Top 100 Be That As It May Quotes
#2. I think you were doing quite well until you got to the bit about slaying polar bears. Be that as it may, little shop-boy and farm-boy, I shall not kiss you; neither shall I marry you.
Neil Gaiman
#3. Be that as it may, it's all I have to work with. Clutching these faded, fading, imperfect memories to my breast, I go on writing this book with all the desperate intensity of a starving man sucking on bones.
Anonymous
#4. People you've known, seemingly forever, may claim to have love for you, but when gossip's tainted tongue whips you - they don't show enough love to weigh your history against false witness. Be that as it may, press forward as the dust settles. Your purpose is much bigger than their paltriness.
T.F. Hodge
#5. Be that as it may, I have been noticing a statistically significant correlation between excessive childhood exposure to radiation and cancers later in life.
Kim Van Alkemade
#6. Be that as it may, it is here that Le Chiffre will, we are confident, endeavour on or after 15 June to make a profit at baccarat of fifty million francs on a working capital of twenty-five million. (And, incidentally, save his life.)
Ian Fleming
#7. Some people think that being in love or infatuated is a modern invention that appears only in novels. Be that as it may, it nevertheless exists, the invention, the word, and our capacity for such a feeling.
Javier Marias
#8. Be that as it may, but even the toughest cookies can crumble.
Mario Saincic
#9. It takes great self-confidence to write a newspaper column. Some might say it takes arrogance. Be that as it may, my willingness to pronounce on a great many matters of which I have little or no knowledge is one of my prime qualifications for this trade.
Russell Baker
#10. Picture how bitterly hordes of the frustrated, disappointed, and dispossessed would greet any complaint about being too satisfied and too wealthy. Be that as it may, it really isn't a very nice sensation not to want anything. Thwarted hopes are no picnic, but desire itself is energizing.
Lionel Shriver
#11. But be that as it may, I think it is more respectful to you that I should speak to you upon and do my best to interest you in the subject which has occupied me, and in which I am myself most interested.
Arthur Cayley
#12. I say, Look, I'm here now. There must be a reason I'm here. If that's fatalistic, be that as it may. Where my work is, is where my life is, and if we're falling in the ocean, we're falling into the ocean.
Cass Elliot
#13. Be that as it may, we were
and no doubt, still are
held under scrutiny, with that whole Phoenix Society brouhaha. It is imperative we remain on our best behaviour, a feat that you did not exactly manage effortlessly with your shenanigans in Edinburgh.
Philippa Ballantine
#14. Mass communication
wonder as it may be technologically and something to be appreciated and valued
presents us wit a serious daner, the danger of conformism, due to the fact that we all view the same things at the same time in all the cities of the country. (p. 73)
Rollo May
#15. You can't make me mad by calling me names that are true. Certainly I'm a rascal, and why not? It's a free country and a man may be a rascal if he chooses. It's only hypocrites like you, my dear lady, just as black at heart but trying to hide it, who becomes enraged when called by their right names.
Margaret Mitchell
#16. The humility that cringes in order that reproof may be escaped or favor obtained is as unchristian as it is profoundly immoral.
Dallas Willard
#17. It may be true that there is no God here, but there must be one not far off, and at such a moment one feels His presence; which comes to the same as saying (and I readily give this sincere profession of faith): I believe in God, and that it is His wi
Vincent Van Gogh
#18. In conclusion it may be said that sin may be defined as lack of conformity to the moral law of God, either in act, disposition, or state
Louis Berkhof
#19. Indeed, one of the most frightening consequences of the Holocaust may well be that rather than serving as a warning to preserve humanity at all cost, it has provided a license to privilege physical survival over moral existence.
Omer Bartov
#20. Freedom can reside only in a point of view, a way of looking upon the system of necessity.Surely this is the one freedom that we may attain to: not to be released from physical reality, but to understand reality and ourselves as part of it, and so be reconciled to what we are.
Roger Scruton
#21. I'd never assume an audience was anything but totally receptive and perfect. Seriously, it seems to me that's the only circumstance you can work under. Otherwise, speaking for myself, you may as well be in the advertising business.
Tom Verlaine
#22. It looks as if I were meant to be alone, and that any hope of happiness is not meant. Am I too old to acquire the knack for happiness?
May Sarton
#23. What may appear as the truth to one person will often appear as untruth to another person. But that need not worry the seeker. Where there is honest effort, it will be realized that what appeared to be different truths are like the countless and apparently different leaves of the same tree.
Mahatma Gandhi
#24. It may safely be received as an axiom in our political system, that the state governments will in all possible contingencies afford complete security against invasions of the public liberty by the national authority.
Alexander Hamilton
#25. A country's economic growth may be defined as a long-term rise in capacity to supply increasingly diverse economic goods to its population, this growing capacity based on advancing technology and the institutional and ideological adjustments that it demands.
Simon Kuznets
#26. It will be quite satisfactory if you open them gradually, as the circumstances may require; but the President assures you that this will not be the case if you make a treaty with England first.
Townsend Harris
#27. Has it never occurred to us, when surrounded by sorrows, that they may be sent to us only for our instruction, as we darken the eyes of birds when we wish them to sing?
Jean Paul
#28. Avoid outshining the master. All superiority is odious, but the superiority of a subject over his prince is not only stupid, it is fatal. This is a lesson that the stars in the sky teach us - they may be related to the sun, and just as brilliant, but they never appear in her company.
Baltasar Gracian
#29. I have no wish to be remembered as a painter, for I never was a painter; my idea of that profession was perhaps too exalted; I may say, is too exalted. I leave it to others more worthy to fill the niches of art.
Samuel Morse
#30. Caste may be bad. Caste may lead to conduct so gross as to be called man's inhumanity to man. All the same, it must be recognized that the Hindus observe Caste not because they are inhuman or wrong-headed. They observe Caste because they are deeply religious.
B.R. Ambedkar
#31. Premature as the question may be, it is hardly possible not to wonder whether we will find any answer to our deepest questions, any signs of the workings of an interested God, in a final theory. I think that we will not.
Steven Weinberg
#32. If there is anything more frightening than the threat of global nuclear war, it is the certainty that humans not only stand on the verge of producing new life forms but may soon be able to tinker with them as if they were vintage convertibles or bonsai trees.
Michael Specter
#33. Painful as it may be, a significant emotional event can be the catalyst for choosing a direction that serves us - and those around us - more effectively. Look for the learning.
Louisa May Alcott
#34. I think one of the reasons it ended was that his eyes never lit up for me the way they did for classical music. I realize that in the long run I may not be as wonderful as a Brahms symphony but I think I'm good for a Haydn quintet.
Daniel Handler
#35. social infancy, regarded the legends of their faith as a child reads a fairy tale, credulous of all that is supernatural in the agency--unconscious of all that may be philosophical in the moral. It is true, indeed, that dim
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
#36. There may be such a thing as habitual luck. People who are said to be lucky at cards probably have certain hidden talents for those games in which skill plays a role. It is like hidden parameters in physics, this ability that does not surface and that I like to call "habitual luck".
Stanislaw Ulam
#37. That useful alterations will be suggested by experience, could not but be foreseen ... It moreover equally enables the general and state governments to originate the amendment of errors as they may be pointed out by the experience on one side or on the other.
James Madison
#38. If there be such a distinguishing excellency in divine things, tis rational to suppose that there may be such a thing as seeing it.
Jonathan Edwards
#39. It would seem, therefore, that this constitutional safeguard may no longer serve its original purpose, especially when, as we learned last year, some acts of perjury may now be acceptable - in this world, at least, if not the next.
James L. Buckley
#40. Only people, especially Anglo-Saxons, are so afraid lest joyfulness may somehow be reprehensible that they will never admit it as a lawful and laudable end in itself.
Arnold Bennett
#41. Televisions and radios are locked on government frequencies - it is a serious crime to listen to a foreign broadcast. As a result, North Koreans think that they live in the best country in the world and that, as difficult as their lives may be, everybody else has it much worse.
Barbara Demick
#42. I think ... that philosophy has the duty of pointing out the falsity of outworn religious ideas, however estimable they may be as a form of art. We cannot act as if all religion were poetry while the greater part of it still functions in its ancient guise of illicit science and backward morals ...
Corliss Lamont
#43. According to Democritus, truth lies at the bottom of a well, the water of which serves as a mirror in which objects may be reflected. I have heard, however, that some philosophers, in seeking for truth, to pay homage to her, have seen their own image and adored it instead.
Charles Francis Richter
#44. But as with so may diagnoses it is, in the end, the symptoms that matter, not the cause, because this is what being alive means, this is what being a person means, to be sickened by an illness known as you.
Heidi Julavits
#45. She may have your heart, but that's not the reason I love her," I say. "It's not just a physical connection. It's something deeper. You may be my Blood Mate, but she's my Soul Mate. That's just as powerful.
Elizabeth Richards
#46. I think it was seen as a symptom that the Chinese leadership may be really scared about their economy.Why would you want to depend more on exports if you're a country that has a stated policy of relying less on exports and more on consumer spending, domestic spending?
David Wessel
#47. Credit is a matter so subtle in its essence, that, as it may be obtained almost without reason, so, without reason, may it be made to melt away.
Anthony Trollope
#48. For they are rebellious against You. But let all who take refuge in You be glad, Let them ever sing for joy; And may You shelter them, That those who love Your name may exult in You. For it is You who blesses the righteous man, O LORD, You surround him with favor as with a shield. (Psalm 5)
Charles R. Swindoll
#49. What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks 'the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat,'.... And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I'm writing, I write. And then it's as if the muse is convinced that I'm serious and says, 'Okay. Okay. I'll come.
Maya Angelou
#50. Mr Lincoln suggested that the Lord sent us this terrible war as punishment for the offense of slavery and that the war may be a mighty scourge to rid US of it
Jennifer Chiaverini
#51. Baking may be regarded as a science, but it's the chemistry between the ingredients and the cook that gives desserts life. Baking is done out of love, to share with family and friends, to see them smile.
Anna Olson
#52. The common prejudice that love is as common as "romance" may be due to the fact that we all learned about it first through poetry. But the poets fool us; they are the only ones to whom love is not only a crucial, but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to mistake it for a universal one.
Hannah Arendt
#53. I've been used to consider poetry as the food of love " Mr.Darcy
Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away." Eliza
Jane Austen
#54. I have long seen my spirituality as personal, to the degree that I harbor a slight mistrust for anyone who practices similarly. It is as though they are admitting to have on the same cut and color of underwear I do. It may be true, but I don't like to share these details with strangers.
Thomm Quackenbush
#55. It is manifest that behind the so-called curtain which is supposed to conceal the inner world, there is nothing to be seen unless we go behind it ourselves, as much in order that we may see, as that there may be something behind there which can be seen.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
#56. When you hear the word 'tyranny of magic' as we heard from Elder Caldell, you will know that it is the calling card of killers. Don't be fooled by their platitudes that is for the common good. Their real power is to strip us of our abilities so that they may easily conquer and rule us.
Terry Goodkind
#57. In truth it may be laid down as an almost universal rule that good poets are bad critics.
Thomas B. Macaulay
#58. That there is little hope of international order or lasting peace so long as every country is free to employ whatever measures it thinks desirable in its own immediate interest, however damaging they may be to others, needs little emphasis now.
Friedrich August Von Hayek
#59. From this we may conclude that it behooves nations as well as men to do things at the very moment when they ought to be done.
W.E.B. Du Bois
#60. That author who draws a character, even though to common view incongruous in its parts, as the flying-squirrel, and, at differentperiods, as much at variance with itself as the caterpillar is with the butterfly into which it changes, may yet, in so doing, be not false but faithful to facts.
Herman Melville
#61. Never be afraid to offer a smile; sure the risk is that a few foolish people may misinterpret your kindness as weakness, but the reward in their error be that at least they cannot blame you because you did show your teeth.
Johnnie Dent Jr.
#62. Tell people that biology and the environment cause obesity and they are offered the one thing we have to avoid: an excuse. As it is, people who see more fat people around them may themselves be more likely to gain weight.
Andrew Lansley
#63. They reminded me that Christianity isn't meant to simply be believed; it's meant to be lived, shared, eaten, spoken, and enacted in the presence of other people. They reminded me that, try as I may, I can't be a Christian on my own. I need a community. I need the church.
Rachel Held Evans
#64. It may be taken for granted that, rash as the Americans are, when they are prudent there is good reason for it.
Jules Verne
#65. As a writer, it is my job to tell a story. I don't want to get involved in social commentary; I just want to show issues from a different point of view. I want to show issues from a perspective that may not be highlighted.
Nicola Monaghan
#66. Being web video 'experts'/'pioneers,' whatever you may want to call us, has us always thinking about content that is outside the box, inherently viral in itself and good for web video audiences, as you can't just put out a good piece of content and expect it to be seen.
Benny Fine
#67. Valentines Day is being marketed as a Date Movie. I think its more of a First-Date Movie. If your date likes it, do not date that person again. And if you like it, there may not be a second date.
Roger Ebert
#68. I've been so bothered with my property, that I'm tired of it, and don't mean to save up any more, but give it away as I go along, and then nobody will envy me, or want to steal it, and I shan't be suspecting folks and worrying about my old cash.
Louisa May Alcott
#69. I say that why don't we bring all points of view. Sit around a table and discuss this evidence, and produce evidence as it may be, and let's see what the outcome is, which is why we are having this International panel which we are all talking about.
Thabo Mbeki
#70. Yes, as long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true mission, that it may violate property instead of securing it, 12everybody will be wanting to manufacture law,
Frederic Bastiat
#71. It's my fond hope that social networks such as Facebook will help users broaden their perspectives by listening to a different set of people than they encounter in their daily life. But I fear services such as Facebook may be turning us into imaginary cosmopolitans.
Ethan Zuckerman
#72. An old body when it is loved becomes a sacred treasure; and sex itself must always, it seems to me, come to us as a sacrament and be so used or it is meaningless. The flesh is suffused by the spirit, and it is forgetting this in the act of love-making that creates cynicism and despair.
May Sarton
#73. On the whole it may be observed, that the specific use of a body of unproductive consumers, is to give encouragement to wealth by maintaining such a balance between produce and consumption as will give the greatest exchangeable value to the results of the national industry.
Thomas Malthus
#74. I've realized that no problem is as hopeless as it first may seem, I've learned how to live day to day and show others how to do the same, and most of all, I've learned how to just be.
Jessie Pavelka
#75. It's so quiet out here, only ocean waves crashing around us. It's these moments when I realise that my time with Kiaran is such a fragile thing. At any moment, my human life could end and he'd still be as unchanging as the sea.
Elizabeth May
#76. I don't think the soul is immortal, or at least not immortal in individuals, but it may be immortal as an aspect of the human personality because when I talk about what literature nourishes, it would be silly of me or reductionist to say that it nourishes the brain.
Christopher Hitchens
#77. The awful consciousness that one is the sole object of attention to that immense space, lined as it were with human intellect from top to bottom, and on all side round, may be perhaps be imagined but can not be described.
Sarah Siddons
#78. I propose to put forward an apology for mathematics; and I may be told that it needs none, since there are now few studies more generally recognized, for good reasons or bad, as profitable and praiseworthy.
G.H. Hardy
#79. I had many friends to help me to fall; but as to rising again, I was so much left to myself, that I wonder now I was not always on the ground. I praise God for His mercy; for it was He only Who stretched out His hand to me. May He be blessed for ever! Amen.
Saint Teresa Of Avila
#80. It may be true that there are no atheists in foxholes. But you don't find many Christians there, either. Or, about as many of one as the other.
Edward Abbey
#81. It may be our idealization of interpersonal relationships in the West that causes marriage, supposedly the most intimate tie, to be so unstable. If we did not look to marriage as the principal source of happiness, fewer marriages would end in tears.
Anthony Storr
#82. I believe that in the future meditation could be as commonplace in schools and society as eco-awareness is now. It interests me that an ancient cure may be the solution to a modern problem.
Paul McCartney
#83. It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a Free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it.
George Washington
#84. If we wish that the name Israel be not extinguished, then we are in duty bound
to create something which may serve as a center for our entire people, like the
heart in an organism, from which the blood will stream into all the arteries of
the national body and fill it with life.
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda
#85. Cucumbers are technically a fruit and in the same family as pumpkins, melons and squash, so it may benefit those markets, although, to be honest, giant melons don't strike me as potentially that commercial.
Jasper Fforde
#86. It may be that for a long time some nations will continue to fight each other, but the example of those nations who prefer arbitration to war, law courts to the battlefield, must sooner or later influence the belligerent powers and make war as unpopular as pugilism is now.
Randal Cremer
#87. If someone gives you a piece of advice that sounds right and feels right, use it. If someone gives you a piece of advice that sounds right and feels wrong, don't waste so much as a single second on it. It may be fine for someone else, but not for you.
Etgar Keret
#88. It is to be remedied that the false traitors will suffer no man to come into the king's presence for no cause without bribes where none ought to be had. Any man might have his coming to him to ask him grace or judgment in such case as the king may give.
Jack Cade
#89. It may be remarked in general, that the laugh of men of wit is for the most part but a feint, constrained kind of half-laugh, as such persons are never without some diffidence about them; but that of fools is the most honest, natural, open laugh in the world.
Richard Steele
#90. I was very short when I was little, so I probably had - and there may be a residue of it now - that Napoleon complex. Wanting to be as big and as powerful as the big guys.
Wesley Snipes
#91. People ... need a time to laugh. It's up to us to bonk ourselves on the head and slip on a banana peel so the average guy can say, 'I may be bad, honey, but I'm not as much of an idiot as that guy on the screen.'
Chris Farley
#92. That for which, you are deserving; will come before you effortlessly. Your purity is required. What is required for your purity? [The intent of] 'May no living being in this world be hurt by me'. If anyone hurts you, it happens as per the law [nature's law].
Dada Bhagwan
#93. It may be that no religious reconciliation with the absolute totality of things is possible. Some evils, indeed, are ministerial to higher forms of good; but it may be that there are forms of evil so extreme as to enter into no good system whatsoever ...
William James
#94. You will be the one chosen to reach out to embrace man once again as the heart. So that all will be as it should. 'Fatu-ma-le-ele-ele' You will give your fire so that Man may live. And he will give his heart so that earth may live.
Thus it has been spoken.
Lani Wendt Young
#95. Suffering has as much right to be expressed as a martyr has to cry out. So it may have been false to say that writing poetry after Auschwitz is impossible.
Theodor Adorno
#96. Yes, people do come across the street to say hi, but as they approach and get near, my perception of space begins to dissolve, and a new interest takes over that is primarily emotional, and with it comes a desire to touch, which may be a human interest, but not the interest of my work.
Diego Giacometti
#97. For as laws are necessary that good manners may be preserved, so there is need of good manner that laws may be maintained.
[It., Perche, cosi come i buoni costumi, per mantenersi, hanno bisogno delli leggi; cosi le leggi per ossevarsi, hanno bisogno de' buoni costumi.]
Niccolo Machiavelli
#98. The power of our thoughts may never be measured or appreciated, but it became obvious to me as a young boy that there was value and power in being aware of my thoughts and how I expressed myself.
Robert Kiyosaki
#99. This I know; God cannot sin, because his doing a thing makes it just, and consequently, no sin ... And therefore it is blasphemy to say, God can sin; but to say, that God can so order the world, as a sin may be necessarily caused thereby in a man, I do not see how it is any dishonor to him.
Thomas Hobbes
#100. As I listened, it occurred to me that interest in and affection for the animals that share the planet with us may be a more unifying force than any other.
Nick Clooney
