Should Have Been Quotes - Page 7

• Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive; why so often the coarse appropriates the finer thus, the wrong man the woman, the wrong women the man, many years of analytical philosophy have failed to explain to our sense of order

  Thomas Hardy

  Beautiful, Philosophy, Men

  1891 Tess of the D'Urbervilles, ch.11.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Earthlings went on being friendly, when they should have been thinking instead.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Life, Thinking, Should Have

  Kurt Vonnegut (1973). “Breakfast of champions: or, Goodbye blue Monday!”, Dell

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I wonder, whether, if I had had any education I should have been more, or less, of a fool than I am. It would have deprived me surely of those exquisite moments of mental flatulence which every now and then inflate the cerebral vacuum with a delicious sense of latent possibilities-of stretching oneself to cosmic limits, and who would ever give up the reality of dreams for relative knowledge?

  Alice James

  Dream, Giving Up, Reality

  Alice James (1934). “Her Brothers Her Journal”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• You really can't worry about stuff you can't control... You need to focus on getting where you need to be and not worry about what could have been and what should have been.

  Robbie Lawler

  Should Have, Mma, Worry

  28 Copy quote

• If it had not been for the English I should have been emperor of the East, but wherever there is water to float a ship we are sure to find them in our way.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Should Have, History, Water

  4 Copy quote

• I regret that I've never actually managed to be inspired enough to get into anything else, and I should've been, I really should have been, because the piano can be a wonderful instrument. But I'm afraid that my inspiration is just purely on the words... and it's gonna stay there.

  Roy Harper

  Regret, Inspiration, Should Have

  4 Copy quote

• I don't regret pulling the trigger. I should have been more careful with many of the things I said afterwards. That was a big regret.

  Bernhard Goetz

  Regret, Should Have, Triggers

  7 Copy quote

• Resistance to improvement contradicts the noblest instincts of the race. It begets its opposite. The fanaticism of reform is only the raging of the accumulated waters caused by the obstructions which an ultra conservatism has thrown across the stream of progress; and revolution itself is but the sudden overwhelming and sweeping away of impediments that should have been seasonably removed.

  Horace Mann

  Should Have, Opposites, Race

  4 Copy quote

• Never was there a dingier, uglier, less picturesque city than London ... it is really wonderful that so much brick and stone, for centuries together, should have been built up with so poor a result.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Should Have, Cities, Together

  Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Julian Hawthorne (2015). “Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of “The Scarlet Letter”, “The House of Seven Gables” and “Twice-Told Tales””, p.817, e-artnow

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• But an escape less self-depreciating was taken by Lord Westbury, who, it is said, rebuffed a barrister's reliance upon an earlier opinion of his Lordship: "I can only say that I am amazed that a man of my intelligence should have been guilty of giving such an opinion". If there are other ways of gracefully and good-naturedly surrendering former views to a better considered position, I invoke them all.

  Robert H. Jackson

  Taken, Men, Should Have

  "McGrath v. Kristensen, 340 U.S. 162, 178". Concurring opinion, 1950.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• In fact, the influence of Schoenberg may be overwhelming on his followers, but the significance of his art is to be identified with influences of a more subtle kind - not the system, but the aesthetic, of his art. I am quite conscious of the fact that my Chansons madécasses are in no way Schoenbergian, but I do not know whether I ever should have been able to write them had Schoenberg never written.

  Maurice Ravel

  Art, Writing, Should Have

  "Ravel: Man and Musician". Book by Arbie Orenstein, p. 126, 1975.

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• Until recently, the question was 'Why can't a woman be more like a man?' It should have been changed to 'Why can't both sexes be more like the best parts of each other?' Instead, the pendulum swung to the 1960s feminist lapel button Adam Was a First Draft. True enough. So are we all.

  Warren Farrell

  Sex, Men, Should Have

  "Why Men Are the Way They Are". Book by Warren Farrell, 1986.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Augustine of Hippo used to say that, but for God's grace, he should have been capable of committing any crime; and it is when we feel this sincerely, that we are most likely to be really improving, and best able to give assistance to others without moral loss to ourselves.

  Henry Parry Liddon

  Loss, Should Have, Giving

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". P. 547. Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, 1895.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Much more should have been achieved by a Labour Government in office and Labour pressure in opposition. Against the dogged resistance to change, we should have pitted a stronger will to change. I conclude that a move to the Left is needed.

  Anthony Crosland

  Moving, Government, Should Have

  Anthony Crosland (1974). “Socialism now and other essays”, Jonathan Cape

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The reader can test his own psychology by asking himself whether he would consider, in retrospect, the selling at 156 in 1925 and buying back at 109 in 1931 was a satisfactory operation. Some may think that an intelligent investor should have been able to sell out much closer to the high of 381 and to buy back nearer the low of 41. If that is your own view you are probably a speculator at heart and will have trouble keeping to true investment precepts while the market rushes up and down.

  Benjamin Graham

  Heart, Intelligent, Thinking

  9 Copy quote

• I felt then, as I feel now, that the politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organizing nothing better than legalized mass murder.

  Harry Patch

  Military, War, Army

  "Land of conflict" by Ian Pindar, Aimee Shalan, John Dugdale, www.theguardian.com. June 13, 2008.

  166 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is time, and there is beyond time. History belongs to time, but truth belongs to what is beyond time. In writing of things as they should have been, you are letting truth into history. You are the word of God.

  Philip Pullman

  Writing, Should Have, Truth Is

  Philip Pullman (2009). “The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ”, p.45, Canongate Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Had (I) been a member of a more popular race, I should have been inclined to yield to the temptation of depending upon my ancestry and my colour to do that for me which I should do for myself. Years ago I resolved that because I had no ancestry myself I would leave a record of which my children would be proud, and which might encourage them to still higher effort

  Booker T. Washington

  Children, Yield, Race

  Frederick Douglass, Solomon Northup, Willie Lynch, Nat Turner, Sojourner Truth (2017). “100$ REWARD ON MY HEAD – Powerful & Unflinching Memoirs Of Former Slaves: 28 Narratives in One Volume: With Hundreds of Documented Testimonies & True Life Stories: Memoirs of Frederick Douglass, Underground Railroad, 12 Years a Slave, Incidents in Life of a Slave Girl, Narrative of Sojourner Truth...”, p.986, e-artnow

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Looking back, I spent a lot of time sitting in pubs when I should have been perfecting my playwriting.

  Jez Butterworth

  Should Have, Sitting, Pubs

  "The grass is greener" by Mark Lawson, www.theguardian.com. March 23, 2009.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The more you surrender to the fear of someone's disapproval, the more you lose face in your own eyes, and the more desperate you become for someone's approval. Within you is a void that should have been filled by self-esteem. When you attempt to fill it with the approval of others instead, the void grows deeper and the hunger for acceptance and approval grows stronger. The only solution is to summon the courage to honor your own judgment, frightening though that may be in the beginning.

  Nathaniel Branden

  Self Esteem, Eye, Acceptance

  Nathaniel Branden (1998). “Nathaniel Brandens Self-Esteem Every Day: Reflections on Self-Esteem and Spirituality”, p.173, Simon and Schuster

  41 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is (as I now find) no remorse for time long past, even for what may have mortified us or made us ashamed of ourselves when it was happening: there is a pleasant panoramic sense of what it all was and how it all had to be. Why, if we are not vain or snobbish, need we desire that it should have been different? The better things we missed may yet be enjoyed or attained by someone else somewhere: why isn't that just as good? And there is no regret, either, in the sense of wishing the past to return, or missing it: it is quite real enough as it is, there at its own date and place.

  George Santayana

  Regret, Real, Past

  "The Letters of George Santayana".

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I should have been thinking more about my family, how I raised my children, how I maintained life's work, so to speak.

  Joe Namath

  Children, Thinking, Should Have

  7 Copy quote

• Nothing is truer in a sense than a funeral oration: It tells precisely what the dead man should have been.

  Louis Gustave Vapereau

  Lying, Men, Should Have

  4 Copy quote

• I remember my agent at ICM at the beginning of my career telling me that I wasn't pretty enough, that I was always going to be a quirky sidekick. And he was an ogre of a man. He should have been carrying a torch. If he was in a bar, he couldn't have come near me, and then he was deciding my fate.

  Whitney Cummings

  Fate, Men, Should Have

  "Can Whitney Cummings Get Some Respect?" by Vanessa Grigoriadis, www.vulture.com. November 18, 2012.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• My marriage had been impulsive. That marriage should have been short-lived instead of the 23 years it spanned.

  Joseph Barbera

  Should Have, Years, Impulsive

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source