Not So Shakespearean Quotes

...and then she smacketh me across mine visage. ~ Zechariah Barrett

The world is not so kind, people trap your mind. ~ Madonna Ciccone

He decided then that he would love her forever no matter what came to pass. It was not so much a matter of deciding as accepting the inevitability of it. It made him feel better, though he felt perturbed, too, worried that this kiss was wrong. But from his point of view, at fourteen years old, their love was entirely unavoidable. It had started on the day they'd clung to his glass box and kissed in the sea, and now it must go on forever. He felt certain of this. ~ David Guterson

HANNAH: You had a vision.
PRIOR: A vision. Thank you, Maria Ouspenskaya. I'm not so far gone I can be assuaged by pity and lies.
HANNAH: I don't have pity. It's just not something I have.
(Little pause)
One hundred and seventy years ago, which is recent, an angel of God appeared to Joseph Smith in upstate
New York, not far from here. People have visions.
PRIOR: But that's preposterous, that's ...
HANNAH: It's not polite to call other people's beliefs preposterous.
He had great need of understanding. Our Prophet. His desire made prayer. His prayer made an angel. The angel was real. I believe that.
PRIOR: I don't. And I'm sorry but it's repellent to me. So much of what you believe.
HANNAH: What do I believe?
PRIOR: I'm a homosexual. With AIDS. I can just imagine what you ...
HANNAH: No you can't. Imagine. The things in my head.
You don't make assumptions about me, mister; I won't make them about you. ~ Tony Kushner

It's just that when a woman is kidnapped and forced into agreeing to marriage, she hopes for a bit more... excitement. Than this."
He rolled slowly- maddeningly- to face her, the air between them thickened, and Penelope was instantly aware of their position, scant inches apart, on a warm pallet in a small room in an empty house, beneath the same blanket- which happened to be his greatcoat. And she realized that perhaps she should not have implied that the evening was unexciting.
Because she was not at all certain that she was prepared for it to become any more exciting. "I didn't mean-" She rushed to correct herself.
"Oh, I think you did an excellent job of meaning." The words were low and dark, and suddenly she was not so very sure that she wasn't afraid after all. "I am not stimulating enough for you?"
"Not you..." she was quick to reply. "The whole..." She waved one hand, lifting the greatcoat as she thought better of finishing. "Never mind."
His gaze was on her, intent and unmoving and, while he had not moved, it seemed as though he had grown larger, more looming. As though he had sucked a great deal of air from the room. "How can I make this night more satisfying for you, my lady?"
The soft question sent a thrum of feeling through her... the way the word- satisfying- rolled languid from his tongue set her heart racing and her stomach turning.
It seemed the night was becoming very exciting very quickly.
And everything was moving muc ~ Sarah MacLean

High school will probably be better. I mean, some kids will still be jerks, but it's not so bad if you have at least one good friend. Someone who gets you. ~ Robin Stevenson

Aging happy and well, instead of sad and sick, is at least under some personal control. We have considerable control over our weight, our exercise, our education, and our abuse of cigarettes and alcohol. With hard work and/or therapy, our relationships with our spouses and our coping styles can be changed for the better. A successful old age may lie not so much in our stars and genes as in ourselves. ~ George Vaillant

Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique and not too much imagination. ~ Christopher Isherwood

I do not want sacrifice, sorrow, dissolution
such is not my taste. I wish to foster, not to blight
to earn gratitude, not to wring tears of blood
no, nor of brine: my harvest must be in smiles, in endearments, in sweet
That will do. I think I rave in a kind of exquisite delirium. I should wish now to protract this moment ad infinitum; but I dare not. So far I have governed myself thoroughly. I have acted as I inwardly swore I would act; but further might try me beyond my strength. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Greatness after all, in spite of its name, appears to be not so much a certain size as a certain quality in human lives. It may be present in lives whose range is very small. ~ Phillips Brooks

It's not so bad to be a prisoner, if you're working on an escape. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Those who are waiting for an epiphany to strike may wait forever. The artist simply goes to work, making art, both good and not so good. ~ Chuck Close

What inspires me is not so much the music as the opportunity to interact with composers. I think that has driven everything I've done. ~ Robert Moog

It looks like the thing that separates out the capable students from the really successful ones is not so much their knowledge ... but their persistence at something, ~ Eric Schmidt

The life of a snail is as full of tasty food, comfortable beds of sorts, and a mix of pleasant and not-so-pleasant adventures as that of anyone I know ~ Elisabeth Tova Bailey

You the rich are no whit more attractive or capable than you who were poor and struggling a few years back. But when before you plodded lonely and unappreciated, now the glamour of the motor and the smart apartment surrounds you with a tangible glory. It is amazing how many friends look you up, call you by name, and extol you, who were once a little timid, or indifferent, or utterly neglectful in your time of dire poverty. One has true friends when one is poor and no riches can be greater than that. They are not so obvious when one is rich. ~ Alice Foote MacDougall

Next week John Boehner will be sitting behind Barack Obama at the State of the Union address. I think Obama should purposely try to embarrass him by telling the story of 'Old Yeller.' The state of our Union is strong, but not so good for one special dog.' ~ Bill Maher

We spend so much of our passion on our first love. I'm not convinced that it - passion - is one of those things that you have an endless amount of - like happiness or sadness. I could be happy all day. I could be sad all day. But I'm not so sure I'll ever love like that again. ~ Laura Miller

Any film that you see is never just the director. If it's a film that you love, it's not so easy to say, "Oh it's directed by this person - that means everything that person directs is going be wonderful." ~ Vin Diesel

From where I sit, the story of Arthur Less is not so bad. ~ Andrew Sean Greer

I'm not so sure that live is always better. It is part of the extrovert assumption to value interaction over inner action. Most introverts savor live time with a close friend, because they know there will be plenty of inner action for both of them. But much of what we call "social" in America allows for very little inner action. Emailing a friend or posting a blog entry will probably feel much richer, and help us feel much closer, than being up close and impersonal. ~ Laurie A. Helgoe

No difference of rank, position, or birth is so great as the gulf that spearates the countless millions who use their head only in the service of their belly, in other words, look upon it as an instrument of the will, and those very few and rare persons who have the courage to say: No! It is too good for that; my head shall be active only in its own service; it shall try to comprehend the wondrous and varied spectacle of this world, and then reproduce it in some form, whether as art or as literature, that may answer to my character as an individual. These are the truly noble, the real noblesse of the world. The others are serfs and go with the soil. Of course, I am here referring to those who have not only the courage, but also the call, and therfore the right, to order the head to quit the service of the will; with a result that proves the sacrifice to have been worth the making. In the case of those to whom all this can only partially apply, the gulf is not so wide; but even though their talent be small, so long as it is real, there will always be a sharp line of demarcation between them and the millions. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Love shouldn't be hard." "There I think you're wrong. I think it should be the hardest thing there is, then it's not so easily given away, or taken away, or just lost. ~ Nora Roberts

There are fashions in saying things just as there are fashions in clothes. You wear what other people are wearing not so much because it's attractive but so as not to be conspicuous; so you can go on bind yourself underneath without being noticed too much. ~ Christopher Morley

A friend gave me a drug for attention deficit disorder, because he's afflicted, but I'm not. So what happened to me is I suddenly had an extra-long attention span. People would tell me a story, and it would end, and I'd get all mad. "Come on, man, there has to be more to that story." ~ Mitch Hedberg

life is sad.......when you are living it alone. ~ Morgan Matson

Worry not so much about other peoples morals but more about your own. ~ James Cook

Life is full of surprises, some good, some not so good. ~ Pablo Escobar

it did not so much judge the quality of a trader's performance as encourage him to game the system by working for short-term profits at the expense of possible blowups - like ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Red remembered growing up in that house as heaven. There were enough children on Bouton Road to form two baseball teams, when they felt like it, and they spent all their free time playing out of doors - boys and girls together, little ones and big ones. Suppers were brief, pesky interruptions foisted on them by their mothers. They disappeared again till they were called in for bed, and then they came protesting, all sweaty-faced and hot with grass blades sticking to them, begging for just another half hour. "I bet I can still name every kid on the block," Red would tell his own children. But that was not so impressive, because most of those kids had stayed on in the neighborhood as grown-ups, or at least come back to it later after trying out other, lesser places. Red ~ Anne Tyler

When you can do that, little Wren, when you can accept the wearing down and the eroding, then you can do anything. How did I manage to keep going out nights? I just told myself I didn't matter all that much - that those in here mattered more. You know something? It's not so hard really. You just have to get past the fear. ~ Terry Brooks

She's kind of funny looking. Her face is out of balance
broad forehead, button
nose, freckled cheeks, and pointy ears. A slammed-together, rough sort of face you can't ignore. Still, the whole package isn't so bad. For all I know maybe she's not so wild
about her own looks, but she seems comfortable with who she is, and that's the important thing. ~ Haruki Murakami

Ranta: Let's just pray that she actually is a tsundere... Though, if she were a tsundere, obviously, the one she'd go dere for is me, you know? That's kind of... not so bad, I guess?

Moguzo: O-Obviously, she wouldn't go dere for Ranta, I think...

Ranta: Oh, shut up, Moguzo! ~ Ao Jyumonji

He held the light up again to the canvas and examined it. The surface seemed to be quite undisturbed and as he had left it. It was from within, apparently, that the foulness and horror had come. Through some strange quickening of inner life the leprosies of sin were slowly eating the thing away. The rotting of a corpse in a watery grave was not so fearful. ~ Oscar Wilde

Kai's date to the Commonwealth's ball last year, and it had been ... terrifying. But also extraordinary. The people of Earth still weren't sure what to do with the fact that one of their beloved leaders was not so secretly dating a Lunar, and a cyborg Lunar at that. ~ Marissa Meyer

In estimating what amount of power would be requisite to secure the objects of government, we must take into the reckoning, what would be necessary to defend the community against external, as well as internal dangers. Government must be able to repel assaults from abroad, as well as to repress violence and disorders within. It must not be overlooked, that the human race is not comprehended in a single society or community. The limited reason and faculties of man, the great diversity of language, customs, pursuits, situation and complexion, and the difficulty of intercourse, with various other causes, have, by their operation, formed a great many separate communities, acting independently of each other. Between these there is the same tendency to conflict - and from the same constitution of our nature - as between men individually; and even stronger - because the sympathetic or social feelings are not so strong between different communities, as between individuals of the same community. ~ John C. Calhoun

What we lack is not so much leisure to do as time to reflect and time to feel. What we seldom "take" is time to experience the things that have happened, the things that are happening, the things that are still ahead of us. ~ Margaret Mead

Ah! Sir, a boy's being flogged is not so severe as a man's having the hiss of the world against him. ~ Samuel Johnson

Oh, good grief," said Vimes. "Look, it's quite simple, man. I was expected to go "At last, alcohol!", and chugalug the lot without thinking. Then some respectable pillars of the community" - he removed the cigar from his mouth and spat - "were going to find me, in your presence, too - which was a nice touch - with the evidence of my crime neatly hidden but not so well hidden that they couldn't find it." He shook his head sadly. "The trouble is, you know, that once the taste's got you it never lets go."
"But you've been very good, sir," said Carrot. "I've not seen you touch a drop for -"
"Oh, that," said Vimes. "I was talking about policing, not alcohol. There's lots of people will help you with the alcohol business, but there's no one out there arranging little meetings where you can stand up and say, "My name is Sam and I'm a really suspicious bastard. ~ Terry Pratchett

How are you this morning? You get up in time for your workout?"
"Yeah. Just finished that. It was just a run ... well, a run in full combat uniform including our packs, but it was only five miles so not so bad."
Her eyes opened wide. "Oh, sure. That's nothing. I do at least that every morning, you know, before tea. ~ Cat Johnson

It's not so much a question of whether we've shot it through 35mm or digital video; what is important is whether the audience accepts it as real. ~ Abbas Kiarostami

Upper education used to open doors. Not so true anymore. The degree used to be a screening tool, but that is falling by the wayside as there are a glut of college grads on the market. ~ Dale Archer

We with my husband [Joseph Millar] are often the first reader for one another's work, and we often also have the last word. We trust each other. We have our past working life in common, our recombined families, as well as our life as teachers, and we read much of the same literature and have similar esthetics, so there's a simpatico there. But we do disagree and that can be fruitful, even if it's not so great in the moment. ~ Dorianne Laux