Quotessence
Home / Quotes / T Quotes

T Quotes

Browse famous quotes beginning with T. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.

All T Quotes

“That a man might do something very audacious and desperate for money, power or fame, was to the general apprehension quite possible; but, in face of plainly-written law, in face of constitutional guarantees protecting each state against domestic violence, in face of a nation of forty million of people, that nineteen men could invade a great State to liberate a despised and hated race, was to the average intellect and conscience, too monstrous for belief.”

“That a system evolved in a given environment only proves it’s best at replicating itself in that environment. […] That doesn’t make it a system that we should want to live in, nor, more importantly, is it any indication of its ability to survive over the longer term. Environments change, sometimes rapidly, sometimes because of the system’s own ill-effects. Out-competing other systems rather than living harmoniously with them can eventually be self-destructive. Viruses are a good case and point. [...] The question is not whether share-trading and capitalism have out-competed other systems up until now, but whether their effects are consistent with their hosts’ survival.”

“That a thing made by hand, the work and thought of a single craftsman, can endure much longer than its maker, through centuries in fact, can survive natural catastrophe, neglect, and even mistreatment, has always filled me with wonder. Sometimes in museums, looking at a humble piece of pottery from ancient Persia or Pompeii, or a finely wrought page from a medieval illuminated manuscript toiled over by a nameless monk, or a primitive tool with a carved handle, I am moved to tears. The unknown life of the maker is evanescent in its brevity, but the work of his or her hands and heart remains.”

“That a woman—of age, well-read, and well-educated—could not be expected to comprehend the stirrings of the heart when men grew passionate for a cause, or grew restless for change, was a grave affront indeed. That her beloved father, who carefully nurtured her every curiosity, and her brother, who lovingly shared every lesson learned, would believe her to be insensible or incapable of aspiring to better the world tore at her heart. She strove to maintain some sort of equanimity but the nature of the events was far too implausible to allow. “It is a bitter pill to swallow,” she murmured at length. “It seems the men in my family deemed it necessary to withhold their dearest worldly concerns from me, after all we had been to one another.”

“That Abbie is such a freaking brat who doesn’t know anything! My William is wasting away in that castle and that stuck up, self-righteous cow doesn’t even care because now she’s just all ooooo, Peter I love you! Well I don’t love Peter and he’s a jerk. Let’s go bust down the door!” She sat back and calmly pushed her hair from her face, “Now would you get me a soda?”

“That abominable and sensual act called reading the newspaper, thanks to which all the misfortunes and cataclysms in the universe over the last twenty-four hours, the battles which cost the lives of fifty-thousand men, the murders, the strikes, the bankruptcies, the fires, the poisonings, the suicides, the divorces, the cruel emotions of statesmen and actors, are transformed for us, who don't even care, into a morning treat, blending in wonderfully, in a particularly exciting and tonic way, with the recommended ingestion of a few sips of cafe au lait.”

“That ache for Dav’s presence struck her heart again, and she felt it in her whole body, a frantic pulse that nearly over- whelmed her with feeling. It scared her, the way it crashed like a wave, no words to give it shape. If only she could describe it, maybe the dark void would shrink and shift and become something she could hold in her palm. When it was in her fingers, she would study it, and then tuck it away in her pocket, or perhaps toss it out into the Plains and let it disap- pear among the grass. But no – she could not throw it away, not when it was all she had left of her mentor. She needed some piece of him to tell her what to do, to remind her who she was.”

“That admirable woman thought so humbly of her own potboiling that to hear it stigmatised by a critic of Stoker’s mental powers as rubbishy stuff didn’t depress her in the least. If she could have made it more rubbishy, and so sold more thousands of copies than she did, she would willingly have done so, but the artist in her, on whose existence George Knox and Adrian always insisted, kept her standard up, firmly if spasmodically.”

“That adolescent me, the girl who was, as I remember her, insecure, unsure, dreaming, yearning, longing, that girl who was hard on herself, who was cowardly and brave, who was confused and determined-that girl who was me-still exists. I call on her when I write. I am the me of today-the person who has become a woman, a mother, a writer. Yet I am the me of all those other days as well. I believe in the reality of that past.”