W Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with W. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“When he was kidnapped by the Iron King and taken into the Nevernever, she didn’t hesitate to go after him. And she didn’t stop there. When her magic was sealed by Mab, leaving her defenseless in the Winter Court, she somehow managed to survive, even when she thought you had turned on her. When the Scepter of the Seasons was stolen by the Iron fey, she went after it, despite having no magic and no weapon with which to defend herself. And when the courts asked her to destroy the false king, she accepted, even though the Summer and Iron glamours within her were making her sick, and she couldn’t use either of them effectively. She still went into the Iron Kingdom to
face a tyrant she didn’t know if she could overcome.
“Now,” Ariella finished, turning toward me, “do you still believe humans are weak?”
Source: The Iron Knight
“When he was not in class, Thorne often served as an expert witness in legal cases involving materials engineering. He specialized in explosions, crashed airplanes, collapsed buildings, and other disasters. These forays into the real world sharpened his view that scientists needed the widest possible education. He used to say, “How can you design for people if you don’t know history and psychology? You can’t. Because your mathematical formulas may be perfect, but the people will screw it up. And if that happens, it means you screwed it up.”
Source: The Lost World
“When he was sixteen (1923), Peter got a job as copy boy on a New York tabloid and entered a saltier, more hard-bitten world. It was a roaring, lush, lousy tabloid. Everybody was drunk all the time. The managing editor hired girl reporters on condition they sleep with him. New staffs moved in and were mowed down like the Light Brigade. Chorus girls, debutantes, and widows suspected of murdering their husbands were perched on desks with their thighs showing to be photographed. An endless parade of cranks, freaks, ministers, actresses, and politicians moved through the big babbling room, day and night. The city editor went crazy one afternoon. So did his successor. And among the typewriters and the paste pots and the thighs, Peter walked with simple delight.
A young reporter took a liking to him, found he was homeless, and insisted he share an elegant bachelor apartment uptown. There were constant parties, starting at dawn and ending as the hush of twilight settled over the city. People went to work and went to parties until they got the two pursuits confused and never noticed the difference. Whisky was oxygen, women were furniture, thinking was masochism.”
“When he was turning thirty, Jobs had used a metaphor about record albums. He was musing about why folks over thirty develop rigid thought patterns and tend to be less innovative. " People get stuck in those patterns, just like grooves in a record, and they never get out of them, " he said. At age forty-five, Jobs was now about to get out of his groove.”
Source: Steve Jobs
“When he was twenty-five and new to the city, he had lived at the Irvines', and Mr. Irvine would talk to him [...] and had given him advice: not advice about how to think as much as advice about how to be, about how to be a curiosity in a world in which curiosities weren't often tolerated. "[...] if you act like you don't belong, if you act like you're apologetic for your own self, then people will start to treat you that way, too." [...] Be as steely as you want to be [...] Don't try to get people to like you. Never try to make yourself more palatable in order to make your colleagues more comfortable.”
Source: A Little Life
“When he was twenty-three or twenty-four my father began to learn German and read philosophy in his spare hours, which did not look as though he were destined to remain long on board ship!”
Source: My days and dreams: being autobiographical notes
“When he was very excited, [John Singer] Sargent would rush at his canvas with his brush poised for attack, yelling, 'Demons, demons, demons!' When he was particularly angry or frustrated, he expressed these feelings with 'Damn,' the only curse he allowed himself. He once had the expletive inscribed on a rubber stamp so he could have the satisfaction of pounding it on a piece of paper.”
“When he was very young, Auberon had begun a collection of postmarks. On a trip with Doc to the post office in Meadowbrook, he had begun idly examining the wastebaskets, having nothing else to do, and had immediately come up with two treasures: envelopes from places that seemed fantastically distant to him, and looking remarkably crisp for having come so far.
It soon developed into a small passion, like Lily's for bird's nests. He insisted on accompanying whoever was traveling near a post office; he conned his friends' mail; he gloated over distant cities, far states whose names began with I, and, rarest of all, names from across the sea.
Then one day Joy Flowers, whose granddaughter had lived abroad for a year, gave him a fat brown bag full of envelopes sent her from every part of the world. He could hardly find on the map a place which had not stamped its name on one of these pieces of blue flimsy. Some of them came from places so distant they weren't even in the alphabet he knew. And at a stroke his collection was complete, and his pleasure in it over. No discovery he could make in Meadowbrook's post office could add to it. He never looked at it again.”
Source: Little, Big
“When he was with a client, he had to be careful not to use any of the forbidden words. Struggle, resist, rebel, queer—and a host of others—were considered too radical by the State and had been banned decades ago, replaced with more innocuous words such as 'to make effort ', 'to dispute' and 'to betray'. Queer, having passed through 'LGBTQIA+' at the turn of the century and 'Sexual and gender divergents' to decades later, now had no permissible equivalent that wasn't a slur. As the linguists working in the State knew very well, without a vocabulary to express it, there could be no concept. By banning the very idea of queerness, they hoped that the people themselves would also disappear.”
Source: Margins and Murmurations
“When he was with Wren, Lewis played a characterized version of himself, punching up his idealism, sense of humor, and creative energy.
He had been an actor, after all.”
Source: Shark Heart
“When he was young, there had been only one reality, and the future had seemed to stretch before him, swelling with immense possibilities. But as he grew older, reality seemed to take many forms, and it was the past that seemed refracted into innumerable possibilities”
Source: Runaway Horses
“When he was young, he had thought love had something to do with understanding, but with age he knew that no human being understood another. Love was the wish to understand, and presently with constant failure the wish died, and love died too perhaps or changed into this painful affection, loyalty, pity.”
“When he was young, I told Dale Jr. that hunting and racing are a lot alike. Holding that steering wheel and holding that rifle both mean you better be responsible.”
“When he was younger, he used the slightest opportunity to slip away from people, without his being able to understand very clearly why he did so: a longing to break free and to breathe in the fresh air?”
Source: So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood
“When he wasn’t around it was like he didn’t exist for her, which was painful because he thought about her almost all the time.”
Source: The Nix
“When he went back to the fire he knelt and smoothed her hair as she slept and he said if he were God he would have made the world just so and no different.”
Source: The Road
“When he went back to untangle himself, she planted a kiss on his lips that he promptly--and in as polite a manner as possible--wiped away after his back was turned.”
Source: The Elite
“When he went blundering back to God, His songs half written, his work half done, Who knows what paths his bruised feet trod, What hills of peace or pain he won? I hope God smiled and took his hand, And said, "Poor truant, passionate fool! Life’s book is hard to understand: Why couldst thou not remain at school?" A poem by Charles Hanson Towne”
Source: For One More Day
“When he went off into space ten years ago, I said to myself, 'He's dead.' Or as good as dead. So think of him dead. And when he comes back, three or four times a year, it's not him at all, it's only a pleasant little memory or a dream. And if a memory stops or a dream stops, it can't hurt half as much. So most of the time I think of him dead--”
“When he went through the kitchen he kissed Rebeca on the forehead. "Get those bad thoughts out of your head," he told her. "You're going to be happy.”
“When he went to go get groceries, though, he asked Mercer to come. 'There's no one I'd rather get stuck in a snowdrift and freeze to death with,' William said.”
Source: City on Fire
“When he who hears does not know what he who speaks means, and when he who speaks does not know what he himself means, that is philosophy.”
“When he, whoever of the gods it was, had thus arranged in order and resolved that chaotic mass, and reduced it, thus resolved, to cosmic parts, he first moulded the Earth into the form of a mighty ball so that it might be of like form on every side … And, that no region might be without its own forms of animate life, the stars and divine forms occupied the floor of heaven, the sea fell to the shining fishes for their home, Earth received the beasts, and the mobile air the birds … Then Man was born:… though all other animals are prone, and fix their gaze upon the earth, he gave to Man an uplifted face and bade him stand erect and turn his eyes to heaven.”
Source: Metamorphoses
“When he whom I love travels with me or sits a long while holding me by the hand, … Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom, I am silent, I require nothing further, I cannot answer the question of appearances or that of identity beyond the grave, But I walk or sit indifferent, I am satisfied, He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me.”
Source: Walt Whitman's Songs of Male Intimacy and Love:
“When he wins the battle, the Warrior celebrates.”
“When he wins the bet, I tell Griggs that it will take me a lifetime to save up two trillion dollars and he tells me that he's only giving me seventy years.”
“When He withholds an answer, it is to have us grow through faith in Him, obedience to His commandments, and a willingness to act on truth.”
“When he woke up, I said, “Your chorus should be more like ‘Big eyes, big soul/big heart, no control/but all she got to give is tiny love.”
Source: Daisy Jones & The Six
“When he woke up in the hospital, dry, and saw Sylvie on a chair next to him, his first thought was that he'd failed. The fact that he had failed meant he had to continue to walk forward with his life history--his mistakes--slung over his shoulders like a heavy backpack. This fact exhausted him, but he was too tired to reject it.”
Source: Hello Beautiful
“When he woke, daylight was coming through the glass floor, and a boy's voice said, "Oh...You are in so much trouble.”
“WHEN HE WON'T LOVE ME
I sit quietly here, still, frozen, a lifeless breathing corpse.
Inside, abandoned cries for love, ricochet deep in bones.
No words pass between my lips, nothing is uttered in protest or defense.
Inside, war is proclaimed between the ignorance of flesh and the knowledge of soul.
Eyes are fixed in place, to avoid meeting his in this vulnerable state.
Inside, is self torture, he is all I can see, no matter the position of eyelids.”
“When he worked, he really worked. But when he played, he really PLAYED.”
“When he worked on this painting, he felt sometimes as if he were flying, as if the world of galleries and parties and other artists and ambitions had shrunk to a pinpoint beneath him, something so small he could kick it away from himself like a soccer ball, watch it spin off into some distant orbit that had nothing to do with him.”
Source: A Little Life
“When he would hear me speak in ways that were judgmental or indicated my wish to get rid of some part of me, he would gently say, 'A more respectful word may want to emerge soon' ...
He encouraged me to just listen for it, not to try to find it by digging around.
Something always came and gradually opened me to a more kind and inclusive way of being with myself and others.
I began to notice that my words and perceptions were inextricably linked, so as the words changed and my perceptions were also shifting (and vice versa, I imagine), and this led to more changes in language to better reflect this continually emerging felt-sense experience while encouraging it to deepen further as well--a beautiful circle of transformation.
Slowly, slowly I found myself moving away from a more judgmental, analytical, disembodied, left-shifted viewpoint toward a more open, curious, accepting way of being that emerges when right-hemisphere processes take the lead.”
Source: The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
“When he would steal a kiss from her, it always took her breath away. No one kissed like Rick. No other man was able to make her lose all conception of time when he kissed her.
That was not all. Rick was fun to work with and made her laugh. As a partner, he had talents that she desperately needed in her business. He was a cunning and crafty man, and his talents helped in solving many cases.”
Source: The Mysterious Doll
“When he wrote Meditations, Marcus Aurelius was the most powerful man in the world. He had, quite literally, a whole empire at his disposal. Cities, armies, palaces. All were his. He spent over a decade, from the year 161 to 180, as Roman emperor during the 'Golden Age'. And yet he resisted seeking any contentment in his status and power, in favour of simplicity, consultation and a cosmic perspective. He believed watching the stars was important and talks about Pythagoras - the early Greek philosopher and founder of Pythagoreanism - as his influence here.
The Pythagoreans saw gazing up at the sky not just as a pleasant thing to do, but an insight into a divine order. Because stars are all separate, but all together in an order. For the Stoics, looking at them was looking at unveiled glimpses of divinity - and also fragments of Nature.
It is not just the sky or the stars, then, that are important, but what we think when we look at them. Our connection to the shifting world around and above us.
'The universe is change', wrote Marcus Aurelius. 'Our life is what our thoughts make it.'
Even a man in charge of an empire could look at the stars and feel happily small in the grand universal order of things.
The sky doesn't start above us. There is no starting point for sky. We live in the sky.”
Source: The Comfort Book
“When he'd pushed inside me and I'd feel him begin to penetrate, it had turned me into a wild thing-hot, wet, and desperate for more of him. With every kiss, every caress, every thrust, I'd just needed more. He'd touched me, I went nuts. The world dwindled down to one thing: him.”
Source: Shadowfever: Fever Series
“When he'd sworn at her and been sworn at in return, they became great friends.”
Source: Northern lights
“When he's at the top of his game, there's not a team in the world that can handle Giggs' speed and penetration”
“When he's happy, it makes you happy too.”
“When he's on fire, he is impossible to stop. He dribbles like a winger, but is still able to score 20 goals a year in the Premiership.
(on Thierry Henry)”
“When healers yearn to kill then hope begins to die ... Evil cannot be overcome by evil.”
“When health flourishes, wealth multiplies, and prosperity abounds, the universe opens its doors to limitless possibilities.”
“When health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot manifest, strength cannot fight, wealth becomes useless, and intelligence cannot be applied.”
“When health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot become manifest, strength cannot be exerted, wealth is useless, and reason is powerless.”
“When health workers are infected at work, this puts other healthcare workers at risk, but also can be a risk to all other patients, understanding where the breach in these measures is occurring and taking the steps needed to fully implement infection prevention and control measures can put an end to these ... infections.”
“When healthy competition prevails -- you come out to play and you play to win.”
Source: Make It Happen, A Healthy, Competitive Approach to Achieving Personal Success
“When healthy expressions of emotion are not permitted in a family system, children are forced to learn how to express, reach, and need in other ways. When there is no safe place for them to express themselves, they learn to repress, rage, or medicate.”
“When hearing a door creak, the optimist thinks it's opening and the pessimist thinks it's closing.”
Source: The Art of Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill
“When heart is frozen, all prayer is amiss.”
Source: Iman Insaniyat, Mazhab Muhabbat: Pani, Agua, Water, It's All One