Famous Quotes & Sayings

George Eliot

Fate has carried me 'Mid the thick arrows: I will keep my stand Not shrink and let the shaft pass by my breast To pierce another.

Gore Vidal

I have been on the cover of Time magazine. My father was on the cover of Time, and my grandfather was on the cover of Time.

Gore Vidal

Democracy is something America has never really practiced. Because the Founding Fathers hated two things: monarchy and democracy. They wanted a republic, a replica of the Roman or Venetian republics. They didn't even like the etymology of the word "democracy."

Gore Vidal

Some of my father's fellow West Pointers once asked him why I turned out so well, his secret in raising me. And he said, "I never gave him any advice, and he never asked for any." We agreed on nothing, but we never quarreled once.

Gore Vidal

Although the notion of one god may give comfort to those in need of a daddy, it reminds the rest of us that the totalitarian society is grounded upon the concept of God the father. One paternal god, one paternal leader. Authority is absolute.

Gore Vidal

When you come from a family that has been political, and I was brought up by my grandfather in the Senate, my father was in Roosevelt's Cabinet, this is not the class that produces writers or reflective people.

James E. Faust

Noble fatherhood gives us a glimpse of the divine attributes of our Father in Heaven.

James D. Watson

The luckiest thing that ever happened to me was that my father didn't believe in God, and so he had no hang-ups about souls.

James D. Watson

One of the greatest gifts science has brought to the world is continuing elimination of the supernatural, and it was a lesson that my father passed on to me, that knowledge liberates mankind from superstition. We can live our lives without the constant fear that we have offended this or that deity who must be placated by incantation or sacrifice, or that we are at the mercy of devils or the Fates. With increasing knowledge, the intellectual darkness that surrounds us is illuminated and we learn more of the beauty and wonder of the natural world.

James Branch Cabell

For all men have but a little while to live and none knows his fate thereafter. So that a man possesses nothing certainly save a brief loan of his body: and yet the body of man is capable of much curious pleasure.

James Bovard

The vision that the founding fathers had of rule of law and equality before the law and no one above the law, that is a very viable vision, but instead of that, we have quasi mob rule.

James Boswell

My father had declared a predilection for heirs general, that is, males and females indiscriminately.... I, on the other hand, had a zealous partiality for heirs male, however remote.

Jake T. Austin

It's important to have a fallback and other activities that keep you interested. I started acting when I was about nine or 10 years old. My father was a midtown firefighter so I always wanted to be a firefighter, but then acting came along. I have to have a plan B.

Jacques Audiard

When you're a kid and your father is an engineer, he goes to the office. I saw my father get up and go to the office in the house and write. But I don't see any similarities.

Jackie Cooper

I remember Mr. Mayer very well. He sort of liked to be the father - no, he liked to be treated like you thought he was Daddy, but he didn't treat you like Daddy at all.

James Gates Percival

I am one who finds within me a nobility that spurns the idle pratings of the great, and their mean boasts of what their fathers were, while they themselves are fools effeminate.

J. R. R. Tolkien

I don't see why the likes o' thee Without axin' leave should go makin' free With the shank or the shin o' my father's kin; So hand the old bone over! Rover! Trover! Though dead he be, it belongs to he; So hand the old bnone over!

J. R. R. Tolkien

Don't dip your beard in the foam, Father!" They cried to Thorin. "It is long enough without watering it!

J. R. R. Tolkien

And here he was, a little halfling from the Shire, a simple hobbit of the quiet countryside, expected to find a way where the great ones could not go, or dared not go. It was an evil fate.

J. R. R. Tolkien

You can make the Ring into an allegory of our own time, if you like: and allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power.

Iyanla Vanzant

For most of my life, I believed that my father had broken many of my bones. They were emotional and psychological bones; things no one could see, things that caused me to limp through life clutching for and holding on to people and situations that often rendered me immobile.

Iyanla Vanzant

My father never kissed me, hugged me or told me that he loved me. As my only living parent, he became the filter through which I saw myself, the possibilities for my life, the world and all men. He was a conflicted and dark filter.

Iyanla Vanzant

If you don't like your sister or don't get along with your father, let's find out if you like yourself. Let's not sugarcoat anything about it.

Iyanla Vanzant

One thing that prevents a man from being a good father is he hasn't completed being a boy.

Irene Rosenfeld

I think my father was somewhat disappointed in not having had a son, and in that way I was the nearest thing he had.

Immanuel Kant

Human reason has the peculiar fate ... that it is burdened with questions that it cannot dismiss ... but which it also cannot answer.

Elon Musk

My background educationally is physics and economics, and I grew up in sort of an engineering environment - my father is an electromechanical engineer. And so there were lots of engineery things around me.

Elton John

I just sit there and make up songs and sing to [my son] in gibberish. I'm very good at gibberish now.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

There is no chance, no destiny, no fate,Can circumvent or hinder or controlThe firm resolve of a determined soul.Gifts count for nothing; will alone is great;All things give way before it soon or late.What obstacle can stay the mighty forceOf the sea seeking river in its course,Or cause the ascending orb of day to wait?

Francois Arnaud

I think there comes a point in probably most father-son relationships where the son kind of starts becoming the parent.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

A man convinced of his own merit will accept misfortune as an honor, for thus can he persuade others, as well as himself, that he is a worthy target for the arrows of fate.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

One should treat one's fate as one does one's health; enjoy it when it is good, be patient with it when it is poor, and never attempt any drastic cure save as an ultimate resort.

Jim Fowler

My father being an outdoors person, he used to take us on quite a few adventures thorugh the wild areas down there, introducing us to alligators and rattlesnakes and all the trees and plants.