Top 100 Only As Quotes
#1. Sometimes writing is like talking to a stranger who's exactly like yourself in every possible way, only to realize that this stranger is as boring as shit.
Chuck Klosterman
#2. So long as we only believe in the justice of the state, of the law-made by those in power, to serve those in power-so long will we continue to be exploited by those in power.
Derrick Jensen
#3. Let us all so live as we shall wish we had lived when we come to die; for that only is well, that ends well.
Benjamin Whichcote
#4. As a newspaper man, Doremus remembered that the only reporters who misrepresented and concealed facts more unscrupulously than the Capitalists were the Communists.
Sinclair Lewis
#5. As soon as government management begins it upsets the natural equilibrium of industrial relations, and each interference only requires further bureaucratic control until the end is the tyranny of the totalitarian state.
Adam Smith
#6. The only thing that could spoil a day was people. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.
Ernest Hemingway,
#7. Learn to recognize true wealth. Money itself will not make you financially free. That comes as a result of only that powerful state of mind which tells us that we are worth far more than our money.
Suze Orman
#8. Christians need to take the lead in educating people that children are gifts, as my autistic grandson most surely is. By going down the path we're currently on, we might one day get rid of genetic diseases, but only at the cost of our own humanity.
Charles Colson
#9. When we are forced to stop the noise around us and in us, we begin to hear everything that is not us, and this is the beginning of humility and the renewal of our soul's energy; as only by listening to all that is larger than us can we discover and feel our place in the Universe.
Mark Nepo
#10. You know, I like to think my life is kind of like the books I read, only I'm the author. I can write the story I want. The future can be anything I want it to be." He moved his head side to side, considering my words. "That works, as long as your story has a blond stud that fucks like an animal.
Adriana Locke
#11. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another - their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.
Ayn Rand
#12. I only look at her as a mother, and she doesn't succeed in being that to me.
Anne Frank
#13. My scary strange English shall only be counted as my English problem.
M.F. Moonzajer
#14. Breaking him until he was as broken as me was the only thing that would ever be enough.
R.K. Lilley
#15. Before I shall have become a man again I shall probably exist as a park, a sort of natural park in which people come to rest, to while away the time. What they say or do will be of little matter, for they will bring only their fatigue, their boredom, their hopelessness.
Henry Miller
#16. The shade melted away as the sun climbed into its zenith. All colors were now covered in stone dust. The only vigorous activity came from the bushes, where cicada songs pulsed like alien hearts.
Aleksandr Voinov
#17. When the laws have ceased to be executed, as this can only come from the corruption of the republic, the state is already lost.
Montesquieu
#18. The better the script is the more you can commit,but you can only really commit with full confidence when you know the material is as strong as your level of commitment to it and it frees you up.
James McAvoy
#19. Leisure is only possible when we are at one with ourselves. We tend to overwork as a means of self-escape, as a way of trying to justify our existence.
Josef Pieper
#20. Memories of our childhood are like images painted on a wet canvas, they merge until they lose all shape, often remaing only as feelings.
Brian Mynott
#21. More and more do I feel, as I advance in life, how little we really know of each other. Friendship seems to me like the touch of musical-glasses
it is only contact; but the glasses themselves, and their contents, remain quite distinct and unmingled.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#22. What we think of as our sensitivity is only the higher evolution of terror in a poor dumb beast. We suffer for nothing. Our own death wish is our only real tragedy.
Mario Puzo
#23. It is here, it exists - but one must enter it naked and alone, with no rags from the falsehoods of centuries, with the purest clarity of mind - not an innocent heart, but that which is much rarer: an intransigent mind - as one's only possession and key.
Ayn Rand
#24. Take your light and take your love into the world as the only weapons that we need to make this world truly glorious, truly beautiful, and astonish all of life.
Hafsat Abiola
#25. People say Altamont was the 'end of the '60s.' It was unfortunate, but at the time we didn't think of it as signaling anything. The fact that nobody got killed at Woodstock is amazing because that was half a million people. We only had 300,000 at Altamont.
Grace Slick
#27. A cigarette is the only consumer product which when used as directed kills its consumer.
Gro Harlem Brundtland
#28. The young women seem to think that they can only go out with or marry a man who is superior to them. The problem there is that they are wanting to be defeated, as opposed to finding a partner.
Gloria Steinem
#29. An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.
Edward De Bono
#30. As the only woman, I was able to sit with the officers in front, with a glass of vodka in one hand and a cucumber in the other. That's how I went to my first war.
Asne Seierstad
#31. I think, if you spend a day or as many people do a life working only with that aspect of your being, the cerebrum connected to a finger, I feel that the rest of you atrophies, essentially.
Brian Eno
#32. Everybody now seems to be talking about democracy. I don't understand this. As I think of it, democracy isn't like a Sunday suit to be brought out and worn only for parades. It's the kind of a life a decent man leads, it's something to live for and to die for.
Dalton Trumbo
#33. The way, and the only way, to stop this evil is for all the red men to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was at first, and should be yet; for it was never divided, but belongs to all for the use of each.
Tecumseh
#34. If only, if only," the woodpecker sighs,
"The bark on the tree was as soft as the skies."
While the wolf waits below, hungry and lonely,
Crying to the moo-oo-oon,
"If only, If only.
Louis Sachar
#35. Our young people have come to look upon war as a kind of beneficent deity, which not only adds to the national honor but uplifts a nation and develops patriotism and courage.
Rebecca Harding Davis
#36. 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
#37. Only way to live here is day by day, same as anywhere.
Barry Unsworth
#38. Ultimately you're trying to reach across and find some other person, some other human warmth. But it is, especially in written poetry, it is inscribed in a text and the text can't do that work by itself and you as a poet can only do your best.
Edward Hirsch
#39. Now the tea began to do its work- as it always did- and the world that only a few minutes previously had seemed so bleak started to seem less so.
Alexander McCall Smith
#40. You want the vote so badly that you think it worth while to become hysterical over it.' 'There is not much hysteria in the movement, only hysteria is the thing that strikes a hysterical press as most worthy of note.
Stella Benson
#42. We look at science as something very elite, which only a few people can learn. That's just not true. You just have to start early and give kids a foundation. Kids live up, or down, to expectations.
Mae Jemison
#43. He kissed her as though he were starved for her. Like he'd been held away from her and had finally broken free. It was the kind of kiss that lived only in her fantasies. No one had ever made her feel so..consumed.
Maya Banks
#44. Leo was the only one who had never petitioned Francie for a loan using The Nest as collateral. Jack and Melody and Bea had all asked at one time that she consider an earlier dispersal, but she stubbornly refused.Until Leo's accident.
Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
#45. When the April wind wakes the call for the soil, I hold the plough as my only hold upon the earth, and, as I follow through the fresh and fragrant furrow, I am planted with every foot-step, growing, budding, blooming into a spirit of spring.
Dallas Lore Sharp
#46. I am now the site of an unmistakable sag ... With fancy holographic belt buckles do I attempt to restrain my stampeding softness. In vain ... My only virtues, as a physical specimen, are my sideburns, which are like the pelts of rare woodland animals. My sideburns are not to be ignored.
Rick Moody
#47. The man who reacts to the universe with a cry of impotent anguish is acceptable as an artist only if he can persuade us that he has sanely considered the other possible reactions and found them inadequate.
Kenneth Tynan
#48. Then, and only then, do they see me. But they do not always know what they have seen.
I see you as a code to be broken, or a puzzle to be cracked. Or a jig-saw puzzle, to be put together. I walk through your life, and I stand motionless at the edge of my own life.
Neil Gaiman
#49. The only thing I wouldn't like to do is to play roles as a musician. I'm not sure that I would be comfortable doing that, and I'm not sure I'd be very good at it. I think I would be better served, and would be a better partner, if I was in something outside of myself.
Larry Mullen Jr.
#50. As far back as I can remember, I have worshipped the sun. My skin is fair, but as the years have gone by, it has toughened and darkened. I now turn a rich golden brown every summer, but only after the first day of burning.
Jane Green
#51. Paradox as it may seem, we likewise find life meaningful only when we have seen that it is without purpose, and know the "mystery of the universe" only when we are convinced that we know nothing about it at all.
Alan W. Watts
#52. We will only begin to forgive when we can look upon the wrongdoers as ourselves, neither better nor worse. We need to remember that we coexist as mortals in the world, together, the wronged and the wrongdoer, and that, in our common humanity, the situation could readily be reversed.
Leo Buscaglia
#53. Blood mixture and the result drop in the racial level is the sole cause of the dying out of old cultures; for men do not perish as a result of lost wars, but by the loss of that force of resistance which is continued only in pure blood. All who are not of good race in this world are chaff.
Adolf Hitler
#54. I was up for Michael Corleone in 'The Godfather,' but, as I was only 10 at the time, I think Mr. Coppola made the right choice. The Julia Roberts role in 'Pretty Woman' held a bizarre allure for me. But, it's silly to look back with regret.
Eric Stoltz
#55. Sustainability is no longer optional. Companies that fail to adopt such practices will perish. They will not only lose cost basis: they will also suffer in recruiting employees as well as attracting customers.
John Replogle
#56. It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance for all our life. We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course.
Henry David Thoreau
#57. Only a complete moral idiot can believe for an instant that we are fighting against the wretched of the earth. We are fighting, as I said before, against the scum of the earth
Christopher Hitchens
#58. You only have to look at London, where almost half of all primary school children speak English as a second language, to see the challenges we now face as a country. This isn't fair to anyone: how can people build relationships with their neighbours if they can't even speak the same language?
Theresa May
#59. I am running for president as a Democrat. And if elected, not only do I hope to bring forth a major change in national priorities, but let me be frank, I do want to see major changes in the Democratic Party.
Bernie Sanders
#60. THE MAGICIAN
They asked St. Germain's manservant if his master was truly a thousand years old, as it was rumored he had claimed.
'How would I know?" the man replied. "I have only been in the master's employ for three hundred years.
Neil Gaiman
#61. Maya Angelou, the famous African American poet, historian, and civil rights activist who is hailed be many as one of the great voices of contemporary literature, believes a struggle only makes a person stronger.
Michael N. Castle
#62. Without death, there is hardly any threat strong enough to truly appreciate human life. He thinks: I am as good as dead
too afraid to live, only waiting, never taking a risk
I am as good as dead already.
Joe Meno
#63. The Net
I made you many and many a song,
Yet never one told all you are
It was as though a net of words
Were flung to catch a star;
It was as though I curved my hand
And dipped sea-water eagerly,
Only to find it lost the blue
Dark splendor of the sea.
Sara Teasdale
#64. Frustration is the first step towards improvement. I have no incentive to improve if I'm content with what I can do and if I'm completely satisfied with my pace, distance and form as a runner. It's only when I face frustration and use it to fuel my dedication that I feel myself moving forwards.
John Bingham
#65. Lies had deserted me, and I felt as lonely as though they had been my only friends.
Graham Greene
#66. The only sure path is to live consciously, moment to moment, as you let go of the outcome.
Charlotte Kasl
#67. You are only going to be as good as the people you surround yourself with, so be brave enough to let go those who keep weighing you down.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
#68. Prudishness is pretense of innocence without innocence. Women have to remain prudish as long as men are sentimental, dense, and evil enough to demand of them eternal innocence and lack of education. For innocence is the only thing which can ennoble lack of education.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
#69. 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
#70. It felt as if I had lived all my life inside a flat painting and only now had I stepped into the real world.
Rosamund Hodge
#71. Can we talk of integration until there is integration of hearts and minds? Unless you have this, you only have a physical presence, and the walls between us are as high as the mountain range.
Chief Dan George
#72. They say a woman's loyalty only lasts as long as it takes her to hang up and dial again.
Kim Gatlin
#73. Negation is the mind's first freedom, yet a negative habit is fruitful only so long as we exert ourselves to overcome it, adapt it to our needs; once acquired it can imprison us.
Emile M. Cioran
#74. Since humans are social animals, you're basically only as good as your reputation.
A.D. Aliwat
#75. The only thing binding individuals together is ideas. Ideas mutate and spread; they change their hosts as much as their hosts change them.
Bernard Beckett
#76. The first task is to get to know the players really well-watching them as individuals in training and in match play-to see what is good in their natural game. Then, and only then, can we begin to outline the general tactics.
Helenio Herrera
#77. The woman I am currently crazy about was a vegetarian for a year until I started dating her. As is the case with most vegetarians, she had never eaten properly prepared meat, only commercially packaged or otherwise abused flesh.
Steve Albini
#78. The only thing that stands in the way of an amazing life are the excuses you tell yourself as to why you can't achieve it
Steven Aitchison
#79. So far as I am aware no leader of a party of the European left in the past twenty-five years has declared capitalism as such to be unacceptable as a system. The only public figure to do so unhesitatingly was Pope John Paul II.
Eric Hobsbawm
#80. I'm proud to pay taxes in the United States; the only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money.
Arthur Godfrey
#81. Promise of secrecy was made at the time, from which I have only been freed during the last month by the untimely death of the lady to whom the pledge was given. It is perhaps as well that the facts should now come to light, for I have reasons to know that there are widespread rumours
Arthur Conan Doyle
#82. If I worked as a waiter, I'd go home and write songs and record them. I'd have to. It's the only thing I know how to do. It's the only thing I can do.
Albert Hammond Jr.
#83. I hadn't grasped how days could be at once long and short. Long, no doubt, as periods to live through, but so distended that they ended up by overlapping on each other. In fact, I never thought of days as such; only the words 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow' still kept some meaning.
Albert Camus
#84. There is no such thing as Intelligence; one has intelligence of this or that. One must have intelligence only for what one is doing.
Edgar Degas
#85. It is clear that those constitutions which aim at the common good are right, as being in accord with absolute justice; while those which aim only at the good of the rulers are wrong.
Aristotle.
#86. Hold it right there. The only agreement we ever had was that you intended to make me as miserable as possible, and I intended to courageously make the best of an intolerable situation like valiant Southern women have always done.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips
#87. Let us ... quietly accept our times, with the firm conviction that just as much good can be done today as at any time in the past, provided only that we have the will and the way to do it.
Etienne Gilson
#88. You've got to stop thinking of consciousness as your own. You're only thinking for yourself when you are by yourself. As soon as you are in the presence of others, your consciousness is linked at some level to those others.
James Rozoff
#89. Only silly Dorothys arrive in a magical land and want to go home. You don't want to be a silly stinking Dorothy, do you? They're reviled throughout every wondrous land. Did you know the name Dorothy translates as "squandered opportunity"?
Bill Willingham
#90. Human beings can tolerate an immortal robot, for it doesn't matter how long a machine lasts, but they cannot tolerate an immortal human being since their own mortality is endurable only so long as it is universal.
Isaac Asimov
#91. I teach a lecture course on American poetry to as many as 150 students. For a lot of them, it's their only elective, so this is their one shot. They'll take the Russian Novel or American Poetry, so I want to give them the high points, the inescapable poets.
Robert Hass
#92. I was never a joiner. I tried - I had people I admired and liked and wanted to hang with, but I ended up starting a theatre company and that took me back to Chicago ... I guess I wasn't a scenester in the end. Something must have worked out right, as I'm still here - but I'm only a binge socialite.
John Cusack
#93. Few realizations are as demoralizing as knowing that the only thing standing between you and what you want is yourself,
Kate Bolick
#94. I could feel the ghosts of all the girls I'd been behind me in the alleyway, creeping in my wake. I could almost hear my own footsteps as an echo. For a moment it was so real that I spooked myself. I stopped and turned to look. There was only silence and darkness. I walked on.
Joshilyn Jackson
#95. It goes against the grain for me to do what so often happens, to speak inhumanly about the great as if a few millennia were an immense distance. I prefer to speak humanly about it, as if it happened yesterday, and let only the greatness itself be the distance.
Soren Kierkegaard
#96. As much as you may want to, you can't control what other people say or do; you can only control yourself.
Victoria Osteen
#97. Faith is only as good as the object in which it is placed.
Erwin W. Lutzer
#98. He who only tastes his error will long dwell with it, will take delight in it as in a singular felicity; while he who drains it to the dregs will, if he be not crazy, find it to be what it is.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#99. The only way to do my job without optimism would be as a cynic, and that's not my nature.
Jon Snow
#100. Life defined only as the opposite of death is not life.
Mahmoud Darwish
