Top 100 Once Was Quotes
#1. She is a pebble skipping
over the surface of a lake.
As I once was.
Not a deep sinking stone that leaves widening ripples behind
after it's disappeared.
As I hope to be.
Padma Venkatraman
#2. What You were Once, Was Also Because You Were Someone Else Before that
Sujit Lalwani
#3. There once was a man called Rousseau who wrote a book containing nothing but ideas. The second edition was bound in the skins of those who laughed at the first.
Benjamin Wiker
#4. Recognizing sexism is harder than it once was. Like the micro-aggressions that people of color endure daily - racism masked as subtle insults or dismissals - today's sexism is insidious, casual, politically correct, even friendly. It
Jessica Bennett
#5. Once was happenstance, twice might be coincidence, but thrice or more indicated the actions of your enemies.
Robert Jordan
#6. I believe in an evolving Constitution. A flexible Constitution leaves room for us to consider not merely how the world once was, but how it ought to be.
Eliot Spitzer
#7. New York is not the centre for American culture and art that it once was because of the forces of conservatism. Giuliani, capitalism - and then there was 9/11. I really believe that if I leave, it will suffer! Maybe that's why I love it here, because I feel wanted.
Rufus Wainwright
#8. I felt somehow happy to be so high above the world - a childish feeling, I grant, but we can't help becoming children as we leave social conventions behind and come nearer to nature. All life's experience is shed from us and the soul becomes anew what it once was and will surely be again
Mikhail Lermontov
#9. You that seek what life is in death,
Now find it air that once was breath.
New names unknown, old names gone:
Till time end bodies, but souls none.
Reader! then make time, while you be,
But steps to your eternity.
Fulke Greville Baron Brooke
#10. There once was a man who was sore
'Cuz his wife wouldn't open the door.
Celibacy
is just not for me
Let me in, you cock-teasing whore.
Jake Wizner
#11. There's something fairy-tale-like about it, which is perfect, because fairy tales are all about innocence and ill will and the inevitability of terrible things. They're all about the moment when a girl is no longer who she once was
Nina LaCour
#12. Our current plight is not made inevitable by human nature. What once was could be again - in a new way.
Gloria Steinem
#13. Think of me as you pass by, As you are now, so once was I. As I am now, some day you'll be, So now prepare to follow me. Someone,
Nicholas Rhea
#14. There once was a girl who didn't know her name. One day she found out it had been Lonely. It was the day she discovered that wasn't her anymore, and then she didn't know her name again.
Nyrae Dawn
#15. I get a very vague idea and - perhaps because I once was a journalist, or perhaps because that's what made me want to be a journalist - I go off and explore it for a bit, rather than mapping out a plot and then filling in the research.
Aminatta Forna
#16. There once was an umpire whose vision Was cause for abuse and derision He remarked in surprise, 'Why pick on my eyes? It's my heart that dictates my decision.'
Ogden Nash
#17. There once was a man from Des Moines
Whose wife was always annoyed
He stepped in the kitchen
She started her bitchin'
Now that fucking cunt is dead.
Frances Winkler
#18. To be honest, I'm not as goal oriented and ambitious as I once was.
Chantal Kreviazuk
#19. A rose, isn't quite as beautiful as it once was, when after its thorn pricks you.
Anthony Liccione
#20. Writing has been challenging at times but that's where all the growth is. I know I'm in the right place if it's difficult. Something a British writer said to me once was: "If the project doesn't make him wobble, he doesn't take it." You have to be uncomfortable to grow.
Geoff Thompson
#21. Wait, I thought to myself! He wants to wait until everything that once was dear to him is trampled under foot.
Anna Seghers
#22. To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once.
G.K. Chesterton
#23. What once was had, forever lost; thy fate is destined, thy love star-crossed.
Nenia Campbell
#24. I am not as I once was. They have done this to me, broken me open and torn out my heart. I do not know who I am anymore. I must try to remember.
N.K. Jemisin
#25. A heart as hard as granite was slowly transformed to a heart ready to give and receive compassion. The story of the prince does that to men. It breaks them down, removes the rubble, and builds a castle where there once was a prison.
Chuck Black
#26. I am not what I once was.
[Lat., Non sum qualis eram.]
Horace
#27. The history of economic progress consists of charging a fee for what once was free.
B. Joseph Pine II
#28. I usually carried with me six loaded plates, which allowed me only six exposures, so that clicking the shutter even once was a serious business that had to be carefully thought out beforehand.
Roald Dahl
#29. In every kind of adversity, the bitterest part of a man's affliction is to remember that he once was happy.
Boethius
#30. I guess I'm depressed. I don't know. I can't explain it. Part of it is the irritability of being 84, and part of it is being not as physically strong as I once was. And part of it is my misunderstanding, I think, of what's going on in the world.
Toni Morrison
#31. I think that if we can't go back, then we should try even harder to go forward. And I do want to go forward, to a place where loving someone because they have a gentle smile and a friendly hello is as easy as it once was.
Walter Dean Myers
#32. A few of the savage creatures (rabids) I could deal with, but taking on this many ventured very close to suicide. Once was enough, thanks
Julie Kagawa
#33. Once was memorable; twice would have been indelible. Maybe
Stephen King
#34. She didn't recognize him and he didn't recognize her, because people and places change and what once was will never be again.
T.C. Boyle
#35. I'm inordinately proud of Smash, on so many levels. The complexity of producing that show, every week, is just incredible. As a television producer and as a Broadway producer, which I once was, I am in awe of what we can do on that show, every week.
Robert Greenblatt
#36. You snore worse. At least I don't turn into a lion in my sleep."
"I only did it once."
"Once was weird enough, thank you.
Ilona Andrews
#37. Religion is nothing more than a useless and sometimes dangerous, evolutionary accident. Religious behavior may be a misfiring, an unfortunate byproduct of an underlying psychological propensity which in other circumstances is, or once was, useful.
Richard Dawkins
#38. Was it this image of the woman she once was that made her fingers tremble? Or did she feel for this man in her bed who'd quietly started weeping for reasons she didn't understand?
Adam Johnson
#39. There once was a man name Barack,
Whose re-election came as a shock.
He raised the taxes I pay,
And then turned marriage gay.
And now he's coming after your glock.
Stephen Colbert
#40. Stop and think as you pass by, she hissed. As you are now, so once was I.
Kat Rosenfield
#41. Even with all our technology and the inventions that make modern life so much easier than it once was, it takes just one big natural disaster to wipe all that away and remind us that, here on Earth, we're still at the mercy of nature.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson
#42. The soul is no longer honored as it once was, but it still keeps appetite from being the measure of all things.
Mason Cooley
#43. The truly changed, truly converted, truly Christian heart can say with John Newton, I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I wish to be. I am not what I hope to be. Yet I can truly say, I am not what I once was. By the grace of God, I am what I am.
Mark Dever
#44. Everything that we do I pretty much want to be organic, so if that happens, then that's okay with me. But I'm not interested in trying to re-create what once was. That doesn't interest me; it's boring.
Pat Benatar
#45. There once was a girl named Destiny. She was the fastest runner in the world. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't outrun who she was. Then she met a boy. He said his name was also Destiny, and for the first time in her life, she didn't feel like she was running alone.
Nyrae Dawn
#46. As James Lovelock writes, 'Mother Earth' is now an old lady in her sixties, no longer as resilient as she once was. With our conscious actions, we are now measurably shortening her lifespan.
Mark Lynas
#47. I don't want to become as good as I once was. I want to become better.
Tiger Woods
#49. Admittedly, there is always a golden age, the one not ours, the one that once was or will someday be. One's own time is never satisfactory, except to the very rich or the smugly oblivious.
Cynthia Ozick
#50. Amazing grace how sweet thuh sound That saved a wretch like me; I once was lost but now I'm found, Was blind, but now I see. A-men." Jem
Harper Lee
#51. Could there, I wanted to know, be any dignity in such a death? Can anything be salvaged of what once was, to bring a sense of himself to aman near his final hour, when he has been through so much?
Sherwin B. Nuland
#52. The sun won't shine since you went away, seems like the rain's falling every day. There's just one heart, where there once was two; that's the way it's gotta be until I get over you.
Christina Milian
#53. Secrets are festering parasites to a relationship, devouring their hosts from within, leaving behind a empty hollow husk of what once was.
Mark W. Boyer
#54. The fact that this was a fairly accurate portrait of my own mother is a quick indicator of how difficult it once was for me to tell the difference between myself and the powerful woman who had raised me.
Elizabeth Gilbert
#55. Change, the uninvited guest that destroys what once was.
Kirby Crow
#56. I ain't as good as I once was, but I'm as good once as I ever was.
Steve Berry
#57. Science ... has opened our eyes to the vastness of the universe and given us light, truth and freedom from fear where once was darkness, ignorance and superstition. There is no personal salvation, except through science.
Luther Burbank
#58. His hope wasn't lost, it was buried, and somehow Prudence Ryland made that old grave seem much more shallow than it once was.
Kathryn Smith
#59. ....you only get one chance at sharing a soul, but that once was enough if it was the right soul.
Heather R. Blair
#60. Nowadays in pop, there's not a lot of men that are singing big and loud and high - it's not as common as it once was.
Adam Lambert
#61. In Music Through the Eyes of Faith, Harold Best defines excellence as "the process of becoming better than I once was.
Bob Kauflin
#62. Mars once was wet and fertile. It's now bone dry. Something bad happened on Mars. I want to know what happened on Mars so that we may prevent it from happening here on Earth.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson
#63. If I can bring Him nothing but my tears, He will put them with His own tears in His own bottle for He once wept; if I can bring Christ nothing but my groans and sighs, He will accept these as an acceptable sacrifice, for He once was broken in heart, and sighed heavily in spirit.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
#66. There once was a lady most beautiful
Spirited, if a little unusual
Her friends were few
But how did the man queue
But to all she gave a refusal
Sarah J. Maas
#67. He is human - they are a lesser species. Over the decades, the dark side has exacted too great a toll on his body. He is a hollow shell of what he once was.
Drew Karpyshyn
#69. A diamond doesn't start out polished and shining. It once was nothing special, but with enough pressure and time, becomes spectacular. I'm that diamond.
Solange Nicole
#70. I used to be ashamed
And now I am proud.
The world once was black
And now it is bright.
I used to walk head bent
And now I stand up tall.
I used to have dreams
But now I have hope.
Judith McNaught
#71. I once was absolutely useless, and God in His grace has made me useful.
Alistair Begg
#72. I have very, very few friends. I live in a very tight circle and emotionally I'm probably not as generous as I once was. In an average week I probably meet 150 new people and that's uncomfortable sometimes.
Veronica Webb
#73. But I wasn't human anymore. And I wasn't as afraid of them as I once was. I was part of their world now, part of the darkness.
Julie Kagawa
#75. Or at the very least, you'll remember that there once was a moment. And that it was perfect.
Jessica Brody
#76. Nikolas shrugged. "So, I have not really changed all that much, Benjamin. I believe I am very much what I once was." He looked across the table. "Totally obsessed with you.
Anonymous
#77. Time doesn't heal scars as most people commonly think. It simply makes them firmer, stiffer. One must accept it and not hope to mend and return to what he or she once was.
V.C. Andrews
#78. The fact that Gene Weingarten and I and Bathroom Inventory are now part of some kind of Matrix of Poop strongly suggests that the Pulitzer is not what it once was.
Dave Barry
#79. Like the lily That once was mistress of the field and flourished, I'll hang my head and perish.
William Shakespeare
#80. The actual tragedy of Emmett Till, he had told her once, was not the murder of a black child for whistling at a white woman but that some black people thought: But why did you whistle?
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#81. What you are, I once was. What I am, you will become.
Isaac Marion
#82. I'm younger than I once was. Internally. Less self-conscious. Less insecure.
Richard Gere
#83. His laugh was like nails to a chalkboard. "I cannot remember a time when anything was new to me. I only ever see the tattered remains of what once was.
Diantha Jones
#84. The bad news for journalists today is that the media, however seriously people who are in the public eye take it, is not taken as seriously as it once was - by the public.
Alastair Campbell
#86. If we can make America great again and if we can get everybody working and bettering their lot in life, then this becomes the great country that it once was, that it's ceased to be.
Robin Leach
#87. A broken friendship that is mended through forgiveness can be even stronger than it once was.
Stephen Richards
#88. Baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh ... people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.
Terrence Mann
#89. I'll meet listeners who tell me what a great voice I have. But I don't have a great voice for radio. My voice is the utterly normal voice, but sheer repetition has made them think it's OK. Mick Jagger once was asked, 'What makes a hit song? He said, 'Repetition.'
Ira Glass
#90. The most critical factor subduing the demand for housing is that home ownership is no longer seen as the great, long-term buildup in equity value it once was.
Mortimer Zuckerman
#91. There is a statement often repeated in the Church, and while it is not in one of the Standard Church Works, it is accepted as church doctrine, and this is: 'As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become.'
LeGrand Richards
#92. I am vain, or once was, and one of my vanities was to feign that I was not.
Lionel Shriver
#93. What once was cuddled must learn to kiss, The cold worm's mouth. That's all the mystery.
Archibald MacLeish
#94. I'm really clear about what my life mission is now. There's no more depression or lethargy, and I feel like I've returned to the athlete I once was. I'm integrating all the parts of me - jock, musician, writer, poet, philosopher - and becoming stronger as a result.
Alanis Morissette
#95. I may not be the man I want to be; I may not be the man I ought to be; I may not be the man I could be; I may not be the man I truly can be; but praise God, I'm not the man I once was
Martin Luther King Jr.
#96. What once was broken can be fixed." Boone lifted the angel with the number eighteen at her feet. I could still see every crack from the break, but she was fixed. "It'll always bear the scars, but at least it's whole again.
Nicole Williams
#97. As man now is, God once was; as God is now man may be.
Lorenzo Snow
#98. Like it takes so little not only to change something, but to make you forget the way it once was, as well.
Sarah Dessen
#99. There once was an old man of Lyme who married three wives at a time when asked, 'Why a third?' he replied 'One's absurd! and bigamy, sir, is a crime!'
William Cosmo Monkhouse
#100. Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade Of that which once was great is passed away.
William Wordsworth
