W Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with W. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Was man selber glaubt, ist Religion, was die anderen glauben, Aberglaube.”
Source: Forest of the Pygmies
“Was Mann himself fully aware of all the facets of his irony? Probably not - any more than Shakespeare was fully aware of all the riches subsequent critics have found in his plays.”
“Was memory always as much of a burden as it could sometimes be a blessing.”
“Was mich betraf, ich war noch Tage krank vor Trauer und fieberte. Ich nehme an, Burrich erzählte, ich hätte irgendeine Kinderkrankheit und so ließ man mich in Frieden. Als ich wieder nach draußen durfte, war es vorbei mit meiner unbeschwerten Freiheit. Burrich beaufsichtigte mich und achtete darauf, dass ich nicht wieder Freundschaft mit einem Tier schloss. Bis zu einem bestimmten Grad hatte er Erfolg, denn es entstand keine besonders enge Verbindung zu einem bestimmten Hund oder Pferd. Ich weiß, er meinte es gut, trotzdem fühlte ich mich von ihm nicht beschützt, sondern eingeengt. Er war der Wärter, der mit fanatischem Eifer meine Isolation überwachte.
Damals wurde das Samenkorn der Einsamkeit in meine Seele gepflanzt, schlug Wurzeln, und gedieh zu einem unausrottbaren Teil meines Lebens.”
Source: Assassin's Apprentice
“Was mich nicht zugrunde richtet, macht mich starker.”
“Was mom pissed?"
"Women get pissed about all kinds of things. It's best not to even think about it. Now, normally, I would tell you not to use the word pissed. But we're in the woods, and we're men. And we can use the word pissed."
"Can I use the word fuck?"
"Can your mom hear you?
"I don't think so."
"Well, there's your answer then. Out here in the woods we will swear like men.”
Source: The Seven Torments of Amy and Craig
“Was Mrs. Wilcox one of the unsatisfactory people- there are many of them- who dangle intimacy and then withdraw it? They evoke our interests and affections, and keep the life of the spirit dawdling around them. Then they withdraw. When physical passion is involved, there is a definite name for such behaviour- flirting- and if carried far enough, it is punishable by law. But no law- not public opinion, even- punishes those who coquette with friendship, though the dull ache that they inflict, the sense of misdirected effort and exhaustion, may be as intolerable. Was she one of these?”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)
“Was mutual need enough to risk trusting a calculated enemy in hopes of destroying a more powerful one?”
Source: The Tarishe Curse
“Was my happiness so completely tied to him now that I could only feel like myself when he was near?”
Source: The Paris Wife
“Was none who would be foremost
To lead such dire attack;
But those behind cried "Forward!"
And those before cried "Back!”
“Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist? - "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free."”
Source: The Essential Martin Luther King, Jr.:
“Was not every human being a mistake, a blunder? Did we not, at the very moment of birth, stumble into agonizing captivity? A prison, a prison with bars and chains everywhere! And, staring out hopelessly from between the bars of his individuality, a man sees only the surrounding walls of external circumstance, until death comes and calls him home to freedom.
Individuality! Oh, what a man is, can, and has seems to him so poor, gray, inadequate, and boring. But what a man is not, cannot, and does not have—he gazes at all that with longing envy—envy that turns to love, because he fears it will turn to hate.”
Source: Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family
“Was not every piece of music “4’33,” never a rendition sounding alike, with each element of chance affecting the dynamics, the receptions, the discovery of the music in the room? Was not the machinery of change as much part of the music as the musician?”
Source: Toward Eternity
“Was not from a mixture of two races that the Titans sprang?”
Source: José Clemente Orozco: An Autobiography
“Was not Hypatia the greatest philosopher of Alexandria, and a true martyr to the old values of learning? She was torn to pieces by a mob of incensed Christians not because she was a woman, but because her learning was so profound, her skills at dialectic so extensive that she reduced all who queried her to embarrassed silence. They could not argue with her, so they murdered her.”
Source: Dream of Scipio
“Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus."”
“Was not Jesus an extremist in love? - "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you."”
Source: The Essential Martin Luther King, Jr.:
“Was not necessity the plea of every illegal exertion of power or exercise of oppression?...Necessity is the plea for very infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”
“Was not the world a vast prison, and women born slaves?”
Source: Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman
“Was not this ... what we spoke of as the great advantage of wisdom -- to know what is known and what is unknown to us?”
Source: The Complete Works of Plato (Unabridged): From the greatest Greek philosopher, known for The Republic, Symposium, Apology, Phaedrus, Laws, Crito, Phaedo, Timaeus, Meno, Euthyphro, Gorgias, Parmenides, Protagoras, Statesman and Critias
“Was not war itself a crime against God and humanity, and therefore, were not all those who sanctioned, engineered and conducted wars, war criminals?”
Source: Soul Force: Gandhi's Writings on Peace
“Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice? So that all this chatter and praise and blame and meeting people who admired one and did not admire one was as ill suited as could be to the thing itself—a voice answering a voice. What could have been more secret, she thought, more slow, and like the intercourse of lovers, than the stammering answer she had made all these years to the old crooning song of the woods, and the farms and the brown horses standing at the gate, neck to neck, and the smithy and the kitchen and the fields, so laboriously bearing wheat, turnips, grass, and the garden blowing irises and fritillaries?”
Source: Orlando
“Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice?”
Source: Orlando: A Biography
“Was nun das Mensch-Tier-Verhältnis im Besonderen angeht, sähe ich meine Ideale verwirklicht, wenn Tiere ein eigenständiges Leben unabhängig von der menschlichen Gesellschaft führen und die konkreten Beziehungen zwischen Mensch und Tier sich auf beiderseitig freiwilliger Basis gestalten.”
Source: >> mensch_tier <<
“Was on my last leg, I couldn't even borrow my friend's extra peg.”
“Was once lost always lost really true of chastity?”
“Was our intimacy paid for in the wrong currency? Or is intimacy the desired product no matter where you find it, how you acquire it, what you pay for it, black market, grey market, taxed, untaxed, under the table, over the counter.”
Source: Call Me by Your Name
“Was our life nothing more than a sequence of anonymous screams in a desert of indifferent stars?”
Source: The Tunnel
“Was parenting ever going to get easier? Did you ever reach a point where you could stop worrying?”
Source: Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor
“Was passiert, wenn wir keinen Namen haben?", fragte Nummer 7, ein schmächtiger Junge mit schwarzen Haaren und Pickeln, ängstlich.”
Source: Die Magie der Namen
“Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?”
“Was rescue always a kind of love? Peter didn't know, and he was tired now; he would leave it to Alan and his philosophers. But he did know, with certainty, that love was always a kind of rescue.
Even when he had no tears left, he would have tears for Anna.”
Source: Held
“was revolution much more than one fast kick forward in the long process called evolution? We condemened the 'cost' of revolution; but was it higher than the cost over centuries in backward, underdeveloped communities, which still covered two-thirds of the earth and which still could not guarantee their populations daily bread?”
“Was sagt es aus, wenn wir uns selbst im Traum sehen? Dass wir selbst nach dem, was wir den Tod nennen, nicht formlos sind; dass nichts verloren, sondern nur Freiheit gewonnen wird, die verloren gegangen war. Weil wir das nicht wissen, haben wir solche Angst, diesen physischen Körper zu verlieren, und es graut uns davor zu sterben. Aber was ist der Tod? Nur ein Schlaf: Der schlaf des Körpers, der ein Mantel war. Wir können ihn wegnehmen und leben dennoch. Trotz allen Redens über den Tod werden wir erkennen, dass wir leben, dass wir nicht verlieren, sondern gewinnen. Wir sind in der physischen Welt, um zu lernen... (S. 210)”
Source: Heilung aus der Tiefe der Seele: Mystik und geistige Heilung
“Was sein soll, muß geschehen, und was sein sollte, das geschah.”
Source: Peter Schlemihl's wundersame Geschichte
“Was she a bad person? She didn’t know. She didn’t feel bad but…she didn’t feel exactly good either. Not that she knew what those things really meant anyway. Who decided?”
Source: Flames of Lethe
“Was she a cold-blooded killer or an innocent patsy in another man’s crime? The two men were in vastly different places on the confusing subject of Arya Khan.”
Source: Betrayal of Justice
“Was she acting entirely consciously? No: women are always sincere, even in the midst of their most shocking duplicities, because it is always some natural emotion which dominates them. Perhaps, having given this young man such a hold on her, by having openly demonstrated her affection for him, Delphine was merely responding to a sense of personal dignity, which led her either to revoke any concessions she might have made or, at least, to enjoy suspending them. Even at the very moment when passion seizes her, it is perfectly natural for a Parisian woman to delay her final fall, as a way of testing the heart of the man into whose hands she is about to deliver herself and her future!”
Source: Père Goriot
“Was she cold? If he'd stayed with her last night, she wouldn't be cold.”
“Was she conscious of her talent? Hardly. If asked about her cooking, Grandma would look down at her hands which some glorious instinct sent on journeys to be gloved in flour, or to plumb disencumbered turkeys, wrist-deep in search of their animal souls. Her gray eyes blinked from spectacles warped by forty years of oven blasts and blinded with strewing of pepper and sage, so she sometimes flung cornstarch over steaks, amazingly tender, succulent steaks! And sometimes dropped apricots into meat loaves, cross-pollinated meats, herbs, fruits, vegetables with no prejudice, no tolerance for recipe or formula, save that at the final moment of delivery, mouths watered, blood thundered in response. Her hands then, like the hands of Great-grandma before her, were Grandma's mystery, delight, and life. She looked at them in astonishment, but let them live their life in the way they must absolutely lead it.”
Source: Dandelion Wine
“Was she happy? She thought – yes, reasonably so. Then again, what was happiness but the vast terrain between ecstasy and agony? Was this too small an ambition?”
Source: Matters of Convenience
“Was she Minh Thuy, finally, or was she Jenny? But the time when there had been a meaningful difference between the two would come to seem like a tiny neighborhood where you couldn't decide which house was yours. Which felt important when you were high above, you thought, in the foothills, but not so much at the truer remove of a continent, where the lives you'd lived and the places you'd come from, dwindled to a single point on the horizon, in the incorrigibly distant past.”
Source: City on Fire
“Was she misinformed or Miss Informed?”
Source: Harp and the Lyre: Exchange
“Was she naked?" Lasher said. "To the waist," Cotsakis said. "From which direction?" Lasher said.”
Source: White Noise
“Was she on some sort of Candid Camera version of This is Your Sucky Love Life?”
Source: Three Daves
“Was she really beautiful? Was she at least what they call attractive? She was exasperation, she was torture.”
Source: Novels, 1969-1974
“Was she strong enough to be able to recover from it, or did something break in her that day? Did the impact of that fleeting encounter knock her so hard that she was irreparably damaged? Can a broken heart be real?”
Source: The Dressmaker's Gift
“Was she telling you to stay away from me?" I asked. He paused, then said, "Yeah." He squeezed my hand out of Aunt Lauren's sight. "It's okay. We're good." Chloe and Derek”
“Was she terribly ravishing in her underclothes?” Livia asked craftily.
“Yes,” Marcus said without thinking, and then scowled. “I mean, no. That is, I didn’t look at her long enough to make an assessment of her charms. If she has any.”
Livia bit the inside of her lower lip to keep from laughing. “Come, Marcus…you are a healthy man of thirty-five—and you didn’t take one tiny peep at Miss Bowman standing there in her drawers?”
“I don’t peep, Livia. I either take a good look at something, or I don’t. Peeping is for children or deviants.”
She gave him a deeply pitying glance. “Well, I’m dreadfully sorry that you had to endure such a trying experience. We can only hope that Miss Bowman will stay fully clothed in your presence during this visit, to avoid shocking your refined sensibilities once again.”
Marcus frowned in response to the mockery. “I doubt she will.”
“Do you mean that you doubt she will stay fully clothed, or you doubt she will shock you?”
“Enough, Livia,” he growled, and she giggled.”
Source: It Happened One Autumn
“Was she terrifyingly beautiful? Was she so ignorant she didn't deserve the truth? Was she also a liar and thus it was something they did together? I don't believe in psychology; which says everything you do is because of yourself. That is so untrue. We are social animals, and everything we do is because of other people, because we love them, or because we don't.”
Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories