Quotes about well
page 21

Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Cassandra Clare photo

“Jace: 'I don't like keeping her in the dark.'
Sebastian: 'We'll tell her in a week. What difference does a week make?'
Jace: 'Two weeks ago you were dead.'
Sebastian: 'Well, I wasn't suggestingweeks. That would be insane.”

Variant: I don’t like keeping her in the dark,” Jace said.
“We’ll tell her in a week. What difference does a week make?”
Jace gave him a look. “Two weeks ago you were dead.”
“Well, I wasn’t suggesting two weeks,” said Sebastian. “That would be insane.
Source: City of Lost Souls

Sylvia Plath photo

“Well, I know now. I know a little more how much a simple thing like a snowfall can mean to a person”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Djuna Barnes photo
Suzanne Collins photo
Alexandre Dumas photo
Charles Baudelaire photo
Frantz Fanon photo
Isabel Allende photo
Philip K. Dick photo
Ngaio Marsh photo
Meg Cabot photo
Diana Gabaldon photo
Donald Barthelme photo
Rick Riordan photo
George Eliot photo

“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.

Yann Martel photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Jim Butcher photo
Derek Landy photo
John Quincy Adams photo

“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.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

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.

Milan Kundera photo
René Descartes photo
Michael Ende photo
Douglas Adams photo
Sue Monk Kidd photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Gordon Korman photo
Rebecca Stead photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Anaïs Nin photo
Richelle Mead photo

“Nah. I’m a consultant, of course. Everyone’s favorite nondescript yet well-paid white-collar job.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus on Top

Rachel Caine photo
Philip Yancey photo
Jonathan Stroud photo
Jane Austen photo

“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

Melissa de la Cruz photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Neal Stephenson photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo

“Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual.”

Angela Carter (1940–1992) English novelist

Expletives Deleted: Selected Writings (1992).

Rita Rudner photo
Georgette Heyer photo
Suzanne Collins photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
Rick Riordan photo
Joyce Meyer photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Richelle Mead photo

“Little princess, lovely as the dawn, well named Aurore.”

Cameron Dokey (1956) American writer

Source: Beauty Sleep: A Retelling of Sleeping Beauty

Patricia C. Wrede photo

“Well, of all the bacon-brained, sapskulled, squirish, buffle-headed nodcocks!”

Patricia C. Wrede (1953) author

Source: Magician's Ward

Molière photo
Richelle Mead photo
Rick Riordan photo
Jean Paul Sartre photo
George Carlin photo

“Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fires, what do freedom fighters fight?”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

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?

Cassandra Clare photo
Margaret Atwood photo
Jean-Dominique Bauby photo

“If I must drool, I may as well drool on cashmere.”

Source: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Rick Riordan photo

“One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that need not to be done at all.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

Source: Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time

Toni Morrison photo
James Patterson photo
Derek Landy photo
Elizabeth Gilbert photo
Daniel Webster photo

“There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters”

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852. Served as the Secretary of Sta…

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.

Gertrude Stein photo
Anatole France photo

“When a thing has been said and well said, have no scruple: take it and copy it.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

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

Jane Austen photo

“I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.”

Source: Northanger Abbey

Tori Amos photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Jonathan Franzen photo

“Use well thy freedom.”

Source: Freedom

Rick Riordan photo
Ali Smith photo
Julian Barnes photo
Edmund Burke photo

“Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

No. 3
Letters On a Regicide Peace (1796)

Mitch Albom photo
Werner Herzog photo

“People think we had a love-hate relationship. Well, I did not love him, nor did I hate him. We had mutual respect for each other, even as we both planned each other's murder.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Herzog on Herzog (2002), On Klaus Kinski

Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Laura Lippman photo

“Let’s talk.” I pinned Red to his chair with my stare. I did deranged quite well, when the occasion required.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Burns