Alas Quotes - Page 8

• Alas! they had been friends in youth; but whispering tongues can poison truth.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Gossip, Poison, Whispering

  'Christabel' pt. 2 (1800) (l. 408)

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• And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves as yet.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  England, Graves, Mets

  Gilbert Keith Chesterton, “Elegy In A Country Churchyard”

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• Alas! all music jars when the soul's out of tune.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Music, Soul, Tunes

  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Peter Anthony Motteux (1822). “The History of the Ingenious Gentleman, Don Quixote of La Mancha ...”, p.10

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• Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face.

  Albert Camus

  Birthday, Men, Age

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Fall”, p.57, Vintage

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• This source of corruption, alas, is inherent in the democratic system itself, and it can only be controlled, if at all, by finding ways to encourage legislators to subordinate ambition to principle.

  James L. Buckley

  Ambition, Way, Principles

  James L. Buckley (2010). “Freedom at Risk: Reflections on Politics, Liberty, and the State”, p.245, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool. Writers, alas, have to be fools in public, while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.

  Erica Jong

  Thinking, Race, Track

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• All the revision in the world will not save a bad first draft: for the architecture of the thing comes, or fails to come, in the first conception, and revision only affects the detail and ornament, alas!

  T. E. Lawrence

  Details, Ornaments, World

  Letter to Bruce Rogers, August 20, 1931.

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• We need a government, alas, because of the nature of humans.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Government, Needs, Humans

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• I was remembering the things we had done together, the times we had had. It would have been pleasant to preserve that comradeship in the days that came after. Pleasant, but alas, impossible. That which had brought us together had gone, and now our paths diverged, according to our natures and needs. We would meet again, from time to time, but always a little more as strangers; until perhaps at last, as old men with only memories left, we could sit together and try to share them.

  John Christopher

  Memories, Men, Trying

  John Christopher (2013). “The Pool of Fire”, p.134, Simon and Schuster

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• There are those hearts, reader, that never mend again once they are broken. Or if they do mend, they heal themselves in a crooked and lopsided way, as if sewn together by a careless craftsman. Such was the fate of Chiaroscuro. His heart was broken. Picking up the spoon and placing it on his head, speaking of revenge, these things helped him to put his heart together again. But it was, alas, put together wrong.

  Kate DiCamillo

  Revenge, Heart, Fate

  Kate DiCamillo (2009). “The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread”, p.116, Candlewick Press

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• Alas, if worth be based on beauty, Snow White has surpassed you, cutie.

  James Finn Garner

  White, Snow, Ifs

  James Finn Garner (2011). “Politically Correct Bedtime Stories”, p.30, Souvenir Press

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• Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.

  Voltaire

  Optimistic, Optimism, Maintaining

  Francois Marie Arouet De Voltaire (2004). “Candide (Sparklesoup Classics)”, p.48, Sparklesoup LLC

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• Alas," said Aslan, shaking his head. "It will. Things always work according to their nature. She has won her heart's desire; she has unwearying strength and endless days like a goddess. But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want; they do not always like it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Heart, Evil, Desire

  C. S. Lewis (2013). “The Chronicles of Narnia Complete 7-Book Collection with Bonus Book: Boxen”, p.98, Harper Collins

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• There are two men in each one of us: the scientist, he who starts with a clear field and desires to rise to the knowledge of Nature through observations, experimentation and reasoning, and the man of sentiment, the man of belief, the man who mourns his dead children, and who cannot, alas, prove that he will see them again, but who believes that he will, and lives in the hope – the man who will not die like a vibrio, but who feels that the force that is within him cannot die.

  Louis Pasteur

  Children, Believe, Men

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• Alas, where is there still a sea in which one could drown: thus our lament resounds – across shallow swamps.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Sea, Swamps, Shallow

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• One day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles, and seized one in each hand. Then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas! it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as was the third one.

  Charles Darwin

  Hands, Two, One Day

  Charles Darwin (2016). “The Autobiography of Charles Darwin: the Evolution”, p.14, VM eBooks

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• The ideal, without doubt, varies, but its enemies, alas, are always the same.

  Jean Rostand

  Doubt, Enemy, Ideals

  Jean Rostand (1962). “The substance of man”

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• Property is unstable, and youth perishes in a moment. Life itself is held in the grinning fangs of Death, Yet men delay to obtain release from the world. Alas, the conduct of mankind is surprising.

  Plautus

  Men, Delay, World

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• Alas for the affairs of men! When they are fortunate you might compare them to a shadow; and if they are unfortunate, a wet sponge with one dash wipes the picture away.

  Aeschylus

  Men, Shadow, Wipe

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• Alas, not me, lord!" she said. "Shadow lies on me still. Look not to me for healing! I am a shieldmaiden and my hand is ungentle.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Lying, Healing, Hands

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Return of the King: Being the Third Part of the Lord of the Rings”, p.939, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• In spite of the honestest efforts to annihilate my I-ity, or merge it in what the world doubtless considers my better half, I still find myself a self-subsisting and alas! self-seeking me.

  Jane Welsh Carlyle

  Self, Justice, Diversity

  Jane Welsh Carlyle (1977). “I Too Am Here: Selections from the Letters of Jane Welsh Carlyle”, p.7, Cambridge University Press

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• Alas! they had been friends in youth;
  But whispering tongues can poison truth,
  And constancy lives in realms above;
  And life is thorny, and youth is vain;
  And to be wroth with one we love
  Doth work like madness in the brain.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Life, Brain, Poison

  'Christabel' pt. 2 (1800) (l. 408)

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• Alas! is even love too weak
  To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
  Are even lovers powerless to reveal
  To one another what indeed they feel?
  I knew the mass of men conceal'd
  Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal'd
  They would by other men be met
  With blank indifference, or with blame reproved;
  I knew they lived and moved
  Trick'd in disguises, alien to the rest
  Of men, and alien to themselves - and yet
  The same heart beats in every human breast!

  Matthew Arnold

  Life, Heart, Men

  Matthew Arnold (2013). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold (Illustrated)”, p.167, Delphi Classics

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• Alas! the road to Anywhere is pitfalled with disaster;
  There's hunger, want, and weariness, yet O we loved it so!
  As on we tramped exultantly, and no man was our master,
  And no man guessed what dreams were ours, as, swinging heel and toe,
  We tramped the road to Anywhere, the magic road to Anywhere,
  The tragic road to Anywhere, such dear, dim years ago.

  Robert W. Service

  Dream, Men, Years

  Robert W. Service (2012). “Robert W. Service: Selected Poetry and Prose”, p.50, Dundurn

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• All the wild sweetness of the flower
  Tangled against the wall.
  It was that magic, silent hour....
  The branches grew so tall
  They twined themselves into a bower.
  The sun shown ... and the fall
  
  Of yellow blossom on the grass!
  You feel that golden rain?
  Both of you could not hold, alas,
  (both of you tried, in vain)
  A memory, stranger. So I pass....
  It will not come again.

  Katherine Mansfield

  Wall, Memories, Spring

  Katherine Mansfield, Margaret Scott (1997). “The Katherine Mansfield notebooks”

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