Quotes about heart
page 24

“I'd rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet.”

Jack London book The Turtles of Tasman

Source: The Turtles of Tasman

Singing

“I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

World

“It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day, and how they are able to cope with having three quizzes and a book report on top of that.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Books

“God is God. He knows what he is doing. When you can’t trace his hand, trust his heart.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

God

“God never witholds from His child that which His love and wisdom call good. God's refusals are always merciful -- "severe mercies" at times but mercies all the same. God never denies us our hearts desire except to give us something better.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Love, Wisdom, God, Time

“If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

Motivational, Back To Work

“When the heart craved something so forcefully, then reason became nothing but helpless observer.”

Cornelia Funke (1958) author

Source: Fearless

“Some people have a thick skin and you don't. Your heart is really open and that is going to cause pain, but that is an appropriate response to this world.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope, and Repair

Pain, People, World

“… to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

Hate, Hell

“Only half a page left now. Shall I fill it with 'I love you, I love you'-- like father's page of cats on the mat? No. Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper.”

Dodie Smith (1896–1990) English novelist and playwright

Love, Cats

“You need a high degree of corruption or a very big heart to love absolutely everything”

Gustave Flaubert book November

Source: November

Love

“2 November. This morning, for the first time in a long time, the joy again of imagining a knife twisted in my heart.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Source: Diaries of Franz Kafka

Imagination, Time, Joy

“I didn't know how… deep love ran, how it was in your blood, not your heart, and how that same blood pumped through your veins your whole life.”

Kristin Hannah (1960) American writer

Source: On Mystic Lake

Love, Life

“We've got to laugh or break our hearts in this damnable world.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Busman's Honeymoon

Source: Busman's Honeymoon

World

“Love, love, love, says Percy.
And hurry as fast as you can
along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust.

Then, go to sleep.
Give up your body heat, your beating heart.
Then, trust.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Love, Sleep

“For that great Love speaks in the most wretched and dirty hearts; only the tone of its voice depends on the echoes of the place in which it sounds.”

George MacDonald book At the Back of the North Wind

Source: At the Back of the North Wind (1871), Chapter 18

Love, Dependency

“There is no knowing what is in a man's heart.”

Charles Portis book True Grit

Source: True Grit

Attitude, For Men

“Quite collected at cocktail parties,
meanwhile in my head
I'm undergoing open-heart surgery.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Variant: Meanwhile in my head, I’m undergoing open-heart surgery.
Source: Transformations

“Someday you're gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You'll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing…”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

Life, Change, Time, Heartbreaking

“my hands dead
my heart dead
silence
adagio of rocks
the world ablaze
that's the best
for me.”

Charles Bukowski book Love Is a Dog from Hell

Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell

World, Silence, Dead

“But now it was spring again, and spring was almost unbearable for sensitive hearts. It drove creation to its utmost limits, it wafted its spice-laden breath even into the nostrils of the innocent.”

Knut Hamsun book Dreamers

Source: Dreamers

Spring

“I stopped watching for ridicule, the scorpion's tail hidden in his words. He said what he meant; he was puzzled if you did not. Some people might have mistaken this for simplicity. But is it not a sort of genius to cut always to the heart?”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

People

“A strange, terrific force unlike anything I've ever experienced is sprouting in my heart, taking root there, growing. Shut up behind my rib cage, my warm heart expands and contracts independent of my will--over and over.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

“For books are more than books, they are the life
The very heart and core of ages past,
The reason why men lived and worked and died,
The essence and quintessence of their lives.”

Amy Lowell (1874–1925) US writer

Life, Men, Books, Age

“Vengeance burns, Torak." said Fin-Kedinn as the river bore him away. "It burns your heart. It makes the pain worse. Dont let that happen to you.”

Michelle Paver book Oath Breaker

Source: Oath Breaker

Pain

“… Chicago divided your heart. Leaving you loving the joint for keeps. Yet knowing it never can love you.”

Nelson Algren (1909–1981) American novelist, short story writer

Source: Chicago: City on the Make

Love

“Edward knew what it was like to say over and over again the names of those you had left behind. He knew what it was like to miss someone. And so he listened. And in his listening, his heart opened wide and then wider still. (page 103)”

Kate DiCamillo book The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

Source: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

“Only the foolish, blinded by language's conventions, think of fire as red or gold. Fire is blue at it's melancholy rim, green in it's envious heart. It may burn white, or even, in it's greatest rages, black.”

Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist

Thinking, Rage

“The heart of a woman who loves will forgive many blows.”

Agatha Christie book Murder on the links

Source: The Murder on the Links

Love, Forgiveness

“He was in my hair, my eyes, my fingers, my heart. I day-dreamed about what he was doing, thinking, seeing, smelling, feeling. I could not eat for thoughts of him.”

Lisa See book Peony in Love

Source: Peony in Love

Dreams, Feeling, Thinking

“I feel ashamed now that I tried to take my life. It is such a precious thing. I had no one to talk me out of my despair and that was a mistake. You need to keep people close. You need to give them access to your heart.”

Mitch Albom For One More Day

Source: For One More Day

Life, People, Feeling, Despair

“And if unhappy in her love, her heart is like some fortress that has been captured, and sacked, and abandoned, and left desolate…”

Washington Irving (1783–1859) writer, historian and diplomat from the United States

Source: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories

Love

“Hearing him say it now, that is was my birthday present, touched me in the last place I wanted him to touch me. My heart.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: We'll Always Have Summer

Birthday

“I am not the one of us who has no heart.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

“With love, there are no rules. The heart decides and what it decides is all that really matters.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Love

“But I also meant that loving someone really opening your heart to them is just asking to have your heart smashed and handed back to you in little pieces.”

Cate Tiernan (1961) American novelist

Source: The Calling

Love

“… And we pray, not for new
earth or heaven, but to be quiet
in heart, and in eye clear.
What we need is here.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

“may my heart always be open to little birds who are the secrets of living”

E.E. Cummings Him

Source: Him

Secret, Bird

“A torn jacket is soon mended; but hard words bruise the heart of a child.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Table-Talk (1857)

Hurtful

“Don't hurt someone who cares about you like that. You're not the only person in the world who's ever been hurt. Don't be cruel. Don't go breaking someone else's heart in the hope that you'll feel better. Becaues you won't.”

Alison McGhee (1960) American novelist

Source: All Rivers Flow To The Sea

World, Hope, Feeling, Hurt

“If you've got them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow.”

John Wayne (1907–1979) American film actor

“Built to be lonely
to love the absent.
Find me
Free me
from this
corrosive doubt
futile despair
horror in repose.
I can fill my space
fill my time
but nothing can fill this void in my heart.”

Sarah Kane book 4.48 Psychosis

Source: 4.48 Psychosis

Love, Time, Despair

“Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, And don't put up with people that are reckless with yours.”

Baz Luhrmann (1962) Australian film director, screenwriter and producer

People

“I cross the place where my heart used to be and hope to be even deader than I am now.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Death Bringer

Hope

“You fight so hard, so long, to cut someone out of your heart, but it’s not always your heart that betrays you.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Incubus Dreams

Source: Incubus Dreams

Fight

“In our hearts there is a ruthless dictator, ready to contemplate the misery of a thousand strangers if it will ensure the happiness of the few we love.”

Graham Greene book The Heart of the Matter

Source: The Heart of the Matter

Love, Happiness

“we are at the crossroads, my little outlaw,
and this is the map of my heart, the landscape
after cruelty”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Source: Crush

“And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind of world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go.”

Kazuo Ishiguro book Never Let Me Go

Source: Never Let Me Go

World, Girl

“My heart's broken,' he thought. 'If I feel this way my heart must be broken.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Source: The Complete Short Stories

Way, Feeling

“You have my whole heart. You always did. You're the best guy. You always were.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Variant: You have my whole heart. You always did.
Source: The Road

Guy

“Hi, Mom…Yes, I know my heart rate’s dangerously elevated. That sound? I’m being shot at, Ma. Gotta go now. Love you much. Hugs and kisses. (Devyn)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of Ice

Love, Moms, Kiss

“We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren't, or of moments that could have been found but were forever hidden in the sands.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Love, Fear, Thinking

“Others may write from the head, but he writes from the heart, and the heart will always understand him.”

Washington Irving (1783–1859) writer, historian and diplomat from the United States

Source: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories

Understanding

“A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Source: Do the Work

“And no matter what anybody says about grief and about time healing all wounds, the truth is, there are certain sorrows that never fade away until the heart stops beating and the last breath is taken.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Truth, Time

“My mother said I broke her heart… but it was my integrity that was important. Is that so selfish? It sells for so little, but it's all we have left in this place. It is the very last inch of us… but within that inch we are free.”

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

Source: V for Vendetta

Selfishness

“I don't remember who said this, but there really are places in the heart you don't even know exist until you love a child.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year

Love

“Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Scarlet Letter

Source: The Scarlet Letter (1850), Chapter XV: Hester and Pearl

Men, Passion

“This world is full of broken things: broken hearts, broken promises, broken people”

John Connolly (1968) author

Source: The Unquiet

People, World

“Stab the body and it heals, but injure the heart and the wound lasts a lifetime.”

Mineko Iwasaki (1949) Japanese Geisha

Heartbreaking, Hurtful

“It’s not the pain that’s inflicted on us by others that destroys us. It’s the pain we let inside our hearts that does that. Don’t let the human’s anger become yours. It can drive you mad if you do. (M'Adoc)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Upon the Midnight Clear

Pain, Madness, Anger

“A pure heart and mind only takes you so far - sooner or later the hormones have their say, too.”

Jim Butcher book Storm Front

Source: Storm Front

“The boy smiled -- mostly at Amy.
"Sorry, her heart belongs to Ian Kabra," Dan said, except that something in her expression made him realize her heart didn't belong at all to Ian
right now.”

Peter Lerangis book The Viper's Nest

Source: The Viper's Nest

Smile, Boy

“The heart, like the mind, has a memory.
And in it are kept the most precious keepsakes.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Memory

“Why do some memories live only on your tongue or in your nose? Why do others always stay in your heart?”

Amy Tan (1952) American novelist

Memory

“Ladies' hearts are like china on a mantelpiece. There are so many of them, and it is so easy to break them without noticing.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Vampires, Scones, and Edmund Herondale

“Never be afraid of doing the thing you know in your heart is right, even if others don't agree.”

Elizabeth Berg (1948) American novelist

Source: Dream When You're Feeling Blue

“I had the brief notion that his heart, pressed flat as a flower, crimson and thin as tissue paper, lay in this file. It was a very thin one.”

Angela Carter (1940–1992) English novelist

Source: The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

Flowers

“Empty pockets never held anyone back…it's only empty heads and empty hearts that do it.”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

"Enthusiasm makes the difference" (2003), p. 58

“Before the mind snaps, or the heart breaks, it gather itself like a clock about to strike. It might even be said one pulls himself together to disintegrate.”

Peter de Vries (1910–1993) American editor and novelist

Source: The Blood of the Lamb

“I feel like you can look inside me and see all the places I am odd or unusual and fit your heart around them, for you are odd and unusual in just the same way. We are the same.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Way, Feeling

“The heartland lies where the heart longs to be. Sometimes it takes a lifetime to find the true place to plant it.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God idea, not God Himself.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

God, Idea, Passion, Despair

“Curiosity, that's what kills us. Not muggers or all that bullshit about the ozone layer. It's our own hearts and minds.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

“My heart is empty & my life has no value anymore. Each moment a thousand tears.”

Lisa See book Peony in Love

Source: Peony in Love

Life, Tear

“Then spoke the thunder
DA Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed.”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Variant: The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Source: The Waste Land (1922)

Age

“sometimes I think I've got this hard kernel in my heart, and nothing much can get inside it. I doubt if I can really love anybody.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Love, Thinking

“People say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but I think they’re wrong: Proximity makes the heart grow fonder.”

Jenny Han book P.S. I Still Love You

Source: P.S. I Still Love You

People, Thinking

“The dead are never far from us. They're in our hearts and on our minds and in the end all that separates us from them is a single breath, one final puff of air.”

William Kent Krueger book Ordinary Grace

Source: Ordinary Grace

Dead

“In secret we met
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

When We Two Parted (1808), st. 4.
Context: In secret we met
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.

Secret, Silence, Forgetting

“Then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Pleasure, Dance

“The body can endure compromise and the mind can be seduced by it. Only the heart protests.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: The Powerbook (2000)

“The boy and his heart had become friends, and neither was capable now of betraying the other.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Boy

“Be happy, noble heart, be blessed for all the good thou hast done and wilt do hereafter, and let my gratitude remain in obscurity like your good deeds.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Happiness, Gratitude

“He shook his head and squeezed my hand tight. "You are my courage, as I am your conscience," he whispered, "You are my heart-- I am your compassion. We are neither of us whole, alone. Do ye not know that, Sassenach?" --Jamie”

Diana Gabaldon book Drums of Autumn

Variant: You are my courage, as I am your conscience," he whispered. "You are my heart---and I your compassion. We are neither of us whole, alone. Do ye not know that, Sassenach?
Source: Drums of Autumn

Courage