Alas Quotes - Page 19

• The intellect, divine as it is, and all worshipful, has a habit of lodging in the most seedy of carcasses, and often, alas, acts the cannibal among the other faculties so that often, where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe.

  Virginia Woolf

  Heart, Tolerance, Mind

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• There are always in life countless tendencies for good and for evil, and each succeeding generation sees some of these tendencies strengthened and some weakened; nor is it by any means always, alas! that the tendencies for evil are weakened and those for good strengthened. But during the last few decades there certainly have been some notable changes for good in boy life. The great growth in the love of athletic sports, for instance, while fraught with danger if it becomes one-sided and unhealthy, has beyond all question had an excellent effect in increased manliness.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Sports, Mean, Boys

  Theodore Roosevelt (2012). “The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses”, p.73, Courier Corporation

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• Shall we all be saved? Shall we go to Heaven? Alas, my children, we do not know at all! But I tremble when I see so many souls lost these days. See, they fall into Hell as leaves fall from the trees at the approach of winter.

  John Vianney

  Children, Fall, Winter

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• If we are honest and fair, then we are known by that. If we are not, alas, we are known by that as well. What we want to do is do right, but you have to say it, you have to show it, and not stop.

  Maya Angelou

  Want, Honest, Shows

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• Alas! Your dear friend and servant Galileo has been for the last month hopelessly blind; so that this heaven, this earth, this universe, which I by my marvelous discoveries and clear demonstrations had enlarged a hundred thousand times beyond the belief of the wise men of bygone ages, henceforward for me is shrunk into such a small space as is filled by my own bodily sensations.

  Galileo Galilei

  Wise, Men, Discovery

  Letter to Élie Diodati (p. 279), January 2, 1638.

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• The life's story of great geniuses is a sad one, without much tangible reward, which does not inspire future generations to face a similar fate. Alas also, it stands to reason why so many talent will not come to sparkle on the artistic firmanent.

  Joseph Haydn

  Fate, Inspire, Doe

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• I want the kind of readers who remain children at any cost. I can tell them at a glance: loyalty to that first enchantment guards better than any cosmetic; than any diet, against the insults of age. But alas for such readers, who would huddle safe and sound in the asylum of their credulous enchantment as if in the womb-our enervating century offends them by its chaos, its fidgets of light and space, the host of its excuses for dividing , for rending oneself from others and from oneself.

  Jean Cocteau

  Loyalty, Children, Light

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• I am not personally a parent.  But I do have two godchildren and am expecting a third.  I am naturally concerned for their future.  If I ruled the world you could bet your boots that none of them would ever set their eyes on any such contraptions as digital clocks and pocket calculators.  But alas, I do not rule the world and that, I am afraid, is the story of my life - always a godmother, never a God.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Eye, Two, Parent

  Fran Lebowitz (2011). “The Fran Lebowitz Reader”, p.104, Vintage

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• There is alas no law against incompetency; no striking example is made. They learn by our bodily jeopardy and make experiments until the death of the patients, and the doctor is the only person not punished for murder.

  Pliny the Elder

  Doctors, Law, Example

  Historia Naturalis 'Greek Physicians'

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• My soul, alas, needs these uneasinesses in outward things, to be driven to take refuge in God.

  Henry Martyn

  Soul, Needs, Driven

  Henry Martyn (1839). “Journals and letters of the Rev. Henry Martyn, B.D.”, p.97

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• A sound banker, alas, is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional and orthodox way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him. It is necessarily part of the business of a banker to maintain appearances, and to confess a conventional respectability, which is more than human. Life-long practices of this kind make them the most romantic and the least realistic of men.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Men, Practice, Long

  "The Consequences to the Banks of the Collapse of Money Values" (1931)

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• Now you say, alas! Christianity is hard; I grant it; but gainful and happy. I contemn the difficulty when I respect the advantage. The greatest labors that have answerable requitals are less than the least that have no regard. Believe me, when I look to the reward, I would not have the work easier. It is a good Master whom we serve, who not only pays, but gives; not after the proportion of our earnings, but of His own mercy.

  Joseph Hall

  Believe, Giving, Looks

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• Alas! the joys that fortune brings
  Are trifling, and decay,
  And those who prize the trifling things,
  More trifling still than they.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Joy, Decay, Fortune

  Oliver Goldsmith (1841). “Goldsmith's miscellaneous works”, p.5

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• Were I to be angry at men being fools, I could here find ample room for declamation; but, alas! I have been a fool myself; and why should I be angry with them for being something so natural to every child of humanity?

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Children, Men, Humanity

  Oliver Goldsmith (1835). “His Works”, p.168

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• Oh, popular applause! what heart of man
  Is proof against thy sweet seducing charms?
  The wisest and the best feel urgent need
  Of all their caution in thy gentlest gales;
  But swell'd into a gust--who then, alas!
  With all his canvas set, and inexpert,
  And therefore, heedless, can withstand thy power?

  William Cowper

  Sweet, Heart, Men

  William Cowper, James Sambrook (2016). “William Cowper: The Task and Selected Other Poems”, p.100, Routledge

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• Alas! if my best Friend, who laid down His life for me, were to remember all the instances in which I have neglected Him, and to plead them against me in judgment, where should I hide my guilty head in the day of recompense? I will pray, therefore, for blessings on my friends, even though they cease to be so, and upon my enemies, though they continue such.

  William Cowper

  Forgiveness, Blessing, Enemy

  William Cowper (1835). “The Works of William Cowper: The life of William Cowper. Letters, 1765-1783”

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• Alas! poor human nature, pity, if hard pressed, degenerates into contempt.

  John Godfrey Saxe

  Degenerates, Human Nature, Pity

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• Can man be so age-stricken that no faintest sunshine of his youth may re visit him once a year? It is impossible. The moss on our time-worn mansion brightens into beauty; and the good old pastor, who once dwelt here, renewed his prime and regained his boyhood in the genial breeze of his ninetieth spring. Alas for the worn and heavy soul, if, whether in youth or age, it has outlived its privilege of springtime sprightliness!

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Spring, Sunshine, Men

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1982). “Tales and Sketches”, p.833, Library of America

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• Publishers, theatrical managers, and critics ask not for the quality inherent in creative art, but will it meet with a good sale, will it suit the palate of the people? Alas, this palate is like a dumping ground; it relishes anything that needs no mental mastication. As a result, the mediocre, the ordinary, the commonplace represents the chief literary output.

  Emma Goldman

  Art, People, Creative

  Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism: Top Crime Collections”, p.39, 谷月社

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• The bright days of my youthThey were full of hopeThe great journey that was before me thenWas what was destined to be, bye bye.Now I'm sorrowful,The day is long past.Alas and woe, oh.

  Enya

  Past, Journey, Bye

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• Alas! we know that ideals can never be completely embodied in practice. Ideals must ever lie a great way off--and we will thankfully content ourselves with any not intolerable approximation thereto! Let no man, as Schiller says, too querulously "measure by a scale of perfection the meager product of reality" in this poor world of ours.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Lying, Reality, Men

  Thomas Carlyle (1840). “On Heroes, Hero-worship and the Heroic in History”, p.234, CUP Archive

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• Alas! in nature, as in art, we gain only according to our capacity. You cannot put an ocean in a pint pot.

  Flora Thompson

  Art, Ocean, Gains

  Flora Thompson (2008). “The Peverel papers: nature notes written in Liphoo, Hampshire, 1921-1927”

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• The children of the poor are so apt to look as if the rich would have been over-blest with such! Alas for the angel capabilities, interrupted so soon with care, and with after life so sadly unfulfilled.

  Nathaniel Parker Willis

  Children, Angel, Care

  Nathaniel Parker Willis (1855). “Out-doors at Idlewild: Or, The Shaping of a Home on the Banks of the Hudson”, p.438

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• We hear in these days a great deal respecting rights--the rights of private judgment, the rights of labor, the rights of property, and the rights of man. Rights are grand things, divine things in this world of God's; but the way in which we expound these rights, alas! seems to me to be the very incarnation of selfishness. I can see nothing very noble in a man who is forever going about calling for his own rights. Alas! alas! for the man who feels nothing more grand in this wondrous, divine world than his own rights.

  Frederick William Robertson

  Men, Rights, Forever

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• The victims of ennui paralyze all the grosser feelings by excess, and torpify all the finer by disuse and inactivity. Disgusted with this world, and indifferent about another, they at last lay violent hands upon themselves, and assume no small credit for the sang froid with which they meet death. But, alas! such beings can scarcely be said to die, for they have never truly lived.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Hands, Feelings, World

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