Top 100 But What If Quotes
#1. And there, in that phrase, the bitterness leaks again out of my pen. What a dull lifeless quality this bitterness is. If I could I would write with love, but if I could write with love I would be another man; I would never have lost love.
Graham Greene
#2. But what use is the unicorn to you if your intellect doesn't believe in it?
Umberto Eco
#3. What I look for in a voice is for it to be unique. I don't really care if a singer sings well. Really, it's about emotion, or being able to sing the lyrics and actually mean it. A lot of singers sing good notes but forget about what words they use.
Zedd
#4. Every white person in this country-and I do not care what he or she says-knows one thing. They may not know, as they put, "what I want",but they know they would not like to be black here.
If they know that, then they know everything they need to know, and whatever else they say is a lie.
James Baldwin
#5. Society tells me to follow my own truth, but I don't let society tell me what to do. If you need someone to tell you that, chances are you're part of the crowd that will move on to the next fashion that comes around.
Criss Jami
#6. We are adept, if occasionally embarrassed, at saying what we make of places - but we are far less good at saying what places make of us ...
Robert Macfarlane
#7. My energy level rises but I get calmer, if that's possible. What a lot of people tend to do is get real tight and get all psyched up and take themselves out of their game.
Joey Harrington
#8. If one doesn't have a character like Abraham Lincoln or Joan of Arc, a diet simply disintegrates into eating exactly what you want to eat, but with a bad conscience.
Maria Augusta Von Trapp
#9. What could he have against love? Sure, it sucked sometimes, but what was the point of living if there wasn't love?
Chani Lynn Feener
#10. God pity the man of science who believes in nothing but what he can prove by scientific methods; for if ever a human being needed divine pity, he does.
J.G. Holland
#11. What should move us to action is human dignity: the inalienable dignity of the oppressed, but also the dignity of each of us. We lose dignity if we tolerate the intolerable.
Dominique De Menil
#12. When you work alone at home, time can become shapeless. There are no eleven o'clock meetings or afternoon coffee breaks. The light outside may clue me in to what part of the day it is, but if all is going well, the hours bleed together.
Isabel Gillies
#13. Lots of people, from what I can see, just want to get into the music business for the glamour of it. But there isn't any, really. It's so up and down this industry, but if you really love it, nothing can stop you.
Eliza Doolittle
#14. I'd always told myself that I deserve good things, that I was worthy, but if I ever believed it. You can't tell yourself anything. Your heart only believes what it feels, and experience is the best teacher.
Penelope Douglas
#15. But, my dear, if you should be caught out in the storm!"
"Why, I don't know but I should like it! What harm could it do? I'm not soluble in water - rain won't melt me away! I think upon the whole I rather prefer being caught in the storm," said Cap, perversely.
E.D.E.N. Southworth
#16. I told you what I wanted from you. If you're refusing, fine. I'll pull out and finish on my own. But you'll be wearing cum on your dress for the rest of the day. Either way those men are going to know you were in here being the dirty little slut that you are. Your choice. Do you understand?
Laurelin Paige
#17. But what was the point, the purpose, of my salvation if it did not permit me to behave with love toward others, no matter how they behaved toward me? What others did was their responsibility, for which they would answer when the judgment trumpet sounded.
James Baldwin
#18. And watch your tongue. I happen to be partial to humans - most, anyway. Clowns, not so much. Those evil bastards never stop smiling."
Niccolo didn't know what these "clowns" were, but he made a mental not to stay away if he ever encountered one. Sounded unpleasant.
Mimi Jean Pamfiloff
#19. Marriage and family are only what we make of them. Without that they're just a nest of hypocrisy. Garbage and empty words. But if there is real love, of the sort one doesn't go around telling everyone about, the sort that is felt and lived ...
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
#20. Authorities say brain cells may shrink, but they don't necessarily die. Frankly, I am cheered by the fact that something is shrinking. I'd be even more thrilled if what was shrinking affected my dress size, but you can't have everything.
Erma Bombeck
#21. If you don't know anything about computers, just remember that they are machines that do exactly what you tell them but often surprise you in the result.
Richard Dawkins
#23. But what do you think, my lady?'
'I think that she must be cruel if she wants to be loved,' Gertrude explained. ' For once a lady succumbs to the man's desire, he rejects her as unworthy of it.'...Was love like a hunger, easily satisfied by feeding? Or did it grow by what it fed on?
Lisa Klein
#24. I may have absolutely no control over what happens to us, but we can control how we respond. If we choose the right attitude, we can rise above whatever challenges we face.
Nick Vujicic
#25. Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves! And without too many regrets, if possible! Those from which the sap has withdrawn. But, good Lord, what beautiful colors!
Andre Gide
#26. In my case, if I start out by thinking about the plot, things don't go well. Small points, such as my impression of what is likely to occur, do come to mind, but I let the rest of the story take its own course. I don't want to spend as long as two years writing a story whose plot I already know.
Haruki Murakami
#27. If you know what you're looking for, that's all you'll get - what's previously known. But when you're open to what's possible, you get something new - that's creativity.
Alan Alda
#28. I wonder what I would find if I could go back and decipher the layers, if it were possible to delve into my past that way, but realize that, even if it were possible, it would be futile.
S.J. Watson
#29. You have no idea what I'd do for you if you'd let me." He runs his thumb over my bottom lip., his touch light, but enough to seize my breath. Enough to triple my heartbeat. "But one day you will.
Kennedy Ryan
#30. And I haven't read a lot of blogs but if someone writes about what they care about I'm sure it's interesting.
Uma Thurman
#31. If I say, 'I forgive you,' I have implicitly said you have done something wrong to me. But what forgiveness is at its heart is both saying that justice has been violated and not letting that violation count against the offender.
Miroslav Volf
#32. I do like to work on a Marvel method, so if I've got the opportunity, and the writer is happy to do it, I like to have a writer detail what happens on a page, but not saying what happens in every scene.
David Lloyd
#33. Suddenly, madness was everywhere, and I was determined to learn about the impact it had on the way society evolves. I've always believed society to be a fundamentally rational thing, but what if it isn't? What if it is built on insanity?
Jon Ronson
#34. What good does it do you to go overseas, to move from city to city? If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you're needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person. Suppose
Seneca.
#35. I was drawn to love songs, but I was just drawn to great music - no matter if it's hip-hop, pop, R&B or whether it's rock n' roll or country. It could be a Garth Brooks song, and if it's a smash, then I'll love the different wordplay and different melodies. That's what I'm a fan of - great music.
Nayvadius Cash
#36. It was an astonishing fantasy but it showed me what even apparently sensible people can believe if they really want to. I
John Cleese
#37. Suppose I could shoot myself in the mouth, but what if I miss? People will laugh at me.
George Carlin
#38. We have all been guilty of complaining, but God does not look at it as lightly as we may think. Complaining was the reason the Jews ended up wandering in the desert for forty years. If we were more grateful for what God has done for us, abasing ourselves would not be a problem.
Monica Johnson
#39. The Bible is to us what the star was to the wise men; but if we spend all our time in gazing upon it, observing its motions, and admiring its splendor, without being led to Christ by it, the use of it will be lost on us.
Thomas Adams
#40. I think we're losing sight of what our ultimate goal is here, said Genevieve. But we feared that if she was washed out, people would look right past the flyer.
Joshua Ferris
#41. I have to save them. They are my world to me. But what if I can't? What if I fail?
Claudia Caren
#42. Not out of right practice comes right thinking, but out of right thinking comes right practice. It matters enormously what you think. If you think falsely, you will act mistakenly; if you think basely, your conduct will suit your thinking.
Annie Besant
#43. I think a lot of what I've done is about people feeling as if they are part of the world but also not part of it at the same time. I don't know whether that's from being a gay kid, but I definitely think that resonates with me.
Greg Berlanti
#44. A lot of people think that kids say the darnedest things. But so would you if you had no education. You'd just be like, I am bike cheese. Because you wouldn't know what words were.
Eugene Mirman
#45. This book I'm reading says if you want to be as thin as a stalk of celery, then that's what you should be eating. I'm not sure I want to look like celery, but I know I don't want to look like a biscuit.
Rebecca Rasmussen
#46. On Earth they've forgotten how to make everything except money. But what good is it, if there's nothing worthwhile left to buy?
James P. Hogan
#47. If we aren't clear on what the Christian gospel is, then what is at stake is not merely a harmless misunderstanding but eternal life and death.
Gloria Furman
#48. I bask in the affection I get on the streets. I recently went into the kitchen of a restaurant to meet the cooks. They were people I didn't know, but what a joy it was meet them! Such experiences wouldn't happen if I were doing only one kind of cinema.
Boman Irani
#49. But I know now that you can't expect anything from anybody. If somebody loves you, it's because he wants to. And it's never because it's what he's supposed to do.
- Pete Cassidy
Cynthia Rylant
#50. Given that there was that era of girl group music and it's still very popular, but I think if you looked at the chart from that time you would see many more men on it. Because the industry, they were catering to young girls. I mean, that's what they thought their audience was.
Lesley Gore
#51. If you cross Fox News Channel, it's not just me, it's Roger Ailes who will go after youThe person gets what's coming to them but never sees it coming. Look at Al Franken, one day he's going to get a knock on his door and life as he's known it will change forever. That day will happen, trust me.
Bill O'Reilly
#52. So if a person produces an object on command, Humboldt wrote, we may admire what he did but we will despise what he is, not a true human being who acts in his own impulses and desires.
Noam Chomsky
#53. I really wanted to make a nonpolitical political film. I wanted something that folks in red states and blue states could look at and not ask if this is the right thing to do to be in this war, but what this war is doing to the fabric of our society.
Paul Haggis
#54. There is your best path, if you can get on it and direct it as best you can. The direction it may take yet is not in your power: but what sort of man walks that path, when you are a man, that you can decide.
C.J. Cherryh
#55. You just have to realize that Jet Li is a movie star. He's great at what he does, but if he stepped into our world he wouldn't last long.
Chuck Liddell
#56. But if we grow stronger...and rise higher than what's pullin' us down...Yes, rise higher than dirt...that fifty pound weight will lift and you'll be free, free without anybody's by-your-leave. Do something to wash out the sin.
Alice Childress
#57. Girls had to believe in anything but their own power, because if girls knew what they could do, imagine what they might.
Robin Wasserman
#58. Love and passion are well and good while they last, but in the end what mattes is whether you like the person you are with. Friendship and companionship matter more. They are the things that last. And if in the end we learn to be friends, I will be content.
Arlene J. Chai
#59. If you tell someone you're divorced they don't even blink, but tell them you've never been married and they wonder what's wrong with you.
Stephanie Bond
#60. He couldn't help but wonder what Hannah might have looked like if ... he'd answered that question April had asked him years ago.
Sandi Layne
#61. If you can't pay the bill, I'll pay it for you."
"Thanks," I said, and turned my head to the side. "But in exchange for what?
Shaye Evans
#62. Growing up, if I hadn't had sports, I don't know where I'd be. God only knows what street corners I'd have been standing on and God only knows what I'd have been doing, but instead I played hockey and went to school and stayed out of trouble.
Bobby Orr
#63. As a director, I have the greatest job in the world, but if I don't push the boundaries, then what's the point of having it?
Casey Neistat
#64. He couldn't change the fact of what he was, nor would he be able to shield Amelia from all the arrows that would be aimed at the wife of a gypsy. But he would be damned if he would let her make her way through a merciless world without him.
Lisa Kleypas
#65. What about this? A colony of nothing but Battle School grads. If they bred true, they'd be the smartest military minds in the galaxy.
Then they'd come home and take over Earth.
OK, not that.
Orson Scott Card
#66. Too goddam many lawyers mixed up in this. Run the sonsobitches out. If they resists shoot 'em, that's what I says to the Governor, but they're all these sonsobitches a lawyers fussin' everythin' up all the time with warrants and habeas corpus and longwinded rigmarole. My ass to habeas corpus.
John Dos Passos
#67. But throughout my life I have rarely if ever achieved what I wanted by tackling it in a logical fashion.
Gerald Durrell
#68. But if the Dream Kings were mine, what would I have to dream about? If I possessed the impossible landscapes, what would remain of the impossible?
Fernando Pessoa
#69. Whatever necessities you require, work to get them. If you fail to get something, then smile and try again in a different way. If you succeed, then enjoy what you get, but without attachment.
William Hart
#70. If we have no idea what we believe in, we'll go along with anything. Truth takes courage. Courage to stand up for what we believe in. Not necessarily in a confrontational way, but in a gentle yet firm way. Like an oak tree, able to sway gently in the wind, but strongly rooted to the ground.
A.C. Ping
#71. So darlin' if your wonderin' why I brought you here tonight
I wanna be your husband I want you to be my wife
I ain't got much to give you but what I got means everything
Its my last name
Dierks Bentley
#72. You could have a lot of money at your fingertips, the finest education and intellectual knowledge, but if you are governed by fear none of that will matter. You will remain tied to dead ideas and stale strategies. You will not be able to adapt. You will lose what you have.
Robert Greene
#73. If poetry were nothing but texture, [Dylan] Thomas would be as good as any poet alive. The what of his poems is hardly essential to their success, and the best and most brilliantly written pieces usually say less than the worst.
Randall Jarrell
#74. If I was in Sydney, I love the beach. Even though I'm incredibly pale, I put on these terribly long unattractive rashies, and people laugh at me. My kids laugh at me. But that's what I would do.
Nicole Kidman
#75. It's not always the case that things will fall into your lap or that life will be great, but it's all about perspective and having a positive outlook. If something goes wrong you say: "That happened for a reason, what can I learn from that and how can I grow?"
Chris Pine
#76. But if science cannot answer some ultimate question, what makes anybody think that religion can?
Richard Dawkins
#77. Why pray if we cannot change God? ... is that why we pray? To change omniscient Love? Isn't it rather to learn what it is and to fulfill it? Not to change it by our acts, but to change our acts by it.
Peter Kreeft
#78. How to achieve such anomalies, such alterations and re-fashionings of reality so what comes out of it are lies, if you like, but lies that are more than literal truth.
Vincent Van Gogh
#79. I might see a pretty woman, but even if I do, I'm not doin' my job if you don't know down to your gut there's nothin' I see that's as beautiful as what I see in you.
Kristen Ashley
#80. I'd always need a creative outlet. But sometimes, I do fantasize what my life would be like if I weren't famous.
Jodie Foster
#81. I'm very honored and thankful if someone says something nice about my playing, but in general I'm very critical of what I do.
Billy Sheehan
#82. I'm designing what I want. If it's a man's coat with a pair of skinny-leg jeans, I'll do that. It's whatever my mood is. But it's about style, and it's about an understated taste that's cool.
Ralph Lauren
#83. Clary: So, do you mind if I ask something? Its personal but important.
Simon: What is it?
Clary: With the whole Mark of Cain thing, does that mean that if I accidently kick you during the nightm I get kicked in the shins seven times by an invisible force?
Simon: Just go to sleep, Fray.
Cassandra Clare
#84. No, I don't want to hear it. You've broken me for the second time, and believe me, Erik Titov, I won't let you do it again. The only thing we need to discuss is our son, and I hope that you know what you are doing. I've let you hurt me, but you won't hurt Dimitri. So go, if you are going.
Toni Aleo
#85. I think Starbucks created a platform and, ultimately, a runway for many other companies to emulate. I suspect if we had not achieved what we have, there would have been many regional brands that would have succeeded. But I'm not sure there would have been a national brand of the scope of Starbucks.
Howard Schultz
#86. I heard once that real love doesn't ask what is in it for me; it just gives unconditionally. It just tries to take the weight out of somebody else's pack, lessen his load, and if it gets reciprocated, that's great, but that isn't what you did it for.
Donald Miller
#87. You guys think if I don't hear bad things, then they won't exist anymore. But you know what? They still do exist, and I do end up hearing them. And I wish to God that I could have heard them from the people I love first
Richelle Mead
#88. There are a lot of food Nazis in the U.S., but I believe if you can show people what's really important, they'll judge the rest for themselves.
Mehmet Oz
#89. I'm not a "what if." I want to just do it, try it, give it my all, and if it's not meant to be, I can accept that. But I had to do it.
Debbi Fields
#90. A great door opened by God for work, but while I'm doing the work, all Hell breaks loose. Oh! The idea that when God opens a door and He's with you, you don't have to fight. Oh, what a joke. That is a joke. In fact, if you don't feel the devil fighting against you, that's a bad sign.
Jim Cymbala
#91. I wasn't good at this dating business. If that's what we were doing. I wasn't very good at predating either. I'd say I wasn't good at postdating, but I hadn't yet had an opportunity to prove it.
Cassandra Page
#92. You can be surrounded by people all the time, but you feel so alone. I think that's when you can lose perspective and lose control of what you're doing. It's almost as if you have no fear and you don't really care about what happens to yourself.
Ladyhawke
#93. Differences are scarier now. The dollar isn't so guaranteed if you don't follow what they see as the norm. But I don't moan about it. I just keep working.
Marlee Matlin
#94. I am often asked what I would be doing if I hadn't become a writer. I have long said I would probably be a chef or a garden designer or a decorator, but since recording my own books, there is no doubt in my mind that if the writing doesn't work out, voice work is what I would choose.
Jane Green
#95. I don't know if it's animalistic or what, but men become like peacocks with their feathers up when women are around.
Bradley Cooper
#96. People always tell me I'm going to regret not having kids. But what if I have one and then I regret having it? Has anyone thought of that option?
Karl Pilkington
#97. It is we ourselves that we have to think about, no one else. That is the way the saints worked. They paid attention to what they were doing, and if others were attracted to them by their enterprise, why, well and good. But they looked to themselves first of all.
Dorothy Day
#98. If you were a pure bolt of fire-cutting the skies I'd touch you-risking my life-not because I'm brave or strong, but because I'm fascinated by what the outcome would be.
Nikki Giovanni
#99. If falsehood, like truth, had but one face, we would be more on equal terms. For we would consider the contrary of what the liar said to be certain. But the opposite of truth has a hundred thousand faces and an infinite field.
Michel De Montaigne
#100. If we see a sad rain, it doesn't mean the rain is sad, but it means we see it. That's an easily dismissible kind of projection. But what I'm struggling to say, is that we take that rain in through our own hearts and emotions and senses and skin, and all those filters have an impact.
Karen Joy Fowler
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