
Top 100 It May Not Be Quotes
#1. The most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of room, not try to be or do anything whatever.
May Sarton
#2. Our love is perfect. And even though we may not be, our love creates a bridge that spans over our imperfections and joins us where it matters.
Steve Maraboli
#3. The biggest issue of the twenty-first century is not necessarily the "decline" of neighborhood. It may be that we have all moved to a new neighborhood and have not learned how to get along with the new neighbors.
Diana Butler Bass
#4. The recognition of virtue is not less valuable from the lips of the man who hates it, since truth forces him to acknowledge it; and though he may be unwilling to take it into his inmost soul, he at least decks himself out in its trappings.
Michel De Montaigne
#5. Most mystics do not want to read religious wisdom; they want to be it. A postcard of a beautiful lake is not a beautiful lake, and Sufis may be defined as those who dance in the lake.
Huston Smith
#6. Still anyone who trusts a serpent deserves its bite. The wise see a creature for what it is, not what it says it may be.
Alice Hoffman
#7. Religion is realization; not talk, nor doctrine, nor theories however beautiful they may be. It is being and becoming, not hearing, or acknowledging; it is the whole soul becoming what it believes.
Swami Vivekananda
#8. We may not be able to witness our own eulogy, but we're actually writing it all the time, every day.
Arianna Huffington
#9. I brought you here to tell you this: sometimes what we are searching for does not exist. We may sacrifice for it, even bleed for it, but it was never meant to be ours.
Esther Dalseno
#10. I believe that eclecticism is a virtue. It may not be a word, but its definitely a virtue.
Will Smith
#11. The gold-digger is the enemy of the honest laborer, whatever checks and compensations there may be. It is not enough to tell me that you worked hard to get your gold. So does the Devil work hard. The way of transgressors may be hard in many respects.
Henry David Thoreau
#12. Do I use VORP? I may be using it and not even know it, and if I am, it's nobody's business. There are a lot of different criteria in judging players. I think I use, um, esoteric qualitative mathematical review times five. That's one of them.
Ned Colletti
#13. If I steal money from any person, there may be no harm done from the mere transfer of possession; he may not feel the loss, or it may prevent him from using the money badly. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself dishonest.
William Kingdon Clifford
#14. 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
#15. Victory may now require a level of force deemed objectionable by civilized peoples, meaning that some, for justifiable reasons, may be reluctant to pursue it. But victory has not become an ossified concept altogether.
Victor Davis Hanson
#16. But lest some unlucky event should happen unfavorable to my reputation, I beg it may be remembered by every gentleman in the room that I this day declare with the utmost sincerity, I do not think myself equal to the command I am honored with.
George Washington
#17. Writing is mostly a case of mood management. The emotion you have is not absolute, it is temporary. It may be useful, but it is not the truth. It is not you.
Anne Enright
#18. If people from their own country are killed, they may express surprise, grief, anger, and sympathy. But if ten thousand people are killed in a distant, far-off land, they will not be the slightest bit affected, particularly if it was their own doing.
Hiroshi Yamamoto
#19. Management of outcomes may not be any more than a skill. It does not require knowledge.
W. Edwards Deming
#20. The effectiveness of political and religious propaganda depends upon the methods employed, not upon the doctrines taught. These doctrines may be true or false, wholesome or pernicious it makes little or no difference.
Aldous Huxley
#21. As an addict who will read anything, I obeyed, but I am not saved, and return to tell you neither what to read nor how to read it, only what I have read and think worthy of rereading, which may be the only pragmatic test for the canonical.
Harold Bloom
#22. I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.
Herman Melville
#23. Just think: you cannot find a single misery for which you are not responsible. It may be jealousy, it may be anger, it may be greed - but something in you must be the reason that is creating the misery.
Rajneesh
#24. 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
#25. A meaningful life is not a popularity contest. Do what in your heart you believe to be the right thing, and you may or may not get immediate approval from the world. Do it anyway.
Marianne Williamson
#26. It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect.
Hermann Hesse
#27. We must believe that He permits it [this war] for some wise purpose of his own, mysterious and unknown to us; and though with ourlimited understandings we may not be able to comprehend it, yet we cannot but believe, that he who made the world still governs it.
Abraham Lincoln
#28. Sometimes you have to create a vision, a path for a vision. It may not be apparent, and you may have to forge it yourself. And that will be the way to move your life forward.
Herbie Hancock
#29. Because impudence is a vice, it does not follow that modesty is a virtue; it is built upon shame, a passion in our nature, and may be either good or bad according to the actions performed from that motive.
Bernard De Mandeville
#30. You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it, and this, paradoxically, alters reality. Try it and see.
Margaret Atwood
#31. The Petersons have not come forward in the press. Apparently they feel the media bears a large responsibility for Scott's conviction. It may be a while before we hear anything from them.
Catherine Crier
#32. But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.
Idries Shah
#33. I am already sensible of decay in the power of walking, and find my memory not so faithful as it used to be. This may be partly owing to the incessant current of new matter flowing constantly through it; but I ascribe to years their share in it also.
Thomas Jefferson
#34. Climate change has happened because of human behaviour, therefore it's only natural it should be us, human beings, to address this issue. It may not be too late if we take decisive actions today.
Ban Ki-moon
#35. 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
#36. The heart may not always be practical, but it is always right.
Debasish Mridha
#37. For when a nation becomes civilized, if it does not drop human sacrifices altogether, it at least selects as victims only such wretches as would be put to death at any rate. Thus the killing of a god may sometimes come to be confounded with the execution of a criminal.
James G. Frazer
#38. 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
#39. The elegant Lord Shaftesbury somewhere objects to telling too much truth: by which it may be fairly inferred, that, in some cases, to lie is not only excusable but commendable. And
Henry Fielding
#40. If you want to be in the best shape, diet is super important. You can exercise all you want, but if you're not eating the right foods, it's not going to equal out. You're not going to get the results you want.
Misty May-Treanor
#41. It should be possible to exist with only a short shelf of books, to read and give away. After all - we may not open a book, once read, for ten years or more. But the act of reading has made it part of us - to relinquish it would be to lose an extension of our being.
Pam Brown
#42. Whatever I may do to serve you will be prompted solely from selfish motives, since it gives me more pleasure to serve you than not.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#43. 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
#44. If history, philosophy and so on vanish from academic life, what they leave in their wake may be a technical training facility or corporate research institute. But it will not be a university in the classical sense of the term, and it would be deceptive to call it one.
Terry Eagleton
#45. The most meaningful engine of change, powerful enough to confront corporate power, may be not so much environmental quality, as the economic development and growth associated with the effort to improve it.
Barry Commoner
#46. I used to feel that if I say something's wrong, I have to say how it could be made right. But what I learned from Kurt Vonnegut was that I could write stories that say I may not have a solution, but this is wrong - that's good enough.
Etgar Keret
#47. A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
H.L. Mencken
#48. Salt, when dissolved in water, may disappear, but it does not cease to exist. We can be sure of its presence by tasting the water. Likewise, the indwelling Christ, though unseen, will be made evident to others from the love which he imparts to us.
Sadhu Sundar Singh
#49. We like things to manifest right away, and they may not. Many times, we're just planting a seed and we don't know exactly how it is going to come to fruition. It's hard for us to realize that what we see in front of us might not be the end of the story.
Sharon Salzberg
#50. Future generations may or may not judge Wittgenstein to be one of the great philosophers. Even if they do not, however, he is sure always to count as one of the great personalities of philosophy. From our perspective it is easy to mistake one for the other; which he is time will tell.
A.C. Grayling
#51. Becoming a man means doing the right thing even though it may be hard or difficult. Boys do what is easiest. A man does what is right, whether easy or not.
Carew Papritz
#52. There are some who esteem that it is a naivety to believe that a moral regeneration may be possible ("soit possible", Fr.); now, if this was not the case, it would not be worth the trouble that humanity continue to vegetate without aim.
African Spir
#53. 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
#54. Doubt is not always a sign that a man is wrong; it may be a sign that he is thinking.
Oswald Chambers
#55. Rejection Is God's Protection
When someone rejects or breaks up with you, it may be a blessing in disguise. The person was not right for you. Or maybe you would have eventually been miserable with them. Now the door is open for someone else much better to come into your life.
Pamela Cummins
#56. If your friend's friend's friend (whom you may not have even met) is obese, a smoker or a zealot of some kind then it is a lot more likely that you will be too.
James H. Fowler
#57. Befriending life is less a matter of knowledge than a question of wisdom. It is not about mastering life, controlling it or exerting our will over it, no matter how well intentioned our will may be. Befriending life is more about harmlessness than it is about control.
Rachel Naomi Remen
#58. It is the task of several months and it is a fact that a girl, either while rehearsing or actually playing, may be training for some character or feature in some future production not yet definitely fixed even in my own mind.
Florenz Ziegfeld
#59. I don't want to play a superhero. Drogo may not be Superman, but it is a phenomenal role. I didn't want to get typecast. Drogo is an exceptional character. Conan is iconic. Whether it does good or not, you just try to elevate it to the next level.
Jason Momoa
#60. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that some portion of the neglect of science in England, may be attributed to the system of education we pursue.
Charles Babbage
#61. And he who does not know himself does not know others, so it may be said with equal truth, that he who does not know others knows himself but very imperfectly.
Joshua Reynolds
#62. 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
#63. Kids who have been tossed around some, we just want to be accepted. And who is the most accepting group on a school campus? The troublemakers. It may not be right, but sometimes it's as close to right as we can find.
Jenny B. Jones
#64. Because what else are we going to do? Say no? Say no to an opportunity that may be slightly out of our comfort zone? Quiet our voice because we are worried it is not perfect? I believe great people do things before they are ready.
Amy Poehler
#65. A man may be buoyed up by the efflation of his wild desires to brave any imaginable peril; but he cannot calmly see one he loves braving the same peril; simply because he cannot feel within turn that which prompts another. He sees the danger, and feels not the power that is to overcome it.
George Henry Lewes
#66. 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
#67. 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
#68. I may have one more 'Star Trek' novel in me, but it would be in the old universe, not the new one.
Diane Duane
#69. If I had seen one miracle fail, I had witnessed another; and even a seemingly purposeless miracle is an inexhaustible source of hope, because it proves to us that since we do not understand everything, our defeats - so much more numerous than our few and empty victories - may be equally specious.
Gene Wolfe
#70. Having a personal philosophy is like having a pet marmoset, because it may be very attractive when you acquire it, but there may be situations when it will not come in handy at all.
Lemony Snicket
#71. Love does not ask many questions, because with thinking comes fear. This might be the fear of being scorned, of being rejected, or of breaking the spell. However ridiculous this may seem, that is how it is. This is why one does not ask, one acts.
Paulo Coelho
#72. In the context of stress, the great paradox of the modern age may be that there is not more hardship, just more news - and too much of it. The 24/7 streaming torrent of tragedy and demands flashing at us from an array of digital displays keeps the amygdala flying.
John J. Ratey
#73. Go! you may call it madness, folly; You shall not chase my gloom away! There 's such a charm in melancholy I would not if I could be gay.
Samuel Rogers
#74. I do not know if hell is hot or cold, or what sort of place hell may be, but this I surely know, that if there is any hell at all it will be badly lit. And it will taste like a train.
H.G.Wells
#75. Greed may not be good, but it's not so bad either. You humans think greed is just for money or power, but everyone wants something they can't have.
Hiromu Arakawa
#76. Fame has no necessary conjunction with praise; it may exist without the breath of a word: it is a recognition of excellence which must be felt, but need not be spoken. Even the envious must feel it,
feel it, and hate in silence.
Washington Allston
#77. 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
#78. We may not be able to do them all, but it is a safe place to dream. And sometimes, if you really work hard enough, dreams come true.
Drew Barrymore
#79. You may not yet be able to bring your unconscious mind activity into awareness as thoughts, but it will always be reflected in the body as an emotion, and of this you can become aware.
Eckhart Tolle
#80. Cultural stupidity accounts for virtually every aspect of Sarah Palin, both as a person and a political icon. Which, come to think of it, may be a pretty good reason not to misunderstimate her.
Joe Bageant
#81. Concordantly, while your first question may be the most pertinent, you may or may not realize it is also the most irrelevant.
Oscar Wilde
#82. 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
#83. Person-centred counselling may be thought of as 'not enough'. In my experience it is. It allows for self-determination through an acknowledgement of a person's human rights.
Suzanne Keys
#84. The malicious humor of men, though perverse and refractory, is not so savage and invincible but it may be wrought upon by kindness, and altered by repeated obligations.
Plutarch
#85. I carry a message
that i can not read.
the words may be haunting ,
or tender or sweet.
though what it says,
i don not know.
i still carry it with me ,
where ever i go.
Carolee Dean
#86. 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
#87. 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
#88. Remember that when you think you are seeing giants, they may not be giants at all; perhaps it is you who is the dwarf.
C. JoyBell C.
#89. The heavens and the earth are around us that it may be possible for us to speak of the unseen by the seen, for the outermost husk of creation has correspondence with the deepest things of the Creator.
He is not a God that hides himself, but a God who made all that he might reveal himself.
George MacDonald
#90. I may not be able to re-record a song, but I can do a better job each time I sing it.
Patty Loveless
#91. In Sardinia one summer my best friend Marisa Berenson and I ironed each other's hair. We used a hot laundry iron and took turns putting our hair on the ironing board, literally ironing it. That's a recipe for straightening that may be highly successful, but is definitely not recommended.
Diane Von Furstenberg
#92. The "Powers That Be" are not smart enough to engineer Armageddon, but they may yet be stupid enough. If governments are involved in covering up the knowledge of aliens, then they are doing a much better job of it than they seem to do at anything else.
Stephen Hawking
#93. 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
#94. Anger does not make history. Power does. And power may be supplemented by anger, but it derives from more fundamental realities; geography, demographics, technology, and culture.
George Friedman
#95. While you, the leader, can teach many things, character is not taught easily to adults who arrive at your desk lacking it. Be cautious about taking on reclamation projects regardless of the talent they may possess. Have the courage to make character count among the qualities you seek in others.
John Wooden
#96. The situation in the sciences is this: A concept or an idea which cannot be measured or cannot be referred directly to experiment may or may not be useful. It need not exist in a theory.
Richard P. Feynman
#97. I may not look it, but I can be a very patient guy. And killing time is one of my specialities.
Haruki Murakami
#98. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us [...], because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate; that which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation, and its excellence may arise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning.
Edmund Burke
#99. The Bible may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Samuel Butler
#100. Finally, since human beings are uniquely capable of producing materials not found in nature, environmental degradation may be due to the resultant intrusion into an ecosystem of a substance wholly foreign to it.
Barry Commoner
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