W Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with W. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Was it my time for writing poems about McCarthy or my time for sending out fresh salmon or the time of playing happy telephone or my time for dictating memoranda about what's wrong with America?... or my time for crying.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“Was it necessary to tell me that you wanted nothing in the world but me?' The corners of his mouth drooped peevishly. Oh, my dear, it's rather hard to take quite literally the things a man says when he's in love with you.' Didn't you mean them?' At the moment.”
Source: The Painted Veil
“Was it new for one, perhaps too busy to seek, to be the prize of a girl who would seek him?”
Source: Emma
“Was it not all a dead-end occupation, nursing back to health men to be patched up and returned to the trenches, or a man to be patched up, court-martialled, and shot? The difference lay in the Ideal.”
Source: The Backwash of War: The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an American Hospital Nurse
“Was it not enough punishment and suffering in history that we were uprooted and made helpless slaves not only in new colonial outposts but also domestically.”
“Was it not his Self, his small, fearful and proud Self, with which he had wrestled for so many years, but which had always conquered him again, which appeared each time again and again, which robbed him of happiness and filled him with fear?”
Source: Siddhartha: An Indian Tale
“Was it not most meet that a woman should first see the risen Saviour? She was first in the transgression; let her be first in the justification. In yon garden she was first to work our wo; let her in that other garden be the first to see Him who works our weal. She takes first the apple of that bitter tree which brings us all our sorrow; let her be the first to see the Mighty Gardener, who has planted a tree which brings forth fruit unto everlasting life.”
“Was it not said and written that give unto God what belongs to God and to Ceaser what belongs to him? Also, give yourself what belongs to you. That is important.”
“Was it not the great philosopher and mathematician Leibnitz who said that the more knowledge advances the more it becomes possible to condense it into little books?”
Source: The Outline of Science, First Volume
“Was it not through pride that the devil became the devil? Christ wanted to serve. The devil wanted to rule. Christ wanted to bring men to where He was. The devil wanted to be above men.”
“Was it not worth the loss of a little immortality to have that strange mix of innocence and strength close to him?”
Source: Angels' Blood
“Was it okay? Adam had turned down so many offers of help from Gansey. Money for school, money for food, money for rent. Pity and charity, Adam had thought. For so long, he'd wanted Gansey to see him as an equal, but it was possible that all this time, the only person who needed to see that was Adam. Now he could see that it wasn't charity Gansey was offering. It was just truth. And something else: friendship of the unshakable kind. Friendship you could swear on. That could be busted nearly to breaking and come back stronger than before.”
Source: Blue Lily, Lily Blue
“Was it only age which made someone respect somebody? Were it only relationships? Surely not. It was something more than that.”
Source: Stella - An extraordinary tale of an ordinary girl
“Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?”
“Was it permitted to believe that there was nowhere upon the earth, or above the earth, a heaven for hogs, where they were requited for all this suffering? Each one of these hogs was a separate creature. Some were white hogs, some were black; some were brown, some were spotted; some were old, some young; some were long and lean, some were monstrous. And each of them had an individuality of his own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart's desire; each was full of self- confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity. And trusting and strong in faith he had gone about his business, the while a black shadow hung over him and a horrid Fate waited in his pathway. Now suddenly it had swooped upon him, and had seized him by the leg. Relentless, remorseless, it was; all his protests, his screams, were nothing to it— it did its cruel will with him, as if his wishes, his feelings, had simply no existence at all; it cut his throat and watched him gasp out his life. And now was one to believe that there was nowhere a god of hogs, to whom this hog personality was precious, to whom these hog squeals and agonies had a meaning? Who would take this hog into his arms and comfort him, reward him for his work well done, and show him the meaning of his sacrifice?”
Source: The Jungle
“Was it possessiveness in his words? Maybe. But deep down, deep in that aching, hidden part of me, wasn’t that exactly what I had been craving all along? Someone who would fight the world to have me. Someone who would burn kingdoms to keep me.”
Source: Ashen Embrace (Divine Destinies
“Was it possible I did like kids, just not the script written for them?”
Source: The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation Into the Prison of Modern Schooling
“Was it possible I'd labeled him incorrectly? Shallow jocksdidn't overcome adversity and accomplish the things Leif had. I'd labeled him, not even knowing him. Just because girls went gaga over him andevery boy wanted to be him didn't make him a jerk. The only jerk in the room happened to be the judgmental, elitist female. Me.”
“Was it possible in any relationship to not disappoint, to do anything more than only briefly rekindle the initial fatal illusion?”
Source: The English Teacher
“Was it possible, she wondered, to have solitude together? She tried to imagine what he would do if after dinner she went to his study back home with her book or her laptop, and sat on the couch there instead of in the living room as they had in the early years. He might glance over the top of his computer with a look of surprise and then a smile of welcome. Hey there. Or there might be a moment's hesitation. She'd sit quietly nearby, each of them feeling the weight of the other int he room and a dampening of his or her own thoughts, each looking up expectantly when the other shifted in a chair or looked off into the middle distance. She might offer a snippet of commentary about something she was reading, but it would not be easily understood out of context. After an hour or so she would stand and stretch, murmur that sh though she'd call it a night, and the following night she'd go back to the living room. It was a gift, solitude. But solitude with another person, that was an art.”
Source: The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.
“Was it possible that a bustling display of energy might only be a camouflage for a spiritual vacuum? The thought so impressed me that I mentioned it next day to the French purser, at whose table I was sitting. He nodded his agreement. "Stevenson is right," he said. "Indeed, if you will pardon my saying so, the idea applies particularly to you Americans. A lot of your countrymen keep so busy getting things done that they reach the end of their lives without ever having lived at all."”
“was it possible that he had really been “de-souled” by a disease? “Do you think he has a soul?” I once asked the Sisters. They were outraged by my question, but could see why I asked it. “Watch Jimmie in chapel,” they said, “and judge for yourself.”
I did, and I was moved, profoundly moved and impressed, because I saw here an intensity and steadiness of attention and concentration that I had never seen before in him or conceived him capable of. I watched him kneel and take the Sacrament on his tongue, and could not doubt the fullness and totality of Communion, the perfect alignment of his spirit with the spirit of the Mass. Fully, intensely, quietly, in the quietude of absolute concentration and attention, he entered and partook of the Holy Communion. He was wholly held, absorbed, by a feeling. There was no forgetting, no Korsakov’s then”
Source: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: Oliver Sacks
“was it possible that i was, in the modern term, in denial?”
Source: Atonement
“Was it possible that my homosexuality had been a choice resulting from pain?”
Source: Sa préférée
“Was it possible that Napoleon should win the battle of Waterloo? We answer, No! Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Blucher? No! Because of God! For Bonaparte to conquer at Waterloo was not the law of the nineteenth century. It was time that this vast man should fall. He had been impeached before the Infinite! He had vexed God! Waterloo was not a battle. It was the change of front of the Universe!”
“Was it possible that one of Robb Stark’s brothers had survived the ruin of Winterfell? Did Manderly have a Stark heir hidden away in his castle? A found boy or a feigned one? The north would rise for either, he suspected… but Stannis Baratheon would never make common cause with an imposter.”
Source: A Dance with Dragons
“Was it possible that the emotion of love had somehow made me more susceptible to fear? Does the noble emotion of love make us start valuing our own lives and the lives of our loved ones more so that the feeling of fear creeps into our mindset?”
Source: Indians in Pakistan
“Was it possible that when we made up our minds to face our monsters, God gave us the right amount of courage at the exact moment we needed it?”
Source: Hereafter
“Was it possible there was some fatal flaw in their matching, that they were ultimately, impossibly different--dissimilar enough to fall in love, but too fundamentally distinct to stay together?”
“Was it possible this one would be a son too? She hoped so, but not because she favored men. Her husband modeled the seriousness, the stoicism, that she hoped her sons would inherit, but she had nothing to teach a daughter. She could teach her to dream—say, to be a painter, as she herself had been trained—and then teach her to let it go. Teach her to cloister herself in dark hallways, admiring how the light fell through the rice-paper doors while knowing that there was no point in putting it on canvas.”
Source: Green Island
“Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, decades, through an entire life, without once being brave enough to go against what was there and yet call yourself a Christian, and face yourself in the mirror?”
Source: Small Things Like These
“Was it possible to fall in love with the same man over and over again, every single day?”
Source: The Viscount Who Loved Me
“Was it possible to feel nostalgic about something that had never happened to him, possible for nostalgia to be taken in by the body as a free pathogen to infect the consciousness with stray sentiments? Perhaps, in his dreams, he had traveled back in time, or even drifted into another dimension of space-time and inhabited the body, experiences, and nostalgia of another. To even envisage so allowed the trauma of those lost moments, though not his own, to draw from him a certain envy for the entity in whose memories he had basked vicariously. . .Perhaps, nostalgia was a microorganism. . .the bacterium that infected. . . Yes. . .maybe he was sick.”
Source: Only the Deplorable
“Was it possible to find recompense, meaning, connection with others amidst the mess and the muddle ?”
Source: Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman
“Was it possible to love a man who made you feel ridiculous? Of course [.....], love was complicated, that was all. Or was love simple, and marriage was complicated? In seventeen years of marriage David had often left her feeling frustrated, and furious, and disgusted, yes - but he had also made her feel beautiful, and protected, and loved. And oh, what she would give to feel loved right now.”
Source: The Widow's Season
“Was it possible to love people you had never met, I wondered...”
Source: The Dream Daughter
“Was it possible to measure what the heart felt?”
Source: Full Moon
“Was it possible to pine for a place I’d been perfectly happy to leave? For a long time while I worked on my ‘love where you live’ experiments, I had thought of place attachment as an either-or proposition: either you adored your city and stayed there forever in connubial bliss, or you didn’t. Moving was a failure of commitment and love.”
Source: This Is Where You Belong: The Art and Science of Loving the Place You Live
“Was it possible—was it at all possible that she could come out of her most desperate choice with a man as clever as Odysseus who looked like Achilles and made love like Paris…?”
Source: His at Night
“Was it pretty? Your country. . .your land?" "It was beautiful," the gunslinger said. "There were fields and forests and rivers and mists in the morning. But that's only pretty. My mother used to say that the only real beauty is order and love and light.”
“Was it privilege to love you?
Painted hues of viridescent lives
to those lost seconds when we saw
the world begin again in strides.”
Source: Under the Rose
“Was it probably true that reasoning beings were equal? It seemed more like a belief than a fact, even if I agreed with it. If you followed logic all the way back to its origin, did you inevitably end up at point of illogic, an article of faith?”
“Was it really a bad day, or did those bad ten minutes get replayed all day (out loud or to yourself)?
Reframing is powerful. So is stopping to breathe. Try them both!
● ☐ ●
Sometimes, when something “bad” happens, do you imagine telling your best friend? Your spouse? Your dog (dogs always understand and never judge!)? So, essentially, instead of training yourself out of the bad mood, do you train yourself to prolong it?”
“Was it really so far-fetched to think that words had a way of shaping a person's whole life?”
“Was it really some other person I was so anxious to discover...or was it only my own solitude that I could not abide?”
“Was it really that easy to win a woman’s heart with a flower? Or was it just thinking about it enough?”
Source: Hopeful Pessimist
“Was it really this easy, once you escaped, to just not care?”
Source: Lock and Key
“Was it really too much to ask to find a single bloke who was actually interested in more than just a hook up?”
Source: Secret Santa
“Was it really wrong of me to remember the past fondly? It wasn't, of course it wasn't--but the past was an easy meal, after all. I could taste it again anytime I wanted, in memory, and it would always be perfect and true. The here-and-now, though, had no recipe. It might be sour or bitter or raw. And yet.”
Source: How Long 'til Black Future Month?
“was it scripted by God or I am playing with my life.”
Source: Equating the Equations of Insanity: A Journey from Grief to Victory