Might Have Been Quotes - Page 8

• The thing that you're faulted on today is not that you are too tough, or not that you aren't careful. It's that you might have been too soft. People want that red meat now because you have to keep up with the mood and the mood today is harsh. It really is.

  Mark Russell

  People, Meat, Want

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• I'm getting a little bored by the juxtaposition of American and other cinema. I no longer think this division is as true as it might have been in the 1980s, or the early part of the 90s.

  Wim Wenders

  Thinking, Bored, Might

  "'The culture of independent film criticism has gone down the drain'". Interview with Richard Phillips, www.wsws.org. January 10, 2000.

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• I don't work hard enough. If I had worked harder I might have been prime minister.

  Ken Livingstone

  Hard Work, Might, Enough

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• Once the threshold is crossed when there is a self-sustaining level of life in space, then life's long-range future will be secure irrespective of any of the risks on Earth. Will this happen before our technological civilization disintegrates, leaving this as a might-have-been? Will the self-sustaining space communities be established before a catastrophe sets back the prospect of any such enterprise, perhaps foreclosing it forever? We live at what could be a defining moment for the cosmos.

  Martin Rees

  Moon, Civilization, Space

  "Our Final Hour: A Scientist's Warning". Book by Martin Rees, 2003.

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• There's always something in the game you wish you would have done different. That's why players improve, because they learn from what they did before. They might have been guessing before, but now they know.

  Gordie Howe

  Player, Games, Wish

  Interview with Arash Markazi, www.si.com. May 15, 2009.

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• Bad teaching wastes a great deal of effort, and spoils many lives which might have been full of energy and happiness.

  Gilbert Highet

  Teaching, Effort, Energy

  GILBERT HIGHET (1950). “THE ART OF TEACHING”

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• Ah, in this world, where every guiding thread Ends suddenly in the one sure centre, death, The visionary hand of Might-have-been Alone can fill Desire's cup to the brim!

  James Russell Lowell

  Regret, Hands, Desire

  James Russell Lowell (1871). “The poetical works of James Russell Lowell”, p.88

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• We might have been - these are but common words, and yet they make the sum of life's bewailing.

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon

  Might, Common, Has Beens

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1841). “Life and literary remains of L.E.L. [ed.] by L. Blanchard”

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• God sends the dawn that we might see the might-have-beens that still might be.

  Robert Breault

  Hope, Dawn, Might

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• Have we not all, amid life's petty strife, Some pure ideal of a noble life That once seemed possible? Did we not hear The flutter of its wings, and feel it near, And just within our reach? It was. And yet We lost it in this daily jar and fret, And now live idle in a vague regret; But still our place is kept, and it will wait, Ready for us to fill it, soon or late. No star is ever lost we once have seen, We always may be what we might have been.

  Adelaide Anne Procter

  Stars, Regret, Wings

  "A Legend of Provence" l. 284 (1861)

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• Twenty-five hundred years ago it might have been said that man understood himself as well as any other part of the world. Today he is the thing he understands least.

  B. F. Skinner

  Men, Years, Twenties

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• God will turn the might have been into a wonderful culture for the future.

  Oswald Chambers

  Culture, Might, Wonderful

  Oswald Chambers (2011). “The Quotable Oswald Chambers”, p.284, Discovery House

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• Just imagine if I would have come back to Germany with a victory. I had nothing to do with the Nazis, but they would have given me a medal. After the war I might have been considered a war criminal.

  Max Schmeling

  War, Victory, Criminals

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• I think I might have been a more interesting actor, had more of a career earlier on, if I had more formal preparation. When I see something ten years later that I was in I think, 'Boy, would I love to do that over.

  Sam Elliott

  Boys, Thinking, Years

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• There is no privilege in restriction. In other words, I disagree with people who say restriction makes you more creative. I think that's a misleading slogan. I might have been more creative without them than with them.

  Asghar Farhadi

  Thinking, People, Creative

  "A Separation's Asghar Farhadi: 'We need the audience to think" by Saeed Kamali Dehghan, www.theguardian.com. July 15, 2011.

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• Splendid cheeses they were, ripe and mellow, and with a two hundred horse-power scent about them that might have been warranted to carry three miles, and knock a man over at two hundred yards.

  Jerome K. Jerome

  Horse, Men, Two

  Jerome K. Jerome (2018). “Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) (English French Edition illustrated): Trois Hommes dans un bateau(Anglais Français édition illustré)”, p.62, Clap Publishing, LLC.

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• Fiction is love and hate and agreement and conflict and common adventure, not lonely musings on have-beens and might-have-beens.

  Alfred Bertram Guthrie

  Lonely, Hate, Adventure

  Alfred Bertram Guthrie (1993). “The Blue Hen's Chick: An Autobiography”, p.177, U of Nebraska Press

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• If other cows with mad cow disease were slaughtered, we wouldn't know where to begin looking for people who might have been affected, .. With a comprehensive tracking system, we would.

  Charles Schumer

  Mad Cow Disease, People, Might

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• Had the Senate or House, or both, censured or somehow warned Richard Nixon, the tragedy of Watergate might have been prevented. Hopefully the Senate will not sit by while even more serious abuses unfold before it.

  John Dean

  House, Abuse, Tragedy

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• Children should learn to draw as they learn to write, and such a mystery should not be made of it. They should be encouraged, not flattered... then [later in life] double the effort is required to get the facility which might have been gained insensibly.

  William Morris Hunt

  Children, Writing, Later In Life

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• I've hung around in absolute exhaustion and starvation waiting for an idea to hit, which might have been months. I've talked things over with editors, found out what they wanted, and when they wanted it delivered.

  Theodore Sturgeon

  Editors, Ideas, Waiting

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• For thence a paradox Which comforts while it mocks, - Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail: What I aspired to be, And was not, comforts me: A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.

  Robert Browning

  Comfort, Might, Succeed

  'Rabbi Ben Ezra' (1864) st. 7

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• The things that have been and shall be no more, The things that are, and that hereafter shall be, The things that might have been, and yet were not, The fading twilight of joys departed.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Twilight, Joy, Departed

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Illustrated)”, p.1099, Delphi Classics

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• There's got to be a point where we fix the system so that legal immigration is easier than illegal immigration and show respect for people, a kid who might have been here for 10 years, that might be a valedictorian of their high school to say, no, no, no you're not allowed to go to college. I just think there's a point past which we are over the line.

  Jeb Bush

  School, Kids, Past

  "Megyn Kelly previews her exclusive interview with Jeb Bush". "The Five" with Kimberly Guilfoyle, www.foxnews.com. May 11, 2015.

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• Imagination transforms one substance into another. It changes what is into what might be, what was into what might have been. Straw becomes gold, gold straw, and neither is more real nor, I submit, more precious than the other. Pebbles turn into luminous pearls and pearls into little gray rocks, both solid and beautiful, both essential. Human beings take shape from clay, angels' wings are spun out of water, fire gives rise to the long tongues of demons, love emerges out of thin air, and the basic elements reconstitute themselves again and again.

  Steve Rasnic Tem

  Beautiful, Real, Angel

  Steve Rasnic Tem, Melanie Tem (2008). “The Man on the Ceiling”, Wizards of the Coast Discoveries

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