Not Rather Quotes

I wish you the best of luck," Grey said politely. "And I do hope that the gentleman Tom saw in the custody of the press gang was Mr. Gormley. However - if he was, does this not rather obviate your conclusion that he was in possession of incriminating information regarding the perpetrator?"

Jones gave him a glassy look, and Tom Byrd looked reproving.

"Now, me lord, you know you oughtn't talk like that at this hour of the morning. You got to pardon his lordship, sir," he said apologetically to Jones. "His father - the duke, you know - had him schooled in logic. He can't really help it, like."

(Haunted Soldier) ~ Diana Gabaldon

I believe, there is scarcely a young lady in the united kingdoms, who would not rather put up with the misfortune of being sought by a clever, agreeable man, than have him driven away by the vulgarity of her nearest relations. ~ Jane Austen

The reason for our confusion is that we usually read the Bible as a series of disconnected stories, each with a "moral" for how we should live our lives. It is not. Rather, it comprises a single story, telling us how the human race got into its present condition, and how God through Jesus Christ has come and will come to put things right. ~ Timothy Keller

We've been texting for weeks. Surely it's rather like in Jane Austen's day when they did letter-writing for months and months and then just, like, immediately got married?'
'Bridget. Sleeping with a twenty-nine-year-old off Twitter on the second date is not "rather like Jane Austen's day". ~ Helen Fielding

There was probably not a knight of all the Round Table combination who would not rather have died than been caught carrying such a thing as that on his flagstaff. And yet there could not be anything more sensible. It had been my intention to smuggle a couple of sandwiches into my helmet, but I was interrupted in the act, and had to make an excuse and lay them aside, and a dog got them. ~ Mark Twain

You have had many and great sadnesses, which passed. And you say that even this passing was hard for you and put you out of sorts. But, please, consider whether these great sadnesses have not rather gone right through the center of yourself? Whether much in you has not altered, whether you have not somewhere, at some point of your being, undergone a change when you were sad? ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

We underestimate this little hole, it seems to me, we call it the arsehole and affect to despise it. But is it not rather the true portal of our being and the celebrated mouth no more than the kitchen door ~ Samuel Beckett

I might have felt unimportant pitted against the awesome might of the mountains. I did not. Rather, on that mountain top I found something important that I had never known before: an awareness of a vital connection between me and the Authority behind all this beauty. ~ Catherine Marshall

40. The gods either have power or they have not. If they have not, why pray to them? If they have, then instead of praying to be granted or spared such-and-such a thing, why not rather pray to be delivered from dreading it, or lusting for it, or grieving over it? Clearly, if they can help a man at all, they can help him in this way. You will say, perhaps, 'But all that is something they have put in my own power.' Then surely it were better to use your power and be a free man, than to hanker like a slave and a beggar for something that is not in your power. Besides, who told you the gods never lend their aid even towards things that do lie in our own power? Begin praying in this way, and you will see. Where another man prays 'Grant that I may possess this woman,' let your own prayer be, 'Grant that I may not lust to possess her.' Where he prays, 'Grant me to be rid of such-and-such a one,' you pray, 'Take from me my desire to be rid of him.' Where he begs, 'Spare me the loss of my precious child,' beg rather to be delivered from the terror of losing him. In short, give your petitions a turn in this direction, and see what comes. ~ Marcus Aurelius

What honest man would not rather be the sufferer than the defrauder? ~ Samuel Richardson

There is no true Latter-day Saint who would not rather bury a son or a daughter than to have him or her lose his or her chastity - realizing that chastity is of more value than anything else in all the world. ~ Heber J. Grant

Is it not rather the touch of Love, of Love the Mysterious, who seeks constantly to unite two beings, who tries his strength the instant he has put a man and a woman face to face? ~ Guy De Maupassant

Critical acumen is exerted in vain to uncover the past; the past cannot be presented; we cannot know what we are not. But one veil hangs over past, present, and future, and it is the province of the historian to find out, not what was, but what is. Where a battle has been fought, you will find nothing but the bones of men and beasts; where a battle is being fought, there are hearts beating. We will sit on a mound and muse, and not try to make these skeletons stand on their legs again. Does Nature remember, think you, that they were men, or not rather that they are bones? ~ Henry David Thoreau

The beautiful you is not the color of your skin

Or the texture of your hair.

The beautiful you is not how tall or short you are

The beautiful you is not rather you're skinny or overweight by society standards

The beautiful you is not the degrees you have obtain

Or the size of your bank accounts.

The beautiful you, has nothing to do with where you're from, or religious beliefs

Nor the car you drive or the house you live in.

The beautiful you is not the price tag of what you wear

The beautiful you has nothing do with how eloquent you speak

The beautiful you is your kindness and compassion toward others

The beautiful you is your tolerance and patience

The beautiful you is your ability to love and forgive

The beautiful you don't rush to judge what you don't understand

The beautiful you is always seeking to evolve into its higher self

That is the beautiful you and that is what the world needs

The beautiful you is what defines our Humanity

The Beautiful you, Be that Always! ~ Micheline Jean Louis

Is it not rather meant that it was placed far above us, in order to convince us of our utter feebleness? ~ John Calvin

Women cannot compete with men in physical prowess. And why in the name of all that is sane should we? Why not rather have our ambition go into sport for health, endurance, and the mere love of it? ~ Michael Sokolove

I wonder if it hurts to live, And if they have to try, And whether, could they choose between, They would not rather die. ~ Emily Dickinson

Is it not rather ugly, one may ask? One collects material possessions not only for security, comfort or vanity, but for beauty as well. Is your sea-shell house not ugly and bare? No, it is beautiful, my house. It is bare, of course, but the wind, the sun, the smell of the pines blow through its bareness. The unfinished beams in the roof are veiled by cobwebs. They are lovely, I think, gazing up at them with new eyes; ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable that I would not rather know it than not know it. ~ Samuel Johnson

I knew I was in danger from the moment I proposed visiting you a second time. I knew because God warned me by sending the whirlwind that pulled a few feathers.'
'But you still came every year.'
'God is my maker but not my master. And I don't think he was saying "Thou shalt not", rather, "I think you're going to regret this.."'
'So, you go freely, with hints. If God made a suggestion to me I'm sure I'd take it. I mean, I assume He has, but I've misunderstood. ~ Elizabeth Knox

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Is it true that existence consists only in the action of energy? Or is it not rather that energy is an output of Existence? ~ Sri Aurobindo

To what end do I lead a simple life at all, pray? That I may teach others to simplify their lives? - and so all our lives be simplified merely, like an algebraic formula? Or not, rather, that I may make use of the ground I have cleared to live more worthily and profitably? ~ Henry David Thoreau

At all events we are not likely in this day to err on the side of praying too much. Might it not rather be feared that many believers in this generation pray too little? Is not the actual amount of time that many Christians give to prayer in the aggregate very small? I am afraid these questions cannot be answered satisfactorily. I am afraid the private devotions of many are most painfully scanty and limited, - just enough to prove they are alive, and no more. ~ J.C. Ryle

Much as the sage may affect to despise the opinion of the world, there are few who would not rather expose their lives a hundred times than be condemned to live on, in society, but not of it - a by-word of reproach to all who know their history, and a mark for scorn to point his finger at. ~ Charles Mackay

At last, he began to discourse of fortune and human affairs. "Is it meet," said he, "for him that knows he is but man, in his greatest prosperity to pride himself, and be exalted at the conquest of a city, nation, or kingdom, and not rather well to weigh this change of fortune, in which all warriors may see an example of their common frailty, and learn a lesson that there is nothing durable or constant? For what time can men select to think themselves secure, when that of victory itself forces us more than any to dread our own fortune? and a very little consideration on the law of things, and how all are hurried round, and each man's station changed, will introduce sadness in the midst of the greatest joy. Or can you, when you see before your eyes the succession of Alexander himself, who arrived at the height of power and ruled the greatest empire, in the short space of an hour trodden underfoot- when you behold a king, that was but even now surrounded with so numerous an army, receiving nourishment to support his life from the hands of his conquerors- can you, I say, believe there is any certainty in what we now possess whilst there is such a thing as chance? No, young men, cast off that vain pride and empty boast of victory; sit down with humility, looking always for what is yet to come, and the possible future reverses which the divine displeasure may eventually make the end of our present happiness. ~ Plutarch

Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be ... ~ William Wordsworth

We obey God not because we are afraid of what He will do to us if we do not. Rather, we obey Him because we are moved by all that He has done for us in Jesus Christ. He has lovingly elected us and sprinkled us with the sin-forgiving, grace-abounding blood of Jesus. ~ Anthony J. Carter

There is a dramatic conflict in what is commonly called the human sciences. Should we postulate a typical human reality and describe its psychic modalities, taking into account only the imperfections, or should we not rather make a constant, solid endeavor to understand man in an everchanging light? ~ Frantz Fanon

Lucy, has he not rather the air of an incipient John Bull? He used to be slender as an eel, and now I fancy in him a sort of heavy dragoon bent - a beef-eater tendency. Graham, take notice! If you grow fat I disown you. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Evolution was far more thrilling to me than the biblical account. Who would not rather be a rising ape than a falling angel? To my juvenile eyes, Darwin was proved true every day. It doesn't take much to make us flip back into monkeys again. ~ Terry Pratchett

The enemy? His sense of duty was no less than yours, I deem. You wonder what his name is, where he came from. And if he was really evil at heart. What lies or threats led him on this long march from home. If he would not rather have stayed there in peace. War will make corpses of us all. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Was the excellence of Socrates or of Shakespeare normal? Was it not rather abnormal, extraordinary? It is, I think, obvious in the first place, that not all that is good is normal; that, on the contrary, the abnormal is often better than the normal... ~ G.E. Moore

There are very few so foolish that they had not rather govern themselves than be governed by others. ~ Thomas Hobbes

1. Sovereignty of the human will; in short, despotism. 2. Inequality of wealth and rank. 3. Property - above JUSTICE, always invoked as the guardian angel of sovereigns, nobles, and proprietors; JUSTICE, the general, primitive, categorical law of all society.
We must ascertain whether the ideas of despotism, civil inequality and property, are in harmony with the primitive notion of justice, and necessarily follow from it, - assuming various forms according to the condition, position, and relation of persons; or whether they are not rather the illegitimate result of a confusion of different things, a fatal association of ideas. And since justice deals especially with the questions of government, the condition of persons, and the possession of things, we must ascertain under what conditions, judging by universal opinion and the progress of the human mind, government is just, the condition of citizens is just, and the possession of things is just; then, striking out every thing which fails to meet these conditions, the result will at once tell us what legitimate government is, what the legitimate condition of citizens is, and what the legitimate possession of things is; and finally, as the last result of the analysis, what justice is. ~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

There are few of us that are not rather ashamed of our sins and follies as we look out on the blessed morning sunlight, which comes to us like a bright-winged angel beckoning us to quit the old path of vanity that stretches its dreary length behind us. ~ George Eliot

But I confess that "my mind to me a kingdom is"
not! Rather it is a fantastical republic, daily troubled by more revolutions than ever occurred in South America ... ~ Lafcadio Hearn

You must strive to multiply bread so that it suffices for the tables of mankind, and not rather favor an artificial control of birth, which would be irrational, in order to diminish the number of guests at the banquet of life. ~ Pope Paul VI

Who would not rather have the fame of Archimedes than that of his conqueror Marcellus? ~ William Rowan Hamilton

There is no one who would not rather appear to know than to be taught. ~ Marcus Fabius Quintilianus

Who would not rather flounder in the fight than not have known the glory of the fray? ~ Richard Hovey

What is it that constitutes virtue, Mrs. Graham? Is it the circumstance of being able and willing to resist temptation; or that of having no temptations to resist? - Is he a strong man that overcomes great obstacles and performs surprising achievements, though by dint of great muscular exertion, and at the risk of some subsequent fatigue, or he that sits in his chair all day, with nothing to do more laborious than stirring the fire, and carrying his food to his mouth? If you would have your son to walk honourably through the world, you must not attempt to clear the stones from his path, but teach him to walk firmly over them - not insist upon leading him by the hand, but let him learn to go alone.'

'I will lead him by the hand, Mr. Markham, till he has strength to go alone; and I will clear as many stones from his path as I can, and teach him to avoid the rest - or walk firmly over them, as you say; - for when I have done my utmost, in the way of clearance, there will still be plenty left to exercise all the agility, steadiness, and circumspection he will ever have. - It is all very well to talk about noble resistance, and trials of virtue; but for fifty - or five hundred men that have yielded to temptation, show me one that has had virtue to resist. And why should I take it for granted that my son will be one in a thousand? - and not rather prepare for the worst, and suppose he will be like his - like the rest of mankind, unless I take care to prevent it? ~ Anne Bronte

Whatever the variations by race, class, age, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, being a man means "not being like women." This notion of antifemininity lies at the heart of contemporary and historical conceptions of manhood, so that masculinity is defined more by what one is not rather than who one is. ~ Michael S. Kimmel

None of us has ever seen a motive. Therefore, we don't know we can't do anything more than suspect what inspires the action of another. For this good and valid reason, we're told not to judge.
Tragedy is that our attention centers on what people are not, rather than on what they are and who they might become. ~ Brennan Manning

Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches - he has made music sick. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Shall we go away whenever life looks like turning in the slightest uncanny, or not quite normal, or even rather painful and mortifying? No, surely not. Rather stay and look matters in the face, brave them out; perhaps precisely in so doing lies a lesson for us to learn. ~ Thomas Mann

All knowledge is of itself of some value. There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable that I would not rather know it than not. ~ Samuel Johnson

Have we even so much as discovered and settled the shores? Let a man travel on foot along the coastand tell me if it looks like a discovered and settled country, and not rather, for the most part, like a desolate island, and No-Man's Land. ~ Henry David Thoreau

[ ... ]we must ask ourselves whether we have not often been deceiving ourselves with our confession of sin to God, whether we have not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution. And is not the reason perhaps for our countless relapses and the feebleness of our Christian obedience to be found precisely in the fact that we are living on self-forgiveness and not a real forgiveness. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

[I]t's necessary to exert very great foresight every time you go to blame or praise a man, so that you won't speak incorrectly ... For you shouldn't suppose that, while stones are sacred and pieces of wood, and birds, and snakes, human beings are not. Rather of all these things, the most sacred is the good human being, while the most polluted is the wicked.
Speech attributed to Socrates in Plato, Minos 319a, trans. Thomas L. Pangle, in The Roots of Political Philosophy: Ten Forgotten Socratic Dialogues, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 63. ~ Plato

You are what you are, and I'd rather be myself than try and be what I'm not. ~ Georgia Groome

At times he felt that he had almost rather not be in love with her, for it brought him no peace. What was the use of it, if it was only going to be painful? ~ Larry McMurtry

Bridget. Sleeping with a twenty-nine year old off Twitter on the second date is not 'rather like in Jane Austen's day'. (Talitha) ~ Helen Fielding

What though the radiance that was once so bright, be now forever taken from my sight. Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind. ~ William Wordsworth

Man is said to be a rational creature; but should it not rather be said, that man is a creature capable of being rational, as we say a parrot is a creature capable of speech? ~ Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke

Is it not enough that we cannot make one another happy, must we also rob one another of the pleasures that any heart may permit itself now and then? And name me a person who in a bad mood will be decent enough to hide it, to bear it alone, without destroying the joy around him. Is it not rather an inner dissatisfaction with our own unworthiness, a dislike of ourselves that is always associated with envy aggravated by foolish conceit? We see people happy and not made happy by us, and that is unbearable. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Four things to think about. 1. Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. 2. Let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred. 3. Keep three chairs in your house. One for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. 4. To preserve your relationship to nature, make your life more moral, more pure, more innocent. ~ Henry David Thoreau

You must always remember that your future holds promise and good fortune. Count your blessings, and never regret what was not. Rather, focus on the path God has chosen for you. ~ Mirella Sichirollo Patzer

What man is such a coward he would not rather fall once than remain forever tottering? ~ Cormac McCarthy

By what right can we call this a system of "corrections"? Is it not, rather, the rubric for a slavishly obedient, oppressed, and humiliated existence? ~ Slavoj Zizek

Hindsight should have lent clarity to his actions; it did not. Rather, he felt a lingering sense of confusion. Everything seemed to jumble together in his mind--all the disparate incomplete reasoning, all the emotions that intertwined and colored. They would not sort themselves out for him; they would not arrange themselves in a neat orderly fashion. They merely shuffled about like stray sheep and he chased after them hopelessly. ~ Terry Brooks

Love and concern for all are not things some of us are born with and others are not. Rather, they are results of what we do with our minds: We can choose to transform our minds so that they embody love, or we can allow them to develop habits and false concepts of separation. ~ Sharon Salzberg

Shall he who soars, inspired by loftier views,
Life's little cares and little pains refuse?
Shall he not rather feel a double share
Of mortal woe, when doubly arm'd to bear? ~ George Crabbe

Why is it that it is often easier for us to confess our sins to God than to a brother? God is holy and sinless, He is a just judge of evil and the enemy of all disobedience. But a brother is sinful as we are. He knows from his own experience the dark night of secret sin. Why should we not find it easier to go to a brother than to the holy God? But if we do, we must ask ourselves whether we have not often been deceiving ourselves with our confession of sin to God, whether we have not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution ... Who can give us the certainty that, in the confession and the forgiveness of our sins, we are not dealing with ourselves but with the living God? God gives us this certainty through our brother. Our brother breaks the circle of self-deception. A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Instead of trying to produce a programme to simulate the adult mind, why not rather try to produce one which simulates the child's? If this were then subjected to an appropriate course of education one would obtain the adult brain. ~ Alan Turing

Suffering occurs when something is taken for what it's not , rather than for what it is. ~ Suzanne Segal