Alas Quotes - Page 16

• Look round and round upon this bare bleak plain, and see even here, upon a winter's day, how beautiful the shadows are! Alas! It is the nature of their kind to be so. The loveliest things in life... are but shadows; and they come and go, and change and fade away, as rapidly as these.

  Charles Dickens

  Beautiful, Nature, Winter

  Charles Dickens (1867). “The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit”, p.125

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• But alas! Like many another consummation devoutly to be wished, the actual performance was a disappointing one.

  Fred Reinfeld

  Chess, Disappointing, Humour

  Fred Reinfeld (2012). “The Immortal Games of Capablanca”, p.10, Courier Corporation

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• No white nor red was ever seen So am'rous as this lovely green. Fond lovers, cruel as their flame, Cut in these trees their mistress' name. Little, alas, they know or heed How far these beauties hers exceed! Fair trees! where s'e'er your barks I wound, No name shall but your own be found.

  Andrew Marvell

  Cutting, White, Flames

  Andrew Marvell (1997). “"To His Coy Mistress" and Other Poems”, p.24, Courier Corporation

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• And when a damp Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand The thing became a trumpet; whence he blew Soul-animating strains,-alas! too few.

  William Wordsworth

  Hands, Soul, Path

  William Wordsworth (1847). “The Poems of William Wordsworth”, p.203

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• But alas, they are all sadly deficient, because they leave us under the domination of political and religious prejudices; and they are as inefficient as the sleepy dose of an ordinary sermon.

  Adam Weishaupt

  Religious, Sleep, Political

  8 Copy quote

• Alas! how little can a moment show Of an eye where feeling plays In ten thousand dewy rays: A face o'er which a thousand shadows go!

  William Wordsworth

  Eye, Play, Feelings

  William Wordsworth (1847). “The Poems of William Wordsworth”, p.172

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Will you not covet such power as this, and seek such throne as this, and be no more housewives, but queens? There is no putting by that crown; queens you must always be; queens to your lovers; queens to your husbands and sons; queens of higher mystery to the world beyond. . . . But alas! you are too often idle and careless queens, grasping at majesty in the least things, while you abdicate it in the greatest.

  John Ruskin

  Queens, Husband, Son

  6 Copy quote

• Why, friends, you go to do you know not what: Wherein hath Caesar thus deserved your loves? Alas, you know not: I must tell you then: You have forgot the will I told you of. . . . . Here is the will, and under Caesar's seal. To every Roman citizen he gives, To every several man, seventy-five drachmas. . . . . Moreover, he hath left you all his walks, His private arbours and new-planted orchards, On this side Tiber; he hath left them you, And to your heirs for ever, common pleasures, To walk abroad, and recreate yourselves. Here was a Caesar! when comes such another?

  William Shakespeare

  Love, Men, Giving

  'Julius Caesar' (1599) act 3, sc. 2, l. [252]

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I ask but one thing of you, only one, That always you will be my dream of you; That never shall I wake to find untrue All this I have believed and rested on, Forever vanished, like a vision gone Out into the night. Alas, how few There are who strike in us a chord we knew Existed, but so seldom heard its tone We tremble at the half-forgotten sound. The world is full of rude awakenings And heaven-born castles shattered to the ground, Yet still our human longing vainly clings To a belief in beauty through all wrongs. O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs!

  Amy Lowell

  Dream, Song, Heart

  Amy Lowell (2009). “A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass”, p.70, ReadHowYouWant.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the beautiful, man sets himself up as the standard of perfection; in select cases he worships himself in it. Man believes that the world itself is filled with beauty -he forgets that it is he who has created it. He alone has bestowed beauty upon the world -alas! only a very human, an all too human, beauty.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Beauty, Beautiful, Believe

  7 Copy quote

• Marrying to increase love is like gaming to become rich; alas, you only lose what little stock you had before.

  William Wycherley

  Love, Marriage, Gambling

  William Wycherley, Marvin T. Herrick (1970). “The Country Wife”, p.47, Barron's Educational Series

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I saw myself. . . in the time I watched, I saw strength and frailty, pride and vanity, courage and fear. Of wisdom, a little. Of folly much. Of intentions many good ones; but many more left undone. On this alas, I saw myself a man like any other. But this too I saw . . . Alike as men may seem, each is different as flakes of snow, no two the same.You told me you had no need to seek the Mirror, knowing you were Annlaw Clay-Shaper. Now I know who I am: myself and none other. I am Taran.

  Lloyd Alexander

  Pride, Men, Vanity

  Lloyd Alexander (2014). “Taran Wanderer: The Chronicles of Prydain”, p.143, Usborne Publishing Ltd

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Love has no middle term; either it destroys, or it saves. All human destiny is this dilemma. This dilemma, destruction or salvation, no fate proposes more inexorably than love. Love is life, if it is not death. Cradle; coffin, too. The same sentiment says yes and no in the human heart. Of all the things God has made, the human heart is the one that sheds most light, and alas! most night.

  Victor Hugo

  Heart, Fate, Night

  Victor Hugo, Charles Edwin Wilbour (1987). “Les misérables”, Dutton Adult

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Alas! never had I loved him so well!

  Charlotte Bronte

  Wells

  Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2009). “The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.202, Penguin

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Do you recall Fred Merriville?” She stared at him. “Fred Merriville? Pray, what has he to say to anything?” “The poor fellow has nothing to say: he’s dead, alas!

  Georgette Heyer

  Praying, Poor, Recalls

  Georgette Heyer (2011). “Frederica”, p.61, Random House

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Alas! by what slight means are great affairs brought to destruction.

  Claudius Claudianus

  Mean, Affair, Destruction

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 289-93, In Rufinum, II, 49., 1922.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Like water spilt upon the ground--alas, Our little lives flow swiftly on and pass; Yet may they bring rich harvests and green grass!

  Henry Van Dyke

  Life, Water, May

  Henry Van Dyke (1920). “The Poems of Henry Van Dyke”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Alas, that Spring should vanish with the Rose! That Youths sweet-scented Manuscript should close!

  Omar Khayyam

  Sweet, Spring, Rose

  Omar Khayyam, Edward FitzGerald, Christopher Decker (1997). “Edward FitzGerald, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: A Critical Edition”, p.222, University of Virginia Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've long believed alas, that in highly organized industrial societies, capitalist or socialist, the stronger tendency is to converge - that if steel or automobiles are wanted and must be made on a large scale, the process will stamp its imprint on the society, whether that me be Magnitogorsk or Gary, Indiana.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Long, Stronger, Steel

  "The Age of Uncertainty". Book by John Kenneth Galbraith. Chapter 2, p. 84, 1977.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: What are you asking God to do? To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.

  C. S. Lewis

  Running, Past, Offering

  "The Problem of Pain". Book by C. S. Lewis, 1940.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish. Alas, the heart hardens as the blood ceases to run. The cold snow strikes down from the head, and checks the glow of feeling. Who wants to survive into old age after abdicating all his faculties one by one, and be sans teeth, sans eyes, sans memory, sans hope, sans sympathy?

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Running, Memories, Selfish

  William Makepeace Thackeray (2008). “The Virginians: A Tale of the Last Century: Easyread Super Large 20pt Edition”, p.353, ReadHowYouWant.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Alas, it is just a single image - an extended moment perhaps. Unlike a biography, a portrait cannot present the many differing moments that make up a personality.

  Burton Silverman

  Personality, Portraits, Portraiture

  7 Copy quote

• I built myself a house of glass:It took me years to make it:And I was proud. But now, alas!Would God someone would break it.

  Edward Thomas

  Glasses, Years, House

  Edward Thomas (2011). “Selected Poems of Edward Thomas”, p.100, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age, More fortunate, alas! than we, Which without hardness will be sage, And gay without frivolity.

  Matthew Arnold

  Gay, Years, Age

  Matthew Arnold (1954). “A selection of his poems”

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• A true evangelist is almost as great a rarity as a true pastor. Alas! Alas! How rare are both! The two are closely connected. The evangelist gathers the sheep; the pastor feeds and cares for them. The work of each lies very near the heart of Christ- [Who Is] The Divine Evangelist and Pastor.

  Charles Henry Mackintosh

  Christian, Lying, Heart

  Charles Henry Mackintosh (2012). “The Mackintosh Treasury - Miscellaneous Writings - Volume V: The Church – The Body of Christ”, p.7, Lulu Press, Inc

  4 Copy quote

  Show source