Top 100 May It Be Quotes
#1. Age doesn't arrive slowly, it comes in a rush. One day nothing has changed, a week later, everything has. A week may be too long a time, it can happen overnight. You are the same and still the same and suddenly one morning two distinct lines, ineradicable, have appeared at the corners of your mouth.
James Salter
#2. Thinking about writing isn't writing. Planning to write isn't writing. Neither is talking about it, posting about it, or complaining how hard it is. These may be part of the process. But only writing is writing.
Jack Ketchum
#3. 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
#4. 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
#5. 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
#6. If you destroy the credibility of those people or institutions that could undermine your own, you create an opportunity for your voice, however irresponsible or misleading it may be, to gain traction.
John Yarmuth
#7. A superior man may be made to go to the well, but he cannot be made to go down into it. He may be imposed upon, but he cannot be fooled.
Confucius
#8. I have now lost my barrier between me and death; God grant I may live to be as well prepared for it, as I confidently believe her to have been! If the way to Heaven be through piety, truth, justice and charity, she is there.
Jonathan Swift
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. 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
#12. In the world of reality the more beautiful a work of art, the longer, we may be sure, was the time required to make it, and the greater the number of different minds which assisted in its development.
Lafcadio Hearn
#13. 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
#14. Those who wish to sit, shut their eyes,
and meditate to know if the world's true or lies,
may do so. It's their choice. But I meanwhile
with hungry eyes that can't be satisfied
shall take a look at the world in broad daylight.
Rabindranath Tagore
#15. The progress of the natural sciences in modern times has of course so much exceeded all expectations that any suggestion that there may be some limits to it is bound to arouse suspicion.
Friedrich August Von Hayek
#16. We may not be able to witness our own eulogy, but we're actually writing it all the time, every day.
Arianna Huffington
#17. 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
#18. I passed what I thought was a Halloween parade, which was disorienting since I was fairly sure this was May. When I stopped on the corner of Sixteenth Street and made a closer inspection it turned out to be something called a "Gay Pride Parade," which made my stomach turn.
Bret Easton Ellis
#19. I believe that eclecticism is a virtue. It may not be a word, but its definitely a virtue.
Will Smith
#20. The storm may be tempestuous, but it is only temporary.
William Gurnall
#21. People working in the private sector should try to save money. There remains the possibility that it may someday be valuable again.
Norman Ralph Augustine
#22. 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
#23. Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment - the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.
Jorge Luis Borges
#24. 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
#25. Genius may be a necessary precondition for creating a masterpiece but it's never a sufficient one.
James Shapiro
#26. The art of spreading rumors may be compared to the art of pin-making. There is usually some truth, which I call the wire; as this passes from hand to hand, one gives it a polish, another a point, others make and put on the head, and at last the pin is completed.
John Newton
#27. Ahhhh ... I see. I think. Perhaps I don't. It may be easier to grasp if you presented it in a musical format. A lyrical song or two, accompanied by a whimsical dance to interpret the words.
Nicole Sager
#28. 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
#29. 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
#30. 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
#31. There are some things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even though the end may be dark.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#32. The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#33. The spirit and tone of your home will have great influence on your children. If it is what it ought to be, it will fasten conviction on their minds, however wicked they may become.
Richard Cecil
#34. A man's moral character may be completely sapped; that is the dreadful part of it.
Henrik Ibsen
#35. If things look right on the surface the underside is rarely questioned. However, things may be great in reality, but if one perceives them to be amiss, it is difficult to change that perception.
Aleatha Romig
#36. 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
#37. Kids who grow up in radically different environments are always going to have different comfort levels with regard to a topic. If you don't live near a train track, it's hard to squash a penny that way, and if you live in an apartment in New York City, it may be difficult to get to drive a car.
Gever Tulley
#38. As confusing, unpredictable and stressful as life may be, always remember, it is never incorrect to be kind. When lost, just do nice things.
Sean Plott
#39. Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#40. 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
#41. Return of love, more blest may be the view;
As call it winter, which being full of care,
Makes summer's welcome thrice more wish'd, more rare.
Sonet56
William Shakespeare
#42. 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
#43. 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
#44. When I get a chance to power jump off both legs, I can lean, twist, change directions and decide whether to dunk the ball or pass it to an open man. In other words, I may be committed to the air, but I still have some control over it.
Julius Erving
#45. I wonder," said Miss Oliver, "if humanity will be any happier because of aeroplanes. It seems to me that the sum of human happiness remains much the same from age to age, no matter how it may vary in distribution, and that all the 'many inventions' neither lessen nor increase it." "After
L.M. Montgomery
#46. One thing I know for certain is that this killer - the Reaper - isn't my white knight. In fact, in this story, I very well suspect he may even be the villain. Because if Blaine ever finds out how I feel, it will certainly be the death of me." - Sasha
A. Zavarelli
#47. It may be ordained that we have many nights and days to follow, if full of peril, but we must go on, and from no danger shall we shrink.
Bram Stoker
#48. Management of outcomes may not be any more than a skill. It does not require knowledge.
W. Edwards Deming
#49. The humility that cringes in order that reproof may be escaped or favor obtained is as unchristian as it is profoundly immoral.
Dallas Willard
#50. It may be the way the cookie crumbles on Madison Avenue, but in Hong Kong its the way the egg rolls.
Robert Orben
#51. I may have a general broad-based idea of what I want to write about when I sit down to write a book, but I don't have any idea of what it's going to say. I would call my experience of creativity 'inspired by God' to produce certain pieces of information that might be useful to others.
Neale Donald Walsch
#52. In the modern world, it may be that a living father can only be half a father to a boy - the dead father is the other vital half: the half that grows the boy up once and for all.
Michael Leunig
#53. 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
#54. 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
#55. I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.
Herman Melville
#56. It may well be that you are in a bad state, but to keep company with someone worse than you would allow to see good in yourself.
Ibn Ata Allah
#57. 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
#58. 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
#59. Yes, I've worked hard; and yes, I may have achieved a certain level of success-but I'm very clear about the fact that none of it would be worth it without doing the things that keep me close to God.
David Archuleta
#60. However well equipped our language, it can never be forearmed against all possible cases that may arise and call for description: fact is richer than diction.
J.L. Austin
#61. Literatures, like trees and plants, are born of a land and in it flourish and die. But literatures, also like plants, may be carried abroad to take root in a foreign soil.
Octavio Paz
#62. Crime fiction makes money. It may be harder for writers to get published, but crime is doing better than most of what we like to call CanLit. It's elementary, plot-driven, character-rich story-telling at its best.
Linwood Barclay
#63. And last, it may be worthwhile trying to hang something beyond the partial wall because some of the pictures do very well in a confined space.
Mark Rothko
#64. In a relationship with God, our most secret places once thickly cloaked and meticulously hidden away now stand before us utterly and entirely exposed. And it may be that this dreaded fear is the single thing that keeps us an arm's length from God, and forever a single step away from His blessings.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#65. 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
#66. 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
#67. It can be unhelpful to wax eloquent about the inerrancy of Scripture without an accompanying acknowledgment that, while Scripture may be inerrant, there are no inerrant interpreters of Scripture.
Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter
#68. 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
#69. 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
#70. Embrace the work opportunity you have today. It may be the stepping-stone you need on your way to success.
Dan Miller
#71. 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
#72. Our work may be important, but we don't take it too seriously. Otherwise, we get attached to one relatively small thing and ignore the rest of life.
Bernie Glassman
#73. I may be an old lion, but I can still bite someone's hand off if he puts it in my mouth.
Wilhelm Steinitz
#74. 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
#75. THE TECHNIQUE of a little individuality will be a little technique, however scrupulously elaborated it may be.
Robert Henri
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. The revenge of an elder sister may be long in coming, but, like a South-Eastern express, it arrives in its own good time.
Hector Hugh Munro
#79. 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
#80. But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.
Idries Shah
#81. Each attraction, limited as it may appear to be, is a cosmic happening-it occurs within the broader pattern of things, within the endlessly complex structure which underlies our lives.
Amalia Kahana-Carmon
#82. Laws and customs may be creative of vice; and should be therefore perpetually under process of observation and correction: but laws and customs cannot be creative of virtue: they may encourage and help to preserve it; but they cannot originate it.
Harriet Martineau
#83. 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
#84. 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
#85. The happy ending is hardly important, though we may be glad it's there. The real joy is knowing that if you felt the trouble in the story, your kingdom isn't dead.
Lynda Barry
#86. Speaking psycho-analytically, it may be laid down that any "great ideal" which people mention with awe is really an excuse for inflicting pain on their enemies. Good wine needs no bush, and good morals need no bated breath.
Bertrand Russell
#87. 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
#88. The heart may not always be practical, but it is always right.
Debasish Mridha
#89. Companies are always being bought and sold. The markets are always moving; you have to be on top of your position. And in the U.S., the market is never closed for more than three days. The only time the market was ever closed was 9/11. I think it may have been closed the whole week.
Karen Finerman
#90. Because I have work to care about, it is possible that I may be less difficult to get along with than other women when the double chins start to form.
Gloria Steinem
#91. 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
#92. 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
#93. You're who you think you are, even if you never admit it to yourself or to anyone else. You may be in the worst position to judge, but you're in the best position to know.
Marilyn Vos Savant
#94. The door to success may be in front of you, but you still have to open it.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#95. 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
#96. 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
#97. There is a difference between going to a service "for the worship" and going to a service "to worship the Lord." The distinction appears to be a minor one, but it may imply the difference between the worship of God and the worship of music!
Sinclair B. Ferguson
#98. And the maestro surely wielded the chairman's baton with extraordinary skill. His stellar record suggests that the only right answer to the age-old question of whether it is better to be lucky or good may be: both.
Alan Blinder
#99. There be also many wicked men that have the comeliness of a beautiful countenance, and it seemeth that nature hath so shaped them because they may be the readier to deceive, and that this amiable look were like a bait that covereth the hook.
Thomas Hoby
#100. I'm always nervous about singing ... always. It may be one of the only things I sweat about.
Ed Robertson