Might Have Been Quotes - Page 11

• A woman's counsel brought us first to woe,
  And made her man his paradise forego,
  Where at heart's ease he liv'd; and might have been
  As free from sorrow as he was from sin.

  John Dryden

  Women, Heart, Sorrow

  John Dryden, C. B., Esquire Charles BATHURST (1852). “Selections from the poetry of Dryden, including his plays and translations. [The editor's preface signed: C. B., i.e. Charles Bathurst.]”, p.243

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• What moments of despair that life would ever be made precious to me by the consciousness that I lived to some good purpose! It was that sort of despair that sucked away the sap of half the hours which might have been filled by energetic youthful activity: and the same demon tries to get hold of me again whenever an old work is dismissed and a new one is being meditated.

  George Eliot

  Despair, Trying, Sap

  George Eliot (2016). “George Eliot's Life, Complete: Top Novelist Focus”, p.407, 谷月社

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• Mars tugs at the human imagination like no other planet. With a force mightier than gravity, it attracts the eye to its shimmering red presence in the clear night sky. It is like a glowing ember in a field of ethereal lights, projecting energy and promise. It inspires visions of an approachable world. The mind vaults to thoughts of what might have been (if Mars were a litter closer to the warming Sun) and of what could be (if humans were one day to plant colonies there).

  John Noble Wilford

  Eye, Night, Light

  John Noble Wilford (1991). “Mars Beckons: The Mysteries, the Challenges, the Expectations of Our Next Great Adventure in Space”, Vintage

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• Could it be that time is too narrow for all events? Could it happen that all the seats within time might have been sold? Worried, we run along the train of events, preparing ourselves for the journey.

  Bruno Schulz

  Running, Journey, Events

  Bruno Schulz, Jonathan Safran Foer, David Goldfarb (2008). “The street of crocodiles and other stories”, Penguin Classics

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• I have never been much of a groomer. I take baths a lot, but I don't wear deodorant. I don't have to. I have a miraculous body scent. I've had women smell me and say that should be bottled. I would advise guys to lay off the Drakkar, because the cavemen weren't wearing it. They might have been putting mint leaves on their balls, but your scent is grown naturally. I have really good dating advice.

  Zach Galifianakis

  Smell, Dating, Guy

  "Zach Galifianakis: Soon You Will Be Laughing at This Man". Interview with Peter Martin, www.esquire.com. June 2, 2009.

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• When I first encountered the poems of Jon Woodward, I was stunned into the state that is my life's joy-I was in the presence of the inimitable. Uncanny Valley extends that experience-almost into another dimension. These apocalyptic, pixilated poems forge a mythology of our ravaged culture, one that might have been written in the future. If you want poetry to give you a persimmon on a plate, look elsewhere; if you want to know what happens when seven trees fall on the highway and the story is told by a stutterer, this is the book, and it could only have been written by Woodward.

  Mary Ruefle

  Book, Fall, Giving

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• Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, let them complain over what might have been, but not you. Let others cry over small hurts, let them be discouraged, let them be revengeful and vindictive, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else's hands, let them become materialistic and empty, but not you. Let others become ungrateful and stop praying, but not you! Let others give up, but not you! For you know in whom you believe and you know that He is always able. Now, that's you!

  Jim Rohn

  Motivational, Hurt, Giving Up

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• Style consists in maintaining a convincing reality all through a piece. It's like wearing a garment that looks as if it might have been made for you even if it wasn't.

  Arlene Croce

  Reality, Style, Looks

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• Feeble are we? Yes, without God we are nothing. But what, by faith, every man may be, God requires him to be. This is the only Christian idea of duty. Measure obligation by inherent ability! No, my brethren, Christian obligation has a very different measure. It is measured by the power that God will give us, measured by the gifts and possible increments of faith. And what a reckoning will it be for many of us, when Christ summons us to answer before Him under the law, not for what we are, but for what we might have been.

  Horace Bushnell

  Christian, Men, Law

  Horace Bushnell (1876). “Sermons for the New Life”

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• Those who have to face persistent political persecution become highly politicized. Our lives take on a rhythm different from those who, on waking up in the morning, do not need to wonder who might have been arrested during the night and what further acts of blatant injustice might be committed against our people later during the day. Our antennae become highly sensitive to vibrations barely noticed by those whose everyday existence is removed from political struggle.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Morning, Struggle, Night

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• How many serious family quarrels, marriages out of spite, and alterations of wills, might have been prevented by a gentle dose of blue pill!-What awful instances of chronic dyspepsia in the characters of Hamlet and Othello! Banish dyspepsia and spirituous liquors from society, and you have no crime, or at least so little that you would not consider it worth mentioning.

  Charles Kingsley

  Character, Blue, Pills

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• I think it's easier to play when you do have a balanced home. I think if I did have alcoholism in my personal life, or my mother, or somebody close to me, it might have been much more uncomfortable to get in there.

  Angelina Jolie

  Mother, Home, Thinking

  "Angelina Jolie Gets Conservative in The Good Shepherd". Interview with Julian Roman, movieweb.com. December 18, 2006.

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• An emotion that lives with me is a sense of what might have been had injuries not robbed me of my most lethal weapon - speed.

  Michael Owen

  Might, Weapons, Emotion

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• Life moves in one direction only - and each day we are faced with an actual set of circumstances, not with what might have been, not with what we might have done, but with what is, and with where we are now- and from this point we must proceed; not from where we were, not from where we wish we were - but from where we are.

  Richard L. Evans

  Moving, One Direction, Wish

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• Sometimes it seems that we might have been happier if we had once had an aristocracy to blame everything on.

  Anatole Broyard

  Government, Aristocracy, Might

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• There might have been a hundred or a thousand life-bearing planets, had the course of evolution of the universe been a little different, or there might have been none at all. They would probably add, that, as life and man have been produced, that shows that their production was possible; and therefore, if not now then at some other time, if not here then in some other planet of some other sun, we should be sure to have come into existence; or if not precisely the same as we are, then something a little better or a little worse.

  Alfred Russel Wallace

  Believe, Men, Body

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• We are all in situations of our own choosing.  Our thinking creates a pathway to success or failure.  By disclaiming responsibility for our present, we crush the prospect of an incredible future that might have been ours.

  Andy Andrews

  Motivational, Crush, Responsibility

  Andy Andrews (2009). “Traveler's Gift; Mastering the Seven Decisions”, p.27, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• There is not a single rule, however plausible, and however firmly grounded in epistemology, that is not violated at some time or other. It becomes evident that such violations are not accidental events, they are not results of insufficient knowledge or of inattention which might have been avoided. On the contrary, we see that they are necessary for progress.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Science, Progress, Events

  Paul Feyerabend (1993). “Against Method”, p.14, Verso

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• Whatever success I have achieved, whatever positions of leadership I have held have depended less on Ivy League degrees or SAT scores or GPAs and have instead been due to that sense of connection and empathy, the special obligation I felt as a black man like you to help those who need it most, people who didn't have the opportunities that I had because there, but for the grace of God go I. I might have been in their shoes. I might have been in prison. I might have been unemployed. I might not have been able to support a family. And that motivates me.

  Barack Obama

  Opportunity, Men, Gpa

  "Around The World" with Michael Holmes and Suzanne Malveaux, www.cnn.com. May 20, 2013.

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• Shakespeare had no tutors but nature and genius. He caught his faults from the bad taste of his contemporaries. In an age still less civilized Shakespeare might have been wilder, but would not have been vulgar.

  Horace Walpole

  Age, Genius, Might

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• [The reason a man has] so much trouble with the Senate is that there isn't a man in the Senate who doesn't think he is better suited to be President than the President, and thinks he might have been President except for luck.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Men, Thinking, Arrogance

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• We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence, and a name.

  Charles Lamb

  Dream, Names, Waiting

  Charles Lamb (1835). “Essays of Elia”, p.113

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• Look at the mother of Washington! She raised a boy that could not tell a lie--could not tell a lie! But he never had any chance. It might have been different if he had belonged to the Washington Newspaper Correspondents' Club

  Mark Twain

  Mother, Truth, Lying

  Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain’s Letters & Speeches (Annotated Edition)”, p.1026, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Don't fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. For all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, "could have, might have, should have,and might have been." Create yourself and live the story of your own unique life.

  Rita Zahara

  Motivational, Unique, Should Have

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• An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one. I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

  Richard Dawkins

  Atheist, Design, Waiting

  "The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design". Book by Richard Dawkins, September 28, 2015.

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