Top 100 Were What Quotes
#1. Poetry, music, forests, oceans, solitude
they were what developed enormous spiritual strength. I came to realize that spirit, as much or more than physical conditioning, had to be stored up before a race.
Herb Elliott
#2. In appearance the locusts were like horses equipped for battle. On their heads were what looked like crowns of gold; their faces were like human faces, 8 their hair like women's hair, and their teeth like lions' teeth;
Anonymous
#3. One of the hardest lessons in young Sam's life had been finding out that the people in charge weren't in charge. It had been finding out that governments were not, on the whole, staffed by people who had a grip, and that plans were what people made instead of thinking.
Terry Pratchett
#4. Riskier mortgage lending practices, imposed by government, were what set the stage for many mortgage payments to stop and thus for the financial disasters that followed. Political rhetoric, echoed in the media, seeks to obscure that painfully plain fact.
Thomas Sowell
#5. Different rates of development on different continents, from 11,000 B.C. to A.D. 1500, were what led to the technological and political inequalities of A.D. 1500.
Jared Diamond
#7. Simple questions
and simple answers
were what we needed in life. That was what Mma Ramotswe believed. Yes.
Alexander McCall Smith
#8. I would be a poorer person if the only things I knew were what I had found out for myself.
J. Irwin Miller
#9. When I first got to the majors in 2004, female fans held up signs asking me to marry them. Those girls today were what, 13, 14? I'm 23, but that's a little young even for me.
David Wright
#10. Differences were what made up the human race, similarities were what made up drones and clones.
Vicktor Alexander
#11. The couch and I were what I would describe as frenemies. I loved to hate it. It was too small for my frame. I had tried to tell my wife that fact when we bought it off of Craigslist, but she assured me that it went perfectly with our room decor and it was a good deal.
Anna M. Aquino
#12. If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#13. With his words, he could approach the soul where it resided, a glory to God, for words were what the Almighty first created, after the silence of the world, and they were Eleazar ben Ya'ir's gift as well.
Alice Hoffman
#14. We were what seemed important then, not some label.
Nancy Garden
#15. My parents were civil rights activists, and my mother was active in the feminist movement. Issues concerning marginalized people and especially women of color were what they cared about most in the world.
Anna Holmes
#16. When I wrote 'The World Is Flat,' I said the world is flat. Yeah, we're all connected. Facebook didn't exist; Twitter was a sound; the cloud was in the sky; 4G was a parking place; LinkedIn was a prison; applications were what you sent to college; and Skype, for most people, was a typo.
Thomas Friedman
#17. What we do is bring them out in the open, show people what we once were, what we still can be.
Elbert Or
#18. They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end.
Jhumpa Lahiri
#19. What you are now is the result of what you were. What you will be tomorrow will be the result of what you are now.
Anonymous
#20. If we take people only as they are, then we make them worse; if we treat them as if they were what they should be, then we bring them to where they can be brought.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#21. You were what you were and you are what you are. Fuck that regrets bullshit.
Irvine Welsh
#23. Acting as if you were what you want to become and know you can become is the way to remove self-doubt and enter your real-magic kingdom.
Wayne Dyer
#24. If Chester had a failing, it was that he believed people were what they thought they were.
Donald E. Westlake
#25. People like Howlin' Wolf, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, John Lee Hooker, Nina Simone, Captain Beefheart - all of these artists were what I grew up listening to every day of my life. And there's a very healthy music scene in the west country of England, where I grew up.
P.J. Harvey
#26. And in so doing, mayhap we reshaped the gods themselves. Now that was a thought made me shudder to the bone. I wondered if it were true, and if it were, what would happen when some deity bent out of true by mortal ambition returned to set the record straight.
Jacqueline Carey
#27. If you spent your life concentrating on what everyone else thought of you, would you forget who you really were? What if the face you showed the world turned out to be a mask ... with nothing beneath it?
Jodi Picoult
#28. For a long period of history, you were what people said about you, and if your reputation was stained, you were in very serious trouble. People fought duels over this. Then it fades away historically.
James Lasdun
#29. The very things that separated me and distinguished me from other people were what mattered; the very things no one else would or could say, these were the things I had to say.
Andre Gide
#30. Fate.
She'd never been a big beliver in things like that, had always believed that solid decisions and hard work were what paid off. And they had.
But, really, it was getting to the point where it felt like the universe was screaming at her to pay attention!
Bella Andre
#31. It was a remarkable realization to Eby, that we are what we're taught. That was why the Morris women were what they were. It was because they knew no different.
Sarah Addison Allen
#32. The polishedness and the sophistication were what I was interested in. I mean, give me a polka dot, a floral print, a pleated dress, a big fur coat, that was always my language, and it wasn't very "in" when I was starting out, so I had a difficult time in the beginning.
Jason Wu
#33. Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them become what they are capable of being.
Daniel J. Siegel
#34. Death was a lens that would reveal things as they really were: what was important would assume its true importance; what was unimportant would recede into the shadows.
Robert Hellenga
#35. And they were killers. Of course they were; what would anyone expect them to be?
Michael Herr
#36. The state of female artists is very good. But the very definition of art has been biased in that 'art' was what men did in a European tradition and 'crafts' were what women and natives did. But it's actually all the same.
Gloria Steinem
#37. People were not what they said. They were not what they thought. They were not what they promised. People were what they did. When the final tally was done, nothing else mattered.
James Lee Burke
#38. He changed us both." She seemed to struggle for words. "I think of you, all that you lost, who you were, what you were forced to be, and might have been, and I - I have become this, this person, unable to - "
She shut her mouth.
"Kestrel," he said softly, "I love this person.
Marie Rutkoski
#39. Books for me were what the ocean is to the fearless explorer-deep and mysterious, boundless and soothing. I loved the smell of books, the feel of their weight in my hands, the rustle of the pages as I turned them, the magnificent illustrations on the covers that promised hidden treasures within.
Steve Pemberton
#40. Such physical matters were nice, yet, to him, intelligence and passion born of living, the ability to move and be moved by subtleties of the mind and spirit, were what really counted.
Robert James Waller
#41. Experiences were what you got when you couldn't get what you wanted.
Margaret Atwood
#42. In many ways we were what Billy and Ruth Graham called 'happily incompatible'.
Gayle Roper
#43. He hesitated. "They were what stayed alive, when I'd been taught and examined everything else."
Maud smiled then. "Exactly. That's it. What could survive our education.
A.S. Byatt
#44. My dreams were welcome; they were what felt real to me, and to wake in a world where Abby was not mine was the dream, the true nightmare.
Ashlan Thomas
#45. Everything I had to give went to my children, and though I loved them and my husband utterly, the drudgery of the day-to-day made it seem as if not love but coffee, my Toyota and sheer logistics were what propelled me through life.
Marcia DeSanctis
#46. When the chopper would praise a pine, he will commonly tell you that the one he cut was so big that a yoke of oxen stood on its stump; as if that were what the pine had grown for, to become the footstool of oxen.
Henry David Thoreau
#47. Mr. Lincoln's maxim and philosophy were: 'What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.' He never joined any Church. He was a religious man always, I think, but was not a technical Christian.
Mary Todd Lincoln
#48. Places, she told herself, were not evil: they were what people made of them.
Kim Newman
#49. The big fun in 'Battleship' is that there are no current battleships in the Navy today. The battleships are about 1,000 feet long and they have huge guns. They were what you saw in WWII. The last battleship that was used was the Missouri, which is what the Japanese surrendered to.
Peter Berg
#50. My parents both defected from communist Hungary and were what most people would today call libertarian. I grew up with a general distaste for taxation and any policy that intruded on our lives.
David Harsanyi
#51. Look at a man the way he is and he only becomes worse, but look at him as if he were what he could be, then he becomes what he should be.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#52. If love were what the rose is, And I were like the leaf, Our lives would grow together, In sad or singing weather, Blown fields or flowerful closes, Green pleasure or grey grief; If love were what the rose is, And I were like the leaf.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#53. Treat others as if they were what they ought to be and you will help them become what they are capable of becoming." Goethe "No one needs love more than the person we find difficult to like." Mike Moore
Mike Moore
#54. Nothing was like knowing you were the appetizer for a feast of orgy, that you were what whetted the guests and enticed them to devour.
Fierce Dolan
#55. I vaguely remember my schooldays. They were what was going on in the background while I was trying to listen to the Beatles.
Douglas Adams
#56. But during the day ... that was life. The collection of small details that made up a shared day were what gave richness to what happened in the bed at night.
Anne Bishop
#57. Because we can't, we don't know how to talk about a movie or a book anymore; the moment has come when movies and novels don't matter, only the time we saw them, read them: where we were, what we were doing, who we were then.
Alejandro Zambra
#58. he noticed an inscription written on the floor at the foot of a pile of bones: What you are, they once were. What they are, you will be.
Zimbardo
#59. My dad used to call me "yeah but" because no matter what the answer was I always wanted to explore why things were what they were and how they might be different.
Arlene Dickinson
#60. When I was 19, I celebrated my first Valentine's Day while being in a relationship. I was so excited, but didn't know what the rules were. What should I get him, or was I even supposed to get him something?
Carly Craig
#61. How do you know me?" she says.
He looks at her through his narrow eyes. "I was," he says.
"You were what?" she asks.
"I was," he says again. "And now I'm not.
Julianna Baggott
#62. Maybe I wasn't defined by the mistakes I had made after all . . . maybe those decisions were what allowed me to become the person I was always destined to be.
Holly Madison
#63. There must be a routine to life, a framework to hang life on. Routines were what kept you sane, gave you something to do at this moment and at that, definite places to go, positive things to do. Abandon it and that way madness lies.
Ruth Rendell
#64. Life was mostly made up of things you couldn't control, full of surprises, and they weren't always good. Life wasn't what you made it. You were what life made you.
Sara Zarr
#65. I grew up taking it for granted that missionaries were what American boys grew up to be.
Huston Smith
#66. What I learned from that moment is that when you face your fears, they aren't as big as you thought they were. What makes them big is when you don't turn around to face them head-on. The longer you avoid your fears, the bigger they grow in your mind.
Steve Harvey
#67. She wanted to destroy something. The crash and clatter were what she wanted to hear.
Kate Chopin
#68. Forget girls who died decades ago; words were ghosts. They were what haunted me.
Leila Howland
#69. How it was, when you lost things, it was like you only knew for the first time that you'd ever had them. ( ... ) You didn't wake up every morning and say yes and yes to every little thing. But little things were what it was all made of. Or just somebody to see, there, when you woke up.
William Gibson
#70. Intentionally, or unintentionally, Kat had spoken with her eyes; tenderly and lovingly conveying a message to Freya that her tongue wouldn't let her speak. It was glaringly obvious they both felt it. The words were not important. The pauses, gazes, and drawn out breaths were what mattered.
Kiki Archer
#71. Somehow I should have been able to say how strong and resilient you were, what a patient and abiding and bonding force, the softness that proved in the long run stronger than what it seemed to yield to ... You are at once a lasting presence and an unhealed wound.
Wallace Stegner
#72. Mainly because people were what they were and you couldn't change them. most of the time, they couldn't change themselves, even if they were desperate to be somebody different from who they were. So, best keep your distance.
Charles Frazier
#73. But I loved Rule like it was my mission in life. I loved him like it was inevitable, like no matter how many times I was shown what an awful idea it was, what a bad match we were, what a callous asshole he could be, I couldn't shake it.
Jay Crownover
#74. They were a susitute. They were what you did when you couldn't have what you wanted.
Connie Willis
#75. Wherever Gandhi went, he transformed situations and lives. As one friend and biographer wrote, He ... changed human beings by regarding them not as what they thought they were but as though they were what they wished to be, and as though the good in them was all of them
Benjamin Hoff
#76. Sometimes the best people to be around are not exactly like you - because if they were, what is the point? If they contribute something different than you can, that is when they are valuable.
Jamie Hyneman
#77. I let her ask the questions. Predictably, the main questions she had were 'What?' and 'Am I going to be on the menu?' Oh, and 'What?
Lia Habel
#78. Maybe that was how you had to live, eventually - just let things be and never ask yourself if they were what you really wanted.
Anna North
#79. What did the poet say? That the saddest words of tongue or pen were what might have been?
Charles Todd
#80. You know, I always knew you were an egg-head when it came to bugs, Robbie, but I never realized how egg-centric you were. What an egg-citing diet you have! I guess the yolk is on you, though - " "Oh, shut up," Robbie mumbled,
Keith Robinson
#81. We hate people who honestly tell us what they think about us. We wish we were what we are not
Bangambiki Habyarimana
#82. Yes, I found myself, by insensible degrees, sincerely fond of her; and the happiest hours of my life were what I spent with her.
Jane Austen
#83. Bones tell me the story of a person's life - how old they were, what their gender was, their ancestral background.
Kathy Reichs
#84. Trouble and pain were what kept a man alive. Or trying to avoid trouble and pain. It was a full time job.
Charles Bukowski
#85. Despite the hour, customers already flooded the market, men, women, and children of every color and race looking for the magic cure to their problems. They were what allowed the poachers to exist. They'd stop poaching if people stopped buying.
Ilona Andrews
#86. They were an odd pair- but odd pairs were what kept life interesting.
Daniel Waters
#87. There was no one to comfort the children, no one to embrace them, no one to love them. Care and control were what the dormitories were all about, not love and affection.
Ruth Hegarty
#88. [...] here "white" could be the way a person talked; "black," the music a person listened to. In Ghana you could only be what you were, what your skin announced to the world.
Yaa Gyasi
#89. There was this about vampires : they could never look scruffy. Instead, they were ... what was the word ... deshabille. It meant untidy, but with bags and bags of style.
Terry Pratchett
#90. If there was one thing I knew, it was that our demons were what shaped who we were. The things we do, the way we act, are all driven by the things we want locked away forever.
Barbara C. Doyle
#91. I needed to know you were what the promise of you seemed to be because I haven't been good with that shit in the past and, if you were, I needed to make certain you stayed where I wanted you to be.
Kristen Ashley
#92. Jokes against the legal profession were what the legal profession loved most.
Ian McEwan
#93. Jesus regularly visualized the success of his efforts ... 'I always do what pleases God.' ... Was this conceit? Or was it enlightened creativity and self-knowledge? ... Jesus was full of self-knowledge and self-love. His 'I am' statements were what he became.
Laurie Beth Jones
#94. Either human beings must be more instinctive, or animals must be more conscious than we had previously suspected. The similarities, not the differences, were what caught the attention.
Matt Ridley
#95. Our flaws were what made us unique as individuals; and accepting them and working through our differences was what made us stronger as a couple.
S.C. Miotto
#96. We do not remember people as they were. What we remember is the effect they had on us then, but we remember it through an emotion charged with all that has since happened to us.
Storm Jameson
#97. ...Past joys and achievements give us the outlines of how to get to a state of happiness again. That memory is a treasure that can never be taken away. At least we know where we were, what we have lost, what we miss and what more to add to our experiences.
Janvier Chouteu-Chando
#98. If kisses were what you were looking for, little fool, why didn't you come to me?
quoted by Susannah Simon
Meg Cabot
#99. My parents were what I like to call proper musical fans. Lots of Sondheim was played in the car.
Daniel Radcliffe
#100. His childhood, and the people he'd encountered there - the ones who'd changed his life, or who'd been witnesses to what had happened to him at that crucial time - were what Juan Diego had instead of religion.
John Irving
