Quotes about people
page 74

“The whole problem with people is they don't know what matters and what doesn't.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

“Humanity can be roughly divided into three sorts of people - those who find comfort in literature, those who find comfort in personal adornment, and those who find comfort in food;”

Elizabeth Goudge (1900–1984) English fiction writer

Source: Little White Horse

Food, Literature, Personality

“I'm just saying -- you can't prevent other people from disappointing you. It's bound to happen at some point. We're all only human. What you can do is decide how you're going to deal with it.”

Sara Shepard (1973) Author

Disappointment

“The reason why so few good books are written is, that so few people that can write know anything.”

Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) British journalist, businessman, and essayist

Shakespeare
Literary Studies (1879)
Context: The reason why so few good books are written is, that so few people that can write know anything. In general an author has always lived in a room, has read books, has cultivated science, is acquainted with the style and sentiments of the best authors, but he is out of the way of employing his own eyes and ears. He has nothing to hear and nothing to see. His life is a vacuum.

Books

“You have to forget about what other people say, when you're supposed to die, or when you're supposed to be loving. You have to forget about all these things. You have to go on and be crazy. Craziness is like heaven.”

Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) American musician, singer and songwriter

Love, Forgetting

“People don't need love. What they need is success in one form or another. It can be love but it needn't be.”

Charles Bukowski book Factotum

Source: Factotum (1975), Ch. 52

Love, Success

“Nah. I got it. Just try not to stake Jean-Luc again if you meet up with him. (Acheron)
I can’t help it. All you fanged people look alike in the dark. (Tabitha)
Yeah. I know what you mean. All you soul-full people look alike to us, too. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Seize the Night

Soul, Help

“People only see what they are prepared to see.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Source: The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Attitude

“You killed more people than anybody in history."

"Be the best at whatever you do, that's what my mother always told me.”

Orson Scott Card book Speaker for the Dead

Source: Speaker for the Dead

History

“I don’t smile. My smiles don’t make people relax.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Burned

Smile

“Disgust with injustice may sharpen the desire for justice. Readers who don’t see this connection merely wish to be entertained, and I have neither skill nor desire to turn the agony of a people into entertainment.”

Ayi Kwei Armah book The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

Source: The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

Justice

“Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.”

Colin Powell (1937) Former U.S. Secretary of State and retired four-star general

2000s, The Powell Principles (2003)
Source: On Leadership

“Is he having a party?" "Dorian is a sociable king. He likes keeping people around him, mostly so he can mock them.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Storm Born

“I mean, what do people talk about when they're married?" "Their kids, I guess." "Maybe that's all they have in common.”

Rita Mae Brown book Rubyfruit Jungle

Source: Rubyfruit Jungle

“You think you know your possibilities.
Then other people come into your life
and suddenly there are so many more.”

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

Life, Thinking

“One good reason to only maintain a small circle of friends is that three out of four murders are committed by people who know the victim.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

“… I'd been raised by my parents to believe barfing your feelings on other people was the height of impoliteness…”

Stephen King book Joyland

Source: Joyland

Feeling, Parent

“I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'.”

Bob Newhart (1929) American stand-up comedian and actor

Music, Country

“When you're a writer, the question people always ask you is, "Where do you get your ideas?" Writers hate this question. It's like asking Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, "Where do you get your leeches?" You don't get ideas. Ideas get you.”

Connie Willis (1945) American science fiction writer

Hate, Idea, Question

“It's a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue, and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don't see or care.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Drink, Time

“People who don't read are brutes.”

Eugéne Ionesco (1909–1994) Romanian playwright

Reading

“People should fall in love with their eyes closed. Just close your eyes. Don’t look and it’s magic”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Variant: People should fall in love with their eyes closed.

Love

“People focus on role models; it is more effective to find antimodels - people you don't want to resemble when you grow up”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

“If you're silent for a long time, people just arrive in your mind.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

Time

“Most people go to their grave with their music inside them.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Music

“Film lovers are sick people.”

Francois Truffaut (1932–1984) film director

Lovers

“It's not arrogance. [Tamilians] are quiet people.”

Chetan Bhagat (1974) Indian author, born 1974

2 States: The Story of My Marriage

“Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.”

Gloria Naylor (1950–2016) American writer

Art, Silence, Time, Friendship

“If you let people into your life a little bit, they can be pretty damn amazing.”

Sherman Alexie book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Source: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Life

“You smell of other peoples blood, ma petite. It was no one you know. -Jean Claude and Anita”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

“We come from people who brought us up to believe that life is a struggle, and if you should feel really happy, be patient: this will pass.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

Life, Happiness, Feeling

“It is very funny, but you do not always have to see people to love them. Just think about it, and see if it isn't so.”

Kate Douglas Wiggin book The Birds' Christmas Carol

Source: The Birds' Christmas Carol

Love, Thinking

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

“I didn't know you were bringing the mundane." His blue eyes flicked uneasily over Simon.
"That's what I like about you people," said Simon. "You always make me feel so welcome.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Feeling

“Sit in a room and read--and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Source: The Power of Myth

Books, Time, Reading

“Slow down. Stop trying to do everything now, now, now. Hold up the people behind you for all you care, feel them kicking at your heels but maintain your pace. Don't let anybody dictate your speed.”

Cecelia Ahern book Thanks for the Memories

Source: Thanks for the Memories

Feeling, Speed

“Where people are really attached, poverty itself is wealth.”

Jane Austen book Northanger Abbey

Source: Northanger Abbey

Wealth

“Some people like what you do, some people hate what you do, but most people simply don’t give a damn.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Hate

“it is the people who control the Government, not the Government the
people.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

“Living was okay, but it wasn't the breaths people took that measured a life. It was the moments that took those breaths away that mattered the most. And Dev did that every time he looked at her. Naked or not.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: No Mercy

Life, Time

“People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Source: A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition

Happiness, Spring

“You learn to move on without the people you love.”

Bret Easton Ellis book Lunar Park

Source: Lunar Park

Love, Learning

“Throughout history, people with new ideas—who think differently and try to change things—have always been called troublemakers.”

Richelle Mead Shadow Kiss

Source: Shadow Kiss

History, Idea, Thinking, Change

“Damn, I miss the internet. You could always find people doing stupid stuff on the internet.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: Calamity

Stupidity

“You have to let other people be right' was his answer to their insults. 'It consoles them for not being anything else.”

André Gide book The Immoralist

Source: The Immoralist

“It’s an odd thing, happiness. Some people take happiness from gold. Or black pearls. And some of us, far more fortunate, take their happiness from periwinkles.”

Patricia A. McKillip book The Changeling Sea

Source: The Changeling Sea

Happiness

“You have no right to make jigsaws of people.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Howl's Moving Castle

Source: Howl's Moving Castle

“But people themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be observed in them for ever.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

“Cry about the simple hell people give other people- without even thinking. Cry about the hell white people give colored folks, without even stopping to think that they're people too.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Color, Hell, Thinking, Cry

“There's no end to the absurd things people will do trying to make life mean something.”

William Wharton book Birdy

Source: Birdy

Life

“Don't think about what you’ll tell people afterward. The time is here and now. Make the most of it.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Source: Aleph

Thinking, Time

“You just have to let people love you in the way they can”

Ann Brashares book Sisterhood Everlasting

Source: Sisterhood Everlasting

Love, Way

“Never get angry. Never make a threat. Reason with people.”

Mario Puzo (1920–1999) American Novelist

“They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

“… and that, in the end, the most interesting people always leave.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

“Four thousand years ago, we, the people of the Indus River basin, had cities that were laid out on grids and boasted underground sewers, while the ancestors of those who would invade and colonize America were illiterate barbarians.”

Mohsin Hamid book The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Source: The Reluctant Fundamentalist

“Most of the successful people in Hollywood are failures as human beings.”

Marlon Brando (1924–2004) American screen and stage actor

Failure, Success

“If you kin see de light at daybreak, you don't keer if you die at dusk. It's so many people never seen de light at all.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Their Eyes Were Watching God

Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God

Light

“People are never perfect, but love can be.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Source: Still Life with Woodpecker

Love, Perfection

“When most of us talk to our dogs, we tend to forget that they're not people.”

Julia Glass (1956) Novelist, journalist, editor

Dogs, Forgetting

“Some people are attracted to sickness, to the kind of madness where sparks fly
off the head, to the incoherence of despair, masked by nervous energy, which winds up looking like bewildered joy.”

Luke Davies (1962) Australian writer

Source: Candy

Joy, Flying, Madness, Despair

“She was sad about what happened to Kostos. And someplace under that, she was sad that people like Bee and Kostos, who had lost everything, were still open to love, and she, who'd lost nothing, was not.”

Ann Brashares The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Source: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Love, Sadness, Bee

“Also, chubby people can never truly pull off ethereal the same way skinny people can never be jolly.”

Mindy Kaling (1979) actress, writer, comedian

Way

“It takes people a long time to learn the difference between talent and genius, especially ambitious young men and women.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women (1868), Ch. 22 : Artistic Attempts

Women, Men, Learning, Time

“The problem, as I see it, is that you've been told and not told. You've been told, but none of you really understand, and I dare say, some people are quite happy to leave it that way.”

Kazuo Ishiguro book Never Let Me Go

Source: Never Let Me Go

Happiness, Way, Understanding, Problem

“They say the only people who tell the truth are drunkards and children. Guess which one I am.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

Children, Truth

“People always tell me "Have a nice day." Well what if I don't want to? What if I want to have a crappy day?”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

“I'd have to say no, people don't change, but they can learn to behave differently.”

Charlaine Harris book Dead Reckoning

Source: Dead Reckoning

Learning, Change

“Only happy people have nightmares, from overeating. For those who live a nightmare reality, sleep is a black hole, lost in time, like death.”

Guy Sajer book The Forgotten Soldier

Source: The Forgotten Soldier

Death, Happiness, Reality, Sleep

“It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;—it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.”

Jane Austen book Sense and Sensibility

Source: Sense and Sensibility

Time, Relationship, Romantic

“A boo is a lot louder than a cheer, if you have 10 people cheering and one person booing all you hear is the booing.”

Lance Armstrong (1971) professional cyclist from the USA

As quoted in "King of the Hill" by Kelli Anderson in Sports Illustrated (5 August 2002) http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/features/2002/sportsman/flashbacks/lance/king_of_the_hill

Personality

“Poets knew that isolation in nature, far from people and things man-made, was good for the soul, and he'd always identified with poets.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Soul, Nature

“The truth frightens people because it isn't stable. It shifts every day.”

Alice Hoffman (1952) Novelist, young-adult writer, children's writer

Source: The Museum of Extraordinary Things

Truth

“Without the presence of black people in America, European-Americans would not be "white"-- they would be Irish, Italians, Poles, Welsh, and other engaged in class, ethnic, and gender struggles over resources and identity. (p. 107-108)”

Cornel West book Race Matters

Source: Race Matters

“❝Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.❞”

Rita Mae Brown (1944) Novelist, poet, screenwriter, activist

“Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

As quoted in The Lost Art of General Management (2004) by Rob Waite, p. 96
Context: Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others.
Unsuccessful people are always asking, "What's in it for me?”

Success, Help

“Most people learn to save themselves by artificially limiting the content of consciousness.”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

Source: The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror

Learning