W Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with W. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“What was it our Mam used to say? If wishes were horses-' 'beggars would ride.”
Source: Changing Patterns
“What was it St. Augustine said? "The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.”
Source: DUNE
“What was it that drew you back? My marvellous personality, I suppose? Or my sparkling conversation?”
Source: Bartimaeus Trilogy, Book Three: Ptolemy's Gate
“What was it that Granny Weatherwax had said once? "Evil starts when you begin to treat people as things". And right now it would happen if you thought there was a thing called a father, and a thing called a mother, and a thing called a daughter, and a thing called a cottage, and told yourself that if you put them all together you had a thing called a happy family.”
Source: I Shall Wear Midnight
“What was it that led the Cynics to repudiate pleasure in any form, if it was not the fact that pain is, in a greater or less degree, always bound up with pleasure? (...) The same truth is contained in that fine French proverb: le mieux est Vennemi du bien —leave well enough alone.”
“What was it that made this human love so much more desirable to me than the love of my own kind? Was it because it was exclusive and capricious? The souls offered love and acceptance to all. Did I crave a greater challenge?...Or was it simply better somehow? Because these humans hate with so much fury, was the other end of the spectrum that they could love with more heart and zeal and fire? I didn't know why I had yearned after it so desperately. All I knew was that, now that I had it, it was worth every ounce of risk and agony it had cost. It was better than I imagined. It was everything.”
“What was it that made this human love so much more desirable to me than the love of my own kind? Was it because it was exclusive and capricious? The souls offered love and acceptance to all. Did I crave a greater challenge?...Or was it simply better somehow? Because these humans hate with so much fury, was the other end of the spectrum that they could love with more heart and zeal and fire?”
“What was it that obliged Jerome to write his book, Concerning Illustrious Men? It was the common reproach of old cast upon Christians, 'That they were all poor, weak, unlearned men.' The sort of men sometime called 'Puritans' in the English nation have been reproached with the same character. . . But when truth shall have liberty to speak, it will be known that Christianity never was more expressed unto the life than in the lives of the persons that have been thus reproached.”
“What was it the pilgrims sought? Paul wondered. They said they came to a holy place. But they must know the universe contained no Eden source, no Tupile for the soul. They called Arrakis the place of the unknown where all mysteries were explained. This was a link between their universe and the next. And the frightening thing was that they appeared to go away satisfied…. What do they find here? Paul asked himself. (Dune Messiah Page 82)”
Source: Dune Messiah
“What was it - this implacable remoteness, this inability to surrender herself to the warmth and comradely feelings of others? Could being an academic star, being applauded over and over again as a prodigy, take the place of all that? She shuddered with a feeling she couldn't have put a name to. It was the congenital human fear of isolation.”
Source: I Am Charlotte Simmons
“What was it to love someone, what was love exactly, and why did it end or not end? Those were the real questions, and who could answer them?”
Source: The Price of Salt: (Illustrated Edition)
“What was it, token of all our wordless and incongruent hunger that one saw here, that has never been expressed, that was so imminent, so exasperating, so impalpably near, as if the opiate of finality we had sought for our exacerbated nerves, the complete nurture we needed to stop the jaws of Cerberus was here almost within our grasp, an inch away from hope, a hand's breadth off from certainty.”
Source: The Good Child's River
“What was it up there in the song that seemed to be calling her back inside? What would happen now in the dim, incalculable hours?”
Source: The Great Gatsby
“What was it with gay men and art photos of nude male torsos?”
Source: Looking After Joey
“What was it with me and organized beatings, anyway?”
“What was it with men, that they found elementary logic so difficult?”
“What was it with people always trying to kill me in the library? Nickamedes so needed to put up warning signs. Danger: Working here could be hazardous to your health.”
Source: Crimson Frost
“What was it with women and pushing men’s buttons?
I get that a woman wants to look attractive. News flash: you already do. We see it. But apparently to women, owning their own beauty isn’t enough. They arm all the weapons in their arsenal to gain the attention of every Y chromosome within a ten-mile radius. Why do they go to all the trouble? Validation.
Meanwhile, biology dictates survival of the fittest; battles ensue, wars are fought, and somewhere amid all the carnage, a victor emerges to claim his female. All because said female just wanted to go out and feel pretty that night.”
Source: No Weddings
“What was it, he wondered for the hundredth time, that enabled Pastor Harris to hear the answers in his heart? What did he mean when he said he felt God’s presence? Steve supposed he could ask Pastor Harris directly, but he doubted that would do any good. How could anyone explain such a thing? It would be like describing colors to someone blind from birth: The words might be understood, but the concept would remain mysterious and private.”
“What was justice, after all, but a particular outcome?”
Source: The Other Typist
“What was Kenzo's reaction to all this criticism? His approach was to stay completely silent. He made no move whatsoever to respond to any of it. And, of course, water eventually wins over fire. One by one, the opponents ran out of heat, their voices faded, their steps faltered and finally, with a wry smile and a shoulder shrug, they were forced to admit defeat.”
Source: The Honjin Murders
“What was life asking of me? How could I respond when I didn't know the question?”
Source: Between Shades of Gray
“What was life has crumbled. What was form, now falls away. Mortal chains unbind and the soul s free. May you find your way to the ancestors. May you find your path to the gods. May your bravery and courage be remembers in song and story, May your parents be proud, and ma our children carry your birthright. Sleep, and wander no more.”
Source: Courting Darkness: An Otherworld Novel
“what was life, if not a certain kind of madness,
which lay in the grey areas between order and chaos?”
Source: Green Hills and Holy Wells
“What was life like in the colonies? Probably the best word to describe it would be "colonial".”
Source: Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway
“What was life worth, anyway, if you had to sit around remembering not to mention this, that, and the other thing because someone else might be upset?”
Source: Conjure Wife
“What was lonelier; a world that had a society and lost it, or one that never had it at all.”
“What was lost in the European cataclysm was not only the Jewish past--the whole life of a civilization--but also a major share ofthe Jewish future.... [ellipsis in source] It was not only the intellect of a people in its prime that was excised, but the treasure of a people in its potential.”
“What was lost, will be replaced. But it will actually be worthy of you this time around.”
“What was love, really? Flowers, chocolate, and poetry? Or was it something else? Was it being able to finish someone's jokes? Was it having absolute faith that someone was there at your back? Was it knowing someone so well that they instantly understood why you did the things you did—and shared those same beliefs?”
Source: Vampire Academy: The Complete Collection
“What was meant to float will never drown.
What was meant to soar will never plunge.
What was meant to ascend will never tumble.
What was meant to hasten will never delay.
What was meant to grow will never shrink.
What was meant to bloom will never wither.
What was meant to flourish will never falter.
What was meant to thrive will never wane.
What was meant to start will never end.
Who was meant to go will never come.
Who was meant to leave will never stay.
Who was meant to run will never crawl.
Who was meant to stand will never sit.
Who was meant to continue will never quit.
Who was meant to thrive will never perish.
Who was meant to gain will never lose.
Who was meant to conquer will never bow.
Who was meant to rise will never fall.”
“What was meant today, It’s a regret tomorrow.”
“What was money that it should make such dreadful things of men and women?”
Source: The White Flag
“What was more brutal than loss of hope?”
“What was more humiliating, I wondered: having to beg for someone's cold chicken bones or being offered them?”
Source: She Needed Me
“What was more needed by this old man who divided the leisure hours of his life, where he had so little leisure, between gardening in the daytime, and contemplation at night? Was not this narrow enclosure, with the sky for a background, enough to enable him to adore God in his most beautiful as well as in his most sublime works? Indeed, is not that all, and what more can be desired? A little garden to walk, and immensity to reflect upon. At his feet something to cultivate and gather; above his head something to study and meditate upon: a few flowers on the earth, and all the stars in the sky.”
“What was more, they had taken the first step toward genuine friendship. They had exchanged vulnerabilities.”
Source: 2010: Odyssey Two
“What was most important to me at the Olympics was going out there and performing my best. When I messed up the first jump combination, which was my big move, it hit me that I messed up the program of my life.”
“What was most important was the knowledge [aspect] of the fight. I learned this early on and just told myself to "upgrade my mind." That's just what I wanted to do my whole life.”
“What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that men set foot on the moon but that they set eye on the earth.”
Source: The Celebration of Life: A Dialogue on Hope, Spirit, and the Immortality of the Soul
“What was most striking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad to wave American flags instead of burn them.”
“What was my body to me? A kind of flunkey in my service. Let but my anger wax hot, my love grow exalted, my hatred collect in me, and that boasted solidarity between me and my body was gone.”
“What was my crime in another life,
as in this life my crime
is sorrow”
Source: The Wild Iris
“What was my dream when I was 18? My big decision when I was 18 was full keg or pony-size keg. I knew by about 16 or 17 that I was going to be an actor. That was based on the fact that there were not a lot of things that I could be really good at, or that I would enjoy enough to not run out of the building screaming.”
“What was my first word? I asked him, and he said: Don’t. I asked him what my second word was but he couldn’t remember. I think I’d have made something up if I was him. Like go.”
Source: A Complicated Kindness
“What was my great sin? To have revealed the private property of the bank - well if this is being a criminal, then maybe I'm a great criminal.”
“What was my mad heart dreaming of?”
Source: Come Close
“What was my path to success? Well, there were some steps forward, some back, some to the side... maybe it wasn't a path, but more of a dance.”
“What was my personal Big Bang? Did I get hooked on guns because I discovered I was good at precisely the moment I was experiencing my first feelings of masculine inadequacy? All I knew at the time was that the rifle range replaced the nurse's office as my place of refuge.”
Source: Gun Guys: A Road Trip
“What was my truth worth, if I was prepared to defend the entire world, but not those who were close to me? If I subdued hate, but wouldn't give love a chance?”