Quotes about attraction
page 3

“Exotic: meaning you're "desired."
For madness is seductive, sexy. Female madness.
So long as the female is reasonably young and attractive.”

Joyce Carol Oates Blonde

Source: Blonde

Madness

“Secrets had an immense attraction to him, because he never could keep one, and he enjoyed the sort of unhallowed thrill he experienced when he went and told another animal, after having faithfully promised not to.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Source: The Wind in the Willows

Secret, Animals

“You attract what you need like a lover”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Lovers

“I enjoyed the innocence of unhappiness and of helplessness; could I blame myself for a sin which attracted me, which flooded me with pleasure precisely to the extent it brought me to despair?”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: My Mother/Madame Edwarda/The Dead Man

Pleasure, Despair

“I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you were stopped from examining.”

Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006) American science fiction writer

Science

“Step 4: Cough and gag.
Step 5: Repeat Step 4 until it feels like maybe your lungs aren't inside your body anymore.
Step 6: Remember that a really cute boy is beside you, so try to cough in a far more attractive manner.”

Ally Carter book Only the Good Spy Young

Source: Only the Good Spy Young

Feeling, Boy

“Missing, one stunningly attractive teenage boy. Answers to 'Jace' or 'Hot Stuff”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Boy

“The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary.”

Italo Calvino (1923–1985) Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels

Literature

“You are the one who calls the law of attraction into action, and you do it through your thoughts.”

Rhonda Byrne book The Secret

Source: The Secret

Law

“If you look up "charming" in the dictionary, you'll see that it not only has references to strong attraction, but to spells and magic. Then again, what are liars if not great magicians?”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Secret Life of Prince Charming

Strong

“Jem" I have an assignmation in Soho this evening with a certain attractive someone.

Tessa: Goodness. If you keep seeing Six-Fingered Nigel like this, he'll expect you to declare your intentions.
Jem choked on his tea.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Tea

“Only stupid men trying to seem smart need to be with dumb women. Only weak men trying to look strong are attracted to compliant women.”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Page 96
Ender's Game series, First Meetings in the Enderverse (2003), Teacher's Pest
Source: First Meetings in Ender's Universe

Women, Men, Stupidity, Strong

“Excuse me, Bane?" said Roderick Morgenstern. "Are you attending?"
"I'm so sorry," Magnus said politely. "Somebody incredibly attractive just came into the room, and I ceased to pay attention to a word you were saying.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Vampires, Scones, and Edmund Herondale

“Start telling the story of your amazing life, and the law of attraction must make sure you receive it!”

Rhonda Byrne book The Power

Source: The Power

Life, Law

“I want to make my own discoveries……. penetrate the evil which attracts me”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin

Evil

“These teenager looks aren't going to last forever, and that there are much better foundation to build a life upon than how attractive you are.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Life

“You assume that it has to be a male god who finds a human female attractive? How sexist is that?”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

God

“Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions, when it ceases to be dangerous you don't want it.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Art

“If you live in rock and roll, as I do, you see the reality of sex, of male lust and women being aroused by male lust. It attracts women. It doesn't repel them.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Women, Sex, Reality

“You know, most psychologists agree that hostility is really just sublimated sexual attraction.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

"Ah, that might explain why I so often run into people who seem to dislike me."
Clary and Jace, pg. 331
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

Hostility

“I’m done. I’m old, I’m sad - that’s on a good day. I want out of this mess. But I don’t want to fade away, I want to flame away - I want my death to be an attraction, a spectacle, a mystery. A work of art.”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

Death, Sadness, Art

“At first opposites attract. Then opposites attack.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

“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

People, Joy, Flying, Madness

“My attraction had been immediate and profound. And it had nothing to do with the way he looked. My attraction was to what resided between his lines.”

Augusten Burroughs book You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas

Source: You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas

Way

“She attracted people to her; she had presence, an uncommon. Documenting her effect on her habitat, a naturalist would likely have compared her to a lioness: strong, sleek, and invariably surrounded by her pride.”

Mohsin Hamid book The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Source: The Reluctant Fundamentalist

People, Strong

“I finally realized the source of your mutual attraction," Saiman said, his voice dry.
"You both think violence is foreplay.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Rises

Thinking

“You're dangerous."he says.
Why?"
Because you make me believe in the impossible."
— Simone Elkeles (Rules of Attraction)”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Suffragist and Women's Rights activist

“There are some men who are consoled by the idea that there are women less attractive than their wives; and others who are haunted by the knowledge that there are more attractive.”

John Fowles book The French Lieutenant's Woman

Source: The French Lieutenant's Woman

Women, Men, Idea, Knowledge

“She attracted him more than he liked.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

“The novels that attract me most… are those that create an illusion of transperancy around a knot of human relationships as obscure, cruel and perverse as possible.”

Italo Calvino (1923–1985) Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels

Source: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“When you're attracted to someone, it just means that your subconscious is attracted to their subconscious, subconsciously. So what we think of as fate is just two neuroses knowing that they are a perfect match.
- Sleepless in Seattle”

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

Fate, Thinking, Perfection

“Nature wishes that woman should attract man, yet she often cunningly moulds into her face a little sarcasm, which seems to say, 'Yes, I am willing to attract, but to attract a little better kind of a man than any I yet behold”

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

Nature

“We naturally like what we have been accustomed to, and are attracted towards it. […] The same is the case with those opinions of man to which he has been accustomed from his youth; he likes them, defends them, and shuns the opposite views.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: The Guide for the Perplexed

Youth, Nature

“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.”

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

Variant: Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.

Life, Imagination, Business

“But Catherine did not know her own advantages - did not know that a good-looking girl, with an affectionate heart and a very ignorant mind, cannot fail of attracting a clever young man, unless circumstances are particularly untoward.”

Jane Austen book Northanger Abbey

Source: Northanger Abbey

Girl, Heart

“I was hoping they'd put up flyers like they do for lost cats," he said. "Missing, one stunningly attractive teenage boy. Answers to 'Jace' or 'Hot Stuff.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Hope, Boy, Cats

“I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it's such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her.”

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

People, Beauty, Thinking, Animals

“Without contraries there is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate are necessary to human existence.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

The Argument
1790s, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793)

Love, Hate

“Mysteries of attraction could not always be explained through logic. Sometimes the fractures in two separate souls became the very hinges that held them together.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Devil in Winter

Soul

“Texting, even browsing the Internet - all these things can attract monsters.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

“Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they're not attracting attention with it, hotheadedness isn't.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Pt. 1, ch. 9
Atticus Finch
Source: To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Children, Learning, Time

“"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

“All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

Problem, Suffering, Personality

“I don’t want to fade away, I want to flame away - I want my death to be an attraction, a spectacle, a mystery. A work of art.”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

Death, Art

“A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Life

“Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.”

James Allen book As a Man Thinketh

Source: As a Man Thinketh

Men, Attitude

“And this is the forbidden truth, the unspeakable taboo - that evil is not always repellent but frequently attractive; that it has the power to make of us not simply victims, as nature and accident do, but active accomplices.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

Truth, Nature, Evil

“It requires uncommon steadiness of reason to resist the attraction of being called the most charming girl in the world.”

Jane Austen book Northanger Abbey

Source: Northanger Abbey

World, Girl

“A good listener is very nearly as attractive as a good talker. You cannot have a beautiful mind if you do not know how to listen.”

Edward de Bono (1933) Maltese physician

Source: How To Have A Beautiful Mind

Beauty

“A giant vulture with a girl hanging from its feet tends to attract attention.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Girl

“Mad people = People who stand alone and burn.
I'm attracted to them because they give me permission to do the same.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

People, Madness

“we attract what is happening in our lives”

Rhonda Byrne book The Secret

Source: The Secret

“Police business is a hell of a problem. It’s a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there’s nothing in it to attract the highest type of men. So we have to work with what we get…”

Raymond Chandler book The Lady in the Lake

Source: The Lady in the Lake

Men, Hell, Business, Problem

“Have you heard that modesty is an attractive traits?
Only to ugly people”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

People

“Who are you, anyway?
-Just someone who knows, from personal experience, how attractive it can be to think you can save somebody else by loving them.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Marriage Plot

Source: The Marriage Plot

Love, Thinking, Personality

“There's nothing so attractive as a blank slate. Take one attractive man, slap on a thick coat of daydream, and voila, the perfect man. With absolutely no resemblance to reality.”

Lauren Willig (1977) American author

Source: The Deception of the Emerald Ring

Reality, Perfection

“Force always attracts men of low morality.”

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

The World As I See It, Einstein, Citadel Press (reprint 2006; originally published in 1934), p. 5
1930s

Men

“Wouldn't it be something if we could have things we love in abudance without their losing that special attraction the want of them held for us.”

Dolly Parton (1946) American singer-songwriter and actress

Source: Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

Love

“Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life. Show me the person they sleep with and I will tell you their valuation of themselves.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Life, Sleep, Personality

“Some women attract desire. Others do not.”

Philippa Gregory book The Other Boleyn Girl

Source: The Other Boleyn Girl

Women

“It was because a great-looking man with no apparent mental defects found her attractive. Imagine feeling so buoyant over something so juvenile.”

Maggie Shayne (1965) American writer

Source: Colder than Ice

Feeling, Imagination

“Remember that your dominating thoughts attract,
through a definite law of nature, by the shortest and most
convenient route, their physical counterpart. Be careful what
your thoughts dwell upon.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

Source: Outwitting the Devil: The Secret to Freedom and Success

Law, Nature

“Here I am, a bundle of past recollections and future dreams, knotted up in a reasonably attractive bundle of flesh. I remember what this flesh has gone through; I dream of what it may go through.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Dreams, Past, Future

“If you alter or obscure the Biblical portrait of God in order to attract converts, you don't get converts to God, you get converts to an illusion. This is not evangelism, but deception.”

John Piper (1946) American writer

God

“I hate it when straight guys think all gay guys are attracted to them. I'm not attracted to every guy any more than you're attracted to every girl.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Variant: No, I couldn’t,” Alec said. “I hate it when straight guys think all gay guys are attracted to them. I’m not attracted to every guy any more than you’re attracted to every girl.
Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Hate, Guy, Girl, Thinking

“Art is the child of Nature; yes,
Her darling child, in whom we trace
The features of the mother's face,
Her aspect and her attitude,
All her majestic loveliness
Chastened and softened and subdued
Into a more attractive grace,
And with a human sense imbued.
He is the greatest artist, then,
Whether of pencil or of pen,
Who follows Nature.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Kéramos http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/lit/poetry/TheCompletePoeticalWorksofHenryWadsworthLongfellow/chap22.html, st. 29.

Art, Nature, Sense

“You become what you think about most.. But you also attract what you think about most. (John Assaraf)”

Rhonda Byrne book The Secret

Source: The Secret

Thinking

“One could pick apart love, examine every filament of attraction, and still it would never be fully explained.

It simply was.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Love in the Afternoon

Love

“Listen, my body is attracted to your body but when you speak it makes my brain angry.”

Mindy Kaling (1979) actress, writer, comedian

“Mirabelle is attractive; it's just that she is never the first or second girl chosen.”

Steve Martin book Shopgirl

Source: Shopgirl

Girl

“Competence was attractive.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

“the description of lust was simple: two people learn they're compatible, attraction grows, and the ancient instinct to preserve the species kicks in.”

Nicholas Sparks book True Believer

Source: True Believer

People, Learning

“The Secret: Law of Attraction”

Rhonda Byrne book The Secret

Source: The Secret

Secret, Law

“If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it;
Every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Source: In the Harbor

Feeling

“In matters of the heart as well, a certain level of negativity and suspicion is universally recommended. You may try to project a thoroughly positive outlook in order to attract a potential boyfriend, but you are also advised to Google him.”

Barbara Ehrenreich (1941) American writer and journalist

Universe, Heart

“… She'd gone past interest, swung into attraction, burst through lust, tripped over affection, and was now skidding out of control into love.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Happy Ever After

Love, Past

“All I see are ankles and wrists--and FYI, you're pulling a Mileyfrickin'-Cyrus with that belly flash. Not attractive.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Unleashed

“On second thought she hoped she never met a woman that attractive.. If she did, she would be morally obligated to run her over with her car.." Bride”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Night Play

Hope, Cars

“The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to kiss them [we soon forget them], but those who coyly lead us between the two extremes.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: On Love

Feeling, Kiss, Forgetting

“You should not complain, it's not attractive.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Longest Ride

Source: The Longest Ride

“Oh, for Christ's sake,' I hear. 'Can we please just try to have a good time?' This is like ordering someone to find you attractive, and it doesn't work. I've tried it.”

David Sedaris When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Source: When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Time, Christ

“People parted, years passed, they met again- and the meeting proved no reunion, offered no warm memories, only the acid knowledge that time had passed and things weren't as bright or attractive as they had been.”

Jacqueline Susann book Valley of the Dolls

Source: Valley of the Dolls

People, Knowledge, Memory, Time

“Remember, attraction is only one part of a relationship. Loyalty, commitment, responsibility and maturity make up the rest.”

Ruth Westheimer (1928) American sex therapist

Parting, Loyalty

“They are presented attractively for the same reason that kittens are cute - so that they can draw you in, then pounce on you for the kill.

Seriously. Stay away from kittens.”

Brandon Sanderson Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

Source: Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

Drawing

“Well that's the problem with paradise- nothing attracts a serpent quite like it.”

Cecelia Ahern book Love, Rosie

Source: Love, Rosie

Problem

“Beauty is that quality which, next to money, is generally the most attractive to the worst kinds of men;”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XVI : The Warning of Experience; Mrs. Maxwell to Helen
Context: Beauty is that quality which, next to money, is generally the most attractive to the worst kinds of men; and, therefore, it is likely to entail a great deal of trouble on the possessor.

Men, Money, Beauty

“People are rarely as attractive in reality as they are in the eyes of the people who are in love with them. Which is, I suppose, as it should be.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Love, People, Reality

“The most attractive quality of all is dignity.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl—A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship

“Those girls on the other side of the car are staring at you."
"Of course they are," he said. "I am stunningly attractive.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Cars, Girl

“You should take more pride in your appearance,” I tell him. “You'll never attract girls with an ugly mug like that.”

Darren Shan book Lord Loss

Source: Lord Loss

Girl, Appearance

“The outer conditions of a person's life will always be found to be harmoniously related to his inner state… Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.”

James Allen book As a Man Thinketh

Source: As a Man Thinketh

Life, Men, Personality

“Thoughts are magnetic, and thoughts have a frequency. As you think thoughts, they are sent out into the Universe, and they magnetically attract all like things that are on the same frequency. Everything sent out returns to the source - you.”

Rhonda Byrne book The Secret

Source: The Secret

Thinking, Universe

“It was in 1947 that the idea of a conscious monochrome vision came to me... Pure, existential space was regularly winking at me, each time in a more impressive manner, and this sensation of total freedom attracted me so powerfully that I painted some monochrome surfaces just to 'see', to 'see' with my own eyes what existential sensibility granted me; absolute freedom! But each time I could neither imagine or think of the possibility of considering this as a painting, a picture, until the day when I said: Why not?”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

Source: before 1960, "Yves Klein, 1928 – 1962, Selected Writings", p. 15

Imagination, Idea, Thinking, Freedom

“Young Lithuanian baritone Vytautas Juozapaitis was well cast as the suave serial seducer with his aristocratic good looks and deep voice. Most women would find him charismatic if not irresistible. From the first moments it became evident that this company, with attractive sets and costumes, is miles ahead of most touring troupes. Theatrically and musically gratifying were the other cast members, all with international experience.”

Vytautas Juozapaitis (1963) Lithuanian opera singer

Corrine Dunn, "A polished Don Giovanni graces the Phil Stage", Naples Daily News (November, 2003) http://www.jennykellyproductions.com/prod_mozart_review.htm

Women, Music

“The doctrine he was going to be teaching, starting tonight, was not the sort of ideology that would stir souls; no one would die for this religion. It would only attracts converts by promising a return to old tradition and by seeming to be the religion of the future.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

Religion, Soul, Future

“If we truly feel that the Lord liveth, before whom we stand, we shall want nothing else for our work but His smile; and we shall feel that the light of His face is all we need. That thought should deaden our love for outward things. How the things that we fever our souls by pursuing, and fret our hearts when we lose, will cease to attract! How small and vulgar the " prizes " of life, as people call them, will appear!”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 127.

Love, Life, People, Smile

“Once the basic assumption of the superiority and attraction of fixed-field farming over all previous forms of subsistence is questioned, it becomes clear that this assumption itself rests on a deeper and more embedded assumption that is virtually never questioned. And that assumption is that sedentary life itself is superior to and more attractive than mobile forms of existence.”

James C. Scott book Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States

Source: Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (2017), pp. 7-8

Life, Question

“The spectator of a sculpture, modern or ancient, is not called to examine his own or the sculptor's knowledge of anatomy but to participations, so to say, a participation where the motions which have strangulated the carver, while working, must operate the same mysterious attraction and inexpressible miracle of forms and lines, its dramaticism, its graphic tragedy, or its smiling gaiety and happiness: its words carved out of forms and sown with lines into phrases of philosophy, religion.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

n.p.
1960 - 1968, Plastic Language, Ossip Zadkine

Happiness, Religion, Smile, Knowledge

“A patent is a legal analog of sticky fly paper: it attracts some of the lowest forms of life.”

David L. Webster (1888–1976) American Physicist

in his autobiography, as quoted by [Peter Louis Galison, Bruce William Hevly, Big science: the growth of large-scale research, Stanford University Press, 1992, 0804718792, 55]

Life, Flying

“Aged 15 or 16, I found some of the priests sexually attractive, they had a way about them... a sexual allure which is a difficult thing to talk about because it's usually meant to be the opposite way round. Boys like me, aged 15 -- if one of them had... yeah, it would have been absolutely no problem for me aged 15. It didn't happen, but it wouldn't have been a problem.”

Colm Tóibín (1955) Irish novelist and writer

Austen was a woeful speller . . . http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/books-arts/austen-was-a-woeful-speller-26694366.html, Irish Independent (30 October 2010)

Age, Way, Boy, Problem

Quotes about attraction page 3

Quotes about attraction
page 3