George Bailey Quotes

God ... God ... dear Father in heaven, I'm not a praying man, but if you're up there and you can hear me, show me the way. I'm at the end of my rope. Show me the way, God ... ~ George Bailey

George Bailey: Mary Hatch, why in the world did you ever marry a guy like me?
Mary: To keep from being an old maid!
George Bailey: You could have married Sam Wainright, or anybody else in town...
Mary: I didn't want to marry anybody else in town. I want my baby to look like you.
George Bailey: You didn't even have a honeymoon. I promised you...
[stops]
George Bailey: Your what?
Mary: My baby!
George Bailey: [stuttering] Your, your, your, ba- Mary, you on the nest?
Mary: George Baily Lassos Stork!
George Bailey: [still stuttering] Lassos a stork?
[Mary nods]
George Bailey: What're'ya... You mean you're... What is it, a boy or a girl?
Mary: [nods enthusiastically] Mmmm-hmmm! ~ It's A Wonderful Life

Merry Christmas, movie house! Merry Christmas, Emporium! Merry Christmas, you wonderful old Building and Loan! ~ George Bailey

•Zuzu Bailey: Look, Daddy. Teacher says, every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings.
•George Bailey: That's right, that's right.
•George Bailey: Attaboy, Clarence. ~ It's A Wonderful Life

But no matter how many movies we watched, we never learned their deepest lesson: they end. George Bailey finally sees his life as wonderful. Rosebud, we find out, is a sled. Travis shoots Old Yeller. One of the things that distinguishes life from movies is the pause button. We can keep Travis' finger on the trigger, the barrel staring down his Yeller, but there is no pause button for the things that matter. ~ Greg Letellier

Do you know what the three most exciting sounds in the world are?
Anchor chains, airplane motors and train whistles. ~ George Bailey

I know what I'm gonna do tomorrow, and the next day and the next year, and the year after that. ~ George Bailey

I want to do something big, something important. ~ George Bailey

George Bailey: [on Mary being caught naked in the bushes after her robe slips off] This is a very interesting situation!
Mary: Please give me my robe.
George Bailey: A man doesn't get in a situation like this every day.
Mary: I'd like to have my robe.
George Bailey: Not in Bedford Falls anyway.
Mary: [after the bushes' thorns starting hurting her] Ouch! Oh!
George Bailey: Gezundheit.
Mary: George Bailey!
George Bailey: Inspires a little thought!
Mary: Give me my robe.
George Bailey: I've read about things like this.
Mary: Shame on you! I'm going to tell your mother on you.
George Bailey: Well, my mother is way up on the corner.
Mary: I'll call the police!
George Bailey: Well, they're all the way downtown. They'd be on my side.
Mary: Then I'll scream!
George Bailey: Maybe I can sell tickets. ~ It's A Wonderful Life

Perhaps the Hungarian humorist Ferencz Karinthy captures the spirit of the situation best in a tableau about a bored businessman who amuses himself by looking through high-powered binoculars from his office high in a skyscraper into neighbouring office rooms. On one occasion he spies a middle-aged executive chasing a comely secretary around his desk. As it happens the observers knows the building in which this drama is taking place and can even make out the name of the occupant from the plaque on his desk. He consults the telephone directory and gives the culprit, who is still trying to force his attentions on the secretary, a ring. When the culprit answers the telephone the observer announces himself as God Almighty and tells him to stop molesting the young woman in his employ. The culprit, thunderstruck and unable to account fo the observer's exact knowledge of what has been going on, fall son his knees in a paroxysm of fear and wonder and begs forgiveness. The observer roundly berates the culprit who swears he will do anything to make amends and promises never to sin again. Hereupon the observer informs the culprit that he can indeed make amends by lending him 100 pengo [dollars]. The answer, of course is a burst of profanity and the abrupt termination of the call. Karinthy then draws his moral: if you want to play God don't try to borrow money... ~ George Bailey

In life one of Midnight's favourite movies had been It's a Wonderful Life, a touching story where a man called George Bailey is shown how poor the world would have been if he'd never existed, but now the young ghost of Midnight Merlot was sat imagining himself not as the kind hero of his own narrative, but, - but as the anti-George. ~ Tom Conrad

Having the experience of senior guys around you just makes things easier as they all contribute ideas and set the standards for the group. ~ George Bailey

It didn't make much difference what time of night it was, whenever [my father would] come in drunk, he'd say, "Get up and sing me some songs." We didn't want to sing but we sang. ~ George Jones

All men must swallow the sour with the sweet. ~ George R R Martin

My wife bought me a vintage Gibson guitar that isn't just beautiful but has tremendous sentimental value. I have plenty of guitars for live gigs but this is one to treasure. ~ Bill Bailey

To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle. ~ George Orwell

Leadership is the process of motivating, mobilizing, resourcing, and directing people to passionately and strategically pursue a vision from God that a group jointly embraces. ~ George Barna

Strategy is the most important department of the art of war, and strategical skill is the highest and rarest function of military genius. ~ George Stillman Hillard

Last Victorian and Edwardian Britain saw a mega-change in reading habits. For the first time fiction took the primary place in book publishing, and the medium was taken up by briliant and entertaining authors with an agenda for 'a brave new world'. Such men as Thomas Hardy, H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw were the opinion-makers for coming generations. 'With the next phase of Victorian fiction', wrote G. K. Chesterton, 'we enter a new world; the later, more revolutionary, more continental, freer but in some ways weker world in which we live today.'
Chesterton did not live to see the full consequences of the change but W. R. Inge predicted what was coming when he wrote:
No God. No country. No family. Refusal to serve in war. Free love. More play. Less work. No punishments. Go as you please. It is difficult to imagine any programme which, if carried out, would be more utterly ruinous to a country situated as Great Britain is today. ~ Iain H. Murray

There is endless room for rebellion against ourselves. ~ George MacDonald

Love makes all safe. ~ George MacDonald

I thought of the places I would be leaving, of what they were and what they could become. I pictured trees returning to the bare slopes, fish and whales returning to the bay. I thought of what my children and grandchildren might find here, and of how those who worked the land and sea might prosper if this wild vision were to be realized. ~ George Monbiot

The worst speak something good; if all want sense,
God takes a text, and preacheth patience. ~ George Herbert

I do think that the elections of 2010 and 2012 are going to determine the trajectory of the country. Either we're going to be aspiring and improving opportunities based on freedom and responsibility, or we're going to go down the path that dictates and mandates a dependency on government. ~ George Allen

You can have my credit card, baby, but keep your red hot fingers off of my heart, lady. ~ George Michael

But there are not a few who would be indignant at having their belief in God questioned, who yet seem greatly to fear imagining Him better than He is. ~ George MacDonald

Let me ask you, sir, when is the time for brave men to exert themselves in the cause of liberty and their country, if this is not? ~ George Washington

Salvador Dalí's aberrations are partly explicable. Perhaps they are a way of assuring himself that he is not commonplace. The two qualities that Dali unquestionably possesses are a gift for drawing and an atrocious egoism. 'At seven', he says in the first paragraph of his book, 'I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.' This is worded in a deliberately startling way, but no doubt it is substantially true. Such feelings are common enough. 'I knew I was a genius', somebody once said to me, 'long before I knew what I was going to be a genius about. ~ George Orwell

The wildlings were cruel men, she said, slavers and slayers and thieves. They consorted with giants and ghouls, stole girl children in the dead of night, and drank blood from polished horns. And their women lay with the Others in the Long Night to sire terrible half-human children. ~ George R R Martin

In the early West, law and politics were parallel roads to usefulness as well as distinction. ~ John George Nicolay

Brains are not everything. ~ George Bernard Shaw

If I were ever stranded on a desert island, there would be 3 things I'd need: food, shelter, and a grip. ~ George C. Scott

Those who understand the steam engine and the electric telegraph spend their lives in trying to replace them with something better. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Ned always said that the man who passes the sentence should swing the blade, though he never took any joy in the duty. But I would, oh, yes. ~ George R R Martin

For the theory-practice iteration to work, the scientist must be, as it were, mentally ambidextrous; fascinated equally on the one hand by possible meanings, theories, and tentative models to be induced from data and the practical reality of the real world, and on the other with the factual implications deducible from tentative theories, models and hypotheses. ~ George E.P. Box

The great and important duty which is incumbent on Christians, is to guard against all appearance of evil; to watch against the first risings in the heart to evil; and to have a guard upon our actions, that they may not be sinful, or so much as seem to be so. ~ George Whitefield

She got very tired, so tired that even her toys could no longer amuse her. You would wonder at that if I had time to describe to you one half of the toys she had. But then, you wouldn't have the toys themselves, and that makes all the difference: you can't get tired of a thing before you have it. ~ George MacDonald

Look, history is interesting. I read three books on George Washington last year. And my opinion is that if they're still analyzing the first president, the 43rd president ought to be doing what he thinks is right. And eventually, historians will come and realize whether ... the decisions I made made sense. ~ George W. Bush

If I trace its breaking point I come across the eternity of the primitive impulse. The sea river is a cold impasse. Will I find secrets there? In my dream I am standing on a frozen lake, the second sex and I can hear female voices all around me. ~ Abigail George

The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink ~ George Orwell

Third, we could, while denouncing them both as illegal, have acquiesced in them both and thus remained neutral with both sides, although not agreeing with either as to the righteousness of their respective orders. ~ George William Norris

I am firmly of the opinion that a large number of unmarried men, over the age of 24 years, is a dangerous element in any community. ~ George Q. Cannon

For a few days after getting into the water the toad concentrates on building up his strength by eating small insects. Presently he has swollen to his normal size again, and then he goes through a phase of intense sexiness. ~ George Orwell

The first sense of mutual love excludes other feelings; it will have the soul all to itself. ~ George Eliot

Woman's happiness begins with her first love and ends about then ~ George Bernard Shaw

He was definitely a father figure for all of us. Once you were a Giant, you were always a Giant. ~ George Martin

A strong foundation exists for immediate military action against Saddam Hussein and for a multilateral effort to rebuild Iraq after he is gone. ~ George P. Shultz

This is global governance in the making. But we must agree, and agree to a binding commitment. ~ George Papandreou

Purity of morals [is] the only sure foundation of public happiness in any country. ~ George Washington

If people will be censors, let them weigh their words. I mean that the words were unfair by that disproportionateness of the condemnation, which everybody with some conscience must feel to be one of the great difficulties in denouncing a particular person. Every unpleasant dog is only one of many, but we kick him because he comes in our way, and there is always some want of distributive justice in the kicking. ~ George Eliot

I want to live forever in a land where summer lasts a thousand years. I want a castle in the clouds where I can look down over the world. I want to be six-and-twenty again. When I was six-and-twenty I could fight all day and fuck all night. What men want does not matter.
Winter is almost upon us, boy. And winter is death. I would sooner my men die fighting for the Ned's little girl than alone and hungry in the snow, weeping tears that freeze upon their cheeks. No one sings songs of men who die like that. As for me, I am old. This will be my last winter. Let me bathe in Bolton blood before I die. I want to feel it spatter across my face when my axe bites deep into a Bolton skull. I want to lick it off my lips and die with the taste of it on my tongue. ~ George R R Martin

If the cost of naming the enemy is diplomatically or politically unacceptable, then the war is not likely to go well. ~ George Friedman

Before marriage she had completely mastered my imagination, for she was a secret to me; and I created the unknown thought before which I trembled as if it were hers. ~ George Eliot

Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them. ~ George Eliot

I think TV remotes should have a button that allows you to kill the person on the screen. ~ George Carlin

Apocalypse is the eye of a needle, through which we pass into a different world. ~ George Zebrowski

There was this to be said for weddings over battles, at least; it was less likely that someone would cut off your nose. ~ George R R Martin

They said my friends were just an unruly mob, and I should get a hair cut and get a new job. ~ George Thorogood

Days, when the ball of our vision
Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun;
When the grasp on the bow was decision,
And arrow and hand and eye were one;
When the Pleasures, like waves to a swimmer,
Came heaving for rapture ahead!-
Invoke then, they dwindle, they glimmer
As lights over mounds of the dead.
-Ode to Youth and Memory ~ George Meredith

The Sierra Club in the United States has now really come out for population control and reduction. ~ Susan George

He was right. I would only eke out a living as a singer. The limited success I had, which Bailey recognized, stemmed from the fact that I didn't love singing. My voice was fair and interesting; my ear was not great, or even good, but my rhythm was reliable. Still, I could never become a great singer, since I would not sacrifice for it. To become wondrously successful and to sustain that success in any profession, one must be willing to relinquish many pleasures and be ready to postpone gratification. I didn't care enough for my own singing to make other people appreciate it. ~ Maya Angelou