Momentous Quotes

#1. Probably people always feel that they are living in a time of transition, but we can hardly be mistaken perhaps in thinking that this is an era of particularly momentous change, rapid and proceeding at an ever quickening rate.

Emily Greene Balch

#2. Monuments make momentous men immortal, but more memorable are mortal men making mere moments monumental.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

#3. The relationship between book and reader is intimate, at best a kind of love affair, and first loves are famously tenacious. [ ... ] First love is a momentous step in our emotional education, and in many ways, it shapes us forever.

Laura Miller

#4. Comrades - We are living in momentous times.

James Larkin

#5. I hold a vision of this blue green planet, safe and in balance. At the end of the Fossil Fuel Era, we are emerging to a new reality. We are ready to make the next leap - as momentous as abolishing slavery or giving women the vote.

Elizabeth May

#6. [2] or directing a stern and momentous enterprise in some crisis of

Virginia Woolf

#7. I always have a lot of things going on because some things take years to make and others take five minutes. I like that there's always something going on. Working doesn't have such a momentous feel - like it's all or nothing.

Urs Fischer

#8. The whole question of evolution seems less momentous than it did, because, unlike the Victorians, we do not feel that to be descended from animals is degrading to human dignity.

George Orwell

#9. It's a different thing to write a love story now than in the time of Jane Austen, Eliot, or Tolstoy. One of the problems is that once divorce is possible, once break-ups are possible, it can all become a little less momentous.

Mona Simpson

#10. Somewhere slightly before or after the close of our second decade, we reach a momentous milestone
childhood's end. We have left asafe place and can't go home again. We have moved into a world where life isn't fair, where life is rarely what it should be.

Judith Viorst

#11. I just loved Bette Davis and the fact that I had a chance to work with her [on the 1979 TV movie Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter] was momentous.

Gena Rowlands

#12. In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you ... You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.

Abraham Lincoln

#13. Because it fulfills yearnings for security, safe haven, and connection that express our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed institution, and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life's momentous acts of self-definition.

Margaret H. Marshall

#14. Significant and seemingly impossible social and political change happens more often than we think, and it happens more rapidly than we realize. Even the most momentous change is always possible if one finds the right way to make it happen.

Glenn Greenwald

#15. Modernity has been largely shaped for Jews by three momentous experiences: the acquisition of citizenship by individual Jews in secular nation-states, the destruction of one-third of Jewry in the Holocaust, and the founding of the State of Israel.

David Novak

#16. The greatest and most momentous fact which
the history of the world records is the fact of-Christ's birth.

Charles Spurgeon

#17. If a man really has charge of his destiny at all, he should have something to say about getting born; and I only came through by a hair's-breadth. What had I to do with this momentous first step? In the language of the lawyer, I was not even a party of the second part.

Clarence Darrow

#18. Let us not fear our wild thoughts for they can give rise to wondrous contemplation, creative endeavour, life changing ideas, momentous bliss.

Jay Woodman

#19. SACERDOTALIST, n. One who holds the belief that a clergyman is a priest. Denial of this momentous doctrine is the hardest challenge that is now flung into the teeth of the Episcopalian church by the Neo-Dictionarians.

Ambrose Bierce

#20. We are blessed to be tiny beings in this universe. We are blessed to feel momentous because we are larger than these grains of sand.

Anne Rice

#21. Fiction that responds to recent world events is a hostage to fortune, because all momentous events look very different a year, two years, three years later.

Mark Haddon

#22. Every day is important; each day make us. Even the nothing ones especially those, given how they slit up, slowly burying other, seemingly more momentous, moments beneath their weight. I see that now.

Adrian Barnes

#23. when you do great things, think as if you missed the mark by an inch; walk as if you are yet to face the greatest task; talk as if you are yet to have the best preparation for the momentous moment and dream as if you are fighting a battalion of tasks

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

#24. It seemed to him as if he were beholding in a magic panorama a future where he himself was sliding into that pleasureless yielding to the small solicitations of circumstance, which is a commoner history of perdition than any single momentous bargain.

George Eliot

#25. I'll never turn her away, Clyde. She's my mate. I'll protect her till my dying breath. I'll even swallow my pride and ask a favor as momentous as the one I just asked of a man who has done nothing but try to drive a wedge between her and myself.

J.L. Sheppard

#26. The course of events is so rapidly hastening forward that the emergency may soon arise when you may be called upon to decide the momentous question whether you possess the power by force of arms to compel a State to remain in the Union

James Buchanan

#27. For all founders, going public is a momentous milestone that has to be experienced to be fully understood. It is the culmination of years of hard work and personal sacrifice.

Jay Samit

#28. The epic implications of being human end in more than this: We start our lives as if they were momentous stories, with a beginning, a middle and an appropriate end, only to find that they are mostly middles.

Anatole Broyard

#29. I was making a lot of momentous personal decisions. I was still very very young: when the prize was awarded, I was 33; the work I had done when I was 21.

Joshua Lederberg

#30. Many [Western Christians] habitually think and act as if there is no eternity ... We major in the momentary and minor in the momentous.

Randy Alcorn

#31. To the patient, any operation is momentous.

Joe Murray

#32. Buying a bicycle is a momentous event, akin to marriage: you are acquiring a partner.

Dervla Murphy

#33. Author Elizabeth Stone once said, Making a decision to have a child - it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.

John Medina

#34. The castle? The monster? The man of learning? I only just thought of it. Surely you know that just as the momentous events of the past cast their shadows down the ages, so now, when the sun is drawing toward the dark,our own shadows race into the past to trouble mankind's dreams.

Gene Wolfe

#35. It is a momentous fact that a man may be good, or he may be bad; his life may be true, or it may be false; it may be either a shame or a glory to him. The good man builds himself up; the bad man destroys himself.

Henry David Thoreau

#36. Forming characters! Whose? Our own or others? Both. And in that momentous fact lies the peril and Responsibility of our existence.

Elihu Burritt

#37. Nothing momentous comes in this world unless it comes on the shoulders of kindness.

Barbara Kingsolver

#38. Designers stand between revolutions and everyday life. They're able to grasp momentous changes in technology, science, and society and convert those changes into objects and ideas that people can understand.

Paola Antonelli

#39. Language is, without a doubt, the most momentous and at the same time the most mysterious product of the human mind.

Susanne Katherina Langer

#40. He was filled with a vast sense of the momentous, of unknown mysteries. He did not know what he should demand of himself, nor did it seem to matter, for he had not chosen this music he moved to, it had chosen him.

Mary Renault

#41. Anyone who claims that the debate is over and the conclusions are firm has a fundamentally unscientific approach to one of the most momentous issues of our time.

Pal Brekke

#42. The awakening of the people of China to the possibilities under free government is the most significant, if not the most momentous, event of our generation.

Woodrow Wilson

#43. One can't realize difficulty arriving at a momentous decision until one comes to do so.

Aminu Kano

#44. Deeds that seemed unimportant at the time would prove to have been momentous; a tiny act of selfishness and unkindness or, conversely, an unconsidered act of generosity would become the measure of a human life

Karen Armstrong

#45. When I was little I always thought I was marked out, special, on the verge of something momentous. I used to tingle with anticipation.

Felicity Kendal

#46. The most momentous and far-reaching question ever brought to issue on this continent was: Shall France remain here, or shall she not?

Francis Parkman

#47. The most momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.

Pythagoras

#48. All genius is simple. It involves close observation and a momentous act of self trust.

Howell Raines

#49. Even the most piddling life is of momentous consequence to its owner.

James Wolcott

#50. You think you got something big to say? Something momentous? Or is it what you had to memorize in order to escape the men with lightning in their eyes?

John Yau

#51. We have a natural tendency to romanticize breakthrough innovations, imagining momentous ideas transcending their surroundings, a gifted mind somehow seeing over the detritus of old ideas and ossified tradition. But ideas are works of bricolage; they're built out of that detritus.

Steven Johnson

#52. Through the skill and devotion to duty of their armed forces of all branches in the Midway area our citizens can now rejoice that a momentous victory is in the making.

Chester W. Nimitz

#53. But then, at what moment, of all our moments, is life not utterly, utterly changed, until the final, most momentous change of all? We

John Banville

#54. For the way in which the word is experienced is always momentous

Walter J. Ong

#55. There are three estates in Parliament but in the Reporters' Gallery yonder there sits a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech or witty saying, it is a literal fact, very momentous to us in these times.

Edmund Burke

#56. The famous names throughout history-be they heroes or villains-if they accomplished anything notable, they were passionate. Passion is what drives those who accomplish momentous feats, for good or evil.

Andrew Williams

#57. And though, indeed, it only happened once, it's gone on happening, the way unique and momentous things do, for ever and ever, as long as there's a memory for them to happen in ...

Graham Swift

#58. In forty hours I shall be in battle, with little information, and on the spur of the moment will have to make the most momentous decisions. But I believe that one's spirit enlarges with responsibility and that, with God's help, I shall make them, and make them right.

George S. Patton

#59. The master-word is Work, a little one, as I have said, but fraught with momentous sequences if you can but write it on the tablets of your hearts, and bind it upon your foreheads.

Abraham Verghese

#60. In a long life there are thirty or thirty-five thousand days to be got through, but only a few dozen that really matter, Big Days when Something Momentous Happens. The rest - the vast majority, tens of thousands of days - are unremarkable, repetitive, even monotonous.

William Landay

#61. A momentous but until then overlooked fact was making itself apparent: I had inadvertently brought myself with me to the island. It

Alain De Botton

#62. Christian worship is the most momentous, most urgent, most glorious action that can take place in human life.

Karl Barth

#63. Our acts of voluntary attending, as brief and fitful as they are, are nevertheless momentous and critical, determining us, as they do, to higher or lower destinies.

William James

#64. Milestone! This is a momentous occasion," he tells her cheerily. "It should be witnessed by a friend."
She throws him an icy gaze, and he does a verbal back pedal.
"Aaaand since no friends are present, I'll have to do.

Neal Shusterman

#65. History is often the tale of small moments - chance encounters or casual decisions or sheer coincidence - that seem of little consequence at the time, but somehow fuse with other small moments to produce something momentous, the proverbial flapping of a butterfly's wings that triggers a hurricane.

Scott Anderson

#66. We live in a world that is lost and in a moment of intense darkness. Have we fallen asleep when our Lord and Savior has asked us to stay awake with Him? Are we sleeping in spiritually and letting momentous events and opportunities pass us by? My dear friends, let's wake up and draw close to Jesus.

Darlene Zschech

#67. And now the momentous day, a day to be forever remembered in the annals of the country, arrived. Early in the morning on the 1st of July the conflict began.

Edward Everett

#68. Making the decision to have a child - it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. - Elizabeth Stone

Lisa Scottoline

#69. Of all the achievements of the human mind, the birth of the alphabet is the most momentous.

Frederic Goudy

#70. The day had finally arrived, a day I'd been awaiting for ten years. A glorious day, a momentous day, a day of import and distinction.
It was time to buy a hot dog.

Brandon Sanderson

#71. Life turns on little things. The momentous events in history can leave us untouched, while small events may shape our destinies.

Jennifer Worth

#72. In increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us
not always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss.

John Irving

#73. If all the months and all their days could be like June weather in New York, there would be paradise on earth. Often, in early June, momentous decisions are made, power waxes strong, quick wars are fought, and love affairs are begun and ended.

Mark Helprin

#74. So, to add to a momentous day, I corrected a misconception that my family had held for at least fifteen years and came out to them as straight.

Graeme Simsion

#75. This war will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongol massacres and the Crusades. - by Arab League Secretary General Abdul Rahman Azzam

Sol Stern

#76. You're not useful to me until you've made three momentous mistakes.

Dan Wieden

#77. Every moment has a momentous gift for you.

Prem Rawat

#78. From triumph to downfall there is but one step. I have noted that, in the most momentous occasions, mere nothings have always decided the outcome of the greatest events.

Napoleon Bonaparte

#79. Does this ... does this mean you want to be my boyfriend?" My question sounds both immature and momentous. But Josh doesn't flinch.
"Yes," he says. "I want.

Stephanie Perkins

#80. So now I imagine, among these Angels and their drained white brides, momentous grunts and sweating, damp furry encounters; or, better, ignominious failures, cocks like three-week-old carrots, anguished fumblings upon flesh cold and unresponding as uncooked fish.

Margaret Atwood

#81. Even of if a certain backlash is unavoidable, we must make the most of the momentous chance with which history has presented us so swiftly and so unexpectedly.

Moshe Sharett

#82. A medical man likes to make psychological observations, and sometimes in the pursuit of such studies is too easily tempted into momentous prophecy which life and death easily set at nought.

George Eliot

#83. Oh, I collect facts and quotes when I can't write, and I can't write most of the time. I do a little chance operation sometimes where I flip through outdated reference books to see if anything will strike me as beautiful or momentous. Library roulette, I call it.

Jenny Offill

#84. the momentous arises only from the trivial.

Cory Doctorow

#85. The business being thus closed ... dined together and took a cordial leave of each other After which I returned to my lodgings, did some business with and received the papers from the secretary of the Convention, and retired to meditate on the momentous work which had been executed.

George Washington

#86. Some men brought women flowers. Sicarius chose not to kill people. The latter seemed a tad more momentous.

Lindsay Buroker

#87. God has reserved momentous victories and great rewards for us, but we'll never make it to our milestones if we can't make it through our moments.

Beth Moore

#88. WRATH, n. Anger of a superior quality and degree, appropriate to exalted characters and momentous occasions; as, "the wrath of God," "the day of wrath," etc ...

Ambrose Bierce

#89. Half of the pleasure of painting and feeling the joy of the creative act is sharing it with others and the feeling of connection. It could just be the colour. But it is something that someone other than you has seen and felt. It is momentous. It is magic.

Sara Genn

#90. What is really momentous and all-important with us is the present, by which the future is shaped and colored.

John Greenleaf Whittier

#91. Asked if he knew how important Stardust would be, Mitchell Parish said he did have a gut feeling that this was a momentous one. But had no idea it would become a standard. You don't sit down and write a standard, he explained. A standard evolves.

Paul Zollo

#92. We have within us enormous reserves of trapped potential. Our natural urges have been so constrained by the accommodations of living that we each have a smoldering volcano just below the surface. To enable this force to erupt in a healthy, open, and positive manner is a momentous act.

Michele Cassou

#93. I sense that stepping into the light is also a powerful metaphor for consciousness, for the birth of the knowing mind, for the simple and yet momentous coming of the sense of self into the world of the mental.

Antonio R. Damasio

#94. A multitude of words is probably the most formidable means of blurring and obscuring thought. There is no thought, however momentous, that cannot be expressed lucidly in 200 words.

Eric Hoffer

#95. Of Congress, "party disputes and personal quarrels are the great business of the day whilst the momentous concerns of an empire ... are but secondary considerations," that "business of a trifling nature and personal concernment withdraws their attention from matters of great national moment.

George Washington

#96. I watched, along with all of you, as the tens of thousands of our people stood patiently in long queues for many hours. Some sleeping on the open ground overnight waiting to cast this momentous vote.

Nelson Mandela

#97. The Hitler movement is a stampede. It is something beyond reason, like a pulse beating, like a rush of blood to the head, like the sap rising from the twisted roots of a family tree ... in many ways it is the most remarkable upheaval of our time, perhaps the most momentous.

Anne O'Hare McCormick

#98. At all costs the true world of childhood must prevail, must be restored; that world whose momentous, heroic, mysterious quality is fed on airy nothings, whose substance is so ill-fitted to withstand the brutal touch of adult inquisition.

Jean Cocteau

#99. In these momentous hours of our history we call on every Hungarian worker who is led by devotion to the people and the country to join our Party, the name of which is the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party.

Janos Kadar

#100. The occasion's enormity: The birth of a friendship being no less momentous than the instant of falling in love.

Leah Hager Cohen