W Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with W. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“What, but the rapacity of the only men who exercised their reason, the priests, secured such vast property to the church, when a man gave his perishable substance to save himself from the dark torments of purgatory.”
Source: Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Men and a Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Hints
“What, by a word lacking even in grammar, is called amorality, is a thing that does not exist. If you are unwilling to submit to any norm, you have, nolens volens , to submit to the norm of denying all morality, and this is not amoral, but immoral. It is a negative morality which preserves the empty form of the other.”
Source: the Revolt of the Masses
“What, can the devil speak true?”
“What, concretely, is Enlightenment ?" "Seeing Reality as it is," said the Master. "Doesn't everyone see Reality as it is?" "Oh, no! Most people see it as they think it is." "What's the difference?" "The difference between thinking you are drowning in a stormy sea and knowing you cannot drown because there isn't any water in sight for miles around.”
“What, did you not know, then, that to-day Lucullus dines with Lucullus?”
“What, did you think," she asked, laughing as he struggled up the bank, "that I, a Gaulish maiden, could not swim?" "I did not think anything about it," Malchus said; "I saw you pushed in and followed without thinking at all." Although they imperfectly understood each other's words the meaning was clear; the girl put her hand on his shoulder and looked frankly up in his face. "I thank you," she said, "just the same as if you had saved my life. You meant to do so, and it was very good of you, a great chief of this army, to hazard your life for a Gaulish maiden. Clotilde will never forget.”
Source: The Young Carthaginian: A Story of the Times of Hannibal
“What, do they run already? Then I die happy.”
“What, do you think that feminism means you hate men?”
“What, eBay isn't good enough for us?”
“What, exactly, is the happiness that can be earned by turning away from reality?”
“What, exactly, is the internet? Basically it is a global network exchanging digitized data in such a way that any computer, anywhere, that is equipped with a device called a 'modem', can make a noise like a duck choking on a kazoo”
Source: Dave Barry Is Not Taking This Sitting Down
“What, for some, is sin, others do to the glory of God. And the good Dr. Pentecost's remarks notwithstanding , I intend to go home tonight and smoke a cigar to the glory of God. It is a kind of incense drifting to Heaven.”
“What, gone without a word? Ay, so true love should do; it cannot speak, For truth hath better deeds than words to grace it.”
“What, however, left a deep impression on me was the reading of the Ramayana before my father. During part of his illness my father was in Porbandar. There every evening he used to listen to the Ramayana.”
Source: My Experiments With Truth: An Autobiography
“What, I ask, drives me to disorder? How can I diagnose myself? All I feel, most immediately, is the most anguished need for physical love and mental companionship -”
Source: Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963
“What, I have actually loved it, because I've been underestimated every step of the way, and it's so exciting when you can prove them all wrong.”
“What, I should only trust good people? Man, good people get bought and sold every day. Might as well trust somebody evil once in a while, it makes no more or less sense.”
Source: Inherent Vice
“What, I sometimes wonder, would it be like if I lived in a country where winter is a matter of a few chilly days and a few weeks' rain; where the sun is never far away, and the flowers bloom all year long?”
“What, I'm supposed to succumb to your ideal image of what this is? No. I'm gonna stand above that and I'm gonna be who I am and be a rolemodel for these girls.”
“What, if as said, man is a bubble.
[Lat., Quod, ut dictur, si est homo bulla, eo magis senex.]”
“What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.”
“What, in fact, is a novel but a universe in which action is endowed with form, where final words are pronounced, where people possess one another completely, and where life assumes the aspect of destiny?”
“What, in the devil's name, is the use of respectability, with never so many gigs and silver spoons, if thou inwardly art the pitifulness of all men?”
“What, in the name of common-sense, had I to do with any better society than I had always lived in?”
Source: Complete Novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated Edition): Fanshawe, The Scarlet Letter with its Adaptation, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, The Marble Faun, The Dolliver Romance, Septimius Felton, Grimshawe's Secret and Biography
“What, indeed, does not that word "cheerfulness" imply? It means a contented spirit, it means a pure heart, it means a kind and loving disposition; it means humility and charity; it means a generous appreciation of others, and a modest opinion of self.”
“What, indeed, is an atheist? He is one who destroys delusions which are harmful to humanity in order to lead men back to nature, to reality, to reason. He is a thinker who, having reflected on the nature of matter, its energy, properties and ways of acting, has no need of idealized powers or imaginary intelligences to explain the phenomena of the universe and the operations of nature.”
“What, keep a week away? Seven days and nights,
Eightscore-eight hours, and lovers' absent hours
More tedious than the dial eightscore times!
O weary reckoning!”
“What, like I want to look like Dick Clark? No. I think I look great with liver spots.”
“What, man, defy the devil. Consider, he's an enemy to mankind.”
“What, more petitions! Won't you be, and stay, intimidated? You must really annoy Sen. Dodd. Here it is [my signature], and I hope it does some good.”
“What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living? Beatrice: Is it possible disdain should die while she hath such meet food to feed it as Signior Benedick?”
Source: Much Ado About Nothing Simplified!: Includes Study Guide, Biography, and Modern Retelling
“What, my soul, was thy errand here?
Was it mirth or ease,
Or heaping up dust from year to year?
"Nay, none of these!"
Speak, soul, aright in His holy sight,
Whose eye looks still
And steadily on thee through the night;
"To do His will!”
Source: The complete poetical works of John Greenleaf Whittier
“What, nephew, said the king, is the wind in that door?”
Source: Le MORTE DARTHUR: the Book of King Arthur and of His Noble Knights of the Round Table [volume 2 Of 4]
“What, no flirting?” I asked, trying to buy time. “Aren’t you going to at least try to be sexy? Think of all those vampire fans out there—they’d be so disappointed.” I pulled out my silver knife. Probably should have paid more attention during my knife training. “Tell you what. Let me go and I promise not to tell anyone that you aren’t suave.”
“What, no more ceremony? See, my women! Against the blown rose may they stop their nose That kneel'd unto the buds.”
“What, no Power Rangers Band-Aids ?" "Shut up, Garett." "Yes, ma'am.”
“What, on the eternal list of priorities, precedes health? What more obvious role could government have than the defense of the life, of each citizen? We cannot stop every germ that seeks to harm us any more than we can stop every person who seeks to harm us. But we can try dammit and government's essential role in that effort facilitate it, reduce its cost, broaden its availability, improve my health and yours, seems, ultimately, self-explanatory.”
“What, or who, led you to take up photography, and about what date ?
George Bernard Shaw – I always wanted to draw and paint. I had no literary ambition. I aspired to be a Michelangelo, not a Shakespeare. But I could not draw well enough to satisfy myself; and the instruction I could get was worse than useless. So when dry plates and push buttons came into the market I bought a box camera and began pushing the button. It was in 1898.”
“What, other than injustice, could be the reason that the displaced citizens of New Orleans cannot be accommodated by the richest nation in the world?”
“What, really, is wanted from a neighborhood? Convenience, certainly, an absence of major aggravation, to be sure. But perhaps mostof all, ideally, what is wanted is a comfortable background, a breathing space of intermission between the intensities of private life and the calculations of public life.”
Source: Familiar territory: observations on American life
“What, really, was the difference between something hounding you and something leading you somewhere?”
“What, shall one of us, That struck for the foremost man of all this world But for supporting robbers--shall we now Contaminate our fingers with base bribes, And sell the mighty space of our large honors For so much trash as may be grasped thus?”
Source: The Family Shakespeare: In One Volume, in which Nothing is Added to the Original Text, But Those Words and Expressions are Omitted which Cannot with Propriety be Read Aloud in a Family
“What, Sheamus? Oh no, I can see him...he's pretty pale......What? oh no, he's even whiter than that. He's like a jar of mayonaisse with eyeballs and a ketchup haircut.”
“What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty ... Whenever governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.”
“What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.”
Source: Mark Twain’s Letters & Speeches (Annotated Edition)
“What, start at this! when sixty years have spread. Their grey experience o'er thy hoary head? Is this the all observing age could gain? Or hast thou known the world so long in vain?”
“What, then is law [government]? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.”
“What, then is our duty? It is to carefully distinguish the historic moment in which we live and to consciously assign our small energies to a specific battlefield. The more we are in phase with the current which leads the way, the more we aid man in his difficult, uncertain, danger-fraught ascent toward salvation.”
Source: Report to Greco
“What, then is truth?... Truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are.”
“What, then, do they want a government for? Not to regulate commerce; not to educate the people; not to teach religion, not to administer charity; not to make roads and railways; but simply to defend the natural rights of man -- to protect person and property -- to prevent the aggressions of the powerful upon the weak -- in a word, to administer justice. This is the natural, the original, office of a government. It was not intended to do less: it ought not to be allowed to do more.”
Source: The Man versus the State: Great Essays