Quotes about people
page 80

“It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Love

“When I got to the street, I walked boldly. But I was always accompanied by an agonizing thought: the fear that honest people may be thieves who have chosen a cleverer and safer way of stealing.”

Jean Genet (1910–1986) French novelist, playwright, poet and political activist

Source: Miracle of the Rose

Fear, Way

“people don't change, they just have momentary steps outside of their true character”

Chad Kultgen (1976) American writer

Source: The Lie

Change

“The important people in our lives leave imprints. They may stay or go in the physical realm, but they are always there in your heart, because they helped form your heart. There's not getting over that.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Help, Heart

“If you only try to please others, you're going to resent those people you're trying to please; the ones who are often closest to you. If you choose a path that you yourself want to take, then you're going to be much kinder to the people in your life.”

Sarah McLachlan (1968) Canadian musician, singer, and songwriter

Source: Plenty: A Collection of Sarah McLachlan's Favorite Recipes

Life

“College: two hundred people reading the same book. An obvious mistake. Two hundred people can read two hundred books.”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer

Source: M: Writings '67-'72

Books, Reading

“You always have a choice. It's just that some people make the wrong one.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Guardian

Source: The Guardian

“… One thing you learn when you've lived as long as I have-people aren't all good, and people aren't all bad. We move in and out of darkness and light all of our lives. Right now, I'm pleased to be in the light.”

Neal Shusterman book Unwind

Variant: One thing yo learn when you've lived as long as I have-people aren't all good, and people aren't all bad. We move in and out of darkness and light all of our lives. Right now, I'm pleased to be in the light.
Source: Unwind

Light, Learning

“Nor would anybody suspect. If was one thing all people took for granted, was conviction that if you feed honest figures into a computer, honest figures come out. Never doubted it myself till I met a computer with a sense of humor.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

Source: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Sense

“Well, I make that one murder victim, one police interrogation and one conversation with a ghost,” George said. “Now that’s what I call a busy evening.”
Lockwood nodded. “To think some people just watch television.”

Jonathan Stroud book The Whispering Skull

Source: The Whispering Skull

Business, Thinking

“You write for the people in high school who ignored you. We all do.”

Carolyn Kizer (1925–2014) American poet

School

“If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Understanding

“Pain is real when you get other people to believe in it. If no one believes in it but you, your pain is madness or hysteria.”

Naomi Wolf book The Beauty Myth

Source: The Beauty Myth (1991), Chapter 7 : 'Violence', p. 254

Pain, Madness

“I once read that people who study others are wise but those who study themselves are enlightened".”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Source: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams Reaching Your Destiny

Study, Reading

“… mediocre people find their way into positions of authority… because when it comes to even the most important positions, our selection decisions are a good deal less rational than we think.”

Malcolm Gladwell book Blink

Source: Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Way, Thinking, Decision

“"You know, most psychologists agree that hostility is really just sublimated sexual attraction."
"Ah, that might explain why I so often run into people who seem to dislike me."”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Clary and Jace, pg. 331
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

Hostility

“People tend the take everything too seriously. Especially themselves. Yep. And that's probably what makes 'em scared and hurt so much of the time. Life is too serious to take that seriously.”

Tom Robbins (1932) American writer

Life, Time, Hurt

“People pay more attention when they think you’re up to something.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Source: The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

Thinking

“Know something? I'd lay even odds that between the people following us and the people hunting us, we've become this city's principle means of employment. Tal Verrar's entire economy is now based on.”

Scott Lynch book Red Seas Under Red Skies

Source: Red Seas Under Red Skies

“I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: After the Quake

Love, Dreams, Light, Waiting

“I knew there was never anyone to blame when people get into drugs. They're always responsible for their own behavior, and it's not the dealer, and it's not the friend, it's not the childhood.”

Anthony Kiedis book Scar Tissue

Source: Scar Tissue, 2004

Behavior, Childhood

“There was no telling what people might find out once they felt free to ask whatever questions they wanted to.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22

Question

“I feel that the dormant goodwill in people needs to be stirred. People need to hear that it makes sense to behave decently or to help others, to place common interests above their own, to respect the elementary rules of human coexistence.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

Feeling, Sense, Help

“People who like quotes love meaningless generalizations”

Graham Greene (1904–1991) English writer, playwright and literary critic

Love, Quotes

“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

Time, Heart

“Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Personality

“Things feel like they'll be forever, but they aren't. Love can go away, or people can, without even meaning to. Nothing is guaranteed.”

Jenny Han book P.S. I Still Love You

Source: P.S. I Still Love You

Love, Feeling

“There are your fog people & your sun people, he said. I said I wasn't sure which kind I was. He nodded. Fog'll do that to you, he said.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Source: Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas

Sun

“And even though people try to pretend that pain doesn't do anything to them, none of us can really handle it. Everything bad we do in our life is because of pain of some kind.”

James Frey book The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Source: The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Life, Pain

“Because being so dependent on people scares me.”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

Dependency

“Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.”

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

Shoe, Nature, Silence, Clothes

“People ask, How did you get in there? What they really want to know is if they are likely to end up in there as well. I can't answer the real question. All I can tell them is, It's easy. Most people pass over incrementally, making a series of perforations in the membrane between here and there until an opening exists. And who can resist an opening?”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted (1994)

Question

“If 4 out of 5 people SUFFER from diarrhea…does that mean that 1 enjoys it?”

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

Suffering

“To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Truth

“The problem with religion, because it's been sheltered from criticism, is that it allows people to believe en masse what only idiots or lunatics could believe in isolation.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Religion, Problem

William Sleator (1945–2011) Young adult science fiction novelist

Source: The Beasties

Books, Learning

“And in some of the houses, people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happening all the time, unnoticed, and it was the thing that really mattered. What really mattered in life, what gave it weight, was death.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

Life, Death, Time, Housing

“The past doesn't matter. People cling to it because it allows them to ignore the present.”

James Frey book The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Source: The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Past

“I think by the time you're grown you're as happy as you're goin to be. You'll have good times and bad times, but in the end you'll be about as happy as you was before. Or as unhappy. I've knowed people that just never did get the hang of it.”

Cormac McCarthy book No Country for Old Men

Source: No Country for Old Men (2005)
Context: I aint got all that many regrets. I could imagine lots of things that you might think would make a man happier. I think by the time you're grown you're as happy as you're goin to be. You'll have good times and bad times, but in the end you'll be about as happy as you was before. Or as unhappy. I've knowed people that just never did get the hang of it.

Happiness, Thinking, Time

“If we act the truth the people who really love us are sure to come back to us in the long run”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Love, Truth

“You no longer need other people in your life once you have found your true love.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Love, Life

“I feel sad for people and the queer part we play in our own distasters.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise

Sadness, Feeling, Parting

“I am always glad when any of my books can be put into an inexpensive edition, because I like to think that any people who might wish to read them can do so. Surely books ought to be within reach of everybody.”

Pearl S. Buck book The Good Earth

Source: The Good Earth

Books, Thinking, Reading

“Well, I can't leave Mags behind," says Finnick. "She's one of the few people who actually likes me.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

“Lena was an introvert. She knew she had trouble connecting with people. She always felt like her looks were fake bait, seeming to offer a bridge to people, which she couldn't easily cross.”

Ann Brashares The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Source: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

“It happens fast for some people and slow for some, accidents or gravity, but we all end up mutilated.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

“Young people don't always do what they're told, but if they can pull it off and do something wonderful, sometimes they escape punishment.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

“People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.”

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) British American-born writer

Myself
Afterthoughts (1931)

Life, Reading

“Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.”

Jane Austen book Emma

Source: Emma

Way

“Most people don't believe something can happen until it already has. That's not stupidity or weakness, that's just human nature.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

Stupidity, Nature

“People could bear so much, but Simon did not know how much of the original you was left when the world had twisted you into a whole different shape.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Bitter of Tongue

World

“I think there's too much mult-tasking going on. I think people need to quiet down and focus and be still more.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Thinking

“This is just my way of pointing out that we people who leap without looking are not stupid. We know damn well we might be headed for a fall. But we also know that, sometimes, it's the only way out.”

Jodi Picoult book Lone Wolf

Source: Lone Wolf

Stupidity, Way

“Discretion,” said Fen with great complacency, “is my middle name.”
“I dare say. But very few people use their middle names.”

Edmund Crispin (1921–1978) British composer

Source: Beware of the Trains

“Do you always try to kill people when they blow their nose?”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

“There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God… These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

God

“she wasn't very
interesting
but few people
are.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

“We should be inspired by people… who show that human beings can be kind, brave, generous, beautiful, strong-even in the most difficult circumstances.”

Rachel Corrie (1979–2003) American anti-war and human rights activist

Beauty, Strong

“Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. And so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it. … We need wilderness preserved — as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds — because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed. The reminder and the reassurance that it is still there is good for our spiritual health even if we never once in ten years set foot in it.”

Wallace Stegner (1909–1993) American historian, writer, and environmentalist

Wilderness Letter http://wilderness.org/bios/former-council-members/wallace-stegner (1960) <br class="br">Source: The Sound of Mountain Water

Health, Books, World, Nature

“Don't you love Jesus?' Well, I thought an' I thought an' finally I says, 'No, I don't know nobody name' Jesus. I know a bunch of stories, but I only love people.”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath

Love

“A nation which thinks that it is belief in God and not good law which makes people honest does not seem to me very advanced.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

God, Law, Thinking

“The doors of the world are opened to people who can read.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

World, Reading

“Who are these people?" my mother asked.
"Guess," replied Abe flatly. "Who would be foolish enough to break into court after escaping it?”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

“He [Nico] regarded Jason, as if waiting for an attack. 'If the others found out-'
'If the others found out,' Jason said, 'You'd have that many more people to back you up, and to unleash the fury of the gods on anybody who gives you trouble.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

God, Waiting

“To make real friends you have to put yourself out there. Sometimes people will let you down, but you can't let that stop you. If you get hurt, you just pick yourself up, dust off your feelings, and try again.”

Kristin Hannah (1960) American writer

Source: Firefly Lane

Feeling, Hurt, Heartbreaking

“But I discovered that people like me -- they do, you know, if you like them -- and then it was all right.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Howl's Moving Castle

Source: Howl's Moving Castle

“It never fails. God will put people in your path that irritate you, especially if you're prone to be irritated.”

Rich Mullins (1955–1997) American christian musician

God

“People who are strangers to liquor are incapable of talking about literature.”

Mo Yan (1955) Chinese novelist

Literature

“I looked at myself in that window, oblivious to all the people around me and I stared and smiled that particular smile. You know that smile that seems to knock you and tell you how pathetic you are? That's the smile I was smiling.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: Underdog

Smile

“Many people are more like the earth than we know. Maybe they have fault lines that sooner or later are going to split open under pressure.”

Rebecca Wells book Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Source: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“I don't believe in guilt, I believe in living on impulse as long as you never intentionally hurt another person, and don't judge people in your life. I think you should live completely free”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

Variant: I don't believe in guilt, I believe in living on impulse as long as you never intentionally hurt another person, and don't judge people in your life. I think you should live completely free...

Life, Thinking, Hurt, Personality

“I am not like
other people.
I am
burning in hell. the hell of
myself.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Hell

“Dress for success. Image is very important. People judge you by the way you look on the outside”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

Way, Success

“How many people came and stayed a certain time,
Uttered light or dark speech that became part of you
Like light behind windblown fog and sand
Filtered and influenced by it, until no part
Remains that is surely you.”

John Ashbery (1927–2017) poet from the United States

Light, Time, Parting

“I was glad I wasn’t in love, that I wasn’t happy with the world. I like being at odds with everything. People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective.”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Source: Women (1978)
Context: I was glad I wasn't in love, that I wasn't happy with the world. I like being at odds with everything. People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective. They lose their sense of humor. They become nervous, psychotic bores. They even become killers.

Love, Happiness, World, Sense