Alas Quotes - Page 20

• Imagine, if you will, that I am an idiot. Then, imagine that I am also a Congressman. But, alas, I repeat myself.

  Mark Twain

  Politics, Idiot, Imagine

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• I am not personally a parent.  But I do have two godchildren and am expecting a third.  I am naturally concerned for their future.  If I ruled the world you could bet your boots that none of them would ever set their eyes on any such contraptions as digital clocks and pocket calculators.  But alas, I do not rule the world and that, I am afraid, is the story of my life - always a godmother, never a God.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Eye, Two, Parent

  Fran Lebowitz (2011). “The Fran Lebowitz Reader”, p.104, Vintage

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• The intellect, divine as it is, and all worshipful, has a habit of lodging in the most seedy of carcasses, and often, alas, acts the cannibal among the other faculties so that often, where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe.

  Virginia Woolf

  Heart, Tolerance, Mind

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• Alas! Your dear friend and servant Galileo has been for the last month hopelessly blind; so that this heaven, this earth, this universe, which I by my marvelous discoveries and clear demonstrations had enlarged a hundred thousand times beyond the belief of the wise men of bygone ages, henceforward for me is shrunk into such a small space as is filled by my own bodily sensations.

  Galileo Galilei

  Wise, Men, Discovery

  Letter to Élie Diodati (p. 279), January 2, 1638.

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• Every intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passionate protest against inert ideas. Then, alas, with pathetic ignorance of human psychology, it has proceeded by some educational scheme to bind humanity afresh with inert ideas of its own fashioning.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Educational, Ignorance, Greatness

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.2, Simon and Schuster

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• Alas! it is true: "Be polite to bores and so shall you have bores always round about you."

  Emily Post

  Polite, Bores, Rounds

  EMILY POST (1950). “ETIQUETTE”

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• Fun comes hard - like, alas, its prarens, pleasure and happiness, whom we have to pursue.

  Saul Bellow

  Fun, Pleasure, Pursue

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• O admirable Mother of God! How many sins have I committed for which thou hast obtained pardon for me, and how many others would I have committed if thou hadst not preserved me? How often have I seen myself on the brink of Hell in obvious danger of falling into it but for thy most benign hand which saved me? How often would the Roaring Lion of Hell have devoured and swallowed up my soul had not the charity of thy heart opposed him? Alas! Without thee, my dearest and my all-good Mother, where should I be today? I should be in the fiery furnace of Hell from which I would never emerge!

  John Eudes

  Mother, Fall, Heart

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• Sensible Catholics have for generations been ignoring the views on contraception held by reactionary old men in the Vatican, but alas, since it is the business of all religious doctrines to keep their votaries in a state of intellectual infancy (how else do they keep absurdities seeming credible?), insufficient numbers of Catholics have been able to be sensible.

  A.C. Grayling

  Religious, Men, Views

  A.C. Grayling (2012). “Against All Gods: Six Polemics on Religion and an Essay on Kindness”, p.12, Oberon Books

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• My soul, alas, needs these uneasinesses in outward things, to be driven to take refuge in God.

  Henry Martyn

  Soul, Needs, Driven

  Henry Martyn (1839). “Journals and letters of the Rev. Henry Martyn, B.D.”, p.97

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• There are always in life countless tendencies for good and for evil, and each succeeding generation sees some of these tendencies strengthened and some weakened; nor is it by any means always, alas! that the tendencies for evil are weakened and those for good strengthened. But during the last few decades there certainly have been some notable changes for good in boy life. The great growth in the love of athletic sports, for instance, while fraught with danger if it becomes one-sided and unhealthy, has beyond all question had an excellent effect in increased manliness.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Sports, Mean, Boys

  Theodore Roosevelt (2012). “The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses”, p.73, Courier Corporation

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• Shall we all be saved? Shall we go to Heaven? Alas, my children, we do not know at all! But I tremble when I see so many souls lost these days. See, they fall into Hell as leaves fall from the trees at the approach of winter.

  John Vianney

  Children, Fall, Winter

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• If we are honest and fair, then we are known by that. If we are not, alas, we are known by that as well. What we want to do is do right, but you have to say it, you have to show it, and not stop.

  Maya Angelou

  Want, Honest, Shows

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• The life's story of great geniuses is a sad one, without much tangible reward, which does not inspire future generations to face a similar fate. Alas also, it stands to reason why so many talent will not come to sparkle on the artistic firmanent.

  Joseph Haydn

  Fate, Inspire, Doe

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• There is alas no law against incompetency; no striking example is made. They learn by our bodily jeopardy and make experiments until the death of the patients, and the doctor is the only person not punished for murder.

  Pliny the Elder

  Doctors, Law, Example

  Historia Naturalis 'Greek Physicians'

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• I want the kind of readers who remain children at any cost. I can tell them at a glance: loyalty to that first enchantment guards better than any cosmetic; than any diet, against the insults of age. But alas for such readers, who would huddle safe and sound in the asylum of their credulous enchantment as if in the womb-our enervating century offends them by its chaos, its fidgets of light and space, the host of its excuses for dividing , for rending oneself from others and from oneself.

  Jean Cocteau

  Loyalty, Children, Light

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• Now the 21st century approaches and with it the inevitability of change. We must wonder if the American people will find renewal and rejuvenation within themselves, will discover again their capacity for innovation and adaptation. If not, alas, the nation's future will be shaped by sightless forces of history over which Americans will have no control.

  John Chancellor

  America, People, Innovation

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• It is easy to promise, and alas! How easy to forget!

  Alfred de Musset

  Promise, Forget, Easy

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• We are all potentially such sick men. The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison-inmates. And whenever we feel this, such a sense of the vanity of our voluntary career comes over us, that all our morality appears but as a plaster hiding a sore it can never cure, and all our well-doing as the hollowest substitute for that well-being that our lives ought to be grounded in, but alas! are not.

  William James

  Life, Men, Vanity

  "Essays in Religion and Morality".

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• But when I came, alas, to wive, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, By swaggering could I never thrive, For the rain it raineth every day.

  William Shakespeare

  Rain, Wind, Rivers

  'Twelfth Night' (1601) act 5, sc. 1, l. [401]

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• Passion is like the lightning, it is beautiful, and it links the earth to heaven, but alas it blinds!

  H. Rider Haggard

  Beautiful, Passion, Heaven

  H. Rider Haggard (2013). “Delphi Works of H. Rider Haggard (Illustrated)”, p.1632, Delphi Classics

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• Alas! how light a cause may move Dissension between hearts that love! Hearts that the world in vain had tried, And sorrow but more closely tied; That stood the storm when waves were rough, Yet in a sunny hour fall off, Like ships that have gone down at sea When heaven was all tranquillity.

  Charles Lamb

  Love, Moving, Fall

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• Do you seriously propose that they are going to be so insane as to allow tariffs to be imposed. The EU is, I'm afraid a job destroying engine. You can see it all across southern Europe, you can see it, alas, in our country.

  Boris Johnson

  Country, Jobs, Europe

  "EU debate: Boris Johnson says Brexit will be 'Britain's independence day' as Ruth Davidson attacks 'lies' of Leave campaign in front of 6,000-strong Wembley audience". www.telegraph.co.uk. June 21, 2016.

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• Any extreme political creed brought only darkness in the long run; it lit up nothing. The best politics were those of caution, tolerance and moderation, Angus maintained, but such politics were, alas, also very dull, and certainly moved nobody to poetry.

  Alexander McCall Smith

  Running, Long, Political

  Alexander McCall Smith (2010). “The Unbearable Lightness of Scones”, p.129, Anchor

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• Ben Bova seems to work very hard at working in new discoveries into his Glum Future but alas, his future is glum and not that well written.

  James Nicoll

  Discovery, Wells, New Discoveries

  Usenet article, 2005.

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