Alas Quotes - Page 7

• I have mastered many things in my life. Navigating the streets of London, speaking French without an accent, dancing the quadrille, the Japanese art of flower arranging, lying at charades, concealing a highly intoxicated state, delighting young women with my charms..." Tessa stared. "Alas," he went on, "no one has ever actually referred to me as 'the master,' or 'the magister,' either. More's the pity.

  Cassandra Clare

  Art, Lying, Flower

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• If little else, the brain is an educational toy. Why it may be a frustrating play thing - one whose finer points recede just when you think you are mastering them - it is nonetheless perpetually fascinating, frequently surprising, occasionally rewarding, and it comes already assembled. [...] Alas! the brain is a toy that plays games of its own. Its very most favorite game is the one-thing-leads-to-another game.

  Tom Robbins

  Philosophy, Educational, Thinking

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• I, answering in the end, began: 'Alas, how many yearning thoughts, what great desire, have lead them through such sorrow to their fate?

  Dante Alighieri

  Fate, Sorrow, Desire

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• It's the problem with age. You have all these rusty arguments, and no quarrel to use them in. My brain is a museum, but alas, I'm the only visitor, and even I am not terribly interested in the displays.

  Orson Scott Card

  Love, Fighting, Museums

  Orson Scott Card (2010). “Heartfire: The Tales of Alvin Maker”, p.236, Macmillan

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• The places we have known do not belong solely to the world of space in which we situate them for our greater convenience. They were only a thin slice among contiguous impressions which formed our life at that time; the memory of a certain image is but regret for a certain moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years.

  Marcel Proust

  Memories, Regret, Years

  Marcel Proust (2003). “In Search of Lost Time: The Way by Swann's”, ePenguin

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• We do not trust educated people and rarely, alas, produce them, for we do not trust the independence of mind which alone makes a genuine education possible.

  James A. Baldwin

  People, Independence, Mind

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• Will his work survive? Alas, I worry that it will not. As an American liberal with impeccable credentials, I would like to say that political correctness is going to kill American liberalism if it is not fought to the death by people like me for the dangers it represents to free speech, to the exchange of ideas, to openheartedness, or to the spirit of art itself. Political correctness has a stranglehold on academia, on feminism, and on the media. It is a form of both madness and maggotry, and has already silenced the voices of writers like James Dicky across the land.

  Pat Conroy

  Art, Media, Land

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• She dreams of him that has forgot her love; You dote on her that cares not for your love. 'Tis pity love should be so contrary; And thinking of it makes me cry 'alas!

  William Shakespeare

  Dream, Love You, Thinking

  William Shakespeare (1996). “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare”, p.208, Wordsworth Editions

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• Collective wisdom, alas, is no adequate substitute for the intelligence of individuals. Individuals who opposed received opinions have been the source of all progress, both moral and intellectual. They have been unpopular, as was natural.

  Bertrand Russell

  Intellectual, Progress, Adequate

  Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I am not a Christian, and other essays on religion and related subjects”, Touchstone

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• Woe, alas, to those who have loved only bodies, forms, appearances! Death will rob them of everything. Try to love souls, you will find them again.

  Victor Hugo

  Soul, Trying, Body

  Victor Hugo (1980). “Les misérables”, Viking Pr

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• Alas for those girls who've refused the truth: The sweetest tongue has the sharpest tooth.

  Jack Zipes

  Girl, Tongue, Teeth

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• I stood beside Van Helsing, and said;- "Ah, well, poor girl, there is peace for her at last. It is the end!" He turned to me, and said with grave solemnity:- "Not so; alas! not so. It is only the beginning!

  Bram Stoker

  Girl, Lasts, Poor

  Bram Stoker (2007). “Dracula”, p.258, Book Jungle

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• And if that is the Foremast, what do you think that sail might be called, Mr. Wheeler?" "The Foresail?" "Very good, Mr. Wheeler, and the next one up would be called..." ..."The Next Sail, Sir?" "Alas, no, Mr. Wheeler.

  L.A. Meyer

  Thinking, Might, Next

  L. A. Meyer (2007). “Under the Jolly Roger: Being an Account of the Further Nautical Adventures of Jacky Faber”, p.117, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes never! You're asked an unexpected question, you don't even flinch, it takes just a second to get yourself under control, you know just what you have to say to hide the truth, and you speak very convincingly, and nothing in your face twitches to give you away. But the truth, alas, has been disturbed by the question, and it rises up from the depths of your soul to flicker in your eyes and all is lost.

  Mikhail Bulgakov

  Eye, Giving, Soul

  "The Master and Margarita". Book by Mikhail Bulgakov (Book One, Chapter "Nikanor Ivanovich's Dream"), 1967.

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• Alas! for that accursed time They bore thee o'er the billow, From love to titled age and crime, And an unholy pillow! From me, and from our misty clime, Where weeps the silver willow!

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Age, Silver, Crime

  Edgar Allan Poe (2008). “Edgar Allan Poe's Annotated Short Stories”, p.39, Bottletree Books LLC

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• Man, do not pride yourself on your superiority to the animals, for they are without sin, while you, with all your greatness, you defile the earth wherever you appear and leave an ignoble trail behind you -- and that is true, alas, for almost every one of us!

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Pride, Greatness, Men

  Fyodor Dostoevsky (2003). “Brothers Karamazov”, p.427, Bantam Classics

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• Nay! Alas for us all! And for all that walk in the world in these after-days. For such is the way of it: to find and lose, as it seems to those whose boat is on the running stream. But I count you blessed [...] for your loss you suffer of your own free will, and you might have chosen otherwise. But you have not forsaken your companions, and the least reward that you shall have is that the memory of Lothlórien shall remain ever clear and unstained in your heart, and shall neither fade nor grow stale.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Running, Memories, Blessed

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings”, p.267, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• God has a plan for His Church upon earth. But alas! we too often make our plan, and we think that we know what ought to be done. We ask God first to bless our feeble efforts, instead of absolutely refusing to go unless God go before us.

  Andrew Murray

  Thinking, Effort, Church

  Andrew Murray (2009). “Absolute Surrender”, p.39, Moody Publishers

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• Alas...I too have known love, that ruler of hearts, that soul of our soul: it's never brought me anything except one kiss and twenty kicks in the rump. How could such a beautiful cause produce such an abominable effect on you?

  Voltaire

  Beautiful, Heart, Kissing

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• Alas, everything that men say to one another is alike; the ideas they exchange are almost always the same, in their conversation. But inside all those isolated machines, what hidden recesses, what secret compartments! It is an entire world that each one carries within him, an unknown world that is born and dies in silence! What solitudes all these human bodies are!

  Alfred de Musset

  Men, Ideas, Unknown Worlds

  Alfred de Musset, David Sices (1994). “Comedies & proverbs”, Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

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• A few can touch the magic string, and noisy fame is proud to win them: Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them!

  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

  Music, Death, Winning

  Oliver Wendell Holmes (1859). “The Autocrat of the Breakfast-table ...”, p.355

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• Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Artist, Paper, Easy

  Vincent van Gogh (1958). “Complete letters: with reproductions of all the drawings in the correspondence”

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• Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return.

  E. M. Forster

  Travel, Adventure, Sunshine

  Howards End ch. 2 (1910)

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• There is nothing more musical than a sunset. He who feels what he sees will find no more beautiful example of development in all that book which, alas, musicians read but too little - the book of Nature.

  Claude Debussy

  Beautiful, Book, Sunset

  "The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music". Book by Don Michael Randel, 1996.

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• Alas, I emerge from one disaster to fall into a worse.

  Pierre Corneille

  Fall, Disaster

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