Alas Quotes - Page 2

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 way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him.

John Maynard Keynes

Bankers, Sound, Investing

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

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Alas, I have done nothing this day! What?! Have you not lived? It is not only the fundamental but the noblest of your occupations.

James O'Donnell Bennett

Life, Fundamentals, Done

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Sublime Philosophy! Thou art the patriarch's ladder, reaching heaven; And bright with beckoning angelsbut alas! We see thee, like the patriarch, but in dreams, By the first step, dull slumbering on the earth.

Alan Judd

Dream, Art, Philosophy

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Alas, why are my nights all thus lost? Ah, why do I ever miss his sight whose breath touches my sleep?

Rabindranath Tagore

Sleep, Night, Sight

Rabindranath Tagore, William Radice (2011). “Gitanjali: Song Offerings”, p.180, Penguin Books India

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I loved dancing with a delirious 'I wish I could die' passion, especially when the music appealed to me ... but alas! only one in ten partners had any notion of time, and what made it worse, the nine were always behind, never before the beat. ... Sometimes I would firmly seize smaller, lighter partners by the scruff of the neck, so to speak, and whirl them along in the way they should go, but I saw they were not enjoying themselves, and oddly enough I wanted these wretches to like dancing with me.

Ethel Smyth

Dance, Passion, Dancing

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I fear I must agree," Magnus murmured. He pressed a hand over his heart and his new peacock-blue waistcoast. "I strive to find some respect in my heart for you, but alas! It seems an impossible quest.

Cassandra Clare

Heart, Blue, Hands

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Nothing is more common than for men to make partial and absurd distinctions between vices of equal enormity, and to observe some of the divine commands with great scrupulousness, while they violate others, equally important, without any concern, or the least apparent conciousness of guilt. Alas, it is only wisdom which perceives this tragedy.

Samuel Johnson

Men, Important, Tragedy

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In a free world there is, alas, more common crime than in a dictatorial system.

Barbara Amiel

World, Common, Crime

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Alas, poor Yorick! How surprised he would be to see how his counterpart of today is whisked off to a funeral parlor and is in short order sprayed, sliced, pierced, pickled, trussed, trimmed, creamed, waxed, painted, rouged and neatly dressed - transformed from a common corpse into a Beautiful Memory Picture.

Jessica Mitford

Beautiful, Memories, Order

Jessica Mitford (2011). “The American Way of Death Revisited”, p.43, Vintage

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

Jean-Baptiste Say

Wisdom, Persecuted, Has Beens

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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, how quickly the gratitude owed to the dead flows off, how quick to be proved a deceiver.

Sophocles

Gratitude, Flow, Deceiver

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