W Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with W. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Why should you take by force that from us that which you can have by Love? Why should you destroy us, who have provided you with food What can you get by war?”
“Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the careless passer-by to pick up idly? Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination.”
Source: The Essential W. Somerset Maugham Collection
“Why should you think that I should woo in scorn? Scorn and derision never come in tears: Look, when I vow, I weep; and vows so born, In their nativity all truth appears. How can these things in me seem scorn to you, Bearing the badge of faith, to prove them true?”
Source: The Dramatic Works of William Shakspeare: From the Text of Johnson, Stevens, and Reed; with Glossarial Notes, His Life, and a Critique on His Genius & Writings
“Why should you trouble yourself about the future? You do not even properly know about the present. Take care of the present, the future will take care of itself.”
“Why should you use a term [rebels] in the United States and England and maybe other countries and use another term in Syria ? This is a double standard that we don't accept.”
“Why should you wait on the Lord ? Because His ways are always wise.”
“Why should you want to exclude from your life all unsettling, all pain, all depression of spirit, when you don’t know what work it is these states are performing within you?”
Source: Letters to a Young Poet
“Why should you want to give up a child's wise not-understanding in exchange for defensiveness and scorn, since not-understanding is, after all, a way of being alone, whereas defensiveness and scorn are a participation in precisely what, by these means, you want to separate yourself from.”
Source: Letters to a Young Poet
“Why should you waste your time in idleness, and torment yourself with unprofitable wishes? Books are at hand; books from which most sciences and languages can be learned. Read, analyse, digest; collect facts, and investigate theories: ascertain the dictates of reason, and supply yourself with the inclination and the power to adhere to them.”
Source: Carwin the Biloquist and Other American Tales and Pieces; Volume III
“Why should you worry whether God wants you to reach the heavenly home by way of the desert or by the fields, when by the one as well as by the other one arrives all the same at a Blessed Eternity? Keep far from you excessive preoccupation which arises from the trials which the good God wishes to visit upon you.”
“Why should young people look for guides who hang out gided placards to advertise themselves? They would do better to look for friends, unite with them, and advance together towards some quarter where it seems possible to survive.”
“Why should your heart not dance?”
Source: Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold
“Why should your Majesty expect it? My own plans are made. While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle. When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws. And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan’s country, or shot over the edge of the world in some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise and Peepiceek will be head of the talking mice in Narnia.”
Source: The voyage of the Dawn Treader
“Why should your majesty think it? My own plans are made. While I may, I sail East in Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I row East in my coracle. When that sinks, shall I paddle East with my four paws. Then, when I can swim no longer, if I have not yet reached Aslan's Country, there shall I sink with my nose to the sunrise... and Peepiceek will be head of Talking Mice in Narnia”
“Why shouldn’t I? I demand silently. Why shouldn’t I become a famous writer? Like Norman Mailer. Or Philip Roth. And F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemmingway and all those other men. Why can’t I be like them? I mean, what is the point of becoming a writer if no one reads what you’ve written?
Damn Viktor Greene and The New School. Why do I have to keep proving myself all of the time? Why can’t I be like L’il, with everyone praising and encouraging me? Or Rainbow, with her sense of entitlement. I bet Viktor Greene never asked Rainbow why she wanted to be a writer.
Or what if-I wince-Viktor Greene is right? I’m not a writer after all.”
Source: Summer and the City
“Why shouldn't Mom trust me, Dad" Why are you so determined to make me out to be the bad guy all the time?" I stared at the side of his face, willing him to make eye contact. He didn't. "I've been doing really good late and you don't even care."
"Yet you still managed to get into trouble tonight," he said.
"You have no idea what happened tonight," I said, my voice ratcheting up a notch. "All you know is that, because I was involved, I'm somehow guilty of something. You could at least pretend to care, you know. You could at least try to understand."
Dad gave a sardonic little laugh. "I'll tell you what I understand," he said. "I understand that when you're left to your own devices you get into trouble, that's what I understand. I understand I was trying to have a happy, restful evening with Briley and once again you screwed it up.”
Source: Hate List
“Why shouldn't this happen? I have to rid
myself of this last land mine, the unlived life.”
“Why shouldn't two new Justices be appointed each administration? A re-elected President would then have four opportunities to appoint. At the beginning of each administration, the two oldest Justices would automatically hand in their resignations, to take effect at the President's convenience. Thus new blood would be infused into the Court at regular intervals without rancour, and the Court would normally be renewed every 16 years ... Whenever death or retirement occurred, the President would have an extra appointment.”
Source: Born to Rebel: The Life of Harriet Boyd Hawes
“Why shouldn't we be honest and honorable, and lie every time we get a chance? That is to say, why shouldn't we be consistent, and either lie all the time or not at all?”
“Why shouldn't a PC work like a refrigerator or a toaster?”
“Why shouldn't gay people be able to live as open and freely as everybody else? What it comes down to, ultimately, is love. How can anything bad come out of love? The bad stuff comes out of mistrust, misunderstanding and, God knows, from hate and from ignorance.”
“Why shouldn't gay people be allowed to be able to marry? Those against gay marriages say marriage should only be between a man and a woman. God, I of all people know that doesn't always work!”
“Why shouldn't he break Ruth's record? He's got more power than Stalin.”
“why shouldn't he? All life is just a progression toward and then a recession from one phrase-- 'I love you”
Source: Flappers and Philosophers
“Why shouldn't I be interested in politics? That is to say, what blindness, what deafness, what density of ideology would have to weigh me down to prevent me from being interested in what is probably the most crucial subject to our existence, that is to say the society in which we live, the economic relations within which it functions, and the system of power which defines the regular forms and the regular permissions and prohibitions of our conduct. The essence of our life consists, after all, of the political functioning of the society in which we find ourselves.”
“Why shouldn't I be introspective? We dont' make sense." "Neither do Chocolate and Peanut Butter, but it somehow works." He says "Somehow the mixture of two things is genius.”
“Why shouldn't I hate her? She did the worst thing to me that anyone can do to anyone else. Let them believe that they're loved and wanted and then show them that it's all a sham.”
Source: A Caribbean Mystery ; A Pocket Full of Rye ; The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side ; They Do it with Mirrors
“Why shouldn't I milk it? We're an agricultural institution.”
“Why shouldn't it be that way for the rest of us? Why not just go with it? Just walk the dog and send the tweets and eat the scones and play with the hamsters and ride the bicycles and watch the sunsets and stream the movies and never worry about any of it? I didn't know it could be that easy. I didn't know that until just now. That sounds good to me.”
“Why shouldn't man be as angry about not having always been alive as about having to stop being alive?”
“Why shouldn't people be able to buy movie tickets on Amazon? Or Google or Flixster, or IMDb? I don't care who you have a relashionship with. This isn't about Fandango or MovieTickets. This is about you. Where do you buy stuff? Are you an Amazon Prime member? Then I want to be on Amazon Prime. Are you a Yahoo guy? Then I want to sell on Yahoo. Are you a Google guy? Then I want to sell tickets on Google.”
“Why shouldn't rap be esoteric, able to take in current events, history and criticism? I guess it's this old idea of containment - that rappers, because they're black, can't and shouldn't aspire to look outside the ghetto for influence.”
“Why shouldn't the death of a person you love bring you into lurid ruin? You don't know how to love the one you love until they disappear abruptly. Then you understand how thinly distanced from their suffering, how sparing of self you often were, only rarely unguarded of heart, working your networks of give-and-take.”
“Why shouldn't we give our teachers a license to obtain software, all software, any software, for nothing? Does anyone demand a licensing fee, each time a child is taught the alphabet?”
“Why shouldn't we, so generally addicted to the gigantic, at last have some small works of art, some short poems, short pieces of music [...], some intimate, low-voiced, and delicate things in our mostly huge and roaring, glaring world?”
Source: Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters
“Why shouldn't you strengthen your own vibrations through fellowship with people seeking Self-realization, and by group meditation with them? This practice will fortify your own spiritual convictions you will find that many seemingly insuperable barriers in your life will crumble and dissolve in the waters of meditation. Your devotion and love for God will commingle with the devotion and love of others. Divine bliss will radiate from you, helping all persons you meet.”
“Why shouldn't you think it's crazy to believe in a green deer? All your life you have been taught to believe in only what you can use-to set on the table, to put in the bank, to build a house with. What possible use would a green deer be to anyone? Who would believe in a man with a blazing bush in his cart? Then let me tell you that it is beliefs just such as these that are the only hope of the world. Let me tell you that until men are ready to believe in the green deer and the strange carter, we shall not lift our noses above the bloody mess we have made of our living.”
“why shouldnt things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? they are so, and we are so, and they and we go together.”
Source: The letters of George Santayana
“Why shouldn’t art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world.”
“Why shouldn’t we experience heartbreak? Through those doorways God is opening up ways of fellowship with His Son. Most of us collapse at the first grip of pain. We sit down at the door of God’s purpose and enter a slow death through self-pity. And all the so-called Christian sympathy of others helps us to our deathbed. But God will not. He comes with the grip of the pierced hand of His Son, as if to say, “Enter into fellowship with Me; arise and shine.” If God can accomplish His purposes in this world through a broken heart, then why not thank Him for breaking yours?”
Source: Utmost: Classic Readings and Prayers from Oswald Chambers
“Why shouldn’t your curiosity about the world be rewarded?”
Source: The Circle
“Why show him the world when he’s never going to leave the ghetto?”
“Because,” she would say, “even if he never leaves the ghetto, he will know that the ghetto is not the world. If that is all I accomplish, I’ve done enough.”
Source: Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
“Why, since folly or perversity is expected of individuals, should we expect anything else from government?”
Source: The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam
“Why since I am myself subject to birth, ageing, disease, death, sorrows and defilement, do I seek after what is also subject to these things? Suppose, being myself subject these things, seeking danger in them, I were to seek the unborn, unageing, und.”
“Why sing music that you get to choose that isn't personal to you? That is the great thing about what I do.”
“Why sip from a tea cup, when you can drink from the river.”
“Why, sir, she is to bear me a son, who shall restore the art of embalming and the old Roman manner of burying their dead; and for the benefit of posterity, he is to discover the longitude, so long sought for in vain.”
Source: A Bold Stroke for a Wife
“Why slap them on the wrist with feather when you can belt them over the head with a sledgehammer.”
“Why sleep when there are books to read.”
“Why so eager to jump in and direct someone else's life when you can't stick to your own goals and resolutions?”