Top 100 Could The Quotes
#1. Erik maintained his ignorance in any and every matter he came across, and even improved upon it when he could. The
Steven Brust
#2. Yet how could the Empire possibly have kept itself stable, using such crude creatures as humans?
Gregory Benford
#3. Why, could the good man not impose his will, control his wife? asked Mrs. Carew, who always made much of masculine authority in her talk with friends but ruled the roost at home.
Leonard Tourney
#4. Muse of poetry, come to his aid, I thought. Could the man produce one more metaphor of husbandry? He seemed to be trying.
"Green wood," I suggested, but even he sensed that there was something unfortunate about a metaphor for a king in which you dry out your royalty before you set fire to it.
Megan Whalen Turner
#5. Human evolution, at first, seems extraordinary. How could the process that gave rise to slugs and oak trees and fish produce a creature that can fly to the moon and invent the Internet and cross the ocean in boats?
Steven Pinker
#7. I don't think the Bonzo Dog could have evolved in America, nor could the old Nice: because of their musical discipline. This is one thing that British groups do have, a sort of discipline. Sometimes it can get a bit soulless, but on the whole I think it's preferable to the American alternative.
Jon Lord
#8. How could the war have any semblance of reality when you found yourself sitting under a plane tree in a playground, in the provincial calm of an early afternoon?
Patrick Modiano
#9. Making art has first of all to do with honesty. My first lesson was to see objectively, to erase all meaning of the thing seen. Then only could the real meaning of it be understood and felt.
Ellsworth Kelly
#10. Some good came of Eureka. More good could come of it. Could the game help me? Could it help anyone?
Scott Kelly
#11. Where else but in America could the women's liberation movement take off their bras, then go on TV to complain about their lack of support?
Bob Hope
#12. Whether I'm unduly sensitive to this pain because I'm a princess - could the whole world be the pea under my mattress? - I don't know, but because I'm a princess, I might be able to do something to help lessen humanity's pain.
Tom Robbins
#13. Reflective of the deep sense of gratitude and respect Mongolians reserved for wolves, there was a belief that only through wolves could the spirit of a deceased human be set free to go to Heaven.
Tim Cope
#14. It mattered not that no one else would bear that moment witness nor remember it, for if the future could not know them, neither could the past confine them, and the choice was always theirs to make, the tale their own to finish,
Susanna Kearsley
#15. I was worried people would laugh at me when I started to talk the language, but they were just pleasantly surprised that I could. The sense of humour here is great - once I could have a giggle, I settled down.
Parminder Nagra
#16. I simply was not able to risk wrecking her world, and I could see no possible way I could move the whole kingdom. So I left her with the only thing I could - the certainty of a little more time.
Mary Oliver
#17. Well, you can't improvise story, which is a fact. If you could, the budget would be insane.
Adam Pally
#18. He put his ear to his own chest and listened to the heart. How could the pulse go on, beat after beat, for all of life? No machine could run that long without a stumble. Ask not if the beating cranks are going to jam, but when.
Giulio Tononi
#19. I have no choice but to believe that all our lives are woven through with grace, because only then could the promise made to me and Stormy come true.
Dean Koontz
#20. Having chosen this foolishness, I was a free being. How could the world ever stop me, how could I betray myself, if I was not afraid?
Annie Dillard
#21. I know you're not like that anymore, Kane. While I don't approve of the person you used to be, I can't change the past. Lord knows I would if I could. The only thing to do is move forward, and if you want, I would love for you to do so with me.
Amanda Stone
#22. Could the best and kindest of us who depart from the earth have an opportunity of revisiting it, I suppose he or she (assuming that any Vanity Fair feelings subsist in the sphere whither we are bound) would have a pang of mortification at finding how soon our survivors were consoled.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#23. What could the Lord Jesus Christ have done for you more than he has? Then do not abuse his mercy, but let your time be spent in thinking and talking of the love of Jesus, who was incarnate for us, who was born of a woman, and made under the law, to redeem us from the wrath to come.
George Whitefield
#24. I wonder that all things seem to be from hell these days: dates, jobs, parties, weather ... Could the situation be that we no longer believe in that particular place? Or maybe we were all promised heaving in our lifetimes, and what we ended up with can't hep but suffer in comparison.
Douglas Coupland
#25. Could we dig up this long-buried treasure, Were it worth the pleasure, We never could learn love's song, We are parted too long. Could the passionate past that is fled Call back its dead, Could we live it all over again, Were it worth the pain!
Oscar Wilde
#26. The information in DNA could no more be reduced to the chemical than could the ideas in a book be reduced to the ink and paper: something beyond physics and chemistry encoded DNA.
Michael Polanyi
#27. Power, power, power: how could the world be organized around the struggle for a thing so lonely and oppressive in the having of it?
Jonathan Franzen
#28. We who must die demand a miracle.
How could the Eternal do a temporal act,
The Infinite become a finite fact?
Nothing can save us that is possible:
We who must die demand a miracle.
W. H. Auden
#29. Her father was the face of her morning and night, he was everything, so saturating Havaa's world that she could no more describe him than she could the air.
Anthony Marra
#30. The vital straining towards an ideal, definite but latent, when it dominates a whole life, may express that ideal more fully than could the best chosen words.
George Santayana
#31. When I was growing up - say in the fifties - the thirties to me didn't even exist. I couldn't even imagine them in any kind of way, so I don't expect anyone growing up now is gonna even understand what the sixties were all about, anymore than I could the thirties or twenties.
Bob Dylan
#32. For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power?
James Madison
#33. Success is doing everything you could the right way and saying man, I did the best I could - that's success.
Aries Merritt
#34. Only with the tools of production in their own hands could the workers ever hope to control their own lives and receive the fruits of their labor.
Ella R. Bloor
#35. If boys were always trying to get in girls' pants, what did they want? What could the girls give them? Pee it seemed to me was an appropriate gift.
Eileen Myles
#36. The village of Wall watched the battle of wills with fascination, wondering what the outcome would be, for no one crossed Bridget Forester: she had a tongue that could, the villagers said, blister the paint from a barn door and tear the bark from an oak.
Neil Gaiman
#37. But what of the seemingly more fanciful idea that the internet might one day "wake up"? Could the internet become something more than just the backbone of a loosely integrated collective superintelligence - something more like a virtual skull housing an emerging unified super-intellect? (This
Nick Bostrom
#38. The parents were too American, too aware of the rights granted them by their Constitution to accept injustices meekly. They could not be bulldozed and exploited as could the immigrants and the second-generation Americans.
Betty Smith
#39. Man's principle trait is a readiness to believe anything. Otherwise, how could the Church have survived for almost two thousand years in the absense of universal gullibility?
Umberto Eco
#40. Could the situation be that we no longer believe in that particular place? Or maybe we were all promised Heaven in our lifetimes, and what we ended up with can't help but suffer in comparison.
Douglas Coupland
#42. The smell of books soothed his soul like nothing else could. The store was his haven, his refuge, and most importantly, it was safe. Here he could go anywhere in the world, explore the seas, scale mountains, travel through time and space or fall in love.
Sheri Lyn
#43. Houses" - so the Wise Men tell me
"Mansions"! Mansions must be warm!
Mansions cannot let the tears in,
Mansions must exclude the storm!
"Many Mansions," by "his Father,"
I don't know him; snugly built!
Could the Children find the way there
Some, would even trudge tonight!
Emily Dickinson
#44. I had a student ask me, "Could the savior you believe in save Osama bin Laden?" Of course, we know the blood of Jesus Christ can save him, and then he must be executed.
Jerry Falwell
#45. Coffin,why no lid? Too antiseptic for Hell, and could the roof of heaven really be made of gray metal?
Andrew Davidson
#46. If you use Hollywood as the test tissue for mankind, what could the prognosis be?
Pauline Kael
#47. How could the whole world not be as broken as I was?
Robin Hobb
#48. Could the one whom Christians worship be merely a mythological creation, or is he real? These questions have exercised many great minds and have been the dominant issue in New Testament studies during this century.
John Clayton
#49. Better could the stem of a rose support a marble bust than the mind of man bear the false infinity of his own deification.
Fulton J. Sheen
#50. But the Good Book said a lot of things. Like 'love thy neighbor' and ' do unto others as you would have them do unto you'. If nothing else, wasn't the message of the Good Book to live and let live? So how could the Crosses call themselves 'God's chosen' and still treat us the way they did?
Malorie Blackman
#51. Could an enemy really curse someone? Could the enemy affect reality by the deliberate mental intent of harming?
M.J. Mandoki
#52. Our schools kept from us, for as long as they could, the dangerous, disruptive, upsetting knowledge of our own female nature.
Hilary Mantel
#53. I just wanted to see every single musical I could. The very first one I saw was 'Beauty and the Beast,' the only one I could get tickets for, and then 'Les Miserables' and then 'Chicago.'
America Ferrera
#54. Virtually any pointed edifice is considered a candidate for alien engineering. After all, how could the Egyptians or Mayans have possibly stacked up stone blocks into pyramids?
Seth Shostak
#55. They say every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it?
By forgetting. We cannot keep in mind too many things. There is only the present and nothing to remember.
Jeanette Winterson
#56. There were more police than Fascists. From inside one of the buses, a uniformed constable gave him the Hitler salute. Lloyd was dismayed. If all these policemen sided with the Fascists, how could the counterdemonstrators resist them?
Ken Follett
#57. How could the Law of Retribution function properly when one party in a dispute was so wealthy and so powerful as to be virtually untouchable?
Reza Aslan
#58. This knowledge I pursure is the finest pleasure I have ever known. I could no sooner give it up that I could the very air that I breath.
Paolo Uccello
#59. Akela, the great gray Lone Wolf, who led all the Pack by strength and cunning, lay out at full length on his rock, and below him sat forty or more wolves of every size and color, from badger-colored veterans who could handle a buck alone to young black three-year-olds who thought they could. The
Rudyard Kipling
#60. How could the human heart hold within its chambers at the same moment such grand measures of nobility and baseness? He wrote in his notebook: Indians at Omaha station: I am ashamed for this thing we call civilization.
Nancy Horan
#61. It would of course be a great step forward if we succeeded in combining the gravitational field and the electromagnetic field into a single structure. Only so could the era in theoretical physics inaugurated by Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell be brought to a satisfactory close.
Albert Einstein
#62. Guys would take runs at me even if I didn't have the puck. [On one occasion] my coach told me that the other team were told to hit number 21 as hard as they could the first period, so we switched jerseys.
Cammi Granato
#63. While it's true a small treat won't blow your budget, indulging every day could - the same way a slice of cake probably won't hurt but, if you make it a daily habit, you may have trouble fitting in your pants.
Jean Chatzky
#64. There was an ancient Roman lawyer, of great fame in the history of Roman jurisprudence, whom they called Cui Bono, from his having first introduced into judicial proceedings the argument, What end or object could the party have had in the act with which he is accused.
Edmund Burke
#65. Could the toilet be showing the future?
Royal
#66. Oh, please, could the cohesive-thought fairies land on her with some inspiration? She sounded like an idiot.
Anna J. Stewart
#67. How could the eagle-eyed politicians of The Hague, who specialized in pointing out the tiniest specks in other people's eyes, overlook someone riding a racist coach in their own neighborhood?
Dauglas Dauglas
#68. Hoisting my brick, I aimed at the white werewolf's head and threw as hard as I could. The brick collided with the wolf's skull and then bounced to the ground. It let go of Kyle and barked out a surprised yelp just as I realized my plan didn't have a step two.
Kathleen Peacock
#69. We want to develop the nation
We want to develop the state
We want to develop the society,
But very few of us wants let the
neighbor grow.
Then how could the world will grow.
Jovieal James
#70. If the pretties were expected to make the supreme sacrifice in order to 'belong,' what could the unattractive female do?
Maya Angelou
#71. Why did death make life taste so much sweeter? Why could the heart love only what it could also lose?
Cornelia Funke
#72. What could the old man say about all those people born with more courage than they could find a way to spend, and then there was nothing to do with it but just get by? And that was when the times were decent.
Marilynne Robinson
#73. They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it?
Jeanette Winterson
#74. Didn't the sky know the world was falling apart? How could the sun shine today?
Kiera Cass
#75. Ultimately, all human activities have as their goal the realization of happiness. Why, then, have we ended up producing the opposite result? Could the underlying cause be our failure to correctly understand the true nature of happiness?
Daisaku Ikeda
#76. Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.
William James
#77. Women not only get violated, but then we take on the struggle to end it too ... As a man, how could the destruction of women be anything to you but devastating? Think about the fact that the women being hurt are your mothers, daughters, sisters.
Eve Ensler
#79. No, I don't know why Bobby and Peter Farrelly bothered with a 'Three Stooges' movie, either. But if they're anything like some men I know, their love for Moe, Larry, and Curly (and an assortment of fourth bananas) is deep, abiding, and unembarrassable. In other words: How could the Farrellys not?
Wesley Morris
#80. Could the straggling thoughts of individuals be collected, they would frequently form materials for wise and able men to improve into useful matter.
Thomas Paine
#81. Something clicked in my brain. "I remember where I've seen you before. You're Curran's ... " - lover, mistress, honey-bunny - "significant other." Dear God, what could the Beast Lord's concubine possibly want from me?
Ilona Andrews
#82. Instead of the birds of the sky and beast of the field, the gods were more than men because Man needed them to be, for what could the world be if Man were the best of all creatures?
Thomm Quackenbush
#83. Could we live it over again, Were it worth the pain, Could the passionate past that is fled Call back its dead!
Oscar Wilde
#84. I think the wonderment of seeing my two sons developing makes me incredibly optimistic about human potential. It makes you think: 'My goodness. It's a miracle that's going on here. What could the human race do together?'
David Miliband
#85. How could the child bear not just the hunger, but the boredom? The rest of humankind used meals to divide the day, Lib realized - as a reward, as entertainment, the chiming of an inner clock. For Anna, during this watch, each day had to pass like one endless moment.
Emma Donoghue
#86. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end ... because how could the end be happy?
J.R.R. Tolkien
#87. Could the two people who are making out please be quiet?" the Colonel asked loudly from his sleeping bag. "Those of us who are not making out are drunk and tired.
John Green
#88. If there is hope, wrote Winston, it lies in the proles. If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, 85 per cent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated.
George Orwell
#89. How could the apartment have seemed so permanent and solid-looking when it was only a stage set, waiting to be struck and carried away by movers in uniform?
Donna Tartt
#90. But what is the past? Could it be, the firmness of the past is just illusion? Could the past be a kaleidoscope, a pattern of images that shift with each disturbance of a sudden breeze, a laugh, a thought? And if the shift is everywhere, how would we know?
Alan Lightman
#91. I looked over at Edwart. It occurred to me that I had never seen him in direct sunlight. Interestingly enough, I had also never seen him sparkle. Could the two be related?
The Harvard Lampoon
#92. How could the death of someone you had never met affect you so?
Robert Galbraith
#93. They looked neither older nor younger now; the beards of the aged were no whiter, nor could the creeping babe of yesterday walk on his feet today ...
Nathaniel Hawthorne
#94. Only in California could the night air be lit not by fireflies, but radioactive porn star cumshots.
C.Z. Hazard
#95. A powerful tool in the early stages of developing scenarios is to pretend the interface is magic. If your persona has goals and the product has magical powers to meet them, how simple could the interaction be? This kind of thinking is useful to help designers look outside the box.
Alan Cooper
#96. Could the garment and appliance industries be in cahoots together, creating an artificial sock demand to keep us buying?
Tom Bodett
#97. Can this be true? This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?" And
Elie Wiesel
#98. (...) I ducked once underwater and holding my breath until movement was an agony, blundered painfully ahead, under the surface, for as long as I could. The water was in a tumult about me.
H.G.Wells
#100. Cheetah bit me whenever he could. The [Tarzan movie] apes were all homosexuals, eager to wrap their paws around Johnny Weismuller's thighs. They were jealous of me, and I loathed them.
Maureen O'Sullivan
