W Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with W. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“What is it?" I asked.
"Rain," she said.
"It's too early for rain."
"That's what you think. Open the door. You'll see."
I turned off the air conditioner so that we could hear better, slid open the glass door -- and the soft thunder of rain falling onto sand curtained us in. Deaf, we would still have known it was raining: smell would have told us; the smell of dry earth watered, of dehydrated vegetation reconstituted, the smell of resurrection. The first rain in a dry land! It smells better than lilies in July, or the ocean, or the wind in sun-warmed pines, or the irrigated patch of alfalfa you reach after a long haul through dry hills. It is hard to smell that sweetness and believe in death.”
Source: A Matter of Time
“What is it I can do to repay you for your deeds?" He watched a sweet smile spread across her rosy lips, and in those unforgettably magical blue eyes, he caught a mischievous sparkle he'd not noticed before.
"I will think of something, Killian O'Brien. One day, I am certain, I will think of a way.”
Source: The Farrier's Daughter
“What is it, I wonder, that they hope to Correct? I am what I am, irredeemably, irretrievably, implacably — as are most of my fellow desperadoes here in Correctional Facility.
We are monsters.”
Source: Dexter Is Dead
“What is it in absinthe that makes it a separate cult? The effects of its abuse are totally distinct from those of other stimulants. Even in ruin and in degradation it remains a thing apart: its victims wear a ghastly aureole all their own, and in their peculiar hell yet gloat with a sinister perversion of pride that they are not as other men.”
Source: Absinthe: The Green Goddess
“What is it in man that for a long while lies unknown and unseen only one day to emerge and push him into a new land of the eye, a new region of the mind, a place he has never dreamed of? Maybe it's like the force in spores lying quietly under asphalt until the day they push a soft, bulbous mushroom head right through the pavement. There's nothing you can do to stop it.”
“What is it in my makeup that makes me grab any offer and fly around the world? Will I ever be satisfied? Can't I ever just rest?”
Source: The Good, the Bad, and Me: In My Anecdotage
“What is it in the actor, the stage, that casts so powerful a spell on the young imagination?”
Source: Except the Lord
“What is it in us that makes us feel the need to keep pretending... we gotta let ourselves be.”
“What is it in you that brings you to a spiritual teacher in the first place? It's not the spirit in you, since that is already enlightened, and has no need to seek. No, it is the ego in you that brings you to a teacher.”
“What is it?"
"It's a Thermomix."
"That crazy cooking-blender thing you were telling me about?"
"The very one." I've been coveting this piece of equipment ever since my last trip to Montreal when I found out that nearly every great restaurant there is using them. It is essentially a powerful blender that also heats, so it will cook your soup and then puree it. It can spin slow enough to make risotto or hollandaise, or fast enough to turn whole unpeeled apples into the smoothest most velvety applesauce you've ever tasted. They aren't for sale in stores or online; you have to go through a special independent contractor salesperson, and they don't sell them in the U.S. Also? They are fifteen hundred dollars, an expense that even I couldn't justify for a piece of kitchen equipment.
"I thought you can't get them here?"
"You can't. He would have had to go through someone in Canada."
"Wow. That is pretty amazing."
"Yeah.”
Source: Off the Menu
“What is it?”
Leigh glanced up with uncertainty, then back to his groin with a sort of horrified fascination. “Well, um… is there something about immortals you haven’t told me?”
“What? What do you mean?” he asked with bewilderment.
Leigh shook her head, then leaned forward and said “Hello?” to his groin, only to stiffen again and jerk back as if it had hissed at her.
“Are you talking to my penis?” Lucian asked with disbelief.
“It talked to me first,” she said defensively, and frowned. “You didn’t mention this little skill.”
Lucian decided she must be joking and laughed. “So, what did it say?”
“It said, ‘Lucian? Lucian, are you there?’” He blinked.
“Why would it say that?”
“I don’t know. It’s your penis.”
That’s when he recalled the cell phone in his pocket. A laugh bursting from his lips, Lucian reached in his pocket to retrieve the phone.”
Source: Bite Me If You Can
“What is it like after you die? Just like it was before you were born.”
“What is it like being single? I like it! I like starting each day with a sense of possibility. And I'm optimistic, because everyday I get a little more desperate. And desperate situations yield the quickest results.”
“What is it like? Manon asked quietly. 'To love.' 'It was like dying a little every day. It was like being alive, too. It was joy so complete it was pain. It destroyed me and unmade me and forged me. I hated it, because I knew I couldn't escape it, and knew it would forever change me.'"-Asterin/Manon”
Source: Queen of Shadows
“What is it like, radiation? Maybe they show it in the movies? Have you seen it? Is it white, or what? Some people say it has no color and no smell, and other people say that it’s black. Like earth. But if it’s colorless, then it’s like God. God is everywhere but you can’t see Him. They scare us! The apples are hanging in the garden, the leaves are on the trees, the potatoes are in the fields. I don’t think there was any Chernobyl, they made it up. They tricked people. My sister left with her husband. Not far from here, twenty kilometers. They lived there two months, and the neighbor comes running: ‘Your cow sent radiation to my cow! She’s falling down.’ ‘How’d she send it?’ 'Through the air, that’s how, like dust. It flies.’ 'Just fairy tales! Stories and more stories.”
Source: Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
“What is it like, the biblical writers seek to know through their art, to be a human being with a divided consciousness—intermittently loving your brother but hating him even more; resentful or perhaps contemptuous of your father but also capable of the deepest filial regard; stumbling between disastrous ignorance and imperfect knowledge; fiercely asserting your own independence but caught in a tissue of events divinely contrived; outwardly a definite character and inwardly an unstable vortex of greed, ambition, jealousy, lust, piety, courage, compassion, and much more?”
Source: The Art of Biblical Narrative
“What is it like to be a bat? What is it like for a bat to be a bat?”
“What is it like to be connected to someone you can never get away from, for better or worse? I love trying to answer that question.”
“What is it like to be made vice-president?
On one level, it's a nearly hallucinatory degree of success. I was barely forty years old, and a shaky, sixty-three-year-old heartbeat from the leadership of the entire Western world.
It was also like throwing up in convention-hall bathrooms before giving speeches, and after. It was sitting through dinners with men and women with whom I had nothing in common. Spending an enormous amount of time on trains. Promising thins and agreeing to things as advised by people I had barely met, on very little sleep. Huge sums of money were changing hands and everything happening on the grandest scale imaginable while still in most moments remaining pointless and usually outright seedy. I pretended to learn to fly-fish; I watched sporting events. In Maine I was assaulted by a lobster; it seized my lapel in a threatening manner. I tasted local foods and admired factories,farms, department stores, hotels, and (unless I'm misremembering) several empty plots of land....
It was like being given what was almost the nation's highest honor by a man you held in infinite esteem and regarded with perhaps a certain amount of terrified suspicion, a man who disliked you and clearly wanted nothing to do with you, who would scowl and change the subject at the mention of your name. And then being given a very important and very nasty job by that person, and despised for it, almost as much as you despised yourself.”
Source: Crooked
“What is it like to be rich in wealth, power, fame but poor health”
“What is it like to fall in love?
What does it feel like? It's this tingling sensation you feel, somewhere in the remotest corners of your stomach. The feeling that butterflies are dancing within you. The feeling that you never want to sleep again because reality finally feels better than any dream you've dreamt before. The feeling that all the colours all around you radiate a bit more than they did before and that your own radiance competes with all the colours all around you. The feeling that all the people all around you drink in this radiance, giving it back to you and that everything is ablaze with light and that everything fell into place and that everything will stay in this place.
The feeling that your own happiness is intertwined with this significant other who suddenly found his way into your life. The feeling you feel within you whenever this significant other looks at you in this way, he doesn't look at anyone else. The feeling that you have already known this significant other for ages. The feeling that you waited for this significant other all your life. The feeling that you want to spend the rest of your days with this significant other. The feeling that you're not solely yourself and him not solely himself but that what has changed is bearing a name: we.
We, together.”
Source: Within the event horizon: poetry & prose
“What is it like when you lose someone you love?" Jane asked.
"You die, too. And you wait around for your body to catch up.”
Source: Old Man's War
“What is it like, working for a well-dressed lunatic who pays you triple what anyone else would pay you to forget your better judgment?”
“What is it, Master Calligrapher, that little girls do in the way that spiders weave?" sleeve asked primly.
The Calligrapher coughed, for his room was very dusty, and there was dust even on his eyelashes, and said: "It is right and proper," he said, "for a girl to read as many books as there are bricks in this city, and then, when she is finished, to begin to write new ones which are made out of the old ones, as this city is made of those stones.”
Source: In the Cities of Coin and Spice
“What is it?" Maud said.
'Nothing' was on Violet's tongue, but Maud had requested truth from her, tonight.
So Violet reached for Maud's hand, lifted the inner wrist to her mouth, and kissed it. It wasn't an answer. It was truth, withheld. Maud smiled, and in her smile was the fact that she'd noticed and let it go.”
Source: A Restless Truth
“What is it?" Maud said.
'Nothing' was on Violet's tongue, but Maud had requested truth from her, tonight.
So Violet reached for Maud's hand, lifted the inner wrist to her mouth, and kissed it. It wasn't and answer. It was truth, withheld. Maud smiled, and in her smile was the fact that she'd noticed and let it go.”
Source: A Restless Truth
“What is it men cannot be made to believe!”
Source: The writings of Thomas Jefferson: being his autobiography, correspondence, reports, messages, addresses, and other writings, official and private : published by the order of the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library, from the original manuscripts, deposited in the Department of State
“What is it men in women do require: The lineaments of gratified desire. What is it women do in men require: The lineaments of gratified desire.”
“What is it possible to do well, in physics particularly, if things are not reduced to degrees and measures?”
“What is it precisely, that feeling of 'returning' from a poem? Something is lighter, softer, larger - then it fades, but never completely.”
“What is it precisely, that they are doing when they are doing science. Are they refining their instruments for observation or discovering new aspects of reality?”
Source: Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away
“What is it really like to be engaged?" asked Anne curiously. "Well, that all depends on who you're engaged to," answered Diana, with that maddening air of superior wisdom always assumed by those who are engaged over those who are not.”
Source: ANNE OF GREEN GABLES - Complete Collection: ALL 14 Books in One Volume (Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island, Rainbow Valley, The Story Girl, Chronicles of Avonlea and more): Including Letters and Autobiography of Lucy Maud Montgomery
“What is it, she asks me, why do people cry? Why do we cry when we're happy and when we're sad or hurt? I tell her what I know or think I know: that the body does not distinguish between emotional and physical pain; the muscles around the lachrymal glands receive a message from the brain, then tighten and squeeze out tears. Tears contain high levels of the hormone ACTH and prolactin, endorphins (which we know are mood-altering and pain-killing), as well as thirty times more manganese than is found in blood, suggesting that human tears can concentrate and remove harmful substances from the body. Prolactin in humans controls fluid balance; by the age of eighteen women have 60 percent more prolactin than men, which may explain why women seem to cry more often. I tell her that sadness--like happiness--is an intense feeling of being alive, of having essence. I try to explain to her my own nonscientific theory: that crying is about weight or heft, that we cry when our bodies feel too light or too heavy to bear or hold on to language.”
“What is it, sweetie," I asked.
"Hair, said a voice that wasn't Missy's. It was Little Joe, a two-year-old personality, and his fingers played in my waist-length hair just as my own babies had many years ago.
My skin prickled as I realized how complete my experience was of being touched by a toddler.”
Source: The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality
“What is it that affectionate parents require of their Children; for all their care, anxiety, and toil on their accounts? Only that they would be wise and virtuous, Benevolent and kind.”
Source: The Quotable Abigail Adams
“What is it that an artist does when he is left alone in his studio? My conclusion was that if I was an artist and I was in the studio, then everything I was doing in the studio should be art . . . . From that point on, art became more of an activity and less of a product.”
“What is it that angers us?... We have been tricked. In essence, we have been lied to. The problem is not that the photograph has been manipulated, but that we have been manipulated by the photograph.”
“What is it that Australians celebrate on 26 January? Significantly, many of them are not quite sure what event they are commemorating. Their state of mind fascinated Egon Kisch, an inquisitive Czech who was in Sydney at the end of January 1935. Kisch has a place in our history as the victim, or hero, of a ludicrous chapter in the history of our immigration laws. He had been invited to Melbourne for a Congress against War and Fascism, and was forbidden to land by order of the attorney-general, R. G. Menzies. He had jumped overboard, broken his leg, gone to hospital, failed a dictation test in Gaelic and been sentenced to imprisonment and deportation. When the High Court declared Gaelic not a language, Kisch was free to hobble on our soil...”
Source: Observing Australia: 1959–1999
“What is it that binds us to this place as to no other? It is not the well, or the bell, or the stone walls, or the crisp October nights or the memory of dogwoods blooming. Our loyalty is not only to William Richardson Davie though we are proud of what he did 200 years ago today. Nor even to Dean Smith, though we are proud of what he did last March. No, our love for this place is based on the fact that it is as it was meant to be, the University of the people.”
“What is it that brings on these moods of yours?
Nothing mysterious: the ordinary pain of being alive.”
Source: Les Fleurs Du Mal
“What is it that dies? A log of wood dies to become a few planks. The planks die to become a chair. The chair dies to become a piece of firewood, and the firewood dies to become ash. You give different names to the different shapes the wood takes, but the basic substance is there always. If we could always remember this, we would never worry about the loss of anything. We never lose anything; we never gain anything. By such discrimination we put an end to unhappiness. (118-119)”
“What is it that distinguishes man from animals? It is not his upright posture.”
Source: For the love of life
“What is it that doesn’t allow you to go to moksha? Obstinacy!”
“What is it that drew us to the hollow tonight? What crazy kind of species is it that leaves a warm home on a rainy night to ferry salamanders across a road? It's tempting to call it altruism, but it's not. There is nothing selfless about it. This night heaps rewards on the givers as well as the recipients. We get to be there, to witness this amazing rite, and, for an evening, to enter into relationship with other beings, as different from ourselves as we can imagine.
It has been said that people of the modern world suffer a great sadness, a "species loneliness" - estrangement from the rest of Creation. We have built this isolation with our fear, with our arrogance, and with our homes brightly lit against the night. For a moment as we walked this road, those barriers dissolved and we began to relieve the loneliness and know each other once again.”
Source: Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
“What is it that drives us outward to the stars above and to the shores below? Is it the security of knowing what's there? Or is it the adventure of finding it?”
“What is it that endowed things with meaning, value, significance? The creating heart, which desired, and, out of its desire, created. It created joy and woe. It wanted to satiate itself with woe. We must take all the suffering that has been endured by men and animals upon ourselves and affirm it, and possess a goal in which it acquires reason.”
“What is it that every man seeks? To be secure, to be happy, to do what he pleases without restraint and without compulsion.”
Source: All the Works of Epictetus: Which are Now Extant; Consisting of His Discourses, Preserved by Arrian, in Four Books, the Enchiridion, and Fragments
“What is it that inspires you? What do you love to do? What would you do for free? At the beginning of my busi-ness career, my why was to become a millionaire, not a good why! And why not? Because that is an aspiration rather than a why. Aspirations, I have found, won’t fuel me when the going gets tough. But a true “why” will.”
“What is it that is done to our children that their puberty should deform them? They have the joy of movement; they have an enterprising curiosity; they are ready for sensible self-denial; they dream ahead, and they have a faithful memory, and, above all, great compassion... The well-meaning educator who flatters and humours the young not only does a disservice to the community, but also damages the individual by depriving him of the opportunities of self-discovery.”
“What is it that is eternal: the primal phenomenon, present in the here and now, of what we call revelation? It is man's emerging from the moment of the supreme encounter, being no longer the same as he was when entering into it.”
Source: I and Thou