
Source: The Midnight Library
“Once she had loved Prince Joffrey with all her heart, and admired and trusted her his mother, the queen. They had repaid that love and trust with her father's head. Sansa would never make that mistake again.”
Source: A Clash of Kings: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Two
“Once she had thought belief depended on inclination. But she fought against this new realization as hard as she could, trying to shut out the future as before she had shut out the past; yet still it gained ground. It mingled with her daily life, with the war, with the winter, until it scarcely seemed a separate thing at all, but merely a state of mind produced by living alone, living in England and all the rest of it. She deeply hoped it was. There were times when it seemed a trivial and shallow depression. And there were times when the fear of it touched her as cold as wet steel: when she could see herself hardly aware that she was unhappy, because her feelings had so nearly atrophied, and receiving no compensations in return.”
“Once she has committed sin, there is nothing left for the Protestant woman, whereas the Catholic Church, hope of forgiveness makes a woman sublime.”
“Once she kissed me, my heart slowed, and every muscle in my body relaxed. How much I needed her terrified me. -pg 252/ARC”
Source: Walking Disaster
“Once she knows how to read there's only one thing you can teach her to believe in and that is herself.”
Source: The Mark on the Wall and Other Short Fiction
“Once she knows you’ve broken her on purpose with an intention to hurt her and then laughed at her pain, enjoyed a bit of narcissistic kick, moved on to other and processing the same pattern
She prepares for your funeral in her life, hate is a stronger emotion than love. Love may still have second thoughts and doubts but hate is a straight forward emotion listening to no other arguments.”
“Once she made him watch Pride and Prejudice and for ages he would re-word Mr Bingley's apology to Jane Bennet, saying, 'I've been an inexplicable fool', for anything from losing his keys to burping out loud. Her reply to anything she wanted to do was Jane Bennet's response to Bingley's marriage proposal, 'A thousand times yes.”
“Once she read a book but found it distasteful because it contained adjectives.”
Source: The Willoughbys
“Once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people.”
Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass: 150th-Anniversary Edition (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“Once she’s dressed — radiant and armored like Venus in court shoes — she floats into her litter or down the palace hall, face veiled just enough for mystery. She’s crowned with a diadem, or sometimes a turban twist, or that curious cone-shaped tutulus that juts from the forehead like a temple spire. There’s a neck-scarf for grace, a handkerchief for dust and sweat (and occasional nose-blowing), and a peacock-feather fan to shoo away flies and men alike. On bright days, an umbrella flutters above her, green as spring, carried by a maid or gallant. And of course — the sacred handbag.”
Source: From Youngstown to Rome´s Fall: How I, Earl Jenkins, Remembered What the Empire Forgot
“Once she's tucked under her covers, which I damn wished I did myself, I open my laptop on the kitchen counter and search for the sign she made after our dance. The one I didn't get.
Clicking on a video, my jaw drops to the floor, and my heart tightens at the same time, so f*ckin' much it hurt.
Mine.
That's what she said as she was signing on my chest.
Mine.”
Source: Whispers of Fire
“Once,' she said, 'I used to sleep with a piece of wood by my side so that I could defend myself if I were attacked. That's how afraid I was.'
'Afraid of what?'
She shook her head. 'Of nothing, of everything.”
Source: Wide Sargasso Sea
“Once she started awake to a sound like the low roll of drums, and to the south she saw an endless congregation of antelope that moved across the nighted plain, raising a cloud of dust behind them that swallowed the stars and turned the moon rusty brown as a scrape of ruined iron. Near dawn, in that darkest hour, she raised her head again and saw to the north the passage of sails. They hovered across the deep like a parade of phantom cavaliers tilted upon hellish steeds. They passed in waves, ranks upon ranks of ghostly warlords bent toward the coming dawn as if to impale the sun itself and set it atop a spike in the blackened sky.”
Source: Fiddler's Green
“Once she was certain, she didn't waiver. I had to make her stop for water or a bite to eat. She obeyed, but she was restless. As clear as if she spoke to me, she was saying, "Very well, I know you want to keep my strength up, but scent fades, you know!"
And I'd say, "I know, girl, but you're what I have and I'm going to take care of you.”
Source: Bloodhound
“Once she was certain, she didn't waiver. I had to make her stop for water or a bite to eat. She obeyed, but she was restless. As clear as if she spoke to me, she was saying, "Very well, I know you want to keep my strength up, but scent fades, you know!" And I'd say, "I know, girl, buy you're what I have and I'm going to take care of you.”
Source: Beka Cooper: The Hunt Records
“Once she was gone, I knelt next to Annabeth and felt her forehead. She was still burning up. "You're cute when you're worried," she muttered. "Your eyebrows get all scrunched together." "You are not going to die while I owe you a favor," I said. "Why did you take that knife?" "You would've done the same for me." It was true. I guess we both knew it. Still, I felt like somebody was poking my heart with a cold metal rod.”
“Once she was standing by her locker and her puka shells broke and scattered and she made a joke about it but he could tell she was upset. He wanted to buy her some more. He wanted to give her a million strands of little nesting polished shells, and tropical flowers and ice creams and lemonades and a pale blue surfboard to teach her to surf on and anything else she wanted. Instead he let his checkered Vans step on one of the rolling shells and crush it.”
Source: Wasteland
“Once she wasn't supposed to like it. To have her in a position she didn't like, that was power. Even if she liked it she had to pretend she didn't. Then she was supposed to like it. To make her do something she didn't like and then make her like it, that was greater power. The greatest power of all is when she doesn't really like it but she's supposed to like it, so she has to pretend.”
Source: Murder in the Dark: Short Fictions and Prose Poems
“Once she woke with untamed lover's face between her legs, now he's cooled and stifled and it's she who has to beg.”
“Once she'd been a victim- helpless, used, and broken. Now, she was a warrior.”
Source: J.D. Robb The IN DEATH Collection
“Once she'd loved my filet mignon, my carnivore inklings, but now she was a vegan princess, living off of beans. She'd given up the cheese and bacon, sworn off Burger King, and when I wouldn't do the same she gave me back my ring. I stood there by the romaine lettuce, feeling my heart pine. Wishing that this meatless beauty still would be all mine. She turned around to go to checkout, fifteen items or less. And I knew this was the last go-round, so this is what I said. ... "Don't you ever give me no rotten tomato, 'cause all I ever wanted was your sweet potato.”