S Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with S. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Soon after a baby is born, illusion comes in and begins teaching them lies, such as “you are not important,” “you are not enough,” “you are not worthy,” or “there’s no time for you.” Guess who teaches children these lies? Mostly their parents transmit deep unconscious lies that they learned from their parents, school, and society.”
Source: The Flower of Heaven: Opening the Divine Heart Through Conscious Friendship & Love Activism
“Soon after a disaster passes, we tend to turn our eyes away and focus our resources on the day-to-day, rather than on preparing for the rare, but foreseeable and potentially catastrophic disaster. It's another form of triage, how much we invest in preparing for that, a very important question for public policy. We are a short-sighted species.”
“Soon after [George Yeo] became a politician, he made a famous speech, and for the first time, the term "OB markers" was used in political discourse. He was using golfing language to vividly make the point that Singapore needed OB markers to demarcate areas of public life that should remain out of bounds to social activism and the media. Otherwise, society paid an unacceptably high price. His essential point was that Singaporeans worked better if the cover of the banyan tree did not remain so broad. He was signalling that the state should pull back and give the people more free play.”
Source: OB Markers: My Straits Times Story
“Soon after Harris’s HeLa-chicken study, a pair of researchers at New York University discovered that human-mouse hybrids lost their human chromosomes over time, leaving only the mouse chromosomes. This allowed scientists to begin mapping human genes to specific chromosomes by tracking the order in which genetic traits vanished. If a chromosome disappeared and production of a certain enzyme stopped, researchers knew the gene for that enzyme must be on the most recently vanished chromosome. Scientists in laboratories throughout North America and Europe began fusing cells and using them to map genetic traits to specific chromosomes, creating a precursor to the human genome map we have today.”
Source: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
“Soon after I began working for the Professor, I realized that he talked about numbers whenever he was unsure of what to say or do. Numbers were also his way of reaching out to the world. They were safe, a source of comfort.”
Source: The Housekeeper and the Professor
“Soon after I returned to private practice, former Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger called me one day.”
“Soon after I was born, my parents moved to the South Florida area, and I've lived here ever since (with a few years of living in both Portugal and Brazil in my younger days).”
“Soon after Marilyn died, I met Bobby Kennedy and he looked at me as if to say: 'I am your enemy'.”
“Soon after, Rika heard the sizzle of butter melting in a hot frying pan. It smelt to her like life itself. Maybe because it was animal fat, there was rough, raw depth and fragrance to its smell, which you didn't get with vegetable oil or margarine.”
Source: Butter
“Soon after that we would go our separate ways, grow cold, forget one another, the rebels would grow tame as teaching assistants in the universities, the sworn bachelors and party animals would be pushing baby carriages and zoning out in front of their TV, the hippies would get regular haircuts at the local barbershop.”
Source: Time Shelter
“Soon after the birth, Maria was shown her son. He was no longer crying.
The baby was tiny, frail, his skin wrinkled — yet his bright, restless eyes darted stubbornly in every direction, as if he were trying to take in this vast, unfamiliar, and beautiful world as quickly as possible.
“You did well, Maria! You have a son! You did well!” Irina kissed her daughter’s hand joyfully. “Everything will be all right now.”
Seeing her child, Maria felt relief wash over her. She longed to take him into her arms, to press him to her chest — but the baby was taken away.
After the necessary procedures, the midwife quietly pulled Irina aside.
“Breastfeeding is dangerous,” she whispered. “The baby could contract typhus. But he is premature, weak — and if he does not receive colostrum now, I fear he will not survive. The previous woman gave birth a week ago and has no colostrum left. I believe we must take the risk: newborns contract infection from sick mothers in only about a third of cases.”
Irina looked at her grandson lying in her arms. He jerked his tiny hands and feet at random — then smiled clumsily.
“God’s will be done,” she said firmly. “A child must drink his mother’s milk.”
When the alcohol-sterilized breast was offered to the baby, it turned out his mouth was too small to take the nipple. Fortunately, the other breast was smaller — and the boy latched on with determined urgency.
Holding the flesh of her flesh to her chest, feeling her son’s gentle sucking, Maria experienced a moment of pure euphoria. The terrible illness receded, making way for the overwhelming joy of motherhood.
Neither Maria nor the newborn knew of the danger of infection. They were simply following the ancient law of nature.
And Irina spent the rest of the day in prayer, asking God to spare two souls — her daughter and her grandson.
— Volodymyr Shablia, Stone. Book One
Context note:
During the Ukrainian Civil War of 1920, amid epidemics, hunger, and collapsing authority, a premature child is born into a world where survival depends on instinct, faith, and impossible choices. This moment captures motherhood and mercy standing against historical catastrophe.”
Source: Камінь. Біографічний роман. Книга перша. Перші кроки до світла та назад: Дитинство та занурення в ГУЛАГ.
“Soon after the news broke about these published conclusions [regarding the evidence of a Palaeolithic human presence on Malta] and their stark contradiction of the orthodox view on Malta's prehistory, the Italian team distanced itself from its initial Palaeolithic leanings and claimed instead that the depictions in Ghar Hasan are 'out of context' -- which indeed they are if one is only prepared to countenance a Neolithic context for the earliest human presence in Malta.
Another development at about the same time was that the Ghar Hasan cave began to be vandalized, and the paintings defaced or completely removed, a process that continued over a long period. The result, which would have caused an international furore anywhere else but Malta, is that today:
'The only depictions which have survived, unless more are obscured by stalagmitic material on the cavern walls, are the two handprints in red pigment in Gallery D ... Vandalism not of the popular type has destroyed and obscured the entire repertoire of images on the accessible areas.”
Source: Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization
“Soon after this incident the court rose. As I was being taken from the courthouse to the prison van, I was conscious for a few brief moments of the once familiar feel of a summer evening out-of-doors. And, sitting in the darkness of my moving cell, I recognized, echoing in my tired brain, all the characteristic sounds of a town I'd loved, and of a certain hour of the day which I had always particularly enjoyed. The shouts of newspaper boys in the already languid air, the last calls of birds in the public garden, the cries of sandwich vendors, the screech of streetcars at the steep corners of the upper town, and that faint rustling overhead as darkness sifted down upon the harbor—all these sounds made my return to prison like a blind man's journey along a route whose every inch he knows by heart.
Yes, this was the evening hour when—how long ago it seemed!—I always felt so well content with life. Then, what awaited me was a night of easy, dreamless sleep. This was the same hour, but with a difference; I was returning to a cell, and what awaited me was a night haunted by forebodings of the coming day. And so I learned that familiar paths traced in the dusk of summer evenings may lead as well to prisons as to innocent, untroubled sleep.”
Source: L'Étranger
“Soon after three o'clock on the afternoon of April 22nd 1973, a 35-year-old architect named Robert Maitland was driving down the high-speed exit lane of the Westway interchange in central London. Six hundred yards from the junction with the newly built spur of the M4 motorway, when the Jaguar had already passed the 70 m.p.h. speed limit, a blow-out collapsed the front nearside tyre. The exploding air reflected from the concrete parapet seemed to detonate inside Robert Maitland's skull. During the few seconds before his crash he clutched at the whiplashing spokes of the steering wheel, dazed by the impact of the chromium window pillar against his head. The car veered from side to side across the empty traffic lanes, jerking his hands like a puppet's. The shredding tyre laid a black diagonal stroke across the white marker lines that followed the long curve of the motorway embankment. Out of control, the car burst through the palisade of pinewood trestles that formed a temporary barrier along the edge of the road. Leaving the hard shoulder, the car plunged down the grass slope of the embankment. Thirty yards ahead, it came to a halt against the rusting chassis of an overturned taxi. Barely injured by this violent tangent that had grazed his life, Robert Maitland lay across his steering wheel, his jacket and trousers studded with windshield fragments like a suit of lights.”
Source: Concrete Island
“Soon after you're dead - we're not sure how long - but not long, you'll be united with the most ecstatic love you've ever known. As one of the best things in your life was human love, this will be love, but much more satisfying, and it will last forever.”
“Soon after, I returned home to my family, with a determination to bring them as soon as possible to live in Kentucky, which I esteemed a second paradise, at the risk of my life and fortune.”
Source: Daniel Boone: His Own Story
“Soon all of you immortals Will be as dead as we are! Come on then, what are you waiting for? Have you run out of thunderbolts?”
Source: Three plays
“Soon, all the children were chanting it. “No school! No school!”
Source: Lights Out: Book 2
“Soon as he sat down, Joe saw it in his face clear as a stream - fear. It lived back behind his eyes, leaked out of his pores. Most people didn't see it because they mistook its public faces - hatred and ill temper - for rage. But Joe had studied it for two years in Charlestown, and he'd discovered that the worst of the men in there were also the most terrified - terrified of being found out as cowards or, worse, victims, themselves, of other terrible and terrified men.”
Source: Live by Night
“Soon as I see her walk up in the club, I'm a flirt. Winking eyes at me, when I roll up on them dubs, I'm a flirt. Sometimes when I'm with my chick on the low, I'm a flirt. And when she's wit her man looking at me, damn right, I'm a flirt.”
“Soon as the evening shades prevail, The moon takes up the wondrous tale, And nightly to the listening earth Repeats the story of her birth.”
Source: The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison
“Soon as the thund-ah enters my lungs-ah I start gettin hungry wheres that balogna Crackers and cheese zuzus and whams Icy white honey bun ooohh there I am Go an light another one constantly smokin' Turn up a 45 drankin and chokin Start smokin weed real young with my peers So full of dope smoke comin out my ears”
“Soon comes the cold, and the night that never ends.”
Source: A Storm of Swords: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Three
“Soon earth will cover us all. Then in time earth, too, will change; later, what issues from this change will itself in turn incessantly change, and so again will all that then takes its place, even unto the world's end. to let the mind dwell on these swiftly rolling billows of change and transformation is to know a contempt for all things mortal.”
Source: Meditations
“Soon enough," he said between breaths as he rested his forehead to hers. "I will be all yours, my love”
Source: Above the Sea
“Soon enough his head would be swimming with tales of derring-do and high adventure, tales of beautiful maidens kissed, of evildoers shot with pistols or fought with swords, of bags of gold, of diamonds as big as the tip of your thumb, of lost cities and of vast mountains, of steam-trains and clipper ships, of pampas, oceans, deserts, tundra.”
Source: The Graveyard Book
“Soon enough, his learners will see across the planet. They'll watch the vast boreal forest from space and read the species-teeming tropics from eye level. They'll study rivers and measure what's in them. They'll collate the data of every wild creature ever tagged and map their wanderings. They'll read every sentence in every article that every field scientist ever published. They'll binge-watch every landscape that anyone has pointed a camera at. They'll listen to all the sounds of the streaming Earth. They'll do what the genes of their ancestors shaped them to do, what all their forebears have ever done themselves. They'll speculate on what it takes to live and put those speculations to the test. Then they'll say what life wants from people, and how it might use them.”
Source: The Overstory
“Soon enough it will be me struggling (valiantly?) to walk - lugging my stuff around. How are we all so brave as to take step after step? Day after day? How are we so optimistic, so careful not to trip and yet do trip, and then get up and say O.K. Why do I feel so sorry for everyone and so proud?”
“Soon enough, my ankle will be bruised as my ego.”
Source: Off the Air
“Soon enough the tears came but of course nobody came down to see if she was all right, it was just the slut in the kitchen who'd ruined their lives, getting drunk of neat gin and howling for her lost lunatic offer.”
“Soon enough, we are all going to leave this earth for good. The thought of this alone should make us love deeply, and live madly.”
Source: Sips And Little Portions
“Soon equates to good, later to worse, Uagen Zlepe, scholar. Therefore, immediacy.”
Source: Look To Windward
“Soon evening worked its way into the sky, and the city hunched itself down.”
Source: Getting The Girl
“Soon, everyone around me had come to terms with my peculiar eating habits and started accepting me for who I was. It felt peculiar at first, but when someone said things like, “I wish I could resist eating all that,” in whatever parallel universe I existed, I felt powerful.”
Source: Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories
“Soon finding, however, that either she or the image was unreal, she turned elsewhere for better pastime.”
Source: The Scarlet Letter
“Soon found there is no way to rid yourself of a disagreeable man’s conversation more effectually than by not allowing him an opportunity of making a remark.”
Source: Sarah Morgan: The Civil War Diary Of A Southern Woman
“Soon Hansel and Gretel came to a little cottage. When they got quite near, they saw that the little house was made of bread and roofed with cake. The windows were transparent sugar." "There must not have been a very strict building code.”
“Soon he essentially stopped talking. "I am retreating into silence as a defensive mode," he mentioned. Eventually, he was down to uttering just five words, and only to guards: yes; no; please; thank you. "I am surprised," he wrote, "by the amount of respect this garners me. That silence intimidates puzzles me. Silence is to me normal, comfortable." Later he added, "I will admit to feeling a little contempt for those who can't keep quiet.”
Source: The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
“SOON, he replied, which makes better sense under the rules of that country than ours. VERY SOON! he added, clasping my hands; then, unable to keep from laughing, he pushed off from the rock like a boy going for the first cold swim of spring; and the current got him. The stream was singing aloud, and I heard him singing with it until he dropped away over the edge.”
Source: Peace Like a River
“Soon," he said in his letter. They said "soon" to each other often, and "soon" gave their plan the weight of something real.”
Source: Americanah
“Soon, he was back out on the streets. He wandered around Manhattan aimlessly for what he thought was weeks. Instead, it was months. Months turned into years.”
Source: The Manhattanville Incident: An Undead Novel
“Soon he was online every night until one or two a.m. Often he would wake up at three of four a.m. and go back online. He would shut down the computer screen when I walked in. In the past, he used to take the laptop to bed with him and we would both be on our laptops, hips touching. He stopped doing that, slipping off to his office instead and closing the door even when A was asleep. He started closing doors behind him. I was steeped in denial, but my body knew.”
Source: Split: A Memoir of Divorce
“Soon he was picturing little girls with mischievous green eyes and pigtails asking him to play tea. Of course he'd bring real food to the tea party. None of that pretend food bullshit for his little girls.
By the time Haley had stopped for breakfast he'd been calmer about everything. He'd already decided to ignore that breakup nonsense. It was just ridiculous and he knew sooner or later Haley would realize that so they could get started on making their all girl baseball team.”
Source: Playing for Keeps
“Soon he'll come in again and kiss me, but differently. He'll be different and so I'll be different. It'll be different. I thought, 'It'll be different, different. It must be different.”
“soon her ice dragon would come for her, and she would ride on its back to the land of always-winter”
“Soon his body was quiet.”
Source: Murphy
“Soon I am seeing the blue-and-yellow flags that line the campus streets, and it makes me feel happy and sad at the same time to be back at La Salle--almost like looking at old pictures of people who have either died or with whom you have lost contact.”
Source: The Silver Linings Playbook: A Novel
“Soon, I'd be home again. Soon, God willing, I'd be asleep.”
Source: My Year of Rest and Relaxation
“Soon I find myself squatting on the floor. I am still striking my face; not with my fists this time, but with wide-open hands. I am slapping myself. The sounds I make when my palms meet my cheeks are like an unrelenting round of applause. I am clapping myself. Or clapping for myself. I start to giggle.
All the voices are receding now. I am no longer filled with rage or disappointment. I clap and clap and simply cannot stop.”
Source: Ten Things My Father Never Taught Me and Other Stories
“Soon I found myself co-leading a small group of people wrestling with their own pain, questions, and disappointments. Even when I felt too bleak to inspire any of them, I knew this was where I needed to be. Because of my rejection I saw and understood the pain of a whole new demographic of people. I had a more profound acceptance of a gray world where things weren’t as black and white as I thought they were. I had much more grace and love for others who hadn’t made the wisest choices in life.
No experience is wasted.”
Source: Dare to Decide