Alas Quotes - Page 8

• Politics is still crucially important. Our choices are vital, and we've got to make them and not just say, 'Oh they're all the same.' They are all the same in certain ways, alas - a political animal is such an animal.

  Dennis Potter

  Animal, Important Choices, Political

  "An interview with Dennis Potter: an edited transcript of Melvyn Bragg's interview with Dennis Potter, broadcast on the 5th of April 1994".

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• Alas, we think of ourselves as unique entities-minds unlike any others-and thus we often reject the lessons that the emotional experience of others has to teach us.

  Daniel Gilbert

  Unique, Emotional, Thinking

  Daniel Gilbert (2006). “Stumbling on Happiness”, p.233, Vintage

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• You can have no wise laws nor free enforcement of wise laws unless there is free expression of the wisdom of the people -- and, alas, their folly with it. But if there is freedom, folly will die of its own poison, and the wisdom will survive.

  William Allen White

  Wise, Wisdom, Expression

  William Allen White (1937). “Forty Years on Main Street”

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• The night is dark, the waters deep,
  Yet soft the billows roll;
  Alas! at every breeze I weep —
  The storm is in my soul.

  Helen Maria Williams

  Dark, Night, Water

  Helen Maria Williams (1791). “Poems”, p.71

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• For, I must tell you, in this world where today all lose their minds over many & wondrous Machines - some of which, alas, you can see also in this Siege - I construct Aristotelian Machines, that allow anyone to see with Words.

  Umberto Eco

  Mind, Machines, World

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• The same authorities who insist upon beginnings, middles, and ends, declare that Great Literature (by which they mean the stories they have been taught to admire) is about love and death, while mere popular fiction like this is about sex and violence. One reader's sex, alas, is another's love; and one's violence, another's death.

  Gene Wolfe

  Sex, Mean, Fiction

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• But, alas! what poor Woman is ever taught that she should have a higher Design than to get her a Husband?

  Mary Astell

  Marriage, Husband, Should Have

  Mary Astell, Patricia Springborg (1996). “Astell: Political Writings”, p.65, Cambridge University Press

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• Alas, how many have been persecuted for the wrong of having been right?

  Jean-Baptiste Say

  Wisdom, Persecuted, Has Beens

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• I am still my teenage self. If you think that we all step through a door marked Adult, or that we sign a Grown-Up Document, you’re quite wrong. We remain as we always were, and that, alas, is one of life’s many nasty tricks.

  Steven Morrissey

  Teenage, Thinking, Doors

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• If the Europeans truly wish to improve their NATO contribution they can show it simply enough. They can establish professional armed forces, like those of the UK. And they can acquire more advanced technology. Indeed, unless that happens soon the gulf between the European and US capabilities will yawn so wide that it will not be possible to share the same battlefield. Alas, I do not think that sharing battlefields with our American friends - but rather disputing global primacy with them - is what European defence plans are truly about.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Technology, Thinking, Wish

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• Alas! it is not the child but the boy that generally survives in the man.

  Arthur Helps

  Children, Boys, Men

  Sir Arthur Helps (1892). “Essays and Aphorisms”

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• Alas! What is man? Whether he be deprived of that light which is from on high, of whether he discard it, a frail and trembling creature; standing on time, that bleak and narrow isthmus between two eternities, he sees nothing but impenetrable darkness on the one hand, and doubt, distrust, and conjecture, still more perplexing, on the other. Most gladly would he take an observation, as to whence he has come, or whither he is going; alas, he has not the means: his telescope is too dim, his compass too wavering, his plummet too short.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Mean, Men, Light

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.480

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• I set out to become the greatest lover in Vienna, the greatest horseman in Austria, and the greatest economist in the world. Alas, for the illusions of youth: as a horseman, I was never really first-rate.

  Joseph A. Schumpeter

  Vienna, Austria, World

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• A set of Bollywood actresses are coming through Dallas soon in a live tour; I'd pay a lot to see them, but alas, I'm fully booked elsewhere.

  Bruce Sterling

  Bollywood, Dallas, Pay

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• Sometimes writers say true things about the overall nature of publicity, promotion, and the publishing industry; but alas, not always.

  Teresa Nielsen Hayden

  Publicity, Sometimes, Promotion

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• To take, for example, my own death: what I consider most likely to be true is that death will be the complete and utter end of my existence, with no successor existence of any kind that can be related to me as I now am. And if that is not the case, the next most likely scenario, it seems to me, is something along the lines indicated by Schopenhauer. But neither of these is what I most want. What I want to be true is that I have an individual, innermost self, a soul, which is the real me and which survives my death. That too could be true. But alas, I do not believe it.

  Bryan Magee

  Real, Believe, Self

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• Sun and moon have no light left, earth is dark;
  Our women's world is sunk so deep, who can help us?
  Jewelry sold to pay this trip across the seas,
  Cut off from my family I leave my native land.
  Unbinding my feet I clean out a thousand years of poison,
  With heated heart arouse all women's spirits.
  Alas, this delicate kerchief here
  Is half stained with blood, and half with tears.

  Qiu Jin

  Heart, Dark, Cutting

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• The artist who is not also a craftsman is no good; but, alas, most of our artists are nothing else.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Artist, Artistic, Craftsman

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• Alas, to wear the mantle of Galileo it is not enough that you be persecuted by an unkind establishment, you must also be right.

  Robert L. Park

  Enough, Establishment, Persecuted

  "Cancer doctor under fire for providing false hope to patients". www.foxnews.com. November 18, 2013.

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• Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

  Francis Pharcellus Church

  Christmas, Virginia, Should Have

  "Is There a Santa Claus?". The New York Sun, September 21, 1897.

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• The Raven's house is built with reeds, — Sing woe, and alas is me! And the Raven's couch is spread with weeds, High on the hollow tree; And the Raven himself, telling his beads In penance for his past misdeeds, Upon the top I see.

  Thomas D

  Weed, Past, Ravens

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• Alas! Alas! Life is full of disappointments; as one reaches one ridge there is always another and a higher one beyond which blocks the view.

  Fridtjof Nansen

  Disappointment, Block, Views

  Fridtjof Nansen (1897). “The First Crossing of Greenland”, Longmans, Green

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• To tell the truth, in Pacific 231 I was on the trail of a very abstract and quite ideal concept, by giving the impression of a mathematical acceleration of rhythm, while the movement itself slowed .  I first called this piece Mouvement symphonique. On reflection I found that a bit colorless. Suddenly, a rather romantic image crossed my mind, and when the work was finished, I wrote the title Pacific 231, which indicates a locomotive for heavy loads and high speeds (a type unfortunately disappeared, alas, and sacrificed to electric traction).

  Arthur Honegger

  Reflection, Giving, Mind

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• Alas, our technology has marched ahead of our spiritual and social evolution, making us, frankly, a dangerous people.

  Steven M. Greer

  Spiritual, Technology, People

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• 'T is said that absence conquers love; But oh believe it not! I've tried, alas! its power to prove, But thou art not forgot.

  Frederick William Thomas

  Love, Art, Believe

  Frederick William Thomas (1847). “Clinton Bradshaw: Or, The Adventures of a Lawyer. Two Volumes in One”, p.117

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