Alibi Quotes

Irony serves as an alibi for a fetish. ~ Nathaniel Wing

Now, if the writers of these four books [Gospels] had gone into a court of justice to prove an alibi, (for it is of the nature of an alibi that is here attempted to be proved, namely, the absence of a dead body by supernatural means,) and had they given their evidence in the same contradictory manner as it is here given, they would have been in danger of having their ears cropt for perjury, and would have justly deserved it. Yet this is the evidence, and these are the books, that have been imposed upon the world as being given by divine inspiration, and as the unchangeable word of God. ~ Thomas Paine

All autobiographies are alibi-ographies. ~ Clare Boothe Luce

If fucking were graceful,desire an alibi. ~ Rita Dove

It is necessary to fall in love – the better to provide an alibi for all the despair we are going to feel anyway. ~ Albert Camus

You must have a love, a great love, to ensure an alibi at unjustified despairs that conquer all of us ~ Albert Camus

Don't ever accuse anyone of being full of pride, undignified and unprofessional when simply they are wise to move away from dishonest schemers.
Dishonesty comprise too of layers of lies simply casted for impressive appearances. There are times too that corrupt hearts have their own confused, modified, self-affirming, pro-self interest business inclined definitions of professionalism, integrity, dignity and pride. ~ Angelica Hopes

A girl gives her boyfriend an alibi for the evening when we suspect him of robbing a north-side Centra and stabbing the clerk. I flirt with her at first, telling her I can see why he would want to stay home when he's got her; she is peroxided and greasy, with flat, stunted features of generations of malnutrition, and privately I am thinking that if I were her boyfriend I would be relieved to trade her even for a hairy cellmate named Razor. ~ Tana French

He was like this when I got here?' That's you alibi? ~ Karen Chance

The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants. ~ Albert Camus

Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise. ~ Eric Hoffer

I graduated first in my class from alibi school. ~ Jeffrey McDaniel

Never ask a man where's he's been. If he's out on legitimate business, he doesn't need an alibi. And, girls, if he has been out on illegitimate business, it's your own fault. ~ Mae West

The Rites of Beauty also seduce women by meeting their current hunger for color and poetry. As they make their way into male public space that is often prosaic and emotionally dead, beauty's sacraments glow brighter than ever. As women are inundated with claims on their time, ritual products give them an alibi to take some private time for themselves. At their best they give women back a taste of mystery and sensuality to compensate them for their days spent in the harsh light of the workplace. ~ Naomi Wolf

Except for cases that clearly involve a homicidal maniac, the police like to believe murders are committed by those we know and love, and most of the time they're right - a chilling thought when you sit down to dinner with a family of five. All those potential killers passing their plates. ~ Sue Grafton

Think and then act. Never act and then alibi. ~ Henry Iba

We lie to ourselves in order that we may still have the excuse of ignorance, the alibi of stupidity and incomprehension, possessing which we can continue with a good conscience to commit and tolerate the most monstrous crimes. ~ Aldous Huxley

His friend arrived and prescribed painkillers and bed rest, giving Daniel the relief of knowing that at least Tiffany hadn't injured herself further. "If you ever find who did this to such a beautiful woman," his friend murmured to him as he packed up to leave, "I will be happy to provide you with an airtight alibi to cover whatever you choose to do to him. ~ Imani Black

Leave now and live, or stay here and die. Your choice. ~ Phillip Margolin

A man's alibi is the child of his own imagination. It is human nature to defend one's own brain-child. ~ Napoleon Hill

It's painfully obvious to both of us that you're dangerously close to a sexless-related meltdown. And I went to Alibi last girls' night and there were plenty of straight people there, too, you know, but um. I mean, there were also lots of - "
"People!" Jon shouts, "Plenty of people. With, uh, orifices. ~ Seventhswan

Hey, Kami. I was wondering if I could get a dance with the best-looking girl in the room."
"Sure," Kami said. "Go ask Angela. Take your life in your hands. I'll miss you and all, but I'm going to give her an alibi for the murder, because that's what best friends do. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan

Conscription is an impediment to achieving the forces Australia needs. It is an alibi for failing to give proper conditions to regular soldiers. We will abolish conscription forthwith. By abolishing it, Australia will achieve a better army, a better-paid army - and a better, united society. ~ Gough Whitlam

A community is an alibi for the failure of individual love. ~ Leonard Cohen

Anything I tell you is an alibi for something else.
Then let's be quiet together. ~ Leonard Cohen

Alcohol.
It can give the courage to talk dirty and the permission to go home with the bartender.
It's the alibi. The cover story.
It wasn't really you - you were possessed by Captain Morgan and the Grey Goose.
Unfortunately, I have a very high tolerance for alcohol.
Sucks to be me. ~ Emma Chase

Besides that, when elsewhere the harvest of wheat is most abundant, there it comes up less by one-fourth than what you have sowed. There, methinks, it were a proper place for men to sow their wild oats, where they would not spring up.
[Lat., Post id, frumenti quum alibi messis maxima'st
Tribus tantis illi minus reddit, quam obseveris.
Heu! istic oportet obseri mores malos,
Si in obserendo possint interfieri.] ~ Plautus

I need no alibi,I did steal your heart. ~ Sapphire Belucci

I imagine that the essential gesture of the Operator is to surprise something or someone (through the little hole in the camera), and that this gesture is therefore perfect when it is performed unbeknownst to the subject being photographed. From this gesture derive all photographs whose principle (or better whose alibi) is "shock"; for the photographic "shock" consists less in traumatizing than in revealing what was so well hidden that the actor himself was unaware or unconscious of it. ~ Roland Barthes

Can you stand on your legs?" Sydelle Pulaski asked. "Can you walk at all?"
People never asked Chris those questions; they whispered them to his parents behind his back. "N-n-no. Why?"
"What better disguise for a thief or a murderer than a wheelchair, the perfect alibi."
Chris enjoyed being taken for the criminal type. Now they really were friends. ~ Ellen Raskin

Her own mother had died when Anna was twelve and since then father and daughter had faced the world like a pair of nineteenth-century adventurers, a riverboat gambler, say, and his alibi girl. ~ John Banville

From that time on they both looked forward to sleeping together. I might even say that the goal of their lovemaking was not so much pleasure as the sleep that followed it. She especially was affected. Whenever she stayed overnight in her rented room (which quickly became only an alibi for Tomas), she was unable to fall asleep; in his arms she would fall asleep no matter how wrought up she might have been. He would whisper impromptu fairy tales about her, or gibberish, words he repeated monotonously, words soothing or comical, which turned into vague visions lulling her through the first dreams of the night. He had complete control over her sleep: she dozed off at the second he chose. ~ Milan Kundera

When people say they're too busy, ask them If they'll have time to die, and see If dead's gonna give a damn. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Her eyes, however, were every bit as hard and shiny as the varnish on Dad's desk.
"Sophie, there you are! Where have you been the past few days? We've hardly seen you."
"A-around?" I stuttered, inwardly cringing. Oh,that was an awesome alibi. ~ Rachel Hawkins

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants. ~ Albert Camus

All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that's an alibi for my ignorance. ~ Will Rogers

What was the value, really, of an alibi between lovers, friends, or family members? Idea for greeting card: 'Will You Be My Alibi? ~ Jincy Willett

If you have the woman you love, what more do you need? Well, besides an alibi for the time of her husband's murder. ~ Dark Jar Tin Zoo

Sin always overpromises and underdelivers, while righteousness pays dividends for eternity...

Nothing is more illogical than sin. It's the epitome of poor judgment. It's temporary insanity with eternal consequences. And we have no alibi, save the cross of Jesus Christ. ~ Mark Batterson

A is for Alibi, my first book, was published in 1982. As it happened the next couple of books took place in June and August of that year. Without meaning to I painted myself into a corner. The other issue was the aging process. I did not want my main character to age one year for every book so I slowed the whole process down. This way I could get through all 26 letters of the alphabet without making her 109 years old in 2015. I might end the series in either 1990 or on New Years Eve 1989. ~ Sue Grafton

After all, the best alibi is not the word of a friend, he knew, but the testimony of an enemy. ~ P.J. Bracegirdle

He's outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)
And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard's.
And when the larder's looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,
Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke's been stifled,
Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair -
Ay, there's the wonder of the thing! Macavity's not there!

And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty's gone astray,
Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way,
There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair -
But it's useless to investigate - Mcavity's not there!
And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:
'It must have been Macavity!' - but he's a mile away.
You'll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs,
Or engaged in doing complicated long-division sums.

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spaer:
At whatever time the deed took place - MACAVITY WASN'T THERE!
And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known
(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)
Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time
Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime! ~ T.S. Eliot

People say movies are escapist, just entertainment, but I think that's only an alibi, a way of hiding from ourselves just how effective what we do actually is. When something is in a movie, and especially when something is in a particularly successful film, its language, its grammar, is added into the grammar of possible reality. The banal fact that sharks are terrifying was cemented into our cultural imagination after Jaws. We have no idea how much power we have and absolutely no idea how to use it. It's like we invent people's dreams. ~ Jacob Wren

Too much faith is the worst ally. When you believe in something literally, through your faith you'll turn it into something absurd. One who is a genuine adherent, if you like, of some political outlook, never takes its sophistries seriously, but only its practical aims, which are concealed beneath these sophistries. Political rhetoric and sophistries do not exist, after all, in order that they be believed; rather, they have to serve as a common and agreed upon alibi. Foolish people who take them in earnest sooner or later discover inconsistencies in them, begin to protest, and finish finally and infamously as heretics and apostates. No, too much faith never brings anything good ... ~ Milan Kundera

In the right circumstances, I'm a big fan of eating alone. Often, on a Sunday evening, I go to a yoga class whose charm is largely that it gives me an alibi to avoid cooking family supper for once. I return to have boiled eggs and soldiers in silence with a book. Bliss. ~ Bee Wilson

You must have an alibi to show why you lost. If you haven't one, you must fake one. You self confidence must be maintained. ~ Christy Mathewson

The way I was brought up 'he needed killing' is an airtight alibi. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I need an alibi. ~ Maya Banks

Being a novice is not an alibi to become a zilch. ~ Anyaele Sam Chiyson

Believe me there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory ... everything is forgotten, even a great love. That's what's sad about life, and also what's wonderful about it. There is only a way of looking at things, a way that comes to you every once in a while. That's why it's good to have had love in your life after all, to have had an unhappy passion- it gives you an alibi for the vague despairs we all suffer from. ~ Albert Camus

If you pick up a golfer and hold it close to your ear, like a conch shell, and listen, you will hear an alibi. ~ Fred Beck

There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day: we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life.288 ~ Thomas Sowell

Where's your sense of adventure? It died under mysterious circumstances. My sense of self-preservation found the body, but assures me it has an airtight alibi. -Captain Tagon & Captain Andreyasn ~ Howard Tayler

You want to find your self in the flow of time, miraculously relieved of your irrelevance . . . I saw the pursuit of historical beauty, the yearning for those higher essences other people had staked their lives on, as the hope for some kind of voice, a chance to join the chorus. I was mad for relevance, connection, some hint that I was not alone. I started scribbling in notebooks in part just so I'd have an excuse, a reason for sitting where I sat, an alibi for being by myself. ~ Charles D'Ambrosio

An alibi is one alliterative consonant short of being a magic carpet ~ Josh Stern

None of us are pretty, but our ugly has an alibi. ~ Andrea Gibson

Shit. Is this a good idea?
I'm a lawyer for Christ's sake.
I look at Lorelai and she looks so happy that I don't care anymore.
Screw it! If she wants to vandalise this prick's car, I'm game.
I can come up with an alibi for us both later ... ~ Joanne McClean

Dispensing with the frivolity, he kissed her meaningfully. When at last he pulled away, her troubled expression alarmed him. "What?"
"Be careful, Hammond."
"No one will know I was here."
She shook her head. "Not that."
"Then what?"
"You may have to put me on trial for my life. Please be careful that you don't make me fall in love with you first. ~ Sandra Brown

We are living in the era of premeditation and the perfect crime. Our criminals are no longer helpless children who could plead love as their excuse. On the contrary, they are adults and the have the perfect alibi: philosophy, which can be used for any purpose - even for transforming murderers into judges. ~ Albert Camus

You know, at parties, people always ask, 'Where were you when Kennedy was shot?' Well, I don't have an alibi! ~ Emo Philips

He said: "We must have one love, one great love in our life, since it gives us an alibi for all the moments when we are filled with motiveless despair. (November 16) ~ Albert Camus

It is necessary to fall in love ... if only to provide an alibi for all the random despair you are going to feel anyway. ~ Albert Camus

If you are ignorant of Lora Delane Porter's books that is your affair. Perhaps you are more to be pitied than censured. Nature probably gave you the wrong shape of forehead. Mrs. Porter herself would have put it down to some atavistic tendency or pre-natal influence. She put most things down to that. She blamed nearly all the defects of the modern world, from weak intellects to in-growing toe-nails, on long-dead ladies and gentlemen who, safe in the family vault, imagined that they had established their alibi. She subpoenaed grandfathers and even great-grandfathers to give evidence to show that the reason Twentieth-Century Willie squinted or had to spend his winters in Arizona was their own shocking health 'way back in the days beyond recall. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

si fueris Romae, Romano vivito more; si fueris alibi, vivito sicut ibi
[if you should be in Rome, live in the Roman manner; if you should be elsewhere, live as they do there] ~ Ambrose Of Milan

We must have one love, one great love in our life, since it gives us an alibi for all the moments when we are filled with despair. ~ Albert Camus

That's why it's good to have had love in your life after all, to have had an unhappy passion - it gives you an alibi from the great despairs we all suffer from. ~ Albert Camus

It would be enough; as an alibi for a life, it would do; she would not need to apologize for how she had spent her time on this earth. ~ Amitav Ghosh

For those who have the habit of prayer, thought is too often a mere alibi, a sly way of deciding to do what one wants to do. Reason will always obscure what we wish to keep in the shadows. A worldling can think out the pros and cons and sum up his chances. No doubt. But what are our chances worth? We who have admitted once and for all into each moment of our puny lives the terrifying presence of God? ... What is the use of working out chances? There are no chances against God. ~ Georges Bernanos

The true life is absent.' But we are in the world. Metaphysics arises and is maintained in this alibi. ~ Emmanuel Levinas

Well, demonization itself can help ... to provide an alibi. You succumb to the Devil incarnate, and as a result you're not guilty yourself. ~ Hannah Arendt

For me to write, I need to work my way back out of one home, consider another, and find the no-man's-land in between. I need to go to one Andre, unwrite that Andre, choose the other Andre across the way, only then go looking for the middle Andre, whose voice will most likely approximate the voice of an Andre able to camouflage all telltale signs that English is not his mother tongue, but that neither is French, nor Italian, nor Arabic. Writing must almost have to fail - it must almost not succeed. If it goes well from the start, if I am in the groove, if I come home to writing, it's not the writing for me. I need to have lost the key and to find no replacement. Writing is not a homecoming. Writing is an alibi. Writing is a perpetual stammer of alibis. ~ Andre Aciman

Ordinarily, an alibi is an account of suspect's whereabouts at the time a crime was committed and it's offered up as proof of innocence, but here it didn't matter where anyone was. ~ Sue Grafton

God is Dipa's alibi. Why can't criminals be frank about what they're up to? All this disgusting idealistic hogwash - it makes one vomit. ~ Aldous Huxley

External explanations of black-white differences - discrimination or poverty, for example - seem to many to be more amenable to public policy than internal explanations such as culture. Those with this point of view tend to resist cultural explanations but there is yet another reason why some resist understanding the counterproductive effects of an anachronistic culture: Alternative explanations of economic and social lags provide a more satisfying ability to blame all such lags on the sins of others, such as racism or discrimination. Equally important, such external explanations require no painful internal changes in the black population but leave all changes to whites, who are seen as needing to be harangued, threatened, or otherwise forced to change.
In short, prevailing explanations provide an alibi for those who lag - and an alibi is for many an enormously valuable asset that they are unlikely to give up easily. ~ Thomas Sowell

As I was to learn, reproductive urges will serve as an alibi for just about anything. ~ Nell Zink

Unfortunately, love is more often an alibi than a reason. ~ Luigina Sgarro

The public wouldn't like the perfect umpire in every game. It would kill off baseball's greatest alibi - 'We was robbed.' ~ Billy Evans

Lucky Tyler: "Yeah, you're here, looking more like the preacher's wife come calling than an overnight alibi. Who's gonna believe I tumbled you?" The devil in him was kicking up his heels, goading him to say things he knew damn well would rub her the wrong way. But he felt he was justified in being ornery. He didn't particularly like her attitude either.
Devon Haines:"What did you expect me to wear? A negligee?"
Lucky Tyler: "I
~ Sandra Brown

I'm sure you could have. Fending off unwanted male attention is a skill every attractive woman must acquire. But you're also a lady who was reluctant to cause a scene.. (Hammond Cross) ~ Sandra Brown

An alibi is only as good as its details. ~ Kenneth Eade

To induce a collective content for the imagination is always an inhuman undertaking, not only because dreaming essentializes life into destiny, but also because dreams are impoverished, and the alibi of an absence. ~ Roland Barthes

In short, sin frames God falsely. Thinking of him as he isn't, sin justifies itself in rejecting him as he is - and therefore draws the false view around itself like a security blanket to provide itself with an alibi for not believing or obeying God. Again, as we saw earlier, our overall attitude must then be that the defense never rests. Whenever and however God is not seen for who he is, but stands in the dock falsely framed and wrongly accused, we must reframe the issue and so defend God's name and restore the truth to the distorted view of reality. ~ Os Guinness

No alibi will save you from accepting the responsibility. ~ Napoleon Hill

You come in all clammed up, defences in depth, alibi-systems long established, delusions full-blown. In order to have a chance of staying sober, or rather of staying dry and becoming sober, you've got to change. Nobody likes to change. What you really want, when you come into hospital, even for the second or third or ninth time, is to stay just who you are and not drink. That's not possible, of course. Jack-Who-Drinks has got to alter into Jack-Who-Does-Not-Drink-And-Likes-It. ~ John Berryman

Don't speak if you don't have to about trivia. The time for joking comes because of the trust, and you have to earn the trust. So, I don't alibi for anything, and I'll take the heat. That's the other thing. Don't let them take the heat. We take the heat. ~ Phil Ramone

I thought it was her wicked stepmother who poisoned her ... '
' ... Turned out the wicked stepmother had an alibi.'
' ... Seems she was off poisoning someone else at the time. Chance in a million, really. It was just bad luck. ~ John Connolly

'Home Alone' was a movie, not an alibi. ~ Jerry Orbach

The world turned and flung me. ~ David Iserson

You met a guy in an alley, and he kissed you?
Is he still alive, or do I need to provide you with an alibi? ~ I.D. Locke