Quotes about people
page 69

“In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

Question

“People need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Fear

“You simply cannot tell other people they are stupid, even if they really are stupid.”

Temple Grandin (1947) USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist

Source: The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism & Asperger's

Stupidity

“The less people think of you, the more they will reveal to you or in your presence.”

Gillian Rubinstein Tales of the Otori

Source: Across the Nightingale Floor

Thinking

“No matter how people try to dispute it, perception is reality. Its what you choose to believe that makes you the person you are.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Reality, Personality

“Take my advice. Stay away from all broken people.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

“Babies, babies, babies. Why did God make so many babies? But no, God didn't make them. Stupid people made them.”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

God, Stupidity, Baby

“Most people would say that she's beautiful.
-That's because she's been with most people.”

Daniel Handler book Why We Broke Up

Source: Why We Broke Up

Beauty

“Real people had real agendas, real demands, real expectations about how other people should behave.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

“Isn't it sad how some people's grip on their lives is so precarious that they'll embrace any preposterous delusion rather than face an occasional bleak truth?”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Source: The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

Truth, Sadness

“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

Heart

“And it occurred to him that there were two parts to being a better person. One part was thinking about other people. The other part was not giving a toss what other people thought.”

Mark Haddon book A Spot of Bother

Source: A Spot of Bother

Thinking, Parting, Personality

“When I look around today, the biggest anachronism I see is pregnancy. I just can't believe that people are still pregnant.”

Andy Warhol book The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

Source: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

“Wilem snorted."That doesn't sound suspicious at all," he said. "And you wonder why people talk about you."

"I don't wonder why they talk," I said "I wonder what they say.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

“Cherish the people who make up your home, and you'll notice the hearth fires burn brighter than ever before.”

Thomas Kinkade (1958–2012) American painter of popular realistic, bucolic, and idyllic subjects

Home

“People who keep stiff upper lips find that it's damn hard to smile.”

Judith Guest Ordinary People

Source: Ordinary People

Smile, Cute

“Once I was seated, I couldn't help people-watching. I'll admit it, I'm an addict from way back.”

James Patterson book Sundays at Tiffany's

Source: Sundays at Tiffany's

Way, Help

“But this isn't a perfect world. The problem is people who think it is. -Connor”

Neal Shusterman book Unwind

Source: Unwind

World, Problem, Thinking, Perfection

“If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Law, Nature

“You must be careful when you ask people whether they’re happy; it’s a question that can upset them a great deal.”

François Lelord (1953) French writer

Happiness, Question

“Major Major had lied, and it was good. He was not really surprised that it was good, for he had observed that people who did lie were, on the whole, more resourceful and ambitious and successful than people who did not lie.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22

Lie, Success

“People leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Memory

“Everyone is a comedy. If people are laughing at you, they just don't quite understand the joke that is themselves.”

Matt Haig (1975) British writer

Source: The Humans

Understanding

“People were just too complex to reduce to simple personality traits.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Final Empire

Personality

“Everybody breaks sooner or later, Bob. Anyone can drown. Sometimes you see it. Most often, you
don’t because the body protects and the skin hides, so drowning doesn’t look like drowning and some
people scar so nicely. Take it from an expert.”

Ilsa J. Bick (1957) American writer

Source: Drowning Instinct

“When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you. But when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it's your laugh.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

“When people have tried everything and have discovered that nothing works, they will tend to revert to what they know best—which will often be the tribe, the totem, or the taboo.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

“Curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have succeeded than encouraging people who have not.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

Time, Success, Inspirational

“Instead of being presented with stereotypes by age, sex, color, class, or religion, children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Twentieth Century Faith : Hope and Survival (1972), p. 61
1970s

Children, Age, Religion, Sex

“One can't love humanity. One can only love people.”

Graham Greene book The Ministry of Fear

Source: The Ministry of Fear

Love

“Agent Jones held Sinjin’s face in his hands. “I’m going to make balloon animals. People need balloon animals.”
“How right you are, strange delusional man,” Sinjin said.”

Libba Bray (1964) American teen writer

Source: Beauty Queens

Animals

“We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we?”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

“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, Feeling, Heart, Despair

“He wanted to explain how people were never quite what you thought they were.”

William Golding book Lord of the Flies

Source: Lord of the Flies

“I'd always thought telling the truth to other people was hard, but maybe that was a snap compared to telling the truth to yourself. Sometimes we just refused to know what we knew.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Six Rules of Maybe

Truth

“Why is marijuana against the law? It grows naturally on our planet, serves a thousand different functions, all of them positive. To make marijuana against the law is like saying that God made a mistake. Like on the seventh day God looked down, "There it is. My Creation, perfect and holy in all ways. Now I can rest. [Gives shocked expression] Oh my Me! I left fuckin' pot everywhere. I should never have smoked that joint on the third day. Hehe, that was the day I created the possum. Still gives me a chuckle. But if I leave pot everywhere, that's gonna give people the impression they're supposed to … use it. Now I have to create Republicans."”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

" … and God wept", I believe is the next part of that story.
Chicago '91 (1991)

God, Law, Way, Nature

“Is she for real?” He paused and reconsidered. “Are you for real? Spells? Magic? I mean, don’t get me wrong. I drink blood and control people’s minds. But I’ve never heard of anything like this.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Drink

“What use is? What good is watching for that matter? People are forever watching things. They should be. Ithe things I look at. I am a see-er.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Fear, Hope

“Why couldn't Jesus command us to obsess over everything, to try to control and manipulate people, to try not to breathe at all, or to pay attention, stomp away to brood when people annoy us, and then eat a big bag of Hershey's Kisses in bed?”

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

Source: Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

Kiss

“Most of the laugh tracks on television were recorded in the early 1950’s. These days, most of the people you hear laughing are dead.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 3
Context: The muffled thunder of dialogue comes through the walls, then a chorus of laughter. Then more thunder. Most of the laugh tracks on television were recorded in the early 1950s. These days, most of the people you hear laughing are dead.

Dead

“Reading has always been the largest and most irreplaceable pleasure for Vincent; reading about other people's successes and failures, joys and sufferings seemed to bury his own failures.”

Irving Stone book Lust for Life

Source: Lust for Life

Pleasure, Failure, Suffering, Reading

“People you knew when you were teenagers, the ones who saw your stupidest haircut and the most embarrassing things you've done in your life, and they still cared about you after all that: they're not replaceable, you know?”

Tana French book Broken Harbour

Source: Broken Harbour

Life

“People who make no mistakes lack boldness and the spirit of adventure. They are the brakes on the wheels of progress.”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

“People hide the truth because they're afraid.”

Nicholas Sparks book Safe Haven

Source: Safe Haven

Truth

“There are two kinds of people I don't trust: people who don't drink and people who collect stickers.”

Chelsea Handler (1975) American comedian, actress, author and talk show host

Source: My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands

Drink

“You will find that hate can unify people more quickly and more fervently than devotion ever could.”

Brandon Sanderson Elantris

Source: Elantris

Hate

“How am I going to make friends with these people if all I can think of is how easy it would be to rob them?”

Trudi Canavan book The Magicians' Guild

Source: The Magicians' Guild

Thinking

“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Happiness, Mountain, Tree, Beauty

“The best luck always happens to people who don't need it.”

Robert Penn Warren book All the King's Men

Source: All the King's Men

“People want to be bowled over by something special. Nine times out of ten you might strike out, but that tenth time, that peak experience, is what people want. That's what can move the world. That's art.”

Haruki Murakami book South of the Border, West of the Sun

Variant: People want to be bowled over by something special. Nine times out of ten you can forget, but that tenth time, that peak experience, is what people want. That's what can move the world. That's art.
Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun

World, Art, Time

“Someone told me much later that you always know the people who are going to make a difference in your life, from the very first time you set eyes on them, even if you do not like them at all. And I had noticed him, as he had me. God help us.”

Sarah Dunant book The Birth of Venus

Source: The Birth of Venus

Life, God, Time, Help

“I hate how I don't feel real enough unless people are watching.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Hate, Feeling

“But then, he thought, most politicians are small and shabby, the sort of people who have been bullied at school.

That's why they become politicians.”

Anthony Horowitz book Skeleton Key

Source: Skeleton Key