Could Have Would Have Should Have Quotes

As if they were supposed to have made a direct hit, to have a long, full, crazy, wild, passion-filled, child-strewn life together, but somehow they'd come at each other from the wrong angle, and missed what could have/would have/should have been. ~ Karen Marie Moning

If we were in a restaurant sometimes Orpheus would look sullen and wouldn't talk to me and I thought people felt sorry for me. I should have realized that women envied me. Their husbands talked too much.
But I wanted to talk to him about my notions. I was working on a new philosophical system. It involved hats. ~ Sarah Ruhl

There's a little known virtue called magnificence: an unostentatious liberality of expenditure in doing good. You would deny me the practice of it. Mierda! I should have left you on the comet. ~ Julian May

It is a fact that if an impulse from one or the other sphere comes up and is not lived out, then it goes back down and tends to develop anti-human qualities. What should have been a human impulse becomes a tiger-like impulse.
For instance, a man has a feeling impulse to say something positive to someone and he blocks it off through some inhibition. He might then dream that he had a spontaneous feeling impulse on the level of a child and his conscious purpose had smashed it. The human is still there, but as a hurt child. Should he do that habitually for five years, he would no longer dream of a child who had been hurt but of a zoo full of raging wild animals in a cage.
An impulse which is driven back loads up with energy and becomes inhuman. This fact, according to Dr. Jung, demonstrates the independent existence of unconscious. ~ Marie-Louise Von Franz

Yes. You survived! You get to eat breakfast with your family every day and dinner with them every night. When people look at you, they should see courage - literally - in your skin, and face the idea that you didn't give up when they probably would have. You're awake and standing and if they don't realize how amazing that is, the you can just blame me. ~ Tessa Elwood

I should have known the power-hungry slave drivers at River's Edge would see my five days of freedom only as a challenge to be filled. ~ Cate Tiernan

Satanism advocates practicing a modified form of the Golden Rule. Our interpretation of this rule is: "Do unto others as they do unto you"; because if you "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and they, in turn, treat you badly, it goes against human nature to continue to treat them with consideration. You should do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but if your courtesy is not returned, they should be treated with the wrath they deserve. ~ Anton Szandor LaVey

I should have known the Queen of the Realm would be a pain in my ass. ~ Rebecca Zanetti

Also, although the great majority of the letters I've received from Hmong readers have been positive, most of the negative ones have criticized me for telling a story that was not mine to tell. I am no lover of identity politics; I believe that anyone should be allowed to write about anyone. Still, I would have harbored the same proprietary resentment had I been they. It was exactly how I felt thirty years ago, when women's voices were harder to hear because men were drowning them out. Now that young Hmong writers are starting to publish - including Mai Neng Moua, who edited a landmark literary anthology called Bamboo Among the Oaks, and Kao Kalia Yang, who wrote a fierce, sad memoir called The Latehomecomer - I am happy to shut up and listen. I hope The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is settling into its proper place not as the book about the Hmong but as a book about communication and miscommunication across cultures. ~ Anne Fadiman

Painting and sculpture, labour and good faith, have been my ruin and I continually go from bad to worse. Better it would have been for me if I had set myself to making matches in my youth. I should not be in such distress of mind. ~ Michelangelo

You should stop by the shop. I'll make you up a special Welcome-To-Marietta chocolate basket for Samara. She'll love it."
Of course. He should have thought of it himself.
"She's got this salted caramel thing that will earn you major points," said Dawson. "the ladies love it."
"I shouldn't say this in church." Sage looked down, and dropped her voice to a whisper. "But it's been called orgasmic."
With that word, for a split second, everyone around him disappeared. Logan imagined putting a tiny square of rich, smooth candy onto Samara's tongue, watching her lips move as she savored it, kissing her, sharing the sweet, silky heat. What sound would she make when the flavor hit the back of her mouth? Would she moan? Would she ask for more? "It's a gift that keeps on giving," added Dawson, waggling his eyebrows. ~ Roxanne Snopek

We don't usually think of achievements in terms of what would have happened otherwise, but we should. What matters is not who does good but whether good is done; and the measure of how much good you achieve is the difference between what happens as a result of your actions and what would have happened anyway. ~ William MacAskill

Christ. He was going to hell.
The thought should have helped with the erection. It didn't. He doubted anything would. Not even thoughts of the Colonel pushing him out of an aircraft from six thousand feet without a parachute was going to kill it. ~ Amy Andrews

The truth is that it's just really hard for me to get to sleep without a dog in my bedroom. I once had a dog named Beau. He used to sleep in the corner of the bedroom. Some nights, though, he would sneak onto the bed and lie right between Gloria and me. I know that I should have pushed him off the bed, but I didn't. He was up there because he wanted me to pat his head, so that's what I would do. ~ James Stewart

My eyes were stinging, my body shaking, and my heart seemed to be just aching deep in my chest. ( ... )
I should have let myself smash down the rocks. It would have hurt a whole lot less ~ Keri Arthur

I have to laugh when people ask me if I do alternative, herbal, acupuncture or holistic medicine. 'No,' I reply. 'We do state-of-the-art medicine. In other words, we find the biochemical, nutritional and environmental causes and cures rather than blindly drugging everything. Sure, herbs are gentler, safer and more physiologic than drugs and holistic medicine attempts to incorporate many diverse modalities, etc. But there is no substitute for finding the underlying biochemical causes and cures. This is real medicine. This is where medicine should and would have been decades ago, if it had not been abducted by the pharmaceutical industry. ~ Sherry A. Rogers

It's true my father abused me and didn't love and protect me the way he should have, and at times it seemed no one would ever help me and it would never end. But God always had a plan for my life, and He has redeemed me. ~ Joyce Meyer

I really should have died then, Tsukuru often told himself. Then this world, the one in the here and now, wouldn't exist. It was a captivating, bewitching thought. The present world wouldn't exist, and reality would no longer be real. As far as this world was concerned, he would simply no longer exist - just as this world would no longer exist for him. ~ Haruki Murakami

He pulls the door shut behind him and drags me against him, murmuring softly, "I understand why you left. I understand everything." I cling to him, holding on for what feels like dear life. "I should have told you." "You would have." He pulls back to look at me. "When you were ready. We all have to deal with our inner demons in our own way, in our own time. ~ Lisa Renee Jones

A month ago, Gavin had given his employer four weeks' notice. "I'll get a job around here," he'd told her. "Something low-stress, part-time, maybe. We're not paying rent, and Dad's left us plenty. You should quit, too." A year earlier this news would have filled her with delicious, full fat, chocolate-coated joy. But now, after a grueling routine of shitty work, shitty- weird home life in a house where the shadow of a dead boy walked more solidly than the grownups, shitty headaches, shitty worry about a husband who couldn't keep his dick out of other women, the golden offer just weirded Laine out. She didn't trust it. ~ Stephen M. Irwin

Although I was four years at the University [of Wisconsin], I did not take the regular course of studies, but instead picked out what I thought would be most useful to me, particularly chemistry, which opened a new world, mathematics and physics, a little Greek and Latin, botany and and geology. I was far from satisfied with what I had learned, and should have stayed longer. ~ John Muir

I don't think there is a perfect athlete. But if I had to come close to picking someone who demonstrates all the traits that I feel an athlete should have, I would say the perfect athlete would be Tiger Woods. He has the ability, he's humble and he's very good at what he does. ~ Jackie Joyner-Kersee

Somehow she'd ended up in bed with the man mothers warn their daughters to stay away from. The kind of man fathers go after with a shotgun, their sobbing daughters trailing behind them in a wedding dress. She should have stayed away, because now that she knew what all the fuss was about, she would never be satisfied with anything less. He'd blindsided her, ruined her, and addicted her in one single evening. ~ Tessa Bailey

At this point I feel I would be remiss to not mention the prevalence of a specific kind of person who enters the field of book publishing. This is the English lit major who never should have left academia, a genius who has read all of V.S. Naipaul but can't photocopy title pages right side up. This person is very thin, possibly vegan, probably Ivy League. He or she feels as if answering the phone in a chipper voice is a form of legalized prostitution. He or she has a single quirky fashion piece, usually red or black, and waxes poetic about typewriters and the British, having never truly known either. Regardless of sex, they all want to be David Foster Wallace when they grow up. ~ Sloane Crosley

To-day all our novels and newspapers will be found to be swarming with numberless allusions to the popular character called a Cave-Man. He seems to be quite familiar to us, not only as a public character but as a private character. His psychology is seriously taken into account in psychological fiction and psychological medicine. So far as I can understand, his chief occupation in life was knocking his wife about, or treating women in general with what is, I believe, known in the world of the film as 'rough stuff.' I have never happeend to come upon the evidence for this idea; and I do not know on what primitive diaries or prehistoric divorce-reports it is founded. Nor, as I have explained elsewhere, have I ever been able to see the probability of it, even considered a priori. We are always told without any explanation or authority that primitive man waved a club and knocked the woman down before he carried her off. But on every animal analogy, it would seem an almost morbid modesty and reluctance, on the part of the lady, always to insist on being knocked down before consenting to be carried off. And I repeat that I can never comprehend why, when the male was so very rude, the female should have been so very refined. The cave-man may have been a brute, but there is no reason why he should have been more brutal than the brutes. And the loves of the giraffes and the river romances of the hippopotami are affected without any of this preliminary fracas or shindy. ~ G.K. Chesterton

The time has come, it seems to me, when Christian men and women all over the world, should begin to look this evil (race prejudice) squarely in the face, and to set themselves earnestly to combat it, to deal with it as Christian men and women ought to deal with it; as Jesus Christ would have it dealt with. ~ Francis Grimke

If I were twenty or thirty years younger, I would start afresh in this field with the certainty of accomplishing much. But I should have to learn from the bottom up, forgetting the theatre entirely and concentrating on the special medium of this new art. My mistake, and that of many others, lay in employing "theatrical" techniques despite every effort to avoid them. Here is something quite, quite fresh, a penetrating form of visual poetry, an untried exponent of the human soul. Alas, I am too old for it! ~ Eleanora Duse

Argument against free will defence: There are some who, while no less free than others, would never knowingly harm another person, and it is surely conceivable that everyone should have been like that. ~ Unknown

When Maryam Babangida and Mariam Abacha built the Women Centre and the National Hospital they did not carry the buildings when they left government. I will not go with the peace mission building. Women should resist being used to kick against the project. If the project was for men the budget for the project would have long been passed. ~ Patience Jonathan

It would have been very much better for the world if Britain had remained neutral and the Germans had won a quick victory. We should not have had either the Nazis or the Communists if that had happened. ~ Bertrand Russell

I was a good Indian girl, but naughty in that I would often sneak out of the back door and into the garden and go off with my friends when I should have been at home cooking or cleaning. ~ Gurinder Chadha