Scarcely Quotes

#1. The American doctrinaire is the converse of the American demagogue, and, in this way, is scarcely less injurious to the public. The first deals in poetry, the last in cant. He is as much a visionary on one side, as the extreme theoretical democrat is a visionary on the other.

James F. Cooper

#2. Sex is perhaps like culture - a luxury that only becomes an art after generations of leisurely acquaintance. Why we scarcely approach either as individuals - it's mass propulsion still!

Alice B. Toklas

#3. Jean Piaget observed that scarcely any question seems absurd to a child, but he was silent on the question of absurd answers from adults.

Nancy Willard

#4. There have been only five burglars in the history of robbery who have specialized in rope. All five of these burglars were caught and sent to prison, which is why scarcely any people lock up their rope for safekeeping.

Lemony Snicket

#5. I scarcely remember counting upon happiness - I look not for it if it be not in the present hour - nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights, or if a sparrow come before my Window I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel.

John Keats

#6. Kings may usurp thrones, republics may be established, but the town scarcely stirs. Plassan sleeps while Paris fights.

Emile Zola

#7. A FRIEND Is a wellspring of understanding. A catch basin for grimy little secrets that can scarcely be voiced.

Ellen Hopkins

#8. It taught me to hope," said he, "as I had scarcely ever allowed myself to hope before." Mr. Darcy - Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen

#9. Victory fades so quickly that it is scarcely apparent and it is always the face of defeat that we are able to see.

Jane Bowles

#10. Scarcely anything in literature is worth a damn except what is written between the lines.

Raymond Chandler

#11. There were people in the world who, for all their gruff arrogance, can, with scarcely a few notes, easily persuade you they are inherently kind, candid, and vulnerable - with unsettling reminders, though, that their ability to flip from one to the other is what ultimately makes them deadly.

Andre Aciman

#12. The musquetos continue to infest us in such manner that we can scarcely exist. My dog even howls with the torture he experiences.

Meriwether Lewis

#13. There are come Critics so with Spleen diseased, They scarcely come inclining to be pleased: And sure he must have more than mortal Skill, Who please one against his Will.

William Congreve

#14. But when oxidation nibbles more slowly - more delicately, like a tortoise - at the world around us, without a flame, we call it rust and we sometimes scarcely notice as it goes about its business consuming everything from hairpins to whole civilizations.

Alan Bradley

#15. Just last night, I was troubled by a decision involving an eyedropper, a greedy night watchman, and a tray of individual custards, and this morning I am so tired that I can scarcely type these worfs.

Lemony Snicket

#16. I'm ever so sorry,' said Sabetha. If the words THAT WAS A LIE had suddenly sprung up behind her in letters of fire ten feet high, the effect could scarcely have added to her tone of voice.

Scott Lynch

#17. Once upon a time there was a little prince who lived on a planet scarcely bigger than himself and who had need for a friend.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#18. We can scarcely avoid the inference that light consists in the transverse undulations of the same medium which is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena.

James Clerk Maxwell

#19. He cannot think. He can scarcely breathe. But he has no desire to either, he simply wants to keep kissing her.

Sara Sheridan

#20. Lettuce is like conversation; it must be fresh and crisp, so sparkling that you scarcely notice the bitter in it.

Charles Dudley Warner

#21. Virtue is uncommon in all the classes of humanity; and I suppose it will scarcely be imagined more frequent in a prison than in other places. Yet ...

Samuel Johnson

#22. This one fact implies everything; and it is scarcely necessary to point out, for instance, that while the Difference Engine can merely tabulate, and is incapable of developing, the Analytical Engine can either tabulate or develope.

Ada Lovelace

#23. I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent.

George Washington

#24. It is scarcely possible in most places to get anyone to attend a meeting where the only attraction is God

Aiden Wilson Tozer

#25. Hark! the hours are softly calling Bidding Spring arise To listen to the rain-drops falling From the cloudy skies To listen to Earth's weary voices Louder every day Bidding her no longer linger On her charm'd way But hasten to her task of beauty Scarcely yet begun.

Adelaide Anne Procter

#26. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy one, I will indulge in the other.

Mary Shelley

#27. Sometimes I could scarcely breathe with the knowledge that for the rest of my life, whenever we wanted, Peter and I could lie down and do whatever we wished.

Anne Rivers Siddons

#28. For a whole generation after the battle of Pydna, the Roman state enjoyed a profound calm, scarcely varied by a ripple here and there on the surface.

Theodor Mommsen

#29. Scarcely a year previously, his father, Percival, had been convicted of a savage and well-publicized attack upon three young Muggles.

J.K. Rowling

#30. Would it be possible that I should not in any degree succeed? I can scarcely think so. Ah delusive hope, how much further wilt thou lead me?

John James Audubon

#31. Why had this power come to me? I can scarcely govern myself. At times, I feel as if I could dance through the halls with happiness, and then, just as suddenly, my thoughts are dark and lost and frightening.

Libba Bray

#32. For he could scarcely make them move together to grip a twig, and they seemed remote from his body and from him.

Jack London

#33. The choir always tittered and whispered all through service. There was once a church choir that was not ill-bred, but I have forgotten where it was, now. It was a great many years ago, and I can scarcely remember anything about it, but I think it was in some foreign country.

Mark Twain

#34. I did not know what it was to be happy for a whole day at a time, scarcely for an hour.

Georg Brandes

#35. I wonder if I shall ever see her again, and I realize that I scarcely care. I can feel the sheets beneath me, and the cold air on my chest. I feel fine. I feel absolutely fine. I feel nothing at all.

Neil Gaiman

#36. He scarcely knew who was battling whom, who was winning, who was losing, as though he hoped that by doggedly ignoring the war it would return the favor

Khaled Hosseini

#37. There's nothing so strong as rage, except what makes you hold it in - that's stronger. It's a good thing not to answer your enemies. I scarcely ever do.

Frances Hodgson Burnett

#38. That dusty hill we can scarcely look upon and then only with pain, The Adversary, also with pain, does and must ever witness The Crucifixion.

Geoffrey Wood

#39. A prevention of the faculty and opportunity to procreate on the part of the physically degenerate and mentally sick, over the period of only six hundred years, would not only free humanity from an immeasurable misfortune, but would lead to a recovery which today seems scarcely conceivable.

Adolf Hitler

#40. Lady Stark was there beside his bed. She had been there, day and night, for close on a fortnight. Not for a moment had she left Bran's side. She had her meals brought to her there, and chamber pots as well, and a small hard bed to sleep on, though it was said she had scarcely slept at all.

George R R Martin

#41. Posterity who are to reap the blessings will scarcely be able to conceive the hardships and sufferings of their ancestors.

Abigail Adams

#42. So ludicrous, in fact, do these ceremonies appear to me, that I scarcely am able to govern my muscles, when I see a man start with eager, and serious solicitude to lift a handkerchief, or shut a door, when the LADY could have done it herself, had she only moved a pace or two.

Mary Wollstonecraft

#43. The light was so dim that Jaime could scarcely see her, though they stood a scant few feet apart. 'In this light she could almost be a beauty', he thought. 'In this light she could almost be a knight'.

George R R Martin

#44. One will abide, and will confess that another is nobler than he, that another is richer, more handsome, and even that he is more learned, but that another is richer in reason scarcely any will confess: Rare is he who will concede genius.

Juana Ines De La Cruz

#45. There is no man so unsuited for the task of speaking about memory as I am, for I find scarcely a trace of it in myself, and I do not believe there is another man in the world so hideously lacking in it.

Geoff Ryman

#46. In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies,

Charles Dickens

#47. [O]ne can scarcely be frightened off writing what one wants to write for fear an obscure reviewer should patronise one on that account.

Dorothy L. Sayers

#48. Human relationships flourish and decay, quickly and silently, so that those concerned scarcely know how brittle, or how inflexible, the ties that bind them have become.

Anthony Powell

#49. This morning he had been so heartsick and weary he could scarcely stand, but now his fury was on him, filling him with strength.

George R R Martin

#50. I have often seen quite demented patients recognize and respond vividly to paintings and delight in the act of painting at a time when they are scarcely responsive, disoriented, and out of it.

Oliver Sacks

#51. Wilderness, wilderness ... We scarcely know what we mean by the term, though the sound of it draws all whose nerves and emotions have not been irreparably stunned, deadened, numbed by the caterwauling of commerce, the sweating scramble for profit and domination.

Edward Abbey

#52. It were well if there were fewer heroes; for I scarcely ever heard of any, excepting Hercules, but did more mischief than good. These overgrown mortals commonly use their will with their right hand; and their reason with their left.

Jeremy Collier

#53. An entire life of solitude contradicts the purpose of our being, since death itself is scarcely an idea of more terror.

Edmund Burke

#54. His ignorance covers the world like a blanket, and there's scarcely a hole in it anywhere.

Mark Twain

#55. She was nothing more than a mere good-tempered, civil and obliging Young Woman; as such we could scarcely dislike her
she was only an Object of Contempt

Jane Austen

#56. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside.

Charles Dickens

#57. It is scarcely fair . . . to permit only those with sufficient funds to spend to appropriate that which, in reality, is the property of all people.

Judith C. Waller

#58. So boasting of her capacity to surround and protect, there was scarcely a shell of herself left for her to know herself by; all was so lavished and spent;

Virginia Woolf

#59. However, if you look at the matter more closely, you will scarcely call it greatness of soul, which prompts a man to kill himself rather than bear up against some hardships of fortune, or sins m which he is not implicated.

Augustine Of Hippo

#60. We take a fancy to something: and scarcely have we thoroughly taken a fancy to it when that tyrant in us calls out: "Give me thatin sacrifice"
and we give it.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#61. A great man scarcely knows how he dines, how he dresses; but without railing or precision, his living is natural and poetic.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#62. If you haven't understood that if you are born you die, you scarcely deserve to be able to be alive.

Joanna Lumley

#63. There is scarcely anything so dull and meaningless as Bible doctrine taught for its own sake. Truth divorced from life is not truth in its Biblical sense, but something else and something less.

Aiden Wilson Tozer

#64. In the Great Deluge in the days of Noah, nearly all mankind perished, eight persons alone being saved in the Ark. In our days a deluge, not of water but of sins, continually inundates the earth, and out of this deluge very few escape. Scarcely anyone is saved.

Alphonsus Liguori

#65. The Englishman is under no constitutional obligation to believe that all men are created equal. The American agony is therefore scarcely intelligible, like a saint's self-flagellation viewed by an atheist.

John Updike

#66. They have scarcely finished burying the dead from the last battle, and already they are practicing for the next one.

George R R Martin

#67. Count it one of the highest virtues upon earth to educate faithfully the children of others, which so few, and scarcely any, do by their own.

Martin Luther

#68. Often, I can scarcely hear any one speaking to me; the tones yes, but not the actual words; yet as soon as any one shouts, it is unbearable. What will come of all this, heaven only knows!

Ludwig Van Beethoven

#69. When the economies of emerging markets don't just grow but beat expectations, there's scarcely a mention.

Kenneth Fisher

#70. She had
become so thoroughly annealed into his life that she was like the
air he breathed
necessary but scarcely noticed.

O. Henry

#71. There is scarcely an aspect of the American character to which humor is not related, few which in some sense it has not governed ... It is a lawless element, full of surprises.

Constance Rourke

#72. There are some persons who are content with everything and others who are scarcely content with anything. These latter need patience to bear with themselves.

Vincent De Paul

#73. In the midst of all this great variety of subjects, an individual cannot attain to perfection in each, because it is scarcely in his power to take in and comprehend the general theories of them.

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

#74. The Sphinx extended a hand. Seth shook it. "One last thing, Seth. Are you aware that Midsummer Eve is scarcely a week away?" "Yeah." "Might I make a suggestion?" "Okay." "Don't open any windows.

Brandon Mull

#75. There we measure shadows, and we search among ghostly errors of measurement for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial.

Edwin Powell Hubble

#76. Great minds tend toward banality. It is the noblest effort of individualism. But it implies a sort of modesty, which is so rare that it is scarcely found except in the greatest, or in beggars.

Andre Gide

#77. A man of broad principles. Of liberal sentiments. Even a generous man ... Yet one might say that his way through the world was so broad it scarcely made a path at all

Cormac McCarthy

#78. Moral activity? There is scarcely such a thing possible! Everything is sketchy. The world does nothing but sketch.

Florence Nightingale

#79. I only live in my music, and I have scarcely begun one thing when I start on another. As I am now working, I am often engaged on three or four things at the same time.

Ludwig Van Beethoven

#80. Contentment preserves one from catching cold. Has a woman who knew that she was well dressed ever caught a cold? No, not even when she had scarcely a rag on her back.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#81. A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian, Who left scarcely any style of writing untouched, And touched nothing that he did not adorn.

Samuel Johnson

#82. The women of the poorer classes make sacrifices, and run risks, and bear privations, and exercise patience and kindness to a degree that the world never knows of, and would scarcely believe even if it did know.

Samuel Smiles

#83. I love something: and scarcely do I love it completely when the tyrant in me says: "I want that in sacrifice." This cruelty is in my entrails. Behold! I am evil.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#84. Now we are expected to be as wise as men who have had generations of all the help there is, and we scarcely anything.

Louisa May Alcott

#85. Nature would be scarcely worth a puff of the empty wind if it were not that all Nature is but a temple, of which God is the brightness and the glory.

Henry Ward Beecher

#86. There is a monsterous deal of stupid quizzing, & common-place nonsense talked, but scarcely any wit.

Jane Austen

#87. She scarcely spoke at all and might have been one of those huge dolls which, when inclined backwards, say "Ma-ma" or "Pa-pa": though impossible to imagine in any position so undignified as that required for the mechanism to produce these syllables.

Anthony Powell

#88. You often feel that your prayers scarcely reach the ceiling; but, oh, get into this humble spirit by considering how good the Lord is, and how evil you all are, and then prayer will mount on wings of faith to heaven.

Charles Simeon

#89. While rose-buds scarcely show'd their hue, But coyly linger'd on the thorn.

James Montgomery

#90. Can you feel the ties that bind us? Can you feel them tightening? Because I can, they're so tight that I can scarcely breathe.

Nenia Campbell

#91. Purity and virtue scarcely differ from vice, if they're not free of malice

Anton Chekhov

#92. Good responded nobly to this tax upon his inventive faculties. Never before had I the faintest conception of the breadth and depth and height of a naval officer's objurgatory powers. For ten minutes he went on in several languages without stopping, and he scarcely ever repeated himself.

H. Rider Haggard

#93. To the Greeks [the Macedonians] were uncouth, semi-civilized barbarians. The Macedonians for their part despised the Greeks as effete, wishy-washy Greeklings. Both regarded the Thracians as scarcely capable of walking on their hind legs.

Nicholas Sekunda

#94. Concord River is remarkable for the gentleness of its current, which is scarcely perceptible, and some have referred to its influence the proverbial moderation of the inhabitants of Concord, as exhibited in the Revolution, and on later occasions.

Henry David Thoreau

#95. There is no employment in the world so laborious as that of making to one's self a great name; life ends before one has scarcely made the first rough draught of his work.

Jean De La Bruyere

#96. Small debts are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound: great debts are like cannon; of loud noise, but little danger.

Samuel Johnson

#97. The party chiefs live in an atmosphere in which a sense of their own importance and the importance of their class interests and privileges is exaggerated, and which the opinions of the common people can scarcely penetrate...' Later,

Anita Leslie

#98. My children are babies and my husband has scarcely half an hour in 24 to give me.

Julia Ward Howe

#99. The coarsest father gains a new impulse to labor from the moment of his baby's birth; he scarcely sees it when awake, and yet it is with him all the time. Every stroke he strikes is for his child. New social aims, new moral motives, come vaguely up to him.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

#100. Scarcely anyone ever wants to be anybody else. However handicapped or unhappy he feels himself, he would not change places with other more fortunate mortals.

Gordon W. Allport