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Alas! Alas! Life is full of disappointments; as one reaches one ridge there is always another and a higher one beyond which blocks the view.
Fridtjof Nansentwo souls, alas, are housed within my breast, and each will wrestle for the mastery there.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheFriar Hugo, old friend, brace yourself. I am the bearer of tragic news!" Alarm spread across Hugo's pudgy features. "Tell me, Jess. What dreadful thing has happened?" Jess spoke haltingly in a broken voice. "I fear that Cluny has tore up one of your oldest and most venerable dishrags. Alas, Redwall will never see it wipe another plate.
Brian JacquesIn the beautiful, man sets himself up as the standard of perfection; in select cases he worships himself in it. Man believes that the world itself is filled with beauty -he forgets that it is he who has created it. He alone has bestowed beauty upon the world -alas! only a very human, an all too human, beauty.
Friedrich NietzscheAlas! if my best Friend, who laid down His life for me, were to remember all the instances in which I have neglected Him, and to plead them against me in judgment, where should I hide my guilty head in the day of recompense? I will pray, therefore, for blessings on my friends, even though they cease to be so, and upon my enemies, though they continue such.
William CowperNo legal plunder: This is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony, and logic. Until the day of my death, I shall proclaim this principle with all the force of my lungs (which alas! is all too inadequate).
Frederic BastiatAlas, how easily things go wrong! A sigh too much, a kiss too long And there follows a mist and a weeping rain And life is never the same again
George MacDonaldAnd when a damp Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand The thing became a trumpet; whence he blew Soul-animating strains,-alas! too few.
William WordsworthThomas Bowman's toupee, alas, was never found. He was somewhat mollified by the gift of a very fine hat from Westcliff on Christmas day.
Lisa KleypasThe chief secret of comfort lies in not suffering trifles to vex us, and in prudently cultivating our undergrowth of small pleasures, since very few great ones, alas! are let on long leases.
Richard SharpWriting anything is terribly hard but, alas for me, because I am addicted, a heck of a lot of fun. I often am sorry I ever started writing prose, because it is so hard. But I can't stop.
Judy CollinsOptimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.
Voltaire[Newton wrote to Halley ... that he would not give Hooke any credit] That, alas, is vanity. You find it in so many scientists. You know, it has always hurt me to think that Galileo did not acknowledge the work of Kepler.
Albert EinsteinHow many, alas, of the precious saints of God must we shut out from being believers, if there is no faith but what amounts to assurance.... shall we say their faith went away in the departure of their assurance?
William GurnallThe moon has set In a bank of jet That fringes the Western sky, The pleiads seven Have sunk from heaven And the midnight hurries by; My hopes are flown And, alas! alone On my weary couch I lie.
SapphoMan, do not pride yourself on your superiority to the animals, for they are without sin, while you, with all your greatness, you defile the earth wherever you appear and leave an ignoble trail behind you -- and that is true, alas, for almost every one of us!
Fyodor DostoevskyI set out to become the greatest lover in Vienna, the greatest horseman in Austria, and the greatest economist in the world. Alas, for the illusions of youth: as a horseman, I was never really first-rate.
Joseph A. SchumpeterMarrying to increase love is like gaming to become rich; alas, you only lose what little stock you had before.
William WycherleyO admirable Mother of God! How many sins have I committed for which thou hast obtained pardon for me, and how many others would I have committed if thou hadst not preserved me? How often have I seen myself on the brink of Hell in obvious danger of falling into it but for thy most benign hand which saved me? How often would the Roaring Lion of Hell have devoured and swallowed up my soul had not the charity of thy heart opposed him? Alas! Without thee, my dearest and my all-good Mother, where should I be today? I should be in the fiery furnace of Hell from which I would never emerge!
John EudesWith respect to love we speak continually about perfection and the perfect person. With respect to love Christianity also speaks continually about perfection and the perfect person. Alas, but we men talk about finding the perfect person in order to love him. Christianity speaks about being the perfect person who limitlessly loves the person he sees.
Soren KierkegaardI loved dancing with a delirious 'I wish I could die' passion, especially when the music appealed to me ... but alas! only one in ten partners had any notion of time, and what made it worse, the nine were always behind, never before the beat. ... Sometimes I would firmly seize smaller, lighter partners by the scruff of the neck, so to speak, and whirl them along in the way they should go, but I saw they were not enjoying themselves, and oddly enough I wanted these wretches to like dancing with me.
Ethel SmythWe scientists have fantasies of being uniquely qualified to make great discoveries. Alas, reality is cruel: most of us are replaceable. For the vast majority of scientific contributions, if scientist X hadn't achieved it that year, scientist Y would have achieved the same result or something very similar soon thereafter.
Jared DiamondAlas! dear Joy, the merriest, is dead. But I have wed Peace ; and our babe, a boy, New-born, is Joy.
John B. TabbAlas! the scientific conscience had got into the debasing company of money obligation and selfish respects.
George EliotBut for the Jews this moral-spiritual issue raises the same societal problem it does for the Greeks: how can a man have the "right" to make himself spiritually or rationally destitute or retarded when this corrupts the whole quality of the culture that we all together need and depend on? If anyone wants a cloistered and closed-minded life, an anti-aristic life, let him either go off and live among the wolves-or else join the community of like-minded idiots that (alas) compose and define the basic terms of modern society.
Kenny SmithAlas, sir, how fell you besides your five wits?" Malvolio: "Fool, there was never a man so notoriously abused. I am as well in my wits, fool, as thou art." Feste: "But as well? Then you are mad indeed, if you be no better in you wits than a fool.
William ShakespeareAlas, where is there still a sea in which one could drown: thus our lament resounds โ across shallow swamps.
Friedrich NietzscheCan it be, that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a Nation with its virtue? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human Nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?
George WashingtonThe places we have known do not belong solely to the world of space in which we situate them for our greater convenience. They were only a thin slice among contiguous impressions which formed our life at that time; the memory of a certain image is but regret for a certain moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years.
Marcel ProustAlas, how can we help but mourn When hero bosoms yield their breath! A century itself may bear But once the flower of such a death.
Silas Weir MitchellNothing is more common than for men to make partial and absurd distinctions between vices of equal enormity, and to observe some of the divine commands with great scrupulousness, while they violate others, equally important, without any concern, or the least apparent conciousness of guilt. Alas, it is only wisdom which perceives this tragedy.
Samuel JohnsonInspiration comes from everywhere. Western, Non-Western cultures - I'm open-minded. I love to travel. But not only for inspiration. Alas, timewise, I have a problem with that. Touring, museums, designing, babies.
Henrik VibskovFun comes hard - like, alas, its prarens, pleasure and happiness, whom we have to pursue.
Saul BellowWoman, thou art a river, deep and wide, Of waters soft and sweet: Alas! I've never reached the other side; Though oft I've wet my feet!
William Batchelder GreeneThere are those hearts, reader, that never mend again once they are broken. Or if they do mend, they heal themselves in a crooked and lopsided way, as if sewn together by a careless craftsman. Such was the fate of Chiaroscuro. His heart was broken. Picking up the spoon and placing it on his head, speaking of revenge, these things helped him to put his heart together again. But it was, alas, put together wrong.
Kate DiCamilloI write like anyone involved with a family and a full time job: in stolen moments. I've had to adapt because I have so little writing time, so I write while dinner bubbles on the stove, and get away to cafes when I can. It is good to have a small laptop to haul around. I wish I could admit to bizarre writing habits, you know, like "I can only write in the presence of my favorite pet elephant, who is my fount of inspiration," but the truth, alas, is far more mundane.
Vandana SinghWe are all potentially such sick men. The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison-inmates. And whenever we feel this, such a sense of the vanity of our voluntary career comes over us, that all our morality appears but as a plaster hiding a sore it can never cure, and all our well-doing as the hollowest substitute for that well-being that our lives ought to be grounded in, but alas! are not.
William JamesBut alas, the most terrifying aspect of the whole fascist episode is the dark fact that most of its poisons are generated not by evil men or evil peoples, but by quite ordinary men in search of an answer to the baffling problems that beset every society.
John T. FlynnAlas," said Aslan, shaking his head. "It will. Things always work according to their nature. She has won her heart's desire; she has unwearying strength and endless days like a goddess. But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want; they do not always like it.
C. S. Lewis