Might Have Been Quotes - Page 7

Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been.

Kurt Vonnegut

Inspirational, Sad, Regret

Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Cat's Cradle: A Novel”, p.279, Dial Press

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My own feeling about JJ, without knowing anything about him, was that he might have been a gay person, because he had long hair and spoke American. A lot of Americans are gay people, aren’t they? I know they didn’t invent gayness, because they say that was the Greeks. But they helped bring it back into fashion. Being gay was a bit like the Olympics: it disappeared in ancient times, and then they brought it back in the twentieth century. Anyway, I didn’t know anything about gays, so I just presumed they were all unhappy and wanted to kill themselves.

Nick Hornby

Fashion, Gay, Hair

"A Long Way Down". Book by Nick Hornby, June 7, 2005.

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Marc’s hand tightened visibly around Kevin’s fingers, his digits going white. Again. Both men clenched their jaws, Kevin in pain, and Marc in an obvious effort to control his temper and keep from breaking Kevin’s hand. Off. Why couldn’t guys find a more original way to test each other’s manly prowess? Arm wrestling might have been more subtle. Or maybe comparing the length of their…canines.

Rachel Vincent

Pain, Wrestling, Men

Rachel Vincent (2016). “Rogue”, p.84, MIRA

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Old Marley was as dead as a doornail. Mind! I don't mean to say that, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail.

Charles Dickens

Country, Mean, Hands

Charles Dickens (1858). “A Christmas Carol”, p.1

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Love is fragile -- she was thinking -- but perhaps the pieces are saved, the things that hovered on lips, that might have been said. The new love-words, the tenderness learned, and treasured up for the next lover.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Love Is, Thinking, Pieces

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1994). “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz: And Other Stories”, p.67, Wordsworth Editions

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...the air so still it aches like the place where the tooth was on the morning after you’ve been to the dentist or aches like your heart in the bosom when you stand on the street corner waiting for the light to change and happen to recollect how things once were and how they might have been yet if what happened had not happened.

Robert Penn Warren

Morning, Heart, Light

Robert Penn Warren (2006). “All the King's Men”, p.50, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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The merest accident of microgeography had meant that the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different. For sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led.

Terry Pratchett

Stupid, Intelligent, Men

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You can't dwell on what might have been...and it's not fair to condemn him for something he hasn't done.

Wendelin Van Draanen

Done, Might, Has Beens

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In history there are no control groups. There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was. It is supposed to be true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I don't believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood and this is a thing that even God--who knows all that can be known--seems powerless to change.

Cormac McCarthy

Believe, Blood, Knowing

Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy”, p.227, Pan Macmillan

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She loves you," the Prince cried. "She loves you still and you love her, so think of that--think of this too: in all this world, you might have been happy, genuinely happy. Not one couple in a century has that chance, not really, no matter what the storybooks say, but you could have had it, and so, I would think, no one will ever suffer a loss as great as you.

William Goldman

Couple, Love You, Loss

William Goldman (2013). “The Princess Bride: An Illustrated Edition of S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure”, p.286, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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The cream-tiled walls were spattered here and there with old dried bloodstains, deep gouges that might have been clawmarks, and all kinds of graffiti. As usual, someone had spelt Cthulhu wrongly.

Simon R. Green

Wall, Graffiti, Usual

Simon R. Green (2003). “Something from the Nightside”, p.17, Penguin

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They just kept grinning at me from over the stupid sign, Dopey because he's too dumb to know any better, Doc because – well, I guess because he might have been glad to see me. Doc's weird that way. Sleepy, the oldest, just stood there, looking … well, sleepy.

Meg Cabot

Stupid, Dumb, Might

Meg Cabot (2009). “Love You to Death”, p.2, Pan Macmillan

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Contrary to popular belief and hope, people don't usually come running when they hear a scream. That's not how humans work. Humans look at other humans and say, 'Did you hear a scream?' because the first scream might have been you screaming inside your head, or a horse backfiring.

Terry Pratchett

Running, Horse, People

Terry Pratchett (2009). “Unseen Academicals: (Discworld Novel 37)”, p.365, Random House

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It's pretty clear now that what looked like it might have been some kind of counterculture is, in reality, just the plain old chaos of undifferentiated weirdness.

Jerry Garcia

Music, Reality, Counter Culture

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She might have been born this way, without an empathy gene and other essentials. In that case, she would interpret any kindness as weakness. Among predatory beasts, any display of weakness is an invitation to attack.

Dean Koontz

Kindness, Empathy, Weakness

Dean Koontz (2016). “The Complete Odd Thomas 8-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd, Saint Odd”, p.471, Bantam

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If the afternoon had been blue,
there might have been less desire.

Carlos Drummond de Andrade

Blue, Desire, Afternoon

Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Thomas Colchie, Mark Strand (1986). “Travelling in the Family: Selected Poems”, New York : Random House

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I would have been a much more popular Wolrd Champion if I had always said what people wanted to hear. I might have been dead, but definitely more popular.

Jackie Stewart

People, Champion, Might

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Well. There was noting to be done for it. Things had happened as they did, time's arrow had yet to be reversed by humans, done was done. If a man spent his life looking over his shoulder at every possible branching of his path he could have taken, he would never accomplish anything. One must learn from history so as not to repeat it, but one must not waste one's energy or time worrying about what might have been. Sorry . . . but people die every day and the galaxy continues on quite well without them. Consider yourself lucky you are one of those as yet unselected by the Fates.

Steve Perry

Sorry, Taken, Learning

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Never's just the echo of forever, lonesome as a love that might have been. Let me go on lovin' and believin' 'til it's over. Please don't tell me how the story ends.

Kris Kristofferson

Echoes, Forbidden Love, Forever

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I doubt if these two fine, active minds [President and Mrs. Roosevelt] have ever inquiried how it is they know what they know and think as they do. Nor have they ever thought of what they might have been if they had grown up in an entirely different culture. They have the disposition of all politicians world over to deal only with made opinion. They have never inquired how it is that opinion is made.

H. G. Wells

Thinking, Two, Doubt

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When I am at my work each day
In the fields so fresh and green
I often think of riches and the way things might have been
But believe me when I tell you when I get home each day
I'm as happy as a sandboy with my wee cup of tay

Patrick McCabe

Believe, Home, Thinking

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It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might have been hit. In a bomb-proof dug-out I may be smashed to atoms and in the open may survive ten hour's bombardment unscratched. No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.

Erich Maria Remarque

Believe, Soldier, Luck

"All Quiet on the Western Front". Book by Erich Maria Remarque (ch.6), 1929.

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Astrologers were greatly impressed, and misled, by what they believed to be confirming evidence-so much so that they were quite unimpressed by any unfavorable evidence. Moreover, by making their interpretations and prophecies sufficiently vague they were able to explain away anything that might have been a refutation of the theory had the theory and the prophecies been more precise. In order to escape falsification they destroyed the testability of their theory. It is a typical soothsayer's trick to predict things so vaguely that the predictions can hardly fail: that they become irrefutable.

Karl Popper

Order, Typical, Might

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We can't afford to waste tears on might-have-beens. We need to turn the tears into sweat that can take us to what can be.

Denis Waitley

Regret, Sweat, Tears

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If he'd been making shell-cases during the war it might have been better for music.

Maurice Ravel

War, Musical, Shells

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