Quotes about anything
page 16

“All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.”

Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet

Letter to J. G. Lockhart (c. 16 June 1830), in H. J. C. Grierson (ed.), Letters of Sir Walter Scott, Vol. II (1936), as reported in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999), p. 652

Men, Education, Leadership, For Men

“As hard as it was, as terrible and unfair as the way things turned out, i wouldn't have traded the few days i spent with him for anything”

Nicholas Sparks book Nights in Rodanthe

Source: Nights in Rodanthe

Way

“Sometimes a man doesn’t know what to do about things and sometimes it’s best to lie very still and try not to think at all about anything.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

Lie, Thinking

“If you care about what you do and work hard at it, there isn't anything you can't do if you want to.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

Source: It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider

“Who said anything about slicing you up?… I just wanted to carve a little Z on your forehead-- nothing serious.”

Hunter S. Thompson book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Source: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

“What we don't let out traps us. We think, "No one else feels this way, I must be crazy." So we don't say anything. And we become enveloped by a deep loneliness, not knowing where our feelings come from or what to do with them. "Why do I feel this way? Last week, I was on top of the world and now my feelings don't make sense." Voicing it, getting it out and letting it other people hear it, helps to dissipate it. The fears and self-criticisms begin to leak. And we begin to heal.”

Sabrina Ward Harrison (1975) Canadian writer

Quoted by Katherine Martin in Women of Courage: Inspiring Stories from the Women Who Lived Them, p. 268 (1999)

People, World, Fear, Way

“Nobody had forgotten anything here. In Berlin, you had to wrestle with the past, you had to build on the ruins, inside them. It wasn't like America where we scraped the earth clean, thinking we could start again every time.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Thinking, Time, Past

“One can bear anything. The pain we cannot bear will kill us outright.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Pain

“You're not stealing anything, you're not breaking anything, so I'd guess you're Stephanie.”

Derek Landy Skulduggery Pleasant

Source: Skulduggery Pleasant

“I repent me of the ignorance wherein I ever said that God made man out of nothing: there is no nothing out of which to make anything; God is all in all, and he made us out of himself.”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

Source: Wind from the Stars

God

“The point is not for women simply to take power out of men’s hands, since that wouldn’t change anything about the world. It’s a question precisely of destroying that notion of power.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

Women, Men, World, Question

“Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.”

Samuel Butler book The Way of All Flesh

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 14
Context: Every man’s work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him.

Music, Literature, Back To Work

“I told you, Ms. Lane, never believe anything is dead-"
"- I know, I know, until you've 'burned it, poked around in its ashes, and then waited a day or two to see if anything rises from them.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Variant: Don't celebrate yet, Ms. Lane. Don't believe anything is dead until you've burned it, poked around in its ashes, and then waited a day or two to see if anything rises from them.
Source: Bloodfever

Waiting, Dead

“I didn’t care about anything except her and the way touching her drove me wild, even as her calm and steady presence soothed the storms that raged within me.”

Richelle Mead book The Fiery Heart

Source: The Fiery Heart

Way, Rage

“If there's anything I look down on, it's a man in a blue outfit.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

“That's right. Act likerejected. It's not like you tried to kill me or anything.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

“Some people are settling down, some people are settling and some people refuse to settle for anything less than butterflies.”

Candace Bushnell book Sex and the City

Source: Sex and the City

People

“Passionately obsessed by anything we love--an avalanche of magic flattens the way ahead, levels, rules, reasons, dissents, bears us with it over chasms, fears, doubts. Without the power of that love….”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

Love, Fear, Way, Passion

“Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

“Be not Afraid of anything. You will do Marvelous work. it is Fearlessness that brings Heaven even in a moment.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Peaceful

“NIHILIST, n. A Russian who denies the existence of anything but Tolstoi. The leader of the school is Tolstoi.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

School

“As far as I was concerned, we'd come to a draw: I hadn't wanted to come, and she didn't want me to leave. We were even. But I knew my mother wouldn't see it that way. Lately, we didn't seem to see anything the same.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Someone Like You

Way, Drawing

“You and I share the same DNA.
Is there anything more lonely than that?”

Charlie Kaufman (1958) American screenwriter

Source: Adaptation.: The Shooting Script

“I can’t… I find that I can’t concentrate. On anything. I can’t really…” Rhage’s eyes drifted to Zsadist. “How do you live with it? All the anger. The pain. The…”

Jessica Bird book Lover Eternal

Source: Lover Eternal

Pain, Anger

“I held her close to me with my eyes closed, wonering if anything in my life had ever been this perfect and knowing at the same time that it hadn't. I was in love, and the feeling was even more wonderful than I ever imagined it could be.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

Love, Life, Feeling, Imagination

“I had come to a place where I was meant to be. I don't mean anything so prosaic as a sense of coming home. This was different, very different. It was like arriving at a place much safer than home.”

Pat Conroy The Lords of Discipline

Source: The Lords of Discipline

Home, Sense

“Only God sees the sparrow fall, but even God doesn't do anything about it.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent

God

“Throwing things horrified me. I suffered extreme, paralyzing anxiety when it came to anything remotely athletic. I wouldn't even run to catch the school bus because I knew I'd trip and then get teased for a year.”

Augusten Burroughs Possible Side Effects

Source: Possible Side Effects

School, Suffering

“Sure it will hurt. But so what? Pain is just a state of mind. You can think your way out of anything, even pain.”

Rodman Philbrick book Freak the Mighty

Variant: Pain is just a state of mind. You can think your way out of everything, even pain.
Source: Freak the Mighty

Pain, Way, Thinking, Hurt

“There are ways in which we’re so alike. We’re reckless. We don’t think before we act. We’ll do anything for people we love. And I never thought how scary that was for the people who loved me until I saw”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Love, People, Way, Thinking

“She just happened to feel like it. Wasn’t that after all, the only reason there was? Had she ever had a less selfish, more complicated reason for doing anything in her life?”

Richard Yates book Revolutionary Road

Source: Revolutionary Road

Life, Feeling, Selfishness

“I still love him so much I'll hide any amount of conjugated estrogen in his food. So much I'll do anything to destroy him.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Love, Food

“.. he continues to cling to the forlorn hope that I will turn into one of those swooning females… and fling myself squeeling at him whenever anything happens. Like all men, he clings to his illusions.”

Elizabeth Peters The Last Camel Died at Noon

Source: The Last Camel Died at Noon

Men, Hope

“I mean, how do you know if people are good for you or not? It's not like they come with an FDA approved sticker or anything.”

Michael Thomas Ford (1968) American writer

Source: Suicide Notes

People

“if i repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. what demon possessed me that i behaved so well?”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Behavior

“Anything can become excusable when seen from the standpoint of the result”

Yukio Mishima book The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Source: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“The future was one thing that could never be broken, because it had not yet had the chance to be anything.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Saint Anything

Chance, Future

“We didn't say anything because there was such an awful lot to say, and no language to say it in.”

William Saroyan book My Name Is Aram

"The Pomegranate Tree"
My Name Is Aram (1940)

“The grass as bristly and stout as chives and me wondering when the ground will break and me wondering how anything fragile survives”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Grass

“He who never makes a mistake, never makes anything.”

Joseph Delaney (1945) British writer

Variant: He who never makes a mistake never makes anything. It's part of learning the job.
Source: Revenge of the Witch

“In a few minutes I heard the books' voices: a low, steady, unsupressible hum. I'd heard it many times before. I've always had a finely tuned ear for a library's accumulations of echo and desire. Libraries are anything but hushed.”

Martha Cooley book The Archivist

Source: The Archivist

Books, Time

“But all I could think of was how when nothing made sense and hadn't for ages, you just have to grab onto anything you feel sure of.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Age, Feeling, Thinking, Sense

“In my house there's this light switch that doesn't do anything. Every so often I would flick it on and off just to check. Yesterday, I got a call from a woman in Madagascar. She said”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Light, Housing

“There are really only two positions one can take toward anything in life: hope or fear. Hope strengthens, fear kills.”

Karen Marie Moning book Darkfever

Variant: There are only really two positions one can take toward anything in life: hope or fear. Hope strengthens, fear kills.
Source: Darkfever

Life, Fear, Hope

“The news should have terrified her, but it was difficult to be frightened of anything when she was sitting so close to Rom. 'I thought we had convinced him that I was leading a blameless life?' 'We had, till you burst out of that damnable cake.”

Eva Ibbotson A Company of Swans

Source: A Company of Swans

Life

“Life is too long to say anything definitely; always say perhaps.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

Life

“He can kill anything for need but he could not even hurt a feeling for pleasure.”

John Steinbeck book Cannery Row

Source: Cannery Row

Pleasure, Feeling, Hurt

“My universe is my eyes and my ears. Anything else is hearsay.”

Douglas Adams book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Universe

“but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

Life

“Humanity? Humanity is not concerned with us. Today anything is allowed. Anything is possible.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Source: Night

“Whatever you describe to another person is also a revelation of who you are and who you think you are. You can not describe anything without betraying your point of view, your aspirations, your fears, your hopes. Everything.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Fear, Hope, Thinking, Personality

“It's hard to let go anything we love. We live in a world which teaches us to clutch. But when we clutch we're left with a fistful of ashes.”

Madeleine L'Engle A Ring of Endless Light

Source: A Ring of Endless Light

Love, World

“I hate women who complain about being fat when they're like a size 5. Anything under size 5 isn't a woman. It's a boy with breasts.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Obsidian Butterfly

Source: Obsidian Butterfly

Women, Hate, Boy

“You hated my rainbows, now you don't like my leather. Is there anything you like on me?”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Dreamfever

Hate

“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Everybody's Political What's What? (ebook, must be borrowed) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL24979564M/Everybody's_political_what's_what (1944), Chapter XXXVII: Creed and Conduct, p. 330 <br class="br">1940s and later <br class="br">Variant: Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. <br class="br">Context: Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. Creeds, articles, and institutes of religious faith ossify our brains and make change impossible. As such they are nuisances, and in practice have to be mostly ignored.

Change, Motivational, Deep, Success

“Almost anything can be improved with the addition of bacon.”

Jasper Fforde (1961) British novelist

Source: Shades of Grey

“Where is this love? I can't see it, I can't touch it. I can't feel it. I can hear it. I can hear some words, but I can't do anything with your easy words”

Patrick Marber Closer

Source: Closer

Love, Feeling

“The most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of room, not try to be or do anything whatever.”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

Light, Change

“If I can live through this, he thought, I can live through anything. If I can live through this, I WILL live through anything.”

Paullina Simons book Tatiana and Alexander

Source: Tatiana and Alexander

“I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble.”

Carl Sagan book The Demon-Haunted World

Source: The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995), Ch. 11 : The Dragon in My Garage, p. 180
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Context: I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble. Really, it's okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.

World, Understanding, Thinking

“It's only in drugs or death we'll see anything new, and death is just too controlling.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Survivor

Source: Survivor

Death

“Having regrets is the only sign that you’ve done anything interesting with your life.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Secrets of a Summer Night

Life

“If you try to use your head to think about things, people don't want to have anything to do with you”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

People, Thinking

“I'm a good person. In most ways. But I'm beginning to think that being a good person in most ways doesn't count for anything very much, if you're a bad person in one way.”

Nick Hornby (1957) English novelist

Way, Thinking, Personality

“"Is," "is." "is" — the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment.”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

The Historical Illuminatus as spoken by Sigismundo Celine
Source: Nature's God

Sense

“If you don’t have a dog--at least one--there is not necessarily anything wrong with you, but there may be something wrong with your life.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Life, Dogs

“Real power is control. Knowing that you can do anything… and not doing it only because you can.”

Joan D. Vinge The Snow Queen

Source: The Snow Queen

“… it just goes to show you can't leave anything behind. You bring it all with you, whether you want to or not.”

Stef Penney book The Tenderness of Wolves

Source: The Tenderness of Wolves

“You like the party?"
"Is it in honor of anything?"
"My cat's birthday."
"Oh." She glanced around. "Where's your cat?"
"I dont know. He ran away."
-Magnus & Clary, pg.221-”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Cats, Birthday

“The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything. She wants all the information you can give her.”

David Ogilvy book Confessions of an Advertising Man

Source: Confessions of an Advertising Man, p. 96 (Ballantine Books)

Intelligence

“But you weren't born expecting that kind of beauty in everyone, all the time. You just got programmed into thinking anything else is ugly.”

Scott Westerfeld book Uglies

Source: Uglies

Beauty, Thinking, Time

“those of us who read because we love it more than anything, who feel about bookstores the way some people feel about jewelers…”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

Source: How Reading Changed My Life

Love, People, Way, Feeling

“How can you do anything until you have seen everything, or as much as you can?”

Rudyard Kipling book The Light That Failed

Source: The Light That Failed

“Here," she said. "This is for you."
"I didn't really get you anything," I sputtered. "I mean, I didn't know that you were going to be here, and--"
"Don't worry. It's your embarrassment at not having the thought that counts.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“Life, I've learned, is never fair. If they teach anything in schools, that should be it.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Life, School, Learning

“There's soknowledge to be had that specialists cling to their specialties as a shield against having to know anything about anything else. They avoid being drowned.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

“And of course you wouldn't be going alone,' Will said impatiently. 'I would go with you. I wouldn't let anything happen to you.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“To be brave is to love someone unconditionally, without expecting anything in return. To just give. That takes courage, because we don't want to fall on our faces or leave ourselves open to hurt.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Love, Courage, Hurt

“I knew he would never leave me, never let me down-because the man had never abandoned anything in his long life. If I hadn’t taken the gold rope of our bond, I knew Adam would have sat on me and hog-tied me with it. I liked that. A lot.”

Patricia Briggs book Silver Borne

Source: Silver Borne

Life

“Ah, ladies and gentlemen, a man lives a sad life when he cannot take anything or anyone seriously.”

Milan Kundera book Laughable Loves

Source: Laughable Loves

Life, Sadness

“The world is made up for the most part of morons and natural tyrants, sure of themselves, strong in their own opinions, never doubting anything.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

World, Nature, Strong, Parting

“Logic is a way of saying that anything which didn't happen yesterday won't happen tomorrow.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Glory Road

Glory Road (1963)
Context: Logic is a feeble reed, friend. "Logic" proved that airplanes can't fly and that H-bombs won't work and that stones don't fall out of the sky. Logic is a way of saying that anything which didn't happen yesterday won't happen tomorrow.

Way

“I love the stars.
Because they can't say anything.
I love the stars.
Because they do not judge anyone.”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Love, Star