O Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with O. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Illustrated): Friedrich Nietzsche
“Once upon a time, man had a love affair with fire.”
“Once upon a time, my mother lived in the posh downtown of Homs, Syria. She described my grandfather as a king in a storybook, atop a horse, wearing a didashah and pointing a long arm.”
“Once upon a time, novelists of the 19th century, such as Charles Dickens, published in serial form.”
“Once upon a time, people identified the god Neptune as the source of storms at sea. Today we call these storms hurricanes.... The only people who still call hurricanes acts of God are the people who write insurance forms.”
Source: Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries
“Once upon a time, Sleeping Beauty decided to take a nap from which she would never wake up.”
Source: You Know Where to Find Me
“Once upon a time, something happened, and it was better than something not happening. The end.”
“Once upon a time, the most successful Democratic leader of them all, FDR, looked south and said I see one third of a nation ill-housed, ill clad, ill nourished. Today our national Democratic leaders look south and say, I see one third of a nation and it can go to hell.”
“Once upon a time, the Reindeer took a running leap and jumped over the Northern Lights. But he jumped too low, and the long fur of his beautiful flowing tail got singed by the rainbow fires of the aurora. To this day the reindeer has no tail to speak of. But he is too busy pulling the Important Sleigh to notice what is lost. And he certainly doesn’t complain. What's your excuse?”
“Once upon a time, the sky knew the weight of angel armies on the move, and the wind blew infernal with the fire of their wings.”
“Once upon a time, there was a boy who learned to read at the age of 5. This changed his life. Owing to the adventure tales he read, he discovered a way to escape from the poor house, the poor country, and the poor reality in which he lived.”
“Once upon a time, there was a clear set of choices that people made. Now there are so many choices of how to think, how to define ourselves.”
“Once upon a time, there was a girl named Grace Brisbane. There was nothing particularly special about her, except that she was good with numbers, and very good at lying, and she made her home in between the pages of books. She loved all the wolves behind her house, but she love one of them most of all.”
Source: Linger
“Once upon a time, there was a little creature that was rather small and rather wicked and it lived all alone in the woods. The little creature lived in a little den, at the bottom of a little ravine, filled with not-at-all little brambles and on the edge of a forest that could only be described as really freakin' huge.”
“Once upon a time, there was a Magic Kingdom made of hopes and childhood fantasies. A timeless place where every land was filled with wonder. A place where everyone who entered its gates would be given the gift of the young at heart.”
“Once upon a time, there was a prostitute called Maria. Wait a minute. "Once upon a time" is how all the best children's stories begin, and "prostitute" is a word for adults. How can I start a book with this apparent contradiction? But since, at every moment of our lives, we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss, let's keep that beginning.”
“Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.”
Source: Back When We Were Grownups
“Once upon a time, there were only three or four dominant women. Now, there are 10 to 15 who can vie for a Grand Slam.”
“Once upon a time, there were two moons, who were sisters. Nitid was the goddess of tears and life, and the sky was hers. No one worshipped Ellai but secret lovers.”
“Once upon a time, they say, there was a girl...there was a boy...there was a person who was in trouble. And this is what she did...and what he did...and how they learned to survive it. This is what they did...and why one failed...and why another triumphed in the end. And I know that it's true, because I danced at their wedding and drank their very best wine.”
“Once upon a time, this idea of having a trained, disciplined, cultivated memory was not nearly so alien as it would seem to us to be today.”
“Once upon a time, this moment - this last light of the evening the day before the race - was the best moment of the year for me. The anticipation of the game to come. But that was when all I had to lose was my life.”
Source: The Scorpio Races
“Once upon a time, when I was young, people saw a wedding as an event that determined the rest of their life. For a rising number of people today, it is quite normal to "try and err", marry, divorce, marry again.”
“Once upon a time, when men and women hurtled through the air on metal wings, when they wore webbed feet and walked on the bottom of the sea, learning the speech of whales and the songs of the dolphins, when pearly-fleshed and jewelled apparitions of Texan herdsmen and houris shimmered in the dusk on Nicaraguan hillsides, when folk in Norway and Tasmania in dead of winter could dream of fresh strawberries, dates, guavas and passion fruits and find them spread next morning on their tables, there was a woman who was largely irrelevant, and therefore happy.”
“Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn, and to sing at dusk, was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.”
“Once upon a time," he said out loud to the darkness. He said these words because they were the best, the most powerful words that he knew and just the saying of them comforted him.”
Source: The Essential Kate DiCamillo Collection
“Once upon a time... a long time ago... things that happened once perhaps but have been talked about for so long that nobody really knows. And underneath all the bits that people have added the magic swords and lamps they're all about one thing - the good hero fighting the giant or the witch or the wicked uncle. Good against bad. Good against evil.”
Source: The Dark Is Rising: The Complete Sequence
“Once upon a times and happy ever afters could suck it and die.”
Source: The Silent Cries of a Magpie
“Once upon hearing a friend's bashing comment I said, "Did you reach that conclusion on your own, or did it come through prayer?"”
“Once upon the dawn of time, there was water.
Before the stars, before the Maker set life into earth, life into lungs, beast or man to roam . . . there was water.”
Source: All the Lost Places
“Once us feel loved by God, us do the best us can to please him with what us like.”
“Once uy break through the shell of uyr own negativity, uy can manifest anything with ease.”
Source: Pataphysics: Mastering Time Line Jumps for Personal Transformation
“Once value-laden facts become acceptable, then things like "racist facts" become acceptable, too – and then it becomes acceptable to reject any factual statement not because it is false, but because it is "racist”. Thus, any Obama-esque "national conversation about race" becomes impossible.”
“Once various forms were signed, I was separated from my free will, led down the corridors into a room which was now to be the boundary of my existence, told to surrender my clothes, handed that comic invention, the hospital gown, and sent to bed in broad daylight like a child being stripped of her privileges.”
“Once, very long ago, Time fell in love with Fate.”
Source: The Starless Sea
“Once, very long ago, Time fell in love with Fate. This, as you might imagine, proved problematic. Their romance disrupted the flow of time. It tangled the strings of fortune into knots. The stars watched from the heavens nervously, worrying what might occur. What might happen to the days and nights were time to suffer a broken heart? What catastrophes might result if the same fate awaited Fate itself? The stars conspired and separated the two. For a while they breathed easier in the heavens. Time continued to flow as it always had, or perhaps imperceptibly slower. Fate weaved together the paths that were meant to intertwine, though perhaps a string was missed here and there. But eventually, Fate and Time found each other again. In the heavens, the stars sighed, twinkling and fretting. They asked the Moon her advice. The Moon in turn called upon the parliament of owls to decide how best to proceed. The parliament of owls convened to discuss the matter amongst themselves night after night. They argued and debated while the world slept around them, and the world continued to turn, unaware that such important matters were under discussion while it slumbered. The parliament of owls came to the logical conclusion that if the problem was in the combination, one of the elements should be removed. They chose to keep the one they felt more important. The parliament of owls told their decision to the stars and the stars agreed. The Moon did not, but on this night she was dark and could not offer her opinion. So it was decided, and Fate was pulled apart. Ripped into pieces by beaks and claws. Fate’s screams echoed through the deepest corners and the highest heavens but no one dared to intervene save for a small brave mouse who snuck into the fray, creeping unnoticed through the blood and bone and feathers, and took Fate’s heart and kept it safe. When the furor died down there was nothing else left of Fate. The owl who consumed Fate’s eyes gained great site, greater site then any that had been granted to a mortal creature before. The Parliament crowned him the Owl King. In the heavens the stars sparkled with relief but the moon was full of sorrow. And so time goes as it should and events that were once fated to happen are left instead to chance, and Chance never falls in love with anything for long. But the world is strange and endings are not truly endings no matter how the stars might wish it so. Occasionally Fate can pull itself together again. And Time is always waiting.”
Source: The Starless Sea
“Once very near the end I said, 'If you can -- if it is allowed -- come to me when I too am on my death bed.' 'Allowed!' she said. 'Heaven would have a job to hold me; and as for Hell, I'd break it into bits.”
Source: A Grief Observed
“Once vigorous measures appear to be the only means left of bringing the Americans to a due submission to the mother country, the colonies will submit.”
“Once war becomes a clash of absolutes, there is no breathing room for mercy. Absolute truth is blind truth.”
Source: The Third Jesus: How to Find Truth and Love in Today's World
“Once war consisted of individual combats between armed men. Later it was waged between lines of men in opposing trenches. Now it is organized slaughter of whole populations.”
Source: Kirby Page and the social gospel: an anthology
“Once war is on men's minds, it festers within, claiming them.”
Source: The Witch and the Tsar
“Once war was over, everyone wanted to find some normality, to settle and fix their disordered homes. The reality, of course, was that it was impossible. Not with rationing and homes bombed and fathers not yet returned.”
Source: The Sleeping Beauties
“Once water charges are in place they will only go up. This has been the history of all these charges”
“Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.”
“Once we achieve this balance, we will see everyone as a balance of masculine and feminine. Everyone has a role. Every energy is of equal value.”
Source: The Magdalene Lineage: Past Life Journeys Into the Sacred Feminine Mysteries
“Once we acknowledge the complex nature of the world, the notion of dissecting and reassembling entire industry constituents like Lego is illusory.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“Once we actually have the production script after many rewrites, at that point is when I start to decide what the look and colors will be. I work like a painter, even though I'm working in three dimensions. I'm working with chairs. I'm working with walls. But even things like the floor or the walls that people might think are not important, they actually do influence the visual look of the film. These are also things that I have to think about.”
“Once we admit that the public sector takes an immense amount of risk along the entire innovation chain, it becomes crucial to find ways to share both risks and rewards.”
“Once we admit that there is room for newness - that there are vastly more conceivable possibilities than realized outcomes - we must confront the fact that there is no special logic behind the world we inhabit, no particular justification for why things are the way they are. Any number of arbitrarily small perturbations along the way could have made the world as we know it turn out very differently.”
“Once we affirm the goal of trying to make sure that you don't have jihadis infiltrating terrorist flows, we need to make sure we're doing it in a thoughtful way that's thinking about the 10 and 15 and 20 years long battle we're going to have against jihadists.”