Quotes about well
page 21

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“If I'm walking on thin ice, I might as well dance my way across.”

“Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending.”
Source: Middlemarch (1871)
Context: Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending. Who can quit young lives after being long in company with them, and not desire to know what befell them in their after-years? For the fragment of a life, however typical, is not the sample of an even web: promises may not be kept, and an ardent outset may be followed by declension; latent powers may find their long-waited opportunity; a past error may urge a grand retrieval.
Source: The Rubadub Mystery

“I love my liberty too well to be in a hurry to give it up for any mortal man.”

Independence Day address (1821)
Context: America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights. She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet on her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world; she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.... Her glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.
“Denying the undeniable just makes you sound like a fool as well as a liar.”
Source: Only the Good Spy Young

“Nah. I’m a consultant, of course. Everyone’s favorite nondescript yet well-paid white-collar job.”
Source: Succubus on Top
Source: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Source: A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

“If a book is well written, I always find it too short.”
Variant: [I]f a book is well written, I always find it too short.
Source: Sense and Sensibility

Source: The Diamond Age: or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
“Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual.”
Expletives Deleted: Selected Writings (1992).
Source: Sammy Keyes And the Dead Giveaway
“Little princess, lovely as the dawn, well named Aurore.”
Source: Beauty Sleep: A Retelling of Sleeping Beauty

“Well, of all the bacon-brained, sapskulled, squirish, buffle-headed nodcocks!”
Source: Magician's Ward

“Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fires, what do freedom fighters fight?”
Doin' It Again, Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics (1990)
Context: Smug, greedy, well-fed white people have invented a language to conceal their sins. It's as simple as that. The CIA doesn't kill anybody anymore, they neutralize people, or they depopulate the area. The government doesn't lie, it engages in disinformation. The Pentagon actually measures nuclear radiation in something they call sunshine units. Israeli murderers are called commandos, Arab commandos are called terrorists. Contra killers are called freedom fighters. Well, if crime fighters fight crime, and firefighters fight fires, what do freedom fighters fight?
“One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that need not to be done at all.”
Source: Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time
Source: Read Me Like a Book
Source: North of Beautiful

A speech delivered at Niblo’s Saloon, in New York, on the 15 of March, 1837.
The Works of Daniel Webster, Boston, Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851, vol. 1, p. 358 http://books.google.com/books?id=9DMOAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA358&lpg=PA358&dq=%22They+mean+to+govern+well%3B+but+they+mean+to+govern%22&source=bl&ots=oJ6IWDhF2B&sig=iYuDQMQjnHzxMjzbd6rJohrXVrQ&hl=en&ei=xqYqTKDpFML-nAeF2omjAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CCwQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=%22They%20mean%20to%20govern%20well%3B%20but%20they%20mean%20to%20govern%22&f=false.
Context: There are men, in all ages, who mean to exercise power usefully; but who mean to exercise it. They mean to govern well; but they mean to govern. They promise to be kind masters; but they mean to be masters.
Source: Only the Good Spy Young
“Hobbes: Do you think there's a God?
Calvin: Well, somebody's out to get me!”
Source: Magic Bites

“When a thing has been said and well said, have no scruple: take it and copy it.”
Quand une chose a été dite et bien dite, n'ayez aucun scrupule, prenez-la, copiez.
As quoted in Anatole France en pantoufles by Jean-Jacques Brousson (1924); published in English as Anatole France Himself: A Boswellian Record by His Secretary, Jean-Jacques Brousson (1925), trans. John Pollock [Read Books, 2007, ISBN 1-406-75172-3], p. 56

“Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar.”
No. 3
Letters On a Regicide Peace (1796)

Herzog on Herzog (2002), On Klaus Kinski