W Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with W. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“When a plain-looking woman is loved, it is certain to be very passionately ; for either her influence on her lover is irresistible, or she has some secret and more irresistible charms than those of beauty.”
“When a plan or strategy fails, people are tempted to assume it was the wrong vision. Plans and strategies can always be changed and improved. But vision doesn't change. Visions are simply refined with time.”
“When a plane crashes and some die while others live, a skeptic calls into question God's moral character, saying that he has chosen some to live and others to die on a whim; yet you say it is your moral right to choose whether the child within you should live or die. Does that not sound odd to you? When God decides who should live or die, he is immoral. When you decide who should live or die, it's your moral right.”
Source: End of Reason
“When a plane departed the atoll after delivering construction supplies, its passengers were given lists of things we needed from town. On one occasion, my wife, Dora DeLarios, went to Papeete for the day. Marlon had given her a shopping list for food for the evening meal and the list included a bottle of rum. When Dora’s plane got back that evening, Marlon discovered that Dora had forgotten his rum and yelled at her. She got so fed up, she took a swing at him and knocked his hat off. I’d never seen Marlon with quite such an expression — surprise, anger, confusion, and amusement all at once. Dora was not to be reckoned with, and Marlon, who could have decked her, controlled himself.”
Source: Waltzing With Brando: Planning a Paradise in Tahiti
“When a plane lands in the Hudson and there's a Twitter user on the ferry taking a picture of it, Boom. That's it. The water is still splashing. Here's the photo of the thing.”
“When a planet is born from interstellar dust it has about twelve refractory minerals, those resistant to decomposition by heat, pressure, or chemical attack. By the time it is complete with asteroid accretion and finally volcanic activity, about 1,500 different minerals are present. The earth has at least 4,300 species of mineral. This high number is unique in the solar system, a function of biological processes such as photosynthesis that releases oxygen which chemically bonds with almost every element, creating new minerals.”
Source: Apocalyptic Planet: Field Guide to the Ever-Ending Earth
“When a planner speaks of implementing goals rationally, he implies that it is possible to demonstrate logically and experimentally the relationship between the proposed means and the ends they are intended to further.”
Source: The process of planning in two American cities
“When a play ends, the audience gets up and follows signs for the exit. For a few hours after Momma died, I lay in my bed and thought I might not ever be able to get up again--without her and her direction, I worried that I'd forget the basic rules of existing.”
Source: The Mourning Report
“When a play enters my consciousness, is already a fairly well-developed fetus. I don't put down a word until the play seems ready to be written.”
“When a player gets to 30, so does his body”
“When a player has a slump, we do not trade them, we coach them. It is the same with our employees.”
“When a player keeps a calm demeanor on the court, it's easier for his ability to shine. The best response to an opposing player's physical or psychological tactics is to keep cool and come right back at him with the force of your game, not your fists. Revenge is always sweeter if your team wins the game.”
“When a player knows he is a slave he'll never give his employer his heart.”
“When a plutocracy is disguised as a democracy, the system is beyond corrupt.”
Source: Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
“When a poem doesn't work, the first question to ask yourself is, 'Am I telling the truth?'”
“When a poem is really finished, you can't change anything. You can't move words around. You can't say, 'In other words, you mean.' No, that's not it. There are no other words in which you mean it. This is it.”
“When a poem might become a song, then certain parts are repeated and might become a refrain or a chorus, so they change in that way. But it's more the nature of the words and what they're saying that determines whether it's a poem or a song.”
“when a poem says something that could not have been said in any other way, in music, prose, sculpture, movement or paint, then it is poetry.”
“When a poet digs himself into a hole, he doesn't climb out. He digs deeper, enjoys the scenery, and comes out the other side enlightened.”
Source: Venus in Arms
“When a poet mentions the spring, we know that the zephyrs are about to whisper, that the groves are to recover their verdure, the linnets to warble forth their notes of love, and the flocks and herds to frisk over vales painted with flowers: yet, who is there so insensible of the beauties of nature, so little delighted with the renovation of the world, as not to feel his heart bound at the mention of the spring?”
Source: The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With Murphy's Essay
“When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience; the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. The latter falls in love, or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes.”
“When a poet settled down to write a poem, could he foresee the lines he would write? Did his head constantly spin with riddles and rhymes and was his only job to put them down? What if he couldn’t get them to make sense, and no one, not even the person he cared for most, could have pleasure in reading it? What would he do?”
Source: Sharden
“When a poet writes a poem, meaning arises - because the poet is not alone; he has created something. When a dancer dances, meaning arises. When a mother gives birth to a child, meaning arises. Left alone, cut off from everything else, isolated like an island, you are meaningless. Joined together you are meaningful. The bigger the whole, the bigger is the meaning.”
“When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience ?in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes.”
“When a police officer follows me, it brings out the police corruption researcher in me.”
“When a police officer grabs me, it brings out the police corruption researcher in me.”
“When a police officer harasses me, I am thinking to myself “I am really looking forward to obtaining the police body camera footage!”.”
“When a police officer is pointing a gun at you, pulling your pants up is a proven way of getting you legally killed.”
“When a police officer tells you to stay in the car, you stay in the car.”
“When a police officer threatens to arrest me, it brings out the police corruption researcher in me.”
“When a political opponent resorts to the racist card, it's a sure sign of moral bankruptcy: there's no decent argument left in the armoury.”
Source: Impromptu Scribe
“When a political organization loses contact with its origin, it declines and risks implosion.”
“When a politician bends the truth or a CEO breaks a promise, trust takes a beating.”
“When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it.”
“When a politician says the debate is over, you can be sure of two things; the debate is raging; and he's losing it.”
“When a politician says, concerning an issue involving science, that the debate is over, you may be sure the debate is rolling on and not going swimmingly for his side.”
“When a politician states that we are all in the same boat, be on Your guard. Does it mean that YOU are supposed to be doing all the rowing?”
“When a poll is really, really out of whack with what I want to happen, I do have a tendency to disregard it.”
“When a poor disconsolated drooping creature is terrified from all enjoyment,--prays without ceasing 'till his imagination is heated,--fasts and mortifies and mopes, till his body is in as bad a plight as his mind; is it a wonder, that the mechanical disturbancesof an empty belly, interpreted by an empty head, should be mistook for [the] workings [of God].”
“When a poor man gives something, that is a sacrifice indeed. When a rich man gives something, it hardly rises to the same level.”
Source: True Blue
“When a poor man, hungry and unseeing because his eyesight is failing, grabs me and starts begging, I feel the Nazi in myself. I abhor this man, and I want him to keep his hands off me.”
“When a poor person dies I want then to die in the arms of somebody who loves them. I want them to be able to look for the last time into the eyes of somebody who cares for them”
“When a poor person dies of hunger it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed.”
Source: In my own words
“When a pope's election could not be explained rationally, it was attributed to the Holy Ghost.”
Source: The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam
“When a popular phenomenon reaches the cover of 'Time,' it is already out of fashion.”
“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”
Source: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
“When a population saves a lot, the funds are invested outside the country as well as inside. If the Japanese invest in the United States, it pushes their exchange rate down and makes their manufacturing more competitive.”
“When a positive exchange between a brand and customers becomes quantifiable metrics, it encourages brand to provide better service, customer service to do a better job, and consumers to actively show their gratitude.”
“When a possibility is unfamiliar to us, we do not even think about it.”
Source: The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't
“When a powerful storm collides with a much more powerful storm, it will understand that his power was just a dust before the wind! You can be a giant only until a bigger giant comes and erases your existence!”