Lamentably Quotes & Sayings

Like any other science, yoga is applicable by people of every clime and time. The theory advanced by certain ignorant writers that yoga is "dangerous" or "unsuitable" for Westerners is wholly false, and has lamentably deterred many sincere students from seeking its manifold blessings. Yoga is a method for restraining the natural turbulence of thoughts, which otherwise impartially prevents all men, of all lands, from glimpsing their true nature of Spirit. Like the healing light of the sun, yoga is beneficial equally to men of the East and to men of the West. The thoughts of most persons are restless and capricious; a manifest need exists for yoga: the science of mind control. — Paramahansa Yogananda

I love a ballad but even too well if it be doleful matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed and sung lamentably. — William Shakespeare

I'm 90% performer, 10% musician. I've always said that Gossip are a band I would go see, not a band I would listen to. — Beth Ditto

When they first emerged in their present shape around the turn of the 18th century, the so-called humane disciplines had a crucial social role. It was to foster and protect the kind of values for which a philistine social order had precious little time. The modern humanities and industrial capitalism were more or less twinned at birth. To preserve a set of values and ideas under siege, you needed among other things institutions known as universities set somewhat apart from everyday social life. This remoteness meant that humane study could be lamentably ineffectual. But it also allowed the humanities to launch a critique of conventional wisdom. — Terry Eagleton

How true, lamentably true. I'm sorry, Father. I do not love my neighbor as myself. — Franny Billingsley

Miss Darracott, an intelligent girl, now perceived that in harboring for as much as an instant the notion of marrying a man who fell so lamentably short of the ideal lover she was an irreclaimable ninnyhammer. Ideal lovers might differ in certain respects, but in whatever mold they were cast, not one of them was so unhandsome as to make it extremely difficult for one not to giggle at their utterances. This hopelessly overgrown and unromantic idiot must be given a firm set-down. — Georgette Heyer

The great discovery of the nineteenth century, that we are of one blood with the lower animals, has created new ethical obligations which have not yet penetrated the public conscience. The clerical profession has been lamentably remiss in preaching this obvious duty. — William Ralph Inge

He had never wanted to know anything about the part of her intimate life that he had not shared with her. Why should he take an interest now, still less take offense at it? Anyhow, he asked himself, what is an intimate secret? Is that where we hide what's most mysterious, most singular, most original about a human being? Are her intimate secrets what make Chantal the unique being he loves? No. What people keep secret is the most common, the most ordinary, the most prevalent thing, the same thing that everybody has: the body and its needs, its maladies, its manias-constipation for instance, or menstruation. We ashamedly conceal these intimate matters not because they are so personal but on the contrary, they are so lamentably impersonal. — Milan Kundera

Why tomorrow when there is today? — Connor Franta

The official line is that, after the war, women couldn't wait to leave the offices and assembly lines and government agencies. But the real story was that the economy couldn't have men coming home without women going home, not unless it wanted a lot of unemployed vets. So the problem became unemployed women. "How you gonna keep us down on the farm after we've seen the world,"' she ad-libs to the old World War I tune. 'Enter the women's magazines, and cookbook publishers, and all these advertising agencies carrying on about the scourge of germs in the toilet bowl, and scuffs on the kitchen floor, and, my favorite, house B.O. Enter chicken hash that takes two and a half hours to prepare. I can just hear them sitting around the conference tables. 'That'll keep the gals out of trouble. — Ellen Feldman

A writer is first of all a reader. It is from reading that I derive the standards by which I measure my own work and according to which I fall lamentably short. — Susan Sontag

God grant that by my persevering labours I may bring a little stone to the frail and ill-assured edifice of our knowledge of those deep mysteries of Life and Death where all our intellects have so lamentably failed. — Louis Pasteur

No one sex can govern alone. I believe that one of the reasons why civilization has failed so lamentably is that is had one-sided government. — Nancy Astor

We've accounted for 95 percent of all the stars in the Milky Way. The other 5 percent are big, bright stars - the kind that dominate the night sky, but are lamentably both rare and short-lived. If biology's your thing, you can forget those guys. — Seth Shostak

[I'm] very fortunate and blessed person who still has a lot of living to do. — Condoleezza Rice

Some women think that if the look this season is minis, they have to wear minis. If you don't have great legs, there are plenty of alternatives. — Ralph Lauren

I snorted. 'For a great sultan who is lord and ruler of all that he surveys, his English is lamentably poor. He can't even spell England properly.'
Still holding the note, Mr Ascham looked up at me. 'Is that so? Tell me, Bess, do you speak his language? Any Arabic or Turkish-Arabic?'
'You know that I do not.'
'Then however lamentable his English may be, he still speaks your language while you cannot speak his. To me, this gives him a considerable advantage over you. Always pause before you criticise, and never unduly criticise one who has made an effort at something you yourself have not even attempted. — Matthew Reilly

Lamentably, alien audiences may be frustrated by the switch to digital television. That's because the transmitter power for DTV is fairly evenly spread across the spectrum. The spikiness is gone, and from afar, the attention-grabbing squeals of analog television's carriers have been replaced by DTV's smooth, low hiss. — Seth Shostak

For honest merit to succeed amid the tricks and intrigues which are now so lamentably common, I know is difficult; but the honor of success is increased by the obstacles which are to be surmounted. Let me triumph as a man or not at all. — James A. Garfield

I was brought up by a Victorian Grandmother. We were taught to work jolly hard. We were taught to prove yourself; we were taught self reliance; we were taught to live within our income. You were taught that cleanliness is next to Godliness. You were taught self respect. You were taught always to give a hand to your neighbour. You were taught tremendous pride in your country. All of these things are Victorian values. They are also perennial values. You don't hear so much about these things these days, but they were good values and they led to tremendous improvements in the standard of living. — Margaret Thatcher

The fact is the physical chemists never use their eyes and are most lamentably lacking in chemical culture. It is essential to cast out from our midst, root and branch, this physical element and return to our laboratories. — Henry Edward Armstrong

Heroic ages are not and never were sentimental and those daring conquistadores who conquered entire worlds for their Spain or Portugal received lamentably little thanks from their kings. — Stefan Zweig

Anyone, however, who has had dealings with dates knows that they are worse than elusive, they are perverse. Events do not happen at the right time, nor in their proper sequence. That sense of harmony with place and season which is so strong in the historian
if he be a readable historian
is lamentably lacking in history, which takes no pains to verify his most convincing statements. — Agnes Repplier

The Turkish infantry were as fine as they had ever been, and their field artillery was presentable. But they had none of the modern weapons which from May, 1940, were proved to be decisive. Aviation was lamentably weak and primitive. They had no tanks or armoured cars, and neither the workshops to make and maintain them nor the trained men and staffs to handle them. They had hardly any anti-aircraft or anti-tank artillery. Their signal service was rudimentary. Radar was unknown to them. Nor did their warlike qualities include any aptitude for all these modern developments. — Winston S. Churchill

Is not the great defect of our education today - a defect traceable through all the disquieting symptoms of trouble that I have mentioned - that although we often succeed in teaching our pupils "subjects," we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think: they learn everything, except the art of learning. — Dorothy L. Sayers

But courage in fighting is by no means the only form, nor perhaps even the most important. There is courage in facing poverty, courage in facing derision, courage in facing the hostility of one's own herd. In these, the bravest soldiers are often lamentably deficient. And above all there is the courage to think calmly and rationally in the face of danger, and to control the impulse of panic fear or panic rage. — Bertrand Russell

When was the last time you heard an insightful, inspiring piece of oratory from an Australian political leader, an appeal to what is pure and true within humanity: a statement of belief backed by ideas for change betterment, a call to those immutable values wherein lie the potential greatness of people individually and collectively? Such exhortation, such leadership is lamentably scarce. — Michael Short

I like Fidel Castro and his beard. — Bob Dylan

Regulators are a backstop: they don't own banks. The governance at the top of our leading banks has been shown to be lamentably weak. No one at the top of Barclays will take responsibility for systemic abuse. — Vince Cable

Sovereignty inheres in the right to issue money. And the American sovereignty belongs by right to the people, and their representatives in Congress have the right to issue money and to determine the value thereof. And 120 million, 120 million suckers have lamentably failed to insist on the observation of this quite decided law ... Now the point at which embezzlement of the nation's funds on the part of her officers becomes treason can probably be decided only by jurists, and not by hand-picked judges who support illegality. — Ezra Pound

- Nothing else has any efficacy, I might as well be myself.
- But your yourself sucks!
- It is, lamentably, all I have. — Junot Diaz

But while admiring my neighbour, I don't think I shall ever try to follow in her steps, my talents not being of the energetic and organising variety, but rather that of that order which makes their owner almost lamentably prone to take up a volume of poetry and wander out to where the kingcups grow, and, sitting on a willow trunk beside a little stream, forget the very existence of everything but green pastures and still waters, and the glad blowing of the wind across the joyous fields. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

How true, how true" said the Sour Kangaroo, "And from now on, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm going to protect them with you!" And the Young Kangaroo in her pouch said "Me too! — Dr. Seuss

It was in this year, 1828, that the standard of "the Christian Party in Politics" was openly unfurled ... This was an evident attempt, through the influence of the clergy over the female mind - until this hour lamentably neglected in the United States - to effect a union of Church and State. — Frances Wright