Quotes about heart
page 29

“The world has been abnormal for so long that we've forgotten what it's like to live in a peaceful and reasonable climate. If there is to be any peace or reason, we have to create it in our own hearts and homes.”

Madeleine L'Engle A Swiftly Tilting Planet

Source: A Swiftly Tilting Planet

World, Peace, Home

“Remember when i slept with my head
in a puddle at your feet?
It was humility, or atonement.
later your ankle was a pillow and
finally you pulled me up and in my sleep i
placed your hand above my heart,
like i forgot i didn't live there
anymore”

Michelle Tea (1971) American writer

Sleep

“Follow your heart. Just don't get lost.”

Ilsa J. Bick (1957) American writer

Source: Draw the Dark

“Forgiveness is the economy of the heart.…forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits.”

Hannah More (1745–1833) English religious writer and philanthropist

Forgiveness, Anger

“It broke my heart into more pieces than my heart was made of, why can't people say what they mean at the time?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 279

People, Time

“believe me. Sometimes when life looks to be at its grimmest, there's a light hidden at the heart of things.
Clive Barker, Abarat”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkspell

Life, Light

“Anger is the most useless emotion," Henchick intoned, "destructive to the mind and hurtful to the heart.”

Stephen King book The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah

Source: Song of Susannah

Hurt, Anger

“Are you learning me by heart, little Sara?" he said, stroking her hair.
"No," she answered. "I know you by heart. You are inside my heart.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett A Little Princess

Source: A Little Princess

Learning

“Waiting on God requires the willingness to bear uncertainty, to carry within oneself the unanswered question, lifting the heart to God about it whenever it intrudes upon one's thoughts.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

God, Question, Waiting

“I love you. I don't know when it started, years ago or weeks. But I know my heart's lost to you, and I wouldn't have it another way. You're what I want, all there is of you.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Tears of the Moon

Love, Way

“Great minds may have cold hearts. Form but no color. It is an incompleteness. And so they are afraid of any woman who both thinks and feels deeply.”

Sena Jeter Naslund (1942) American writer

Source: Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

Color, Feeling, Thinking

“Courage originally meant "To speak one's mind by telling all one's heart.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

Courage, Courageous

“Everyday, every hour, I have held you close in my heart.”

Elizabeth Chandler (1954) writer

Source: Evercrossed

“I’ve dropped out of their hearts like a little sparrow fallen from its nest. So gather me up, dear, fold me to your heart – and you’ll see how nice I can be.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

Source: No Exit and Three Other Plays

“Even death has a heart.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Death

“Regrets and apologies are all very well, but there's things that happen in a person's life that are so scorched in the memory and burned into the heart that there's no forgetting them. They're like brands.”

John Boyne (1971) Irish novelist, author of children's and youth fiction

Source: Mutiny on the Bounty

Life, Memory, Personality, Forgetting

“Can officially confirm that the way to a man's heart these days is not through beauty, food, sex, or alluringness of character, but merely the ability to seem not very interested in him.”

Helen Fielding book Bridget Jones's Diary

Source: Bridget Jones's Diary

Food, Beauty, Sex, Way

“Pride is an evil dragon; it sleeps underneath your heart and then roars when you need silence.”

Jodi Picoult book Small Great Things

Source: Small Great Things

Sleep, Silence, Evil

“Hearts don't really break. If only they could.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 22/11/63

“A human’s love. I couldn’t wish anything better for him. Animals protect what they know. They protect what they are bound to, but humans…humans have a greater capacity for sacrifice for those who live in their hearts. (Aristotle)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Unleash the Night

Love, Animals

“There in that pool stained with green blood, he had learned two things: one was that all the pain stopped when you stopped fighting death; and the other was that as long as you could still hear your heart beating, you had to keep fighting back.”

Ryū Murakami book Coin Locker Babies

Source: Coin Locker Babies

Death, Pain, Learning, Fight

“The heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head.”

Noah Webster (1758–1843) lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English-language spelling reformer, writer, editor and author

“It's fairly easy to break hearts, Miss Duvall. The more interesting challenge is how to keep someone's love, not to lose it.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Someone to Watch Over Me

Love

“Never regret trusting someone. It proves you have a heart. But if he turns out to be a lying worm… I'm not going to waste my time crying. Because I am way too fabulous for that.”

Jude Watson book Beyond the Grave

Source: Beyond the Grave

Way, Lying, Time, Cry

“That's how it is sometimes when we plunge into the depths of our lives. No one can accompany us, not even those who would give up their hearts for our happiness.”

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni book Sister of My Heart

Source: Sister of My Heart

Happiness

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Letter to his Wife (April 29 1812).

Heart Touching

“It may be an infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him. The former may be the act of a moment of passion: the latter is the heart’s choice.”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

‘’It Shall Not Be Forgiven’’
Unspoken Sermons, First Series (1867)
Source: Unspoken Sermons: Series I, II, III

Forgiveness, Passion, Evil

“Where we belong is often where we least expect to find ourselves—a place that we may have willed ourselves to forget, but that the heart remembers forever.”

Emily Giffin book Where We Belong

Source: Where We Belong

Forgetting

“There’s been time this whole time. You can’t kill time with your heart. Everything takes time.”

David Foster Wallace book Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Source: Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Time

“Contentment… has an internal quietness of heart that gladly submits to God in all circumstances.”

Joni Eareckson Tada (1949) American artist

Source: When God Weeps: Why Our Sufferings Matter to the Almighty

God

“For an absurd moment, I wondered if Ammit devoured the hearts of wicked cows, and if he liked the beefy taste.

- Carter Kane”

Rick Riordan book The Serpent's Shadow

Source: The Serpent's Shadow

“And the heart that is soonest awake to the flowers
Is always the first to be touch'd by the thorns.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Oh think not my Spirits are always as light.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Flowers

“He could build a city. Has a certain capacity. There’s a niche in his chest
where a heart would fit perfectly
and he thinks if he could just maneuver one into place –
well then, game over.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Game, Thinking

“Somewhere in all the snow, she could see her broken heart, in two pieces.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

“Find what causes a commotion in your heart. Find a way to write about that”

Richard Ford (1944) American novelist and short story writer

Way

“Poems are a hotline to our hearts, and we forget this emotional power at our peril.”

Andrew Motion (1952) poet, novelist and biographer from England

Forgetting

“199. For to wish to forget how much you loved someone—and then, to actually forget—can feel, at times, like the slaughter of a beautiful bird who chose, by nothing short of grace, to make a habitat of your heart.”

Maggie Nelson (1973) American writer

Source: Bluets

Love, Beauty, Feeling, Bird

“I'm a coward when it comes to matters of the heart. That is my fatal flaw.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

“Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.”

George Eliot book The Mill on the Floss

Source: The Mill on the Floss (1860)

Jealousy

“No summer ever came back, and no two summers ever were alike. Times change, and people change; and if our hearts do not change as readily, so much the worse for us.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Blithedale Romance

Source: The Blithedale Romance

People, Change, Time, Summer

“And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: 100 Love Sonnets

Star, Parting

“My mom had a soft heart after all! Instead of being chained by both wrists, we were only chained by one ankle!
I mean, if I’d been looking for proof that she really did love me, this was it, right?”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Love, Moms

“The heart knows no logic, and rarely corresponds with the brain.”

Alyson Nöel (1965) writer

Source: Everlasting

“If I were dead and buried And I heard your voice, Beneath the sod My heart of dust Would still rejoice.”

Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976) American screenwriter and novelist

Dead

“It's awful to be rich and mind-boggingly handsome and have women fawn over you. My heart bleeds for you. Poor dear, how do you manage?”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: On the Edge

Women

“It is better for the heart to break, than not to break.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

For women, Hope, Positive

“I teleported home last night with Ron and Sid and Meg
Ron stole Meggy's heart away and I got Sidney's leg.”

Douglas Adams book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Home, Night

“It is the mind that speaks a woman's heart, not the vaginal walls.”

Mary Roach book Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Source: Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

“Suppose death had a heart to love and to release you, to whom would he turn this passion, would you chose a person from the crowd there. A person to suffer as you suffer.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

Love, Death, Suffering, Passion

“He has ''. Eddy fumbled for her high school French. 'A heart like an artichoke?' '. He has a leaf for everyone, but makes a meal for no one.”

Poppy Z. Brite (1967) Novelist, short story writer, food writer

School

“Time is more precious than gold, more precious than diamonds, more precious than oil or any valuable treasures. It is time that we do not have enough of; it is time that causes the war within our hearts, and so we must spend it wisely.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: The Gift

War, Time

“Food is music to the body, music is food to the heart.”

Gregory David Roberts (1952) Australian writer and bank robber

Food, Music

“She didn't know how to love, to give herself to someone, to out herself in someone else's keeping and take him into hers. She didn't trust anyone with her heart - or the darker places of her soul.”

Christine Feehan American writer

Source: Turbulent Sea

Love, Soul

“Here's what no one ever tells you about love: it hurts, having your heart broken”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Between the Lines

Love, Hurt

“I stood still, vision blurring, and in that moment, I heard my heart break. It was a small, clean sound, like the snapping of a flower's stem.”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

Flowers, Romantic

“Damon’s voice was no louder than before. “Get away from my brother.” Bonnie could feel it inside him, a swell of Power like a tsunami. He continued, “Before I tear your heart out.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: The Fury / Dark Reunion

Feeling, Tear

“We do know that no one gets wise enough to really understand the heart of another, though it is the task of our life to try.”

Louise Erdrich (1954) writer from the United States

Source: The Bingo Palace

Life, Understanding

“My heart is so tired”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

“You see, I do not want a body without a heart.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

“I’ve been through all this before,’ he says to his heart.
“ ‘Yes, you have been through all this before,’ replies his heart. ‘But you have never been beyond it.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Warrior of the Light

“There is something in the human spirit that will survive and prevail, there is a tiny and brilliant light burning in the heart of man that will not go out no matter how dark the world becomes.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

World, Light

“If you look into your own heart, and you find nothing wrong there, what is there to worry about? What is there to fear?”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Fear

“We should not shed tears
That is a surrender of the body to the heart
It is only proof
That we are beings that do not know
What to do with out hearts”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

Source: Bleach, Volume 01

Tear

“We need books… because we are all, in the private kingdoms of our hearts, desperate for the company of a wise, true friend.”

Steve Almond (1966) American writer

Books

“No, there is no escape. There is no heaven with a little of hell in it - no place to retain this or that of the devil in our hearts or our pockets. Out Satan must go, every hair and feather.”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

Hell

“She had changed him. The ice was in his eyes and in his heart, like he had predicted with that song, but now they were deep embedded there, all the pain of the world. Not pain to make you feel for somebody else but pain to make you stop feeling.”

Francesca Lia Block (1962) American children's writer

Source: The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold

Pain, World, Feeling, Change

“This is your heart. Keep it locked until the chap turns up who has the key.”

Jean Webster book Just Patty

Source: Just Patty

“But to see her was to love her;
Love but her, and love for ever.
Had we never lov'd sae kindly,
Had we never lov'd sae blindly,
Never met—or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.”

Robert Burns Ae fond kiss, and then we sever...

Ae Fond Kiss, And Then We Sever, st. 2
Johnson's The Scots Musical Museum (1787-1796)
Source: Robert Burns

Love, Parting

“Once in a while I go off on a spree and make a fool of myself, but I always come back, and in my heart I love her all the time. - The Great Gatsby.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Love, Fools, Time

“You know the legend. Stab them in the heart and they’ll die. (Ravyn)
Call me Buffy. I’m even blond, but don’t ask me to wear a halter top. Or corset. (Susan)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dark Side of the Moon

“The aim of literature… is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

"Florence Green is 81".
Source: Come Back, Dr. Caligari (1964)
Context: His examiner... said severely: "Baskerville, you blank round, discursiveness is not literature." "The aim of literature," Baskerville replied grandly, "is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart."

Literature

“If it works out, it's the best thing in the world. If it doesn't work out, it's like having your heart torn out and chopped up into little pieces while you watch. It leaves a big hollow space that never really heals.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Narcissus in Chains

Source: Narcissus in Chains

World

“Nations are born in the hearts of poets; they prosper and then die in the hands of politicians.”

Muhammad Iqbál (1877–1938) Urdu poet and leader of the Pakistan Movement

Stray reflections http://www.allamaiqbal.com/works/prose/english/strayreflections/index.htm

“There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out, but I'm too tough for him.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“It is a fine thing to establish one's own religion in one's heart, not to be dependent on tradition and second-hand ideals. Life will seem to you, later, not a lesser, but a greater thing.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Life, Religion, Dependency

“She would follow, her dream of love, the dictates of her heart that told her he was her all in all, the only man in all the world for her for love was the master guide. Come what might she would be wild, untrammelled, free.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

Love, World, Dreams

“If you're at the end of your rope… untie the knot in your heart.”

Cooper Edens (1945) American writer

Source: If You're Afraid of the Dark, Remember the Night Rainbow/Add One More Star to the Night

“… The friends we have lost do not repose under the ground… they are buried deep in our hearts. It has been thus ordained that they may always accompany us…”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

“Don’t spend your time on and give your heart to any guy who makes you wonder about anything
related to his feelings for you”

Greg Behrendt (1963) American comedian

Source: He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys

Guy, Feeling, Time

“The wrongs done to trees, wrongs of every sort, are done in the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, for when the light comes, the heart of the people is always right.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

about 1900, page 429
John of the Mountains, 1938

People, Tree, Light

“The eyes mirror the heart of a person. An entire life can be seen through them. Love, sorrow, deceit, pain. If you look closely, it’s all there.”

Gail Tsukiyama (1957) American writer

Source: The Language of Threads

Love, Life, Pain, Personality

“He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder.”

Tad Williams Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn

Author’s Warning
Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

“Oh continue to love me -
never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.

ever thine
ever mine
ever ours”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

Love, Faith

“The words "Think and Thank" are inscribed in many of the Cromwellian churches of
England. These words ought to be inscribed in our hearts, too: "Think and Thank". Think
of all we have to be grateful for, and thank God for all our boons and bounties.”

Dale Carnegie book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

Source: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

God, Thinking

“He lives down in a ribcage in the dry leaves of a heart.”

Thomas Harris The Silence of the Lambs

Source: The Silence of the Lambs

“Your feet will bring you to where your heart is.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Spell of the Highlander

“And remember, my sentimental friend, that a heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.”

L. Frank Baum book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

this is a line spoken by Frank Morgan's depiction of the Wizard of Oz in the 1939 film, which debuted 20 years after Baum's death. It did not actually appear in the "Wonderful Wizard of Oz". The ending of "Steam Engines of Oz" wrongly attributes this phrase to Baum when it would've originated from the 1939 adaptation script writers Langley/Ryerson/Woolf.
Misattributed
Variant: A heart is not judged by how much you love; but by how much you are loved by others
Source: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Love

“Jo had learned that hearts, like flowers, cannot be rudely handled, but must open naturally…”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Flowers, Nature, Learning

“When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. In the realm of kitsch, the dictatorship of the heart reigns supreme.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Five: Lightness and Weight

“Reminds us that greatness lies even in the smallest of moments, in the humblest of hearts, and we shall, each of us, be called to greatness. Whether we shall rise to meet it or let it slip away is the challenge put before us all.”

Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

“But I watch my brothers give their hearts away and I think, Don’t you know better? Hearts are breakable. And I think even when you heal, you’re never what you were before.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Thinking

“… maybe it was better to break a man's leg than to break his heart.”

Laura Hillenbrand book Seabiscuit: An American Legend

Source: Seabiscuit: An American Legend

“There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person's heart.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

World, Personality

“peace of mind and heart
arrives
when we accept what is:
having been
born into this
strange life
we must accept
the wasted gamble of our
days
and take some satisfaction in
the pleasure of
leaving it all
behind.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Pleasures of the Damned

Life, Pleasure, Peace

“He felt his heart, which no longer beat, contract, and he wondered if there was anything in the world as painful as not being able to protect the people you loved.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Love, Pain, People, World

“Potentiality knocks on the door of my heart. [On Seeing The 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning ]”

Haruki Murakami book The Elephant Vanishes

Source: The Elephant Vanishes

Beauty, Girl, Perfection

“Somehow I think Trophy Wives wear more makeup and less cutlery. But hey, I haven't ever met a Trophy Wife, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they know what I know, that the true way to a man's heart is six inches of metal between his ribs.”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

Anita's musings on knives; unidentified edition, pp. 304-305
Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, Narcissus In Chains (2001)
Context: I stepped out of the car on the rat king's arm, like a trophy wife--except for the wrist sheaths and the two folding knives hidden in my clothing. Somehow I think trophy wives wear more makeup and less cutlery. But, Hey, I haven't met a trophy wife, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they know what I know, that the true way to a man's heart is six inches of metal between his ribs. Sometimes four inches will do the job, but to be really sure, I like to have six. Funny how phallic objects are always more useful the bigger they are. Anyone who tells you size doesn't matter has been seeing too many small knives.

Way, Thinking