Alas Quotes - Page 3

• Alas, not me, lord!" she said. "Shadow lies on me still. Look not to me for healing! I am a shieldmaiden and my hand is ungentle.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Lying, Healing, Hands

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Return of the King: Being the Third Part of the Lord of the Rings”, p.939, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return.

  E. M. Forster

  Travel, Adventure, Sunshine

  Howards End ch. 2 (1910)

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• All the revision in the world will not save a bad first draft: for the architecture of the thing comes, or fails to come, in the first conception, and revision only affects the detail and ornament, alas!

  T. E. Lawrence

  Details, Ornaments, World

  Letter to Bruce Rogers, August 20, 1931.

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• No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool. Writers, alas, have to be fools in public, while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.

  Erica Jong

  Thinking, Race, Track

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• A few can touch the magic string, and noisy fame is proud to win them: Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them!

  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

  Music, Death, Winning

  Oliver Wendell Holmes (1859). “The Autocrat of the Breakfast-table ...”, p.355

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• Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Artist, Paper, Easy

  Vincent van Gogh (1958). “Complete letters: with reproductions of all the drawings in the correspondence”

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• There is nothing more musical than a sunset. He who feels what he sees will find no more beautiful example of development in all that book which, alas, musicians read but too little - the book of Nature.

  Claude Debussy

  Beautiful, Book, Sunset

  "The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music". Book by Don Michael Randel, 1996.

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• Alas! they had been friends in youth; but whispering tongues can poison truth.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Gossip, Poison, Whispering

  'Christabel' pt. 2 (1800) (l. 408)

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• And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves as yet.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  England, Graves, Mets

  Gilbert Keith Chesterton, “Elegy In A Country Churchyard”

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• Alas! all music jars when the soul's out of tune.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Music, Soul, Tunes

  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Peter Anthony Motteux (1822). “The History of the Ingenious Gentleman, Don Quixote of La Mancha ...”, p.10

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• The celebrations Of secret nonmeetings are empty, Unspoken conversations, Unuttered words. Glances that don't intersect Don't know where to come to rest. And only the tears rejoice Because they can flow and flow. Sweetbrier around Moscow, Alas! Somehow it is here ... And all this they will call Love eternal.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Secret, Tears, Moscow

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• Alas. I am not an option.

  Laini Taylor

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• Alas, everything that men say to one another is alike; the ideas they exchange are almost always the same, in their conversation. But inside all those isolated machines, what hidden recesses, what secret compartments! It is an entire world that each one carries within him, an unknown world that is born and dies in silence! What solitudes all these human bodies are!

  Alfred de Musset

  Men, Ideas, Unknown Worlds

  Alfred de Musset, David Sices (1994). “Comedies & proverbs”, Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

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• I was remembering the things we had done together, the times we had had. It would have been pleasant to preserve that comradeship in the days that came after. Pleasant, but alas, impossible. That which had brought us together had gone, and now our paths diverged, according to our natures and needs. We would meet again, from time to time, but always a little more as strangers; until perhaps at last, as old men with only memories left, we could sit together and try to share them.

  John Christopher

  Memories, Men, Trying

  John Christopher (2013). “The Pool of Fire”, p.134, Simon and Schuster

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• There are those hearts, reader, that never mend again once they are broken. Or if they do mend, they heal themselves in a crooked and lopsided way, as if sewn together by a careless craftsman. Such was the fate of Chiaroscuro. His heart was broken. Picking up the spoon and placing it on his head, speaking of revenge, these things helped him to put his heart together again. But it was, alas, put together wrong.

  Kate DiCamillo

  Revenge, Heart, Fate

  Kate DiCamillo (2009). “The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread”, p.116, Candlewick Press

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• Alas, if worth be based on beauty, Snow White has surpassed you, cutie.

  James Finn Garner

  White, Snow, Ifs

  James Finn Garner (2011). “Politically Correct Bedtime Stories”, p.30, Souvenir Press

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• Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.

  Voltaire

  Optimistic, Optimism, Maintaining

  Francois Marie Arouet De Voltaire (2004). “Candide (Sparklesoup Classics)”, p.48, Sparklesoup LLC

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• Alas," said Aslan, shaking his head. "It will. Things always work according to their nature. She has won her heart's desire; she has unwearying strength and endless days like a goddess. But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want; they do not always like it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Heart, Evil, Desire

  C. S. Lewis (2013). “The Chronicles of Narnia Complete 7-Book Collection with Bonus Book: Boxen”, p.98, Harper Collins

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• There are two men in each one of us: the scientist, he who starts with a clear field and desires to rise to the knowledge of Nature through observations, experimentation and reasoning, and the man of sentiment, the man of belief, the man who mourns his dead children, and who cannot, alas, prove that he will see them again, but who believes that he will, and lives in the hope – the man who will not die like a vibrio, but who feels that the force that is within him cannot die.

  Louis Pasteur

  Children, Believe, Men

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• Alas, where is there still a sea in which one could drown: thus our lament resounds – across shallow swamps.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Sea, Swamps, Shallow

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• One day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles, and seized one in each hand. Then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas! it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as was the third one.

  Charles Darwin

  Hands, Two, One Day

  Charles Darwin (2016). “The Autobiography of Charles Darwin: the Evolution”, p.14, VM eBooks

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• Collective wisdom, alas, is no adequate substitute for the intelligence of individuals. Individuals who opposed received opinions have been the source of all progress, both moral and intellectual. They have been unpopular, as was natural.

  Bertrand Russell

  Intellectual, Progress, Adequate

  Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I am not a Christian, and other essays on religion and related subjects”, Touchstone

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• Woe, alas, to those who have loved only bodies, forms, appearances! Death will rob them of everything. Try to love souls, you will find them again.

  Victor Hugo

  Soul, Trying, Body

  Victor Hugo (1980). “Les misérables”, Viking Pr

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• Alas, poor Yorick!" he said. "She heard mermaids, so it follows that there is something rotten in the state of Denmark. I have caught an everlasting cold, but luckily I am terribly dishonest. I cling to that.

  Diana Wynne Jones

  Mermaid, Rotten, Denmark

  Diana Wynne Jones (2002). “Wizard's Castle”

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• This source of corruption, alas, is inherent in the democratic system itself, and it can only be controlled, if at all, by finding ways to encourage legislators to subordinate ambition to principle.

  James L. Buckley

  Ambition, Way, Principles

  James L. Buckley (2010). “Freedom at Risk: Reflections on Politics, Liberty, and the State”, p.245, ReadHowYouWant.com

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