Alas Quotes - Page 20

• Memory is ever active, ever true. Alas, if it were only as easy to forget!

  Ninon de L'Enclos

  Memories, Forget, Easy

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• It is not the weariness of mortality, but the strength of divinity, which we have to recognize in all mighty things; and that is just what we now never recognize, but think that we are to do great things by help of iron bars and perspiration. Alas! we shall do nothing that way but lose some pounds of our own weight.

  John Ruskin

  Power, Thinking, Iron

  John Ruskin, Louisa Caroline Tuthill (1858). “The true and the beautiful in nature, art, morals, and religion”, p.317

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• the more humdrum aspects of life do not make for gripping reading. To render them compelling, a writer must describe the universal in eloquent and evocative prose. Alas, Frey's writing suggests that this was not an option, and he came up with something else.

  Anna Quindlen

  Reading, Writing, Gripping

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• Cupid and my Campaspe play'd
  At cards for kisses - Cupid paid:
  He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows,
  His mother's doves, and team of sparrows;
  Loses them too; then down he throws
  The coral of his lips, the rose
  Growing one's cheek (but none knows how);
  With these, the crystal of his brow,
  And then the dimple of his chin:
  All these did my Campaspe win.
  At last he set her both his eyes -
  She won, and Cupid blind did rise.
  O Love! has she done this for thee?
  What shall, alas! become of me?

  John Lyly

  Love, Mother, Team

  John Lyly, “Cards And Kisses”

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• Alas! Man's vices, horrible as they are supposed to be, contain the positive proof of his taste for the infinite.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Men, Vices, Taste

  Charles Baudelaire (1926). “Baudelaire, Prose and Poetry”

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• Woman, thou art a river, deep and wide, Of waters soft and sweet: Alas! I've never reached the other side; Though oft I've wet my feet!

  William Batchelder Greene

  Sweet, Art, Women

  William Batchelder Greene (1871). “Imogen: And Other Poems”, p.62

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• Alas! while the body stands so broad and brawny, must the soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihilated? Alas! this was, too, a breath of God, bestowed in heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded!

  Thomas Carlyle

  Lying, Heaven, Soul

  Thomas Carlyle (1864). “Sartor Resartus”, p.140

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• In this way they went on, and on, and on-in the language of the story-books-until at last the village lights appeared before them, and the church spire cast a long reflection on the graveyard grass; as if it were a dial (alas, the truest in the world!) marking, whatever light shone out of Heaven, the flight of days and weeks and years, by some new shadow on that solemn ground.

  Charles Dickens

  Nature, Book, Reflection

  Charles Dickens (1872). “Works of Charles Dickens”, p.123

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• Despite history, despite English, despite the noteworthies, and a little bit also despite ourselves, alas!, the Quebecois people have stayed French. I had violently returned. This people had no need of directives to affirm its French pride in the face of the whole world

  Pierre Bourgault

  Pride, People, Needs

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• Can it be, that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a Nation with its virtue? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human Nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?

  George Washington

  Vices, Impossible, Human Nature

  George Washington, Andrew Jackson (1862). “Washington's Farewell Address: The Proclamation of Jackson Against Nullification, and the Declaration of Independence”, p.9

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• Alas! the praise given to the ear
  Ne'er was nor ne'er can be sincere.

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon

  Ears, Flattery, Praise

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• Imagine, if you will, that I am an idiot. Then, imagine that I am also a Congressman. But, alas, I repeat myself.

  Mark Twain

  Politics, Idiot, Imagine

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• I loved a lass, a fair one,As fair as e'er was seen;She was indeed a rare one,Another Sheba queen:But, fool as then I was,I thought she loved me too:But now, alas! she's left me,Falero, lero, loo!

  George Wither

  Queens, Fool, Inconstancy

  George Wither, “I Loved A Lass”

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• But alas for the dreams that round us play! / For the plans of mortal making! / And alas for the false and fickle day / That looked so fair at waking!

  Phoebe Cary

  Dream, Disappointment, Play

  Phoebe Cary, Mary Clemmer (1876). “The Poetical Works of Alice and Phoebe Cary”

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• Why dost thou heap up wealth, which thou must quit,
  Or what is worse, be left by it?
  Why dost thou load thyself when thou 'rt to fly,
  Oh, man! ordain'd to die?
  Why dost thou build up stately rooms on high,
  Thou who art under ground to lie?
  Thou sow'st and plantest, but no fruit must see,
  For death, alas! is reaping thee.

  Abraham Cowley

  Art, Lying, Men

  Abraham Cowley, Thomas Sprat (1826). “Prose works of Abraham Cowley ; including his essays in prose and verse”, p.217

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• Indeed, I have, alas! outlived almost every one of my contemporaries. One pays dear for living long.

  Hannah More

  Friends, Long, Pay

  Hannah More, Zachary Macaulay (1860). “Letters of Hannah More to Zachary Macaulay, Esq: Containing Notices of Lord Macaulay's Youth. Now First Published”, p.200

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• It is easy to promise, and alas! How easy to forget!

  Alfred de Musset

  Promise, Forget, Easy

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• Now the 21st century approaches and with it the inevitability of change. We must wonder if the American people will find renewal and rejuvenation within themselves, will discover again their capacity for innovation and adaptation. If not, alas, the nation's future will be shaped by sightless forces of history over which Americans will have no control.

  John Chancellor

  America, People, Innovation

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• We are all potentially such sick men. The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison-inmates. And whenever we feel this, such a sense of the vanity of our voluntary career comes over us, that all our morality appears but as a plaster hiding a sore it can never cure, and all our well-doing as the hollowest substitute for that well-being that our lives ought to be grounded in, but alas! are not.

  William James

  Life, Men, Vanity

  "Essays in Religion and Morality".

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• Passion is like the lightning, it is beautiful, and it links the earth to heaven, but alas it blinds!

  H. Rider Haggard

  Beautiful, Passion, Heaven

  H. Rider Haggard (2013). “Delphi Works of H. Rider Haggard (Illustrated)”, p.1632, Delphi Classics

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• But when I came, alas, to wive, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, By swaggering could I never thrive, For the rain it raineth every day.

  William Shakespeare

  Rain, Wind, Rivers

  'Twelfth Night' (1601) act 5, sc. 1, l. [401]

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• Alas! how light a cause may move Dissension between hearts that love! Hearts that the world in vain had tried, And sorrow but more closely tied; That stood the storm when waves were rough, Yet in a sunny hour fall off, Like ships that have gone down at sea When heaven was all tranquillity.

  Charles Lamb

  Love, Moving, Fall

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• Do you seriously propose that they are going to be so insane as to allow tariffs to be imposed. The EU is, I'm afraid a job destroying engine. You can see it all across southern Europe, you can see it, alas, in our country.

  Boris Johnson

  Country, Jobs, Europe

  "EU debate: Boris Johnson says Brexit will be 'Britain's independence day' as Ruth Davidson attacks 'lies' of Leave campaign in front of 6,000-strong Wembley audience". www.telegraph.co.uk. June 21, 2016.

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• Ben Bova seems to work very hard at working in new discoveries into his Glum Future but alas, his future is glum and not that well written.

  James Nicoll

  Discovery, Wells, New Discoveries

  Usenet article, 2005.

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• Alas, 'tis force alone that can compel to virtuous actions a degenerate people.

  Vittorio Alfieri

  People, Degenerates, Action

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