Top 100 What For Quotes
#1. 'Dreamers' was because I really wanted to go back after I heard so much nonsense about '68. I wanted to go back to what for me was '68, when young people thought that they could change the world.
Bernardo Bertolucci
#2. Everything has changed. When I was at school and was told I had better learn English, I said: What for? The English are a hell of a long way away!
Juan Manuel Fangio
#3. Then I decided I couldn't just crawl in the corner and die, so I started putting pen to paper and wrote some songs. I had no idea what for or who I was going to work with. I tried to find my way and direction.
Glenn Tipton
#4. What for me is bliss and life and ecstasy and exaltation, the world in general seeks at most in imagination; in life it finds it absurd.
Hermann Hesse
#5. I didn't do it because of the underlying greed that's prevailing, but it is about greed, doing the right thing at the right time using your clout when you have it and what for and what reason.
Danny DeVito
#6. I've come for one of your lasses," Sinclair said again. "A maid - she must be a virgin."
Donal folded his arms over his chest. "What for? Pagan sacrifice?
Lecia Cornwall
#7. In reviewing my life, in tracing its course, I fill my cell with the pleasure of being what for want of a trifle I failed to be, recapturing, so that I may hurl myself into them as into dark pits, those moments when I strayed through the trap-ridden compartments of a subterranean sky
Jean Genet
#8. Thank you." Nox leaned over and kissed my forehead. "For what?" "For everything." "Don't you get it?" he asked. "Get what?" "Alexandria Collins, I want to be your everything. There's nothing you can tell me or confess to change my mind." My
Aleatha Romig
#9. Peeta will ask Haymitch to let him go into the arena with me no matter what. For my sake. To protect me.
Suzanne Collins
#10. They talk about those All-Star Games being exhibition affairs, and maybe they are, but I've seen very few players in my life who didn't want to win, no matter whom they were playing or what for.
Carl Hubbell
#11. What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth.
Boris Pasternak
#12. I'm pretty sure you just kissed me."
"Yes, I did. Shall I apologize?"
"What for?"
"It was terribly impolite. I didn't ask your permission.
Ruthie Knox
#13. I know we planned to walk down to Schubert's for burgers, but can we go upstairs first?' She raised her eyebrows. 'What for?' 'Because I need to be inside you. Like ... now.
Lacey Alexander
#14. I'm sorry," I said. I felt unbearably ashamed. "I'm sorry." "What for?" "For being a blind, self-satisfied ass. For not seeing . . .
Sergei Lukyanenko
#15. Where is the pain when your pride is wounded? And why do we say that: wounded? There is no gash, no blood, not even a scratch. Which part of us hurts? The brain cells? The neurons? What, for goodness' sake, what?
A.P.
#16. And when in doubt, take all your clothes off,' said Caleb. 'What for?' 'Sign of a good berserk, taking all your clothes off. Frightens the hell out of the enemy. If anyone starts laughing, stab 'em one.
Terry Pratchett
#17. Thank you, Shay." "For what?" "For looking into the eyes of nothing and seeing a man you could love." Shahara wanted to weep at his words that touched her deep inside her heart. "You were never nothing, Syn. And you will always be everything to me.
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#18. They look, I said. They look in all our rooms.
What for? he said.
I think I lost control then, a little. Razor blades, I said, Books, writing, black market stuff. All things we aren't supposed to have.
Margaret Atwood
#19. The fork was invented sometime in the fifteenth century, I believe."
"Really?" she asked. "Were you there?"
His features blank, he looked up and asked, "What, for the invention of the fork or the fifteenth century?
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#20. Start with putting three of your friends to jail. You definitely know what for, and people will believe you
Lee Kuan Yew
#21. What, for some, is sin, others do to the glory of God. And the good Dr. Pentecost's remarks notwithstanding , I intend to go home tonight and smoke a cigar to the glory of God. It is a kind of incense drifting to Heaven.
Charles Spurgeon
#22. I'm in no hurry. What for?
The sun and moon aren't in a hurry: they're right.
Hurrying is believing people can get past their legs,
Or that, jumping, they can land past their shadow.
No; I don't know how to hurry.
Alberto Caeiro
#23. Then the great old, young, beautiful princess turned to Curdie.
'Now, Curdie, are you ready?' she said.
'Yes ma'am,' answered Curdie.
'You do not know what for.'
'You do, ma'am. That is enough.
George MacDonald
#24. Once one is caught up into the material world not one person in ten thousand finds the time to form literary taste, to examine the validity of philosophic concepts for himself, or to form what, for lack of a better phrase, I might call the wise and tragic sense of life.
F Scott Fitzgerald
#25. I am impatient with directors who don't know what they want, and the way you don't know what they want is because they want to do one more. "Let's do one more." So, "What for?" I guarantee you there's not going to be a change.
Morgan Freeman
#26. She couldn't imagine why there was such a difference between those children and her. She couldn't imagine why she and all these other people with her had to be treated this way. Who decided this, and what for?
Tatiana De Rosnay
#27. Apologize for what?" "For hurting you. For not trusting you and listening to Lily and Alex instead of staying strong and doing what I wanted.
Helena Hunting
#28. He said, "Yefrem! Stop griping. Take this book and read it."
Yefrem stopped short, and looked at it dully.
"What for? Why read, when we'll all be dead soon?"
Ogloyed's scar twitched.
"That's exactly why you have to hurry, because you'll soon be dead.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#29. You can stop waiting, you know,' she says. 'For what?' 'For God to strike you down.
J.C. Lillis
#30. The way I work emotionally is: I don't ever try to cry. I try not to, which is what for me produces organic emotion.
Condola Rashad
#31. For the mystic what is how. For the craftsman how is what. For the artist what and how are one.
William McElcheran
#32. Beauty doesn't have to be about anything. What's a vase about? What's a sunset or a flower about? What, for that matter, is Mozart's Twenty-third Piano Concerto about?
Douglas Adams
#33. WHAT FOR IS THIS BOX PADDED? IS IT TO BE SAT ON? CAN IT BE THAT IT IS CAT-FLAVOURED?
Terry Pratchett
#34. As I helped him up, I felt him shake all over, so I asked him to forgive me, without knowing what for, but that was my lot, asking forgiveness, I even asked forgiveness of myself for being what I was, what it was my nature to be.
Bohumil Hrabal
#35. It's ["Into Thin Air"] there in print forever. It's part of history. People should be above taking someone else down. And for what? For money and egos people are willing to destroy other people to further their careers.
David Breashears
#36. Then maybe you can help me out with something. I need an armaments shop. I want to buy a sword. A really good one." Jace looked surprised, then amused. "What for?" "Oh, you know. Killing." Clary made a hand gesture she hoped conveyed her murderous intentions toward all things evil.
Cassandra Clare
#37. Certainly one of the most enthralling things about human life is the recognition that we live in what, for practical purposes, is a universe without bounds.
James Van Allen
#38. While no other success of ours can compensate for our failures within or outside our homes, there is a success that can compensate when we cannot, after we conscientiously do all we can. That success is the Atonement of Jesus Christ, which can mend what for us is beyond repair.
Bruce C. Hafen
#39. Let me say no more. Words do no justice to the hidden meaning. Everything immediately becomes slightly different when it is expressed in words, a little bit distorted, a little foolish ... It is perfectly fine with me that what for one man is precious wisdom for another sounds like foolery.
Hermann Hesse
#40. Have you seen Marcus?" he asked his ugly friend.
"Yes, he was stoping some people in the Violet Room from climbing the curtains."
"What for?"
"They were not professionals."
"Oh.
Ellen Kushner
#41. I don't want to see people decorating a house or digging a garden. As for guys like Jonathan Ross, he got an award there last Christmas. What for? He doesn't sing, dance or tell jokes, does he?
Ian St. John
#42. What, for instance, does it mean to be insulted? [29] Stand by a rock and insult it, and what have you accomplished? If someone responds to insult like a rock, what has the abuser gained with his invective? If, however, he has his victim's weakness to exploit, then his efforts are worth his while.
Epictetus
#43. One should love from a position of wholeness. One should have a firm and rich sense of self no matter what. For there is always pain - it cannot be avoided in this life, more's the pity. But pain should not destroy the person who feels it.
Mary Balogh
#44. For long I could not close my ears that night: I lay listening, I knew not what for. A scare was on me that made me dislike the dark,
J.M. Barrie
#45. There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It's always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.
David Bowie
#46. Don't tense up no matter what, for you only close off creative power when you do.
Norman Vincent Peale
#47. Here I am paying big money to you writers and what for? All you do is change the words.
Samuel Goldwyn
#48. I was banished," said Reven proudly.
"What for?" Elfwyn pressed.
"The king said I was anathema."
"He doesn't like athemas?"
"Anathema means, like, accursed," said Jinx. "Probably it was for robbing people.
Sage Blackwood
#49. They fight a war and they don't know what for. Isn't that crazy? How can one man kill another and not really know the reason why he does it, except that the other man wears a different color uniform and speaks a different language?
Michael Morpurgo
#50. And for What, For What. No matter what you do it will never amount to anything but a single drop in a limitless ocean. What is an ocean but a multitude of drops.
David Mitchell
#52. I went to the bank and asked to borrow a cup of money. They said, 'What for?' I said, 'I'm going to buy some sugar.'
Steven Wright
#53. my sympathy. And my gratitude." "Your gratitude? For what?" "For sharing that information with me. I know you are a private person, Mr. Birdsey. Thank you for trusting me.
Wally Lamb
#54. We breathe, sleep, drink, eat, work and then die! The end of life is death. What do you long for? Love? A few kisses and you will be powerless. Money? What for? To gratify your desires. Glory? What coems after it all? Death! Death alone is certain.
Guy De Maupassant
#55. Then it was you who wounded Aravis?"
"It was I."
"But what for?"
"Child," said the Voice, "I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.
C.S. Lewis
#56. The magic question is, 'What for?' But art is not for anything. Art is the ultimate goal.
William McDonough
#57. We thought being offered the M.B.E. [Member of the Order of the British Empire] was as funny as everybody else thought it was. Why? What for? We didn't believe it. It was a part we didn't want. We all met and agreed it was daft.
John Lennon
#59. Is it not folly, Spider-like to spin
The Thread of present Life away to win-
What? for ourselves, who know not if we shall
Breathe out the very Breath we now breathe in!
Omar Khayyam
#60. I'm not a social person. Not that I'm not at ease. I'm pretty good, but it bores me. Not the people, but the whole thing. What for? It's not very productive. I only want to do what I have to do: fashion, photography, books. And that's all.
Karl Lagerfeld
#61. I'm terribly sorry, Fergal."
"What for? Marrying him? I should think you would be, Angel.
Trisha Ashley
#62. We are being punished, that's all." "What for?" he demanded, already on guard because there was a tone in her voice he hated. "For presuming. For thinking we could be happy. Happy because we decided we would be.
Doris Lessing
#63. Yes. He told me things. Like what for instance? Like once he said I had beautiful eyes. He said my eyes were like black diamonds lit up on a starry night. They are, honey. But nobody ever told me. No, Maggie said. They never do.
Kent Haruf
#64. Don't ever let desperation take the seat of inspiration in you! Always live inspired no matter what! For though something might be wrong somewhere, something is always right somewhere! If you have life, be alive and smile!
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
#65. The process of living is to surrender what, for a few glimmering days or years, you have been allowed to hold. But there is no such place as gone.
Ramona Ausubel
#66. Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.
Jean Cocteau
#67. This knotted dilemma lies at the center of women's development. How can girls both enter and stay outside of, be educated in and then try to change, what for millennia has been a man's world?
Carol Gilligan
#68. I mean, look at the people we celebrate - a lot of people who really don't do anything. They just walk the red carpets and go to all the parties, and they're hooked up with the right people, so they're celebrities. But what for?
Lenny Kravitz
#69. HAMM
Open the window.
CLOV
What for?
HAMM
I want to hear the sea.
CLOV
You wouldn't hear it.
HAMM Even if you opened the window?
CLOV
No.
HAMM
Then it's not worth opening it?
CLOV
No.
HAMM(violently)
Then open it!
Samuel Beckett
#70. Rene, you want us to find you-don't-know-who and to retrieve his you-don't-know-what for you-won't-tell-me-whom?
Ilona Andrews
#71. I'm terribly sorry, Fergal!'
'What for? I'm beginning to feel as if it's mine, too!
Trisha Ashley
#72. I think I'm a full-time artist, a full-time urban planner, and a full-time preacher with an aspiration of no longer needing any of those titles. Rather, I'm trying to do what for some seems a very messy work or a complicated work.
Theaster Gates
#73. Halloween. Sly does it. Tiptoe catspaws. Slide and creep. But why? What for? How? Who? When! Where did it all begin? 'You don't know, do you?' asks Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud climbing out under the pile of leaves under the Halloween Tree. 'You don't really know!'
Ray Bradbury
#74. It's crazy that the Constitution has to be amended to clarify what for the majority of Americans is a clear and true statement: corporations are not people.
Chellie Pingree
#75. I am so ready to hunt down those tiny adorable creatures and give them what for," said Emma. "SO READY."
"Emma . . ."
"I may even tie bows on their heads."
"We have to interrogate them."
"Can I get a selfie with one of them first?"
"Eat your toast, Emma.
Cassandra Clare
#77. Who do I like best, men or women? I think it really depends on what for!
Joyce Grenfell
#78. I always jest to people, the Oval Office is the kind of place where people stand outside, they're getting ready to come in and tell me what for, and they walk in and get overwhelmed in the atmosphere, and they say, man, you're looking pretty.
George W. Bush
#79. Thank you, Scarlet".
"For what? For being your Tuesday and Thursday girl?"
"For all seven days. Because I think of you on all of them".
Sarina Bowen
#80. Everything hurt. I closed my eyes, pressing my cheek to the street, and waited. What for, I didn't know. To be rescued. Or found. But no one came. All I'd ever thought I wanted was to be left alone. Until I was.
Sarah Dessen
#81. A policeman stopped me and said: Would you please blow into this bag, sir? I said: What for, officer? He said: My chips are too hot.
Tommy Cooper
#82. And what, for instance, would have happened had Romeo and Juliet lived to middle age, their silhouettes broadened by pasta?
Anita Loos
#83. The big man leaned down from his hips and bent his knees a little and breathed in my face.
'What for did you call me Hemingway, pally?'
'There are ladies present.
Raymond Chandler
#84. Do you have any matches?"
"What for?" The suspicion is back in his voice. That's the Tobin I know and lo-
Well, that's the Tobin I know, anyway.
Josin L. McQuein
#85. Face. And what, for instance, were you telling me about charity? And
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#86. What's that you mutter to yourself, Matthew Maule?" asked Scicpio. "And what for do you look so black at me?"
"No matter, darky," said the carpenter. "Do you think nobody is to look black but yourself?
Nathaniel Hawthorne
#87. Yesterday I told a chicken to cross the road. It said, "What for?"
Steven Wright
#88. Earth would soon
Be uninhabitable as the moon.
What for that matter had it ever been?
Who advised man to come and live therein?
Robert Frost
#89. A great deal of my mail comes from fans of the 'Oz' picture - fans of all ages. The scholarly, the curious, the disbelievers write and ask how? why? when? what for? did you fly? melt? scream? cackle? appear? disappear? produce? sky-write? deal with monkeys? etc., etc., etc.
Margaret Hamilton
#90. I'm sorry ... what?" "For they are the Crows," he intoned solemnly, "and they are the harbingers of death.
Shelly Laurenston
#91. I never scrimmage Oilers against Oilers ... What for? Houston isn't on our schedule.
Bum Phillips
#92. We're all alive, but we don't know why or what for; we're all searching for happiness; we're all leading lives which are different and yet the same.
Anne Frank
#93. In many ways we were drugged when we were young. We were brought up to need people. For what? For acceptance, approval, appreciation, applause.
Anthony De Mello
#94. I have to talk to him," I said flatly. "I forbid it." Every cell in my being bristled. I practically shouted, "You what?" "For. Bid. It." "You did not just say that to me.
Karen Marie Moning
#95. Ordinary people who live their lives peacefully, whose days gently resemble each other, may happen one day to stop and wonder why and what for do they do the things they do and have been doing for so many years?
Haim Shapira
#96. One need ask only 'What for? What am I to unify my being for?' The reply is: Not for my own sake.
Martin Buber
#97. The universe can best be pictured as consisting of pure thought, the thought of what for want of a better word we must describe as a mathematical thinker.
James Jeans
#98. The same question arose in every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed?" ... p982
Leo Tolstoy
#99. What about study hall? Shouldn't I go to the library?
"What for, Ms. Lord?" Mr. anderson said. "You're with me
Ilsa J. Bick
#100. I need to pick up some lingerie," I told them. "What for?" asked Trey. "To make you feel pretty, Pound Cake," I retorted. "The fuck you think?
Kelli Jean
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