Quotes about heart
page 6

“The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to the ocean-
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Thinking

“As he was about to climb yet another dune, his heart whispered, "Be aware of the place where you are brought to tears. That's where I am, and thats where your treasure is.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Tear

“Proportion is the heart of beauty.”

Ken Follett book The Pillars of the Earth

Source: The Pillars of the Earth

Beauty

“I am bound to accord you, in the name of free speech, the full right to shout, lie and write to your heart’s content. But you are bound to grant me, in the name of freedom of association, the right to enter into, or withdraw from, association with people advocating this or that view.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

.
1900s
Context: Everyone is free to write and say whatever he likes, without any restrictions. But every voluntary association (including the party) is also free to expel members who use the name of the party to advocate anti-party views. Freedom of speech and the press must be complete. But then freedom of association must be complete too. I am bound to accord you, in the name of free speech, the full right to shout, lie and write to your heart’s content. But you are bound to grant me, in the name of freedom of association, the right to enter into, or withdraw from, association with people advocating this or that view. The party is a voluntary association, which would inevitably break up, first ideologically and then physically, if it did not cleanse itself of people advocating anti-party views.

People, Lie, Freedom

“Go to your bosom; Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.”

William Shakespeare Measure for Measure

Source: Measure for Measure

“Not bombs nor my broken heart can take away from me walking barefoot with you in jasmine June through the Field of Mars.”

Paullina Simons book The Bronze Horseman

Source: The Bronze Horseman

“The heart will break, but broken live on.”

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

Variant: And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on.

Sad, Heartbreaking, Moving On

“Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.”

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

Attributed to Irving as early as 1883. [Hit and miss : a story of real life, Angie Stewart, Manly, Chicago, J.L. Regan, 1883, i, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/osu.32435018229575?urlappend=%3Bseq=7] However, it does not seem to appear in Irving's known works. Other citations from the same year leave the quotation unattributed. [Henry S. (ed.), Clubb, The Peacemaker and Court of Arbitration, Volume 1, Universal Peace Union, 1883, 125, Philadelphia, https://books.google.com/books?id=Uu84AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA125] [The Australian Women's Magazine and Domestic Journal, Vol. 2 No. 2 (May 1883), 1883, Melbourne, 435, https://books.google.com/books?id=mq0sAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA435]. A similar passage is found in a pseudonymous novel published two years earlier in 1881: "Julia knew that sacrifices to patience are not in vain. Although they often do not produce the happiness for which they are made, they will, always, flow back and soften and purify the heart of the one who makes them". [Illma, Or, Which was Wife?, Miss, M.L.A., Cornwell & Johnson, 1881, 239, New York, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/osu.32435017658592?urlappend=%3Bseq=245]
Disputed

Love, Heartbreaking, Relationship, Cute

“Who invented the human heart, I wonder? Tell me and then show me the place where he was hanged.”

Lawrence Durrell book Justine

Variant: Who invented the human heart, I wonder? Tell me, and then show me the place where he was hanged.
Source: Justine

“Watch out for each other. Love everyone and forgive everyone, including yourself. Forgive your anger. Forgive your guilt. Your shame. Your sadness. Embrace and open up your love, your joy, your truth, and most especially your heart.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

Love, Truth, Sadness, Forgiveness

“She laughed and danced with the thought of death in her heart.”

Hans Christian Andersen book The Little Mermaid

Source: The Little Mermaid

Death, Dance

“and here I felt a strange leaping of my heart-God did! My job was to simply follow His leading one step at a time, holding every decision up to him in prayer.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

Source: The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom

God, Decision, Time

“Be yourself. Be true to that, to your heart. Patience. See what happens if you step back instead of bounding forward.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Patience

“You wake up one morning and there it is, sitting in an old plaid bathrobe in your kitchen, unpleasant and unshaved. You look at it, heart sinking. Madness is a rotten guest.”

Marya Hornbacher (1974) American journalist

Source: Madness: A Bipolar Life

Madness

“One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn't have to understand something to feel it. By the time the mind is able to comprehend what has happened, the wounds of the heart are already too deep.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Feeling, Understanding, Time, Childhood

“I don’t write this letter to put bitterness into your heart, but to pluck it out of mine. For my own sake I must forgive you.”

Oscar Wilde book De Profundis

Source: De Profundis

Forgiveness

“I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy
eyes—and moreover, I will go with thee to thy uncle’s.”

William Shakespeare book Much Ado About Nothing

Source: Much Ado About Nothing

“Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts. There are seven words that will make a person love you. There are ten words that will break a strong man’s will. But a word is nothing but a painting of a fire. A name is the fire itself.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 86, “The Fire Itself” (pp. 672-673)

Love, Men, Tear, Light

“Deep down within the heart there is a stillness which is healing, a trust in the universal laws which is unwavering, and a strength which is rock-like. But because it is so deep we need both patience and perseverance when digging for it.”

Paul Brunton (1898–1981) British philosopher

Source: The Notebooks of Paul Brunton

Law, Universe, Patience, Perseverance

“(on forgiveness) Didn't he and I stand together before an all seeing God convicted of the same murder? For I had murdered him with my heart and my tongue.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

Source: The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom

God, Forgiveness

“For a friend with an understanding heart is worth no less than a brother.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

VIII. 585–586 (tr. G. H. Palmer).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)
Source: The Odyssey

Understanding

“When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

People

“Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Books, Reading, Past

“Don't worry about having the right words; worry more about having the right heart. It's not eloquence he seeks, just honesty.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Source: Cast of Characters: Common People in the Hands of an Uncommon God

“There's something perverse about women… they're all masochists at heart.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

Women

“It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want—oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Spring

“When angels visit us, we do not hear the rustle of wings, nor feel the feathery touch of the breast of a dove; but we know their presence by the love they create in our hearts.”

Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910) religious leader

Source: Poems by Mary Baker Eddy

Love, Angels, Feeling

“Looking for peace is like looking for a turtle with a mustache: You won't be able to find it. But when your heart is ready, peace will come looking for you.”

Ajahn Chah (1918–1992) thai Buddhist monk

Peace, Peaceful

“Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.”

Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948) Novelist, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Variant: nobody hαs ever meαsured, not even poets, how much the heαrt cαn hold.

Wise, Relationship, Heart Touching, Romantic

“The mind can calculate, but the spirit yearns, and the heart knows what the heart knows”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“THIRD WATCHER Let her speak. Don't interrupt. She knows words that mermaids taught her… I'm falling asleep in order to hear her… Go on, sister, go on… My heart aches because I wasn't you when you dreamed at the seashore…”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Source: The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa

Dreams, Sister

“Ah! The anguish, the vile rage, the despair
Of not being able to express
With a shout, an extreme and bitter shout,
The bleeding of my heart.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Source: A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems

Rage, Despair

“Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Love, Nature, Heart Touching

“But, here was a curious thing. The more I tried to give up thinking of her, the more I said to myself, 'She's nothing to you', the harder I tried to pluck the idea of her out of my heart, the more she stayed there.”

Sarah Waters book Fingersmith

Source: Fingersmith

Idea, Thinking

“What if I told you I’m incapable of tolerating my own heart?”

Virginia Woolf book Night and Day

Source: Night and Day

“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!”

William Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice

Source: The Merchant of Venice

Smile, Soul, Evil

“I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Scarlet Letter

Source: The Scarlet Letter

“Remember to let her into your heart.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

“I get cross, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside out, and keep trying to find a way to become what I'd like to be and what I could be if…. if only there were no other people in the world.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

People, World, Sadness, Way

“I love making, I love doing. I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying and dead at heart.”

John Fowles book The Collector

Source: The Collector

Love, Dead

“There are moments in life that you wish with all your heart you could take back. Like, just erase from existence. Like, if you could, you'd erase yourself right out of existence too, just to make that moment not exist.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

Life

“Your life might be easier if you were. A fool for love is happier than a Dog with a heart that's all leather.”

Tamora Pierce book Bloodhound

Source: Bloodhound

Love, Life, Dogs, Fools

“I laugh maniacally, then take a deep breath and touch my chest- expecting a heart to be thumping quickly, impatiently, but there's nothing there, not even a beat.”

Bret Easton Ellis book American Psycho

Source: American Psycho

“Never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

Faith

“I can tell you that you will have your hearts broken more by the people you love than by the people you hate. But you must still dare to love. The rewards are worth far more than the risks.”

Margaret Peterson Haddix book Into the Gauntlet

Source: Into the Gauntlet

Love, Hate, People

“So I want to thank the Pentagon, the Soviet Union and the military-industrial complex from the bottom of my heart. Without them, I could never have become the man I am today.”

George Carlin book Last Words

Source: Last Words

“Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

"Evidence"
Evidence (2009)

“Now that my ladder’s gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

The Circus Animals' Desertion, III
Last Poems (1936-1939)

Lie

“I know nothing and my heart aches”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

“The mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

“Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later--no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover or how much we learn or forget--we will return.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind) (2001)

Books, World, Way, Thinking

“Who dares think one thing, and another tell,
My heart detests him as the gates of hell.”

Homér Iliad

IX. 312–313 (tr. Alexander Pope).
A. H. Chase and W. G. Perry, Jr.'s translation:
: Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is the man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)
Source: The Iliad

Hell, Thinking

“My heart's in my hand, and my hand is pierced, and my hand's in the bag, and the bag is shut, and my heart is caught.”

Jean Genet book Our Lady of the Flowers

Source: Our Lady of the Flowers

“He was still too young to know that the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera

Variant: .. the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and [that] thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past
Source: Love in the Time of Cholera

Memory, Past