What They Had Quotes

#1. They're politicians,' Win said. 'They'd lie and evade if you asked them what they had for breakfast.

Harlan Coben

#2. If something doesn't work, people will say 'we told you so', and if it works, they will come up with a new theory and will conveniently forget what they had said earlier.

Ram Gopal Varma

#3. People don't realize what they had till it's gone. Like President Kennedy, there was no one like him, the Beatles, and my man Elvis Presley. I was the Elvis of boxing.

Muhammad Ali

#4. When I wrote The Virgin Suicides, I gave myself very strict rules about the narrative voice: the boys would only be able to report what they had seen or found or what had been told to them.

Jeffrey Eugenides

#5. Such power I gave the people as might do,
Abridged not what they had, now lavished new,
Those that were great in wealth and high in place
My counsel likewise kept from all disgrace.
Before them both I held my shield of might,
And let not either touch the other's right.

Plutarch

#6. Reg NMS was intended to create equality of opportunity in the U.S. stock market. Instead it institutionalized a more pernicious inequality. A small class of insiders with the resources to create speed were now allowed to preview the market and trade on what they had seen.

Michael Lewis

#7. I want soldiers who hate what they had to do and fear having to ever do it again." "And if that means we lose the war?" "Then we lose the war by keeping ourselves." That

Chuck Wendig

#8. Heroines did not pick their own battles - the ones they knew they could win. On the contrary, they managed what they had to manage, and they did not lie to themselves about relying on others for help instead of accomplishing the thing alone.

Gordon Dahlquist

#9. Once she had said to him that what they had was grace. Even now, married properly, rank bestowed, it still was. And always would be

Anne Leonard

#10. Let them tremble in fear at what they had awoken.

Sarah J. Maas

#11. I always felt that I was as good as the next person, and I didn't care what they had.

Lenny Wilkens

#12. These soldiers had done what they had done, and been done unto in return. This was how it went.
In the cycle of slaughter, reprisal begat reprisal, forever.

Laini Taylor

#13. I wouldn't say I worked with these people because I was looking for a particular vocal sound. I worked with them because I loved what they had done before-and because they really wanted to work with me.

Melanie Chisholm

#14. Maybe even though what they had was beautiful, it wasn't meant to last forever.

Leah Konen

#15. Maybe they did what they had to do to live, and tried to get a little love and have a little fun before the darkness took them.

Poppy Z. Brite

#16. What they had right now was not what she wanted. And if the rules of the game were always going to stay this way, she just didn't know if she even wanted to play.

Lauren Kate

#17. Human progress had so often been checked by those who were afraid of losing what they had.

Marya Mannes

#18. Max said little. His essential quality was always to say little, but by powerful empathy for writers and for books to draw out of them what they had it in them to say and to write.

A. Scott Berg

#19. When I saw how the European Union was developing, it was very obvious what they had in mind was not democratic. In Britain, you vote for a government so the government has to listen to you, and if you don't like it you can change it.

Tony Benn

#20. They had a great deal in common, Bowman a little defiantly said. What they had in common was more vital than similar interests
it was wordless understanding and accord. It was love, the furnace into which everything is dropped.

James Salter

#21. British generals often gave away in stupidity what they had gained in ignorance.

Scott Anderson

#22. Some people lose the ones they love, and then realize they never truly appreciated what they had.

Jason Pellegrini

#23. There were too many disappointments to name and too much heartbreak. They were beyond punishment or forgiveness, beyond what they had inflicted on each other, beyond love.

Ayana Mathis

#24. Actually it broke my heart to hear that we were going to have to part ways, ... It's a business and they had to do what they had to do.

Eddie Griffin

#25. Nadia shook her head, marveling at the capacity people had for ignoring what they had in common, and fighting bitterly over whatever small differences existed between them. She

Kim Stanley Robinson

#26. The establishment Republicans are beginning to say on the record what they had been whispering about in private for months: that Donald Trump at the top of the ticket could mean an electoral wipeout down the ballot.

Dalia Mogahed

#27. It was true what they had been saying: if people remember you, then you're not dead. It was very comforting.

Maeve Binchy

#28. He pronounced them good not because of what they had accomplished, but because of who He had made them to be." I

Tessa Afshar

#29. All those men had died for some senseless reason, died perhaps without ever knowing exactly what they had fought to accomplish.

Terry Brooks

#30. God sends drunks blackouts because if they knew what they had done they would surely die of shame.

Lucia Berlin

#31. Some men, under the pressure of incarceration, showed true mettle, while others revealed themselves as less than what they had appeared to be.

Nelson Mandela

#32. This was the book I read over and over. I really felt so in tune with them- I knew all the dates of their lives, what they had been doing, whre they had been. They were always my heroes, creating something fantastic against all odds, and against their real life.

Christian Tetzlaff

#33. Even the gods
Cowered like dogs at what they had done.

Herbert Mason

#34. Alditha wondered if perhaps the key [to] contentment was not what they had, but seeing the beauty in what they had already been given.

Sarah Holman

#35. She glanced up from his lips to those dark eyes that smoldered with his fire. She remembered now what they had looked like as she'd seen him before Morgen had entered his world. "Your eyes used to be blue."
"That was a long time ago."
-Seren to Kerrigan

Kinley MacGregor

#36. The truth was, history repeated itself on a daily basis; mistakes were made over and over. People were haunted by what they had done, and by what they hadn't had time to do.

Jodi Picoult

#37. Or maybe they weren't changing. Maybe they were just now becoming what they had always wanted to be.

Eilis O'Neal

#38. Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen.

Louis L'Amour

#39. But what they had achieved apart on the dance floors of the world was nothing compared to what they achieved together.

Siri Mitchell

#40. Staring at the plaster death figures in the museum window, she wondered what they had been thinking as they curled up to die in the ashes. Probably not: Well, we're Romans! We shouldn't complain!

Rick Riordan

#41. While the innocent yearned to lose their innocence, those who had already done so in turn envied the innocent, and knew grief in what they had lost. Between the two, no exchange of truths was possible.

Steven Erikson

#42. What they had between them was still as fragile as flickering candle flame, as delicate as eggshell - and he knew that if it shattered, if he somehow let it break and be destroyed, something inside him would shatter too, something that could never be fixed.

Cassandra Clare

#43. I've read my grandmother's memoirs and she served as a nurse during World War II. What they had to do was incredible.

Jessica Brown Findlay

#44. Cut the 'I'm a bad-ass demon' crap. You have a soul. That's more than what they had.

Ashlyn Mathews

#45. Upon entering into the divine domain of transcendence, all these religious founders truly felt that they had accessed the true meaning of the universe, while in reality, what they had access to, in that state of mind, was their inner self.

Abhijit Naskar

#46. I think all of the best nonfiction that has ever been made comes from the result of someone who can't stop thinking about a certain topic - a very specific aspect of a certain topic in some cases. And second, they got really good at figuring out what they had to say about it.

Merlin Mann

#47. Their friendship had made them so thankful for all they still had that they couldn't be sad for what they had lost.

Jeremy D. Shapiro

#48. The truth was that the sky didn't discriminate. It covered all of them in this graceful, inexplicable splendor. No matter what they had done.

Laura K. Cowan

#49. What they did was sell invisible things. And after they'd sold what they had, they still had it. They sold what everyone needed but often didn't want. They sold the key to the universe to people who didn't even know it was locked. "I

Terry Pratchett

#50. ...should the Dreamers reap what they had sown, we would reap it right with them.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

#51. It was as if the birds were caught in the repetition of some primal trauma, stuck between what they had and what they wanted.

Garth Risk Hallberg

#52. Maybe it was simply human nature to only love a thing after losing it. Maybe they should all lose more things so they can appreciate what they had.

Tiffany Reisz

#53. I like the fact that I'm from the South and that I have this rich history behind me. I come from a family of storytellers. They can't just tell you how someone went to the store. They have to tell you who they saw, what they were wearing, what they said, what they had in their grocery cart.

Kimberly Willis Holt

#54. (After death.) So few people who come across, possess awareness of any kind. All they bring along with them are worthless values. All they desire is continuation of what they had in life no matter how misguided or degraded ... Will those people ever progress, even with our help?

Richard Matheson

#55. A lot of people that embark on spiritual endeavors tended to, especially in the '60s and '70s, they tended to give up what they had before and cut themselves off from their lives, previous life as it were. But, I don't think that one should do that.

Dave Davies

#56. What they had both thought was safety proved to have been the camouflage of an enemy who works in terms of friendship, trust and pity.

Graham Greene

#57. And the women who had thought they wanted dresses never realized that what they had wanted was happiness.

John Steinbeck

#58. He measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned.

Jorge Luis Borges

#59. You couldn't trust people to be tomorrow what they had been yesterday.

Garth Risk Hallberg

#60. Some people will only value what they HAVE when it becomes what they HAD

Renita Bryant

#61. Because my parents, growing up, they worked hard. Everyone in my family woke up early in the morning. I used to see my mother and my father go off to work, and come back and, no matter what, they had time for the kids.

Herschel Walker

#62. Perhaps what set the saints apart - the holy women and men - was that they held fast to what they had seen, not allowing their realisation to fade and die, but they held on, held on and refused to let go, saw forgetfulness as a tool of the devil and held on. Maybe this was the secret.

John Ajvide Lindqvist

#63. Childhood is such a delicate tissue; what they had done this morning could snag somewhere in the little ones, make a dull, small pain that will circle back again and again, and hurt them in small ways for the rest of their lives.

Lauren Groff

#64. what they had seen,

Jodi Picoult

#65. They all believed they were innocent, no matter what they had done.

Jeff Giles

#66. Men died as she watched, and they didn't care about what they had fought for.

Tamora Pierce

#67. I have sometimes seen women, who would have been sensible enough, if they would have been content not to be called women of sense
but by aiming at what they had not, they only proved absurd
for sense cannot be counterfeited.

Horace Walpole

#68. I was reared to pay no mind to what folks looked like, but to what they had inside. Traits like integrity, kindness and respect are what makes up a person.

Deanna Edens

#69. What they had most feared had happened, and yet what lay ahead was a wonderful plan they could not have imagined on their own. God had things well under control.

Sandra Byrd

#70. I feel like my entire career and life, I've been judged by people who did not really know me. I definitely think that they probably were right to assume what they had assumed about me, because there was such little to go on out there.

Nicki Minaj

#71. What was the American Revolution? The people who joined to carry it out had different views of what they had done.

Edmund Morgan

#72. I wanted what they had. I wanted inside jokes and casual touches that said 'I'm here, with you.' I wanted someone who knew me so well, he could finish my sentences. Or knew when to say nothing at all. I

Emma Scott

#73. It is advisable that a person know at least three things, where they are, where they are going, and what they had best do under the circumstances.

John Ruskin

#74. I could faintly smell the ocean. I imagined being one of the old oak trees standing there swaying in the wind and braving all sorts of weather. I pondered what they had seen in the past and what they might see in the future

Nancy B. Brewer

#75. It was a saying of Demetrius Phalereus, that "Men having often abandoned what was visible for the sake of what was uncertain, have not got what they expected, and have lost what they had, - being unfortunate by an enigmatical sort of calamity."

Athenaeus

#76. Does anybody really think that they didn't get what they had because they didn't have the talent or the strength or the endurance or the commitment?

Nelson Mandela

#77. And even if you cared what they had to say, would you act upon their opinions and create your life from it? No. Than stop replaying their toxic words in your head, it's no good for your being and start doing the things that once made you, you.

Nikki Rowe

#78. I left my job as a feature writer on a newspaper to write a book, then sent it off to a number of agents thinking they would all reject me. Within a week, most had come back to say they loved what they had read, which then led to a bidding war for my first two novels.

Jane Green

#79. Old age was naturally more honored in times when people could not know much more than what they had seen.

Joseph Joubert

#80. The McDonald brothers were simply not on my wavelength at all. I was obsessed with the idea of making McDonald's the biggest and the best. They were content with what they had; they didn't want to be bothered with more risks and more demands.

Ray Kroc

#81. So, we come out to Los Angeles. And we met with every network. We met with show runners, directors, writers, everything. And what we had an idea for, they didn't like. And what they had an idea for, we didn't like. So, we went home.

Reba McEntire

#82. In the end you should probably know your characters as well as you know yourself. Not only what they had for breakfast this morning, but what they wanted to have for breakfast.

Colum McCann

#83. A lot of times when people become successful, people don't really understand what they had to do or the sacrifices they made to do that, or they assume that they had money. This is coming from, like, a kid who was broke and lived with roaches and a single mom in Dorchester.

Clinton Sparks

#84. Most of those we call heroes only did what they had to do.

Robert Jordan

#85. Artemus Ward used that trick a good deal; then when the belated audience presently caught the joke he would look up with innocent surprise, as if wondering what they had found to laugh at. Dan Setchell used it before

Mark Twain

#86. The challenges they had faced together had taught them humility - the need to subsume their individual egos for the sake of the boat as a whole - and humility was the common gateway through which they were able now to come together and begin to do what they had not been able to do before.

Daniel James Brown

#87. They were very generous with me. Everybody was willing to talk about their particular accident, what they had to deal with and how they got back in touch with their competitors' spirit.

Gregory Hines

#88. Perhaps they suspected that I thought less of them because I knew it. (I'm too aware of human frailty to have let that happen. If anything, I thought more of them for wanting to face up to what they had done and for trying to change.)

Harold S. Kushner

#89. Many immigrants do not talk about what they endured back home. They were fleeing that world, and when they left they didn't want to talk about it because there had been pain and heartbreak under the caste system of the South. They didn't want to burden their children with what they had endured.

Isabel Wilkerson

#90. I assumed that looking back reminded older guys of what they had shot at and missed, the what-ifs, the good memories, the bad, the people left behind, the people who moved on.

Dan Groat

#91. It was important for a person not to let their body or mind become slow and dull. Oba believed it was important to learn new things. He believed it was important to grow. He thought it was important for a person to use what they had learned. That was how people grew.

Terry Goodkind

#92. People were always sorry. Sorry they had done what they had done, sorry they were doing what they were doing, sorry they were going to do what they were going to do; but they still did whatever it is. The sorrow never stopped them; it just made them feel better. And so the sorrow never stopped.

Iain Banks

#93. Griff held his breath, waiting for it, knowing the axe would fall and he'd start dying as soon as he walked out the fucking door, and Dante would just grin and joke and try to forget what they had done together in this room.

Damon Suede

#94. When people talk about how in America, anybody can grow up to be President, I'm not sure George Bush is exactly what they had in mind.

Will Durst

#95. There were nine children in my father's family and eight in my mother's. My grandparents did the best with what they had. After the Depression, they were scratching out a living and working hard. They kept the family going.

Cheryl Ladd

#96. As they walked he glanced sideways and at last asked, "You are the one they call Pug?"
If Pug hadn't already been surprised by what they had encountered, he was now openly taken aback. "Yes," he said.
"I'd thought you'd be taller," mused the Pantathian.

Raymond E. Feist

#97. If your mother did not know how to love herself, or your father did not know how to love himself, then it would be impossible for them to teach you to love yourself. They were doing the best they could with what they had been taught as children.

Louise L. Hay

#98. Men said things like "peace in our time" or "an empire that will last a thousand years," and less than half a lifetime later no one even remembered who they were, let alone what they had said or where the mob had buried their ashes.

Terry Pratchett

#99. Hugo, child, have I ever said that I loved you? Do you know that your fists are clenched? You aren't going to strike me-' She had smiled. Then he had burst into tears. He had never mentioned love either, but it had not occurred to him that it might not be identical with what they had enjoyed.

Glenway Wescott

#100. Sometimes in a defeat, you can set the stage for future victory. I wanted them to feel good about what they had accomplished. Not to like losing, but to like the success that they had.

Mike Krzyzewski