Been But Quotes

#1. To weep not for the way things had once been but for the way things had been supposed to go and did not. People believed that they were haunted by bad memories, but that wasn't the truth. The most sinister hauntings were from unrealized futures.

Michael Koryta

#2. I have been called many things in my life, but if there has been but one constant, one barb, one arrow flung my way time after time, it is the accusation that I am, in essence, nothing more than an escapist. Apparently this is bad, suspect, possibly even un-American.

J. Maarten Troost

#3. When she transformed into a butterfly, the caterpillars spoke not of her beauty, but of her weirdness. They wanted her to change back into what she always had been. But she had wings.

Dean Jackson

#4. I always find the greatest help I receive is from people who have been where I have been, but now they're no longer there.

John C. Maxwell

#5. The hardest bit about losing people you loved wasn't thinking about the memories you had, the ones that had already been made. No. The hardest bit was the stuff that should have been, but had now been denied.

Matt Haig

#6. I do not know when it was, nor where it was, nor how young I may have been, but I can recall ... a sudden feeling of happiness at hearing the voice of the pines.

Frank Bolles

#7. In history there are no control groups. There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was.

Cormac McCarthy

#8. The broom wasn't as comforting as a flamethrower would have been, but it was better than a mop and certainly more threatening than a feather duster.

Dean Koontz

#9. I have to admit I didn't do as much as I should have back when I was mayor, but now we're getting it done. It's not where you've been but where you're going.

Marion Barry

#10. It's really hard for me to remember all of the places that I've been but I can remember all of the delicious meals that I've ever eaten. I love traveling by way or stomach ... and finding quiet time.

Sarah Kay

#11. He just wanted to see it. From afar. To see what might have been, what he was glad hadn't been. But maybe should have been.

Julia Quinn

#12. I brought pictures to the inn, to show you who I'd been, but I saw at once my mistake, the hurt in your eyes, and you said, It hurts that I wasn't with you.

Anita Shreve

#13. We know it matters not what we have been but this and always this: what we shall be.

Angelina Grimke

#14. Maybe part of passing that test was a marker for where I've been, but it feels more like a pointer for something I'll never reach

Nancy E. Turner

#15. His eyesight wasn't as keen as it had been, but he knew a changing mind when he saw it.

Bebe Moore Campbell

#16. I'm so in control of my life, you shouldn't dislike anything I do-because I'm not only in the best place I've ever been, but it keeps getting better and better.

Drew Barrymore

#17. Her knees began to shake, not because he was beautiful, which he had always been, but because coming into this room with him here waiting for her ... it was like coming home.

Jess Michaels

#18. Your past is not as important as your future. Did you know that? Can't change anything about what you've been, but you can change who you'll become.

Siri Mitchell

#19. Liverpool really ever since I can remember, but anyway in the '50s and '60s was always a place where people were potentially in show business, knew someone who was, would like to be, had been but were now doing something else and there was a general recreational feeling in the air at all times.

Derek Taylor

#20. Tom counted the pages of the sermon; after church he always knew how many pages there had been, but he seldom knew anything else about the discourse.

Mark Twain

#21. Ah! The transitory joy of the past week had been but the lightning's arrowy course scathing where it illumined!

E.D.E.N. Southworth

#22. He left not knowing where he was going, he got there not knowing where he was, and he came back not knowing where he had been. But history books will point out Columbus as the person who made the Americas available for exploitation. I guess I can make the same kind of ridiculous claim.

Herschell Gordon Lewis

#23. It's true that Blake was emotionally disturbed - always has been - but he doesn't have murder in his heart. If he was going to do any damage to anything or anyone, it would be to himself.

Tommy Bond

#24. He knew that these creatures were dead, that they were reanimated echoes who wore the disguise of the people they had once been, but Tom's words rang in his mind. They used to be people. How could he strike them? How could he hurt them? Children, women, old people. Lost souls.

Jonathan Maberry

#25. Suddenly she realized that what she was regretting was not the lost past but the lost future, not what had not been but what would never be.

F Scott Fitzgerald

#26. Money. You don't know where it's been, but you put it where your mouth is. And it talks!

Dana Gioia

#27. [DELETE this quote]
we can spend our lives talking about what could of been; but that takes the time of working on what we could be

Darrius Garrett

#28. I'm busier than I've ever been, but you can go through the lists of people who are bang up there one minute, and then just disappear.

Chris Hemsworth

#29. Wars have ever been but another aristocratic mode of plundering and oppressing commerce.

Richard Cobden

#30. A whore Ailean may have been, but a loving, caring whore who adored his offspring and mate.

G.A. Aiken

#31. Because you never know where life is gonna take you, And you can't change where you've been, But today, I have the opportunity to choose ...

India.Arie

#32. We can never know what might have been but what is to come is another matter entirely

C.S. Lewis

#33. I'm a wet liberal really, and always have been. But I'm sort of an aggressive wet liberal.

Max Hastings

#34. it matters not what we have been but this an always this: what we shall be.

Angelina Weld Grimke

#35. She was keeping her head for a reason, for a cause; and the labour of this detachment, with the labour of her forcing the pitch of it down, held them together in the steel hoop of an intimacy compared with which artless passion would have been but a beating of the air. Her

Henry James

#36. Democratic nations care but little for what has been, but they are haunted by visions of what will be.

Alexis De Tocqueville

#37. If there is a heaven, it should be like all the places you love or the places you've never been but wish you'd visited while you were still alive." -Giselle

Edwidge Danticat

#38. I don't entirely approve of some of the things I have done, or am, or have been. But I'm me. God knows, I'm me.

Elizabeth Taylor

#39. Every so often we long to steal to the land of what-might-have-been. But that doesn't soften the ache we feel when reality sets back in.

Stephen Schwartz

#40. I'm not good at this. I never have been. But, there's something about you that makes me just want to forget about everything else and only focus on you. No one has ever made me feel like that

Bernadette Marie

#41. When the drama of history is over, Jesus Christ will stand alone on the stage. All the great figures of history ... will realize that they have been but actors in a drama produced by another.

Helmut Thielicke

#42. After Leaving Las Vegas I did assume that things would get a lot easier than they've been. But it's just been a mirror of the way my career's been from the beginning, so for it to have changed would have been strange. My career has never been perfect.

Elisabeth Shue

#43. I am the very slave of circumstance And impulse borne away with every breath! Misplaced upon the throne misplaced in life. I know not what I could have been, but feel I am not what I should be let it end.

Lord Byron

#44. In order to see where we are going, we not only must remember where we have been, but we must understand where we have been.

Ella Baker

#45. Dreams? If only they had been! But I don't need dreams, Doctor, that's why I hardly have them - because I have this life instead. With me it all happens in broad daylight!

Philip Roth

#46. I would love my older self to not be in the story of how it should have been, but to live in deep acceptance of how it is.

Boyd Varty

#47. I'd rather be a 'could-be' if I cannot be an 'are' because a 'could-be' is a 'maybe' who is reaching for a star. I'd rather be a 'has-been' than a 'might-have-been' by far; for a 'might-have-been' has never been, but a 'has' was once an 'are.

Milton Berle

#48. For the one that loved, the nightmare, it was simple. It never had been, but was all in their mind.

Jennifer Megan Varnadore

#49. I'm not a follower. I never have been. But I'll definitely become someone I'm not for a few hours if it'll make me blend in rather than make me a blatant eye sore and draw attention.

J.A. Redmerski

#50. Life is not fair, nor has it ever been, but the morning seems determined to dawn until it is.

Robert Breault

#51. We're not on a sustainable path in civilization. We're on an exponential growth curve, on which we perhaps always have been, but it has turned up sharply at the beginning of the 20th century.

Edgar Mitchell

#52. I can't say I forgive her for refusing to indulge the perhapsness of what we might have been, but I understand why she chose to do it, and she never asked for my forgiveness.

Robyn Schneider

#53. It is, she considered gravely, a terribly dangerous world. She supposed it always had been, but she was only now really experiencing it.

S.D. Smith

#54. Take it all off. I don't intend to fuck somebody in his underwear. And you have to use a condom. I know where I've been, but I don't know where you've been. - Lisbeth Salander

Stieg Larsson

#55. I was no chief and never had been, but because I had been more deeply wronged than others, this honor was conferred upon me, and I resolved to prove worthy of the trust.

Geronimo

#56. Churches come and go, but there has ever been but one religion. The only religion is conscience in action.

Henry Demarest Lloyd

#57. There's a certain grace in accepting what your life is and embracing all the good things that have been - but there's still an expectation of good things to come. Not necessarily what you expected.

Emmylou Harris

#58. Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we have been, but what we yearn to be.

Jose Ortega Y Gasset

#59. Your head sits on a neck that turns to let you see where you've been. But, your eyes point the same direction as your feet for a reason; keep moving forward.

D. Denise Dianaty

#60. And so I sat in the centre of this old city that I loved, which itself sat at the bottom of a tiny island. I was surrounded by people I loved, and I felt happy and miserable at the same time. I thought of what a mess everything had been, but that it wouldn't always be this way.

Hanif Kureishi

#61. I don't want to sound too bleeding heart, because I know how lucky I've been, but I never knew how hard it was to be the lead in a television show.

Jessica Raine

#62. It was not his habit to dwell on what could have been, but what could never be.

Alan Paton

#63. The poet may say or sing, not as things were, but as they ought to have been; but the historian must pen them, not as they ought to have been, but as they really were.

Miguel De Cervantes

#64. There has never been but one question in all civilization-how to keep a few men from saying to many men: You work and earn bread and we will eat it.

Abraham Lincoln

#65. I know there's evil in the world, and there always has been. But you don't need to believe in Satan or demons to explain it. Human beings are perfectly capable of evil all by themselves.

Tess Gerritsen

#66. About that mystifying enthusiasm a million years ago for turning over as many human activities as possible to machinery: What could that have been but yet another acknowledgment by people that their brains were no damn good?

Kurt Vonnegut

#67. What has been has been but what will be is what we make of it.

Kristen Ashley

#68. Emotions are lovely. Even if they fall to the negative for a time. The sun will rise again another day. The sadness perhaps never forgotten, but a new day enjoyed in another way. A way that could not have been but for the sadness's existence.

Anne Mallory

#69. User experience is everything. It always has been, but it's undervalued and underinvested in. If you don't know user-centered design, study it. Hire people who know it. Obsess over it. Live and breathe it. Get your whole company on board.

Evan Williams

#70. 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

#71. The water moves on, a little faster than before, yet still the great river flows. It is as fluid and unpredictable in its moods as it has ever been, but it meanders within familiar banks.

William Dalrymple

#72. And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.

Kurt Vonnegut

#73. Most people's major life regrets are not about the things they've done, but about the things they've not done, the goals they never reached, the type of lover or friend or parent they wished they'd been but know they failed to be.

Thom Hartmann

#74. There are a lot of reasons why everyone in the known universe has a boyfriend except for me. I can list the top five on command, just in case anyone's ever interested. No one ever has been, but that's no reason not to be prepared.

J.J. Howard

#75. We Americans are as great as we have ever been. But our government is broken.

Marco Rubio

#76. Maybe our telling of the story wasn't as clear as it should have been, but I don't think that's true. In terms of understanding the story, it comes across.

Joel Coen

#77. He who has had, has been, but he who hasn't been, has been had.

Stanislaw Lem

#78. Yes, the United States is still the great meritocracy it's always been; but now, if you aren't brilliant or beautiful or both, there isn't much to do, because they can do it cheaper in Shanghai or Mumbai.

Elizabeth Wurtzel

#79. God knows we're all drawn toward what's beautiful and broken; I have been, but some people cannot be fixed. Or if they can be, it's only by love and sacrifice so great it destroys the giver.

Cassandra Clare

#80. Sure, scars can be painfull to look at, reminding you where you've been, but they also remind you of how far you've come.

GirlDrawsManga

#81. I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial ... I thought I knew a good deal about it all, I was sure I should not fail.

Winston S. Churchill

#82. One would think that it would be very easy, with an iconic character like James Bond, to keep making the films, but it hasn't been. But, it sure has been entertaining and rewarding.

Barbara Broccoli

#83. The religion of the God who became man has met the religion (for such it is) of man who makes himself God. And what happened? Was there a clash, a battle, a condemnation? There could have been, but there was none

Pope Paul VI

#84. It was a tragedy. A horrible tragedy. You can't imagine the physical pain and despair I went through. I'm a better man than I would have been, but I would have eagerly chosen a less agonizing route to my good fortune,

Chris Knopf

#85. I've definitely had obstacles in my career - my whole entire career - to stay a certain weight, to get smaller than I have been, but I look at my family, I look at where I come from and that's not really in our genes.

Raven-Symone

#86. You compose a question and then you just start walking. Concentrate on each step. Don't think too far ahead and don't think about where you have been. But consider closely how one step leads to another. Contemplate connections and links. Immerse yourself in the pattern.

Amanda Quick

#87. He could not change the man he had been, but these hands would make him the man he could be

Alethea Kontis

#88. Whether it goes to series or stands by itself, I'm proud of what we did with it, not only from the standpoint of what it could have been, but for itself.

Yancy Butler

#89. Many heroic exploits and chivalrous adventures are related to me which exist only in the regions of fancy. With me the world has taken great liberties, and yet I have been but a common man.

Daniel Boone

#90. To wed his eldest daughter, Calla, to Aegor. Bitter his steel may have been, but worse was his tongue. He spilled poison in Daemon's ear, and with him came the clamoring of other knights and lords with grievances.

George R R Martin

#91. At that moment, he was meaner and madder than he'd ever been, but mainly at himself, which is the worst kind of mean and mad to be, because the only thing to do about it is to take it out on someone else.

Victoria Forester

#92. As a player leaving early, you always look back and wonder what could have been. But you have to be happy with your decisions, because you ultimately have to live with them.

Gilbert Arenas

#93. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.

Jane Austen

#94. In 2014, having children is complicated and daunting and fraught - as much as it's always been, but now we're talking about it. And the more we talk about it, the more of us will realize that we're not going through it alone. Far from it.

Rachel Sklar

#95. Christopher Columbus was looking for a passage to India, but he landed in America. He landed in the wrong place, and when he got back, he wasn't sure where he'd been. But most important of all, he did it on someone else's money.

Ronald Reagan

#96. History teaches us that there have been but few infringements of personal liberty by the state which have not been justified, as they are here, in the name of righteousness and the public good, and few which have not been directed, as they are now, at politically helpless minorities.

Harlan F. Stone

#97. There are people who'll dismiss me as 'just' a singer. That's how it is, how it's always been, but just because I'm not hunched over a piece of paper with a pen in my hand doesn't mean I'm not putting in the graft.

Joe Cocker

#98. You're a good girl and always have been, but deep down, you think there's more to life than always following the rules, and there's a part of you that craves the unknown.

Nicholas Sparks

#99. All that money stuff was so strange; all it ever meant to me was freedom from worry. I'm happier now than I've ever been but I still wish I had that money.

Dana Plato

#100. Today is nothing but a snapshot of a place I've been, but not the place I'll always be.

Innocent Mwatsikesimbe