Might Have Been Quotes - Page 7

• I work continuously within the shadow of failure. For every novel that makes it to my publisher's desk, there are at least five or six that died on the way. And even with the ones I do finish, I think of all the ways they might have been better.

  Gail Godwin

  Thinking, Shadow, Might

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• The saddest thing of word or pen, To know the things that might have been.

  John Greenleaf Whittier

  Might, Saddest, Pens

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• Our world is not an optimal place, fine tuned by omnipotent forces of selection. It is a quirky mass of imperfections, working well enough (often admirably); a jury-rigged set of adaptations built of curious parts made available by past histories in different contexts. A world optimally adapted to current environments is a world without history, and a world without history might have been created as we find it. History matters; it confounds perfection and proves that current life transformed its own past.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Past, Our World, Perfection

  "The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History". Book by Stephen Jay Gould. "Only His Wings Remained", p. 54, 1985.

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• Great wealth may be to its owner a blessing or a curse. Alas! I fear it is too often the latter. It hardens the heart, blunts the finer susceptibilities, and transforms into a fiend what under more favourable circumstances might have been a human being.

  Arnold Bennett

  Heart, Blessing, May

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• National Socialism is what Marxism might have been if it could have broken its absurd and artificial ties with a democratic order.

  Adolf Hitler

  Order, Ties, Broken

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• There are very few things in the mind which eat up as much energy as worry. It is one of the most difficult things not to worry about anything. Worry is experienced when things go wrong, but in relation to past happenings it is idle merely to wish that they might have been otherwise. The frozen past is what it is, and no amount of worrying is going to make it other than what it has been. But the limited ego-mind identifies itself with its past, gets entangled with it and keeps alive the pangs of frustrated desires.

  Meher Baba

  Past, Worry, Ego

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• What is enthralling and illuminating about The Metaphysical Club is its portraits of individuals and their milieus. Menand is wonderfully deft at evoking a climate of ideas or a cultural sensibility, embodying it in a character, and moving his characters into and out of one another's lives. What might have been a jumble of intellectual movements and colorful minor figures (...) is instead a subtle weave of entertaining narrative and astute interpretation.

  George Scialabba

  Moving, Character, Ideas

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• One of my heroes, almost necessarily from what I'm saying, of course, is Borges, who is a supreme master of doing thing -- being a data bank -- and the beauty of this economy is that he could have written War and Peace in three or four pages; who knows, it might have been a better book.

  Peter Greenaway

  War, Book, Hero

  Interview in Art and Design, no. 49,

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• Becka might have been average in L.A., but average in L.A. is Queen of Mars in the visiting room of a federal penitentiary in North Carolina.

  Kelly Link

  Queens, Average, North Carolina

  "Magic for Beginners". Book by Kelly Link, 2005.

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• It seemed to me singularly ill-contrived for the British government to be going to war with Hitler when Hitler might have been about to attack the Russians, and even more ill-contrived that, when Hitler did attack the Russians, he had already defeated the French army. What I'm saying is that the war shouldn't have been started in September 1939...from the point of view of Britain, the war was really not a good thing and I would regard it as, in effect, a defeat.

  Maurice Cowling

  War, Army, Government

  "Singular Encounters" by Naim Attallah, Quartet Books, (p. 144), 1990.

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• How few of us appreciate the fact that a very great deal of physical suffering in after life comes from bad mental training in childhood! I do not mean suffering of an imaginary kind; I mean disease which may entirely ruin a life which might have been of use to the world, and which surely would have been happier but for the lost health. Many a chronic invalid might have preserved his health had he been taught to use his brain properly when a child.

  Lyman Abbott

  Children, Mean, Appreciate

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• Now this is over thirty years later and the guy said he was that cab driver. He apologized and he was serious. I felt awful. He might have been spending his whole life thinking he had jinxed me, but I told him he hadn't. My number was up.

  Joe DiMaggio

  Thinking, Yankees, Years

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• Then there was the time in Hollywood when I sat down in a breakaway chair and it collapsed on me. I was nearly knocked out and might have been even more seriously hurt but my fall was broken by the smog.

  Jack Paar

  Funny, Hurt, Fall

  JACK PAAR (1960). “I KID YOU NOT”

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• 'A Naval History of Britain' which begins in the 7th century has to explain what it means by Britain. My meaning is simply the British Isles as a whole, but not any particular nation or state or our own day... 'Britain' is not a perfect word for this purpose, but 'Britain and Ireland' would be both cumbersome and misleading, implying an equality of treatment which is not possible. Ireland and the Irish figure often in this book, but Irish naval history, in the sense of the history of Irish fleets, is largely a history of what might have been rather than what actually happened.

  Nicholas Rodger

  Book, Mean, Perfect

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• He was in the right place at the right time, but he might have been elsewhere on a different afternoon.

  Tony Gubba

  Football, Different, Afternoon

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• In the [first] fifteen years [of field work] I can remember just ten times when I had really narrow escapes from death. Two were from drowning in typhoons, one was when our boat was charged by a wounded whale; once my wife and I were nearly eaten by wild dogs, once we were in great danger from fanatical lama priests; two were close calls when I fell over cliffs, once I was nearly caught by a huge python, and twice I might have been killed by bandits.

  Roy Chapman Andrews

  Dog, Years, Whales

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• It seems the height of antiquated hubris to claim that the universe carried on as it did for billions of years in order to form a comfortable abode for us. Chance and historical contingency give the world of life most of its glory and fascination. I sit here happy to be alive and sure that some reason must exist for "why me?" Or the earth might have been totally covered with water, and an octopus might now be telling its children why the eight-legged God of all things had made such a perfect world for cephalopods.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Children, Octopus, Eight

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “An Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books and Ideas”, p.206, W. W. Norton & Company

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• I guess it's a sequel to our story From the journey 'tween heaven and hell With half the time thinking of what might have been and half thinkin' just as well. I guess only time will tell.

  Harry Chapin

  Journey, Thinking, Heaven

  Song: Sequel

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• This is the place to be. Baseball town. The intimacy of Fenway, the toughness of it. I like that. I'm used to it. I need it. If I went somewhere else, it might have been a bit of a letdown. I like the edge.

  David Cone

  Baseball, Somewhere Else, Needs

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• Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been. We have to work together for what still can be.

  Hillary Clinton

  Life Is Too Short, Working Together, Might

  Announcing Suspension of Presidential Campaign, delivered 7 June 2008, National Building Museum, Washington, D.C.

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• The notion that I might have been able to court friends, win attention, conjure it, would have spoiled it for me. Unbidden love was what I wanted.

  Edmund White

  Winning, Attention, Might

  Edmund White (2016). “A Boy's Own Story: Picador Classic”, p.79, Pan Macmillan

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• If you didn’t believe it before — and it’s easy to understand how you might have been sceptical on this point — if you didn’t believe it before, you can absolutely believe it now: New York City is the greatest city in the world.

  David Letterman

  New York, Believe, Cities In The World

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• If you put a ten dollar bill under the rug instead of spending it, that is capital formation. It represents ten dollars' worth of something that might have been immediately consumed, but wasn't.

  Garet Garrett

  Dollar Bills, Dollars, Might

  Garet Garrett (1965). “The people's pottage”, Caxton Printers

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• The bad press came because they thought I should fight more. I couldn't get the fights because if I would sign to fight one of King's guys I would be signed to him. I chose not to do that. In hindsight, that might have been a mistake.

  Gerry Cooney

  Kings, Mistake, Fighting

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• If I'd had a great level of success early on, who knows how I would have responded. I might have been a complete jerk.

  Steve Carell

  Levels, Might, Jerk

  "Steve Carell Says Comedy Has Become 'Uber-Cynical,' 'Borderline Mean'" by Stephen Galloway, www.hollywoodreporter.com. August 1, 2012.

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