Quotes about being
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“One of the Georges - I forget which - once said that a certain number of hours' sleep each night - I cannot recall at the moment how many - made a man something which for the time being has slipped my memory.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Source: Mike and Psmith

Sleep, Memory, Time, Night

“No human being is illegal.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

Hope, Despair, and Memory (1986)

“Pippa's laugh is bitter, tinged with tears. 'Ha! Why do girls think being beautiful will solve every problem? Being beautiful just creates problems. It's a misery. I wish I were someone else.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

Beauty, Girl, Problem, Thinking

“If 180 million people want to be undead, that’s their funeral, but I happen to like being alive.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

People

“To be or not to be?' That is not the question. What is the question? The question is not one of being, but of becoming. 'To become more or not to become more' This is the question faced by each intelligence in our universe.”

Truman G. Madsen (1926–2009) American educator

Source: Eternal Man

Intelligence, Question, Universe

“Being brave doesn't meanhaving to fight alone.”

Esther M. Friesner (1951) American writer

Source: Sphinx's Princess

Fight

“So therefore I dedicate myself, to my art, my sleep, my dreams, my labors, my suffrances, my loneliness, my unique madness, my endless absorption and hunger because I cannot dedicate myself to any fellow being.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Hunger, Dreams, Art, Sleep

“Jason settled back on the bench. 'I hate to break this to you, but as a rule, wizards are nasty people. They're powerful, capricious, ruthless, egotistical, used to getting their own way. That's being kind.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Hate, People, Way

“We're being led by an idiot with a crayon.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Variant: We're being lead by an idiot with a crayon.
Source: The Arctic Incident

“The Yogic scriptures say that God responds to the sacred prayers and efforts of human beings in any way whatsoever that mortals choose to worship - just so long as those prayers are sincere.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

God, Way, Effort, Sincerity

“The nice girl makes the mistake of being available all the time.”

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

Girl, Time

“Stories are the most important thing in the world. Without stories, we wouldn't be human beings at all.”

Philip Pullman (1946) English author

World

“If there's any real truth, it's that the entire multidimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

Source: The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Truth, Universe

“Altogether, if I'd been looking at nothing but the media all these years, I would be a much more discouraged person-especially given the notion that only conflict is news, and that objectivity means being evenhandedly negative.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Source: My Life on the Road

Personality

“If you care about somebody, you should want them to be happy. Even if you wind up being left out.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Happiness

“Rose,” he said, forcibly trying to keep a serious tone, “I can think of many words to describe you, sexy and hot being at the top of the list. You know what’s not on the list? Sane.”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

Thinking

“Come with me into the woods where spring is
advancing, as it does, no matter what,
not being singular or particular, but one
of the forever gifts, and certainly visible.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: Dog Songs

Spring

“Stop being so…"
"Charming? Attractive? Irresistible?
"I'm going with arrogant.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Bitter Blood

“To love is to enter into the inevitability of one day not being able to protect what is most valuable to you.”

Mohsin Hamid book Exit West

Source: Exit West

Love

“It is hard to accept being different, hard to have people avoid looking at you, and still believe in yourself.”

Patricia Briggs (1965) American writer

Source: The Hob's Bargain

People

“At first, being with Sebastian was like being in the middle of the best dream I'd ever had - but now it mostly feels exhausting. I'm up one minute and down the next; questioning what I say and do. Even questioning my sanity.”

Candace Bushnell book The Carrie Diaries

Source: The Carrie Diaries

Dreams, Feeling, Question

“One moment several things are possible, the next moment only one happens, and the rest don't exist. Except that other worlds have sprung into being, on which the did happen.”

Philip Pullman book Northern Lights

Source: The Golden Compass

World

“If eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson The Rhodora

The Rhodora
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Beauty

“Anyone who loves in the expectation of being loved in return is wasting their time.”

Paulo Coelho book The Devil and Miss Prym

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym

Love, Time, Powerful

“Phaedra looked across the water and her eyes met Lucian’s. Their needs came second. It came from the privilege of being trusted.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Quintana of Charyn

Water

“Enjoy the present, bid defiance to the future, laugh at all those reasonable beings who exercise their reason to avoid the misfortunes which they fear, destroying at the same time the pleasure that they might enjoy.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

Pleasure, Fear, Exercises, Time

“When did I stop being me?”

Sara Gruen book Water for Elephants

Source: Water for Elephants

“You get used to people being a certain way; you depend on it. And when they surprise you, for better or worse, it can shake you to your core.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Saint Anything

People, Way, Dependency

“Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female — whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.”

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

“When I look at narcissism through the vulnerability lens, I see the shame-based fear of being ordinary. I see the fear of never feeling extraordinary enough to be noticed, to be lovable, to belong, or to cultivate a sense of purpose.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Fear, Feeling, Sense

“The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us,… The madness of this planet is largely a result of the human being's difficulty in coming to viruous balance with himself.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Light, Madness

“I’m still afraid of being totally honest. I’m more afraid of this than dying.”

Natsuo Kirino book Real World

Source: Real World

“Being myself includes taking risks with myself, taking risks on new behavior, trying new ways of 'being myself', so that I can see who it is I want to be.”

Hugh Prather (1938–2010) American writer

Way, Behavior

“… well, if women's work was never done, why trouble about how much of it wasn't being accomplished at any given moment?”

Diana Gabaldon book The Fiery Cross

Source: The Fiery Cross

Women

“We’ve been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being.”

Atul Gawande (1965) American surgeon

Source: Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End

Health, Thinking

“What was the point of being able to forgive, when deep down, you both had to admit you'd never forget?”

Jodi Picoult book The Tenth Circle

Source: The Tenth Circle

Forgiveness, Forgetting

“You can't put being in love on a scale. Either you are or you aren't.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: We'll Always Have Summer

Love

“Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?”

Thornton Wilder Our Town

Source: Our Town

Life

“Being a doctor at Johns Hopkins does not make me any better in God's sight than the individual who has not had the opportunity to gain such an education but who still works hard.”

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

Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

God, Education

“Do you mind not being so kind and obedient? It makes me nervous.”

Diana Wynne Jones (1934–2011) English children's fantasy writer

Source: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Vol. 1

“Working on our own consciousness is the most important thing that we are doing at any moment, and being love is a supreme creative act.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Love

“It broke the spell. It's not that I stopped being happy. I was still inexplicably, utterly happy. But suddenly the happiness had implications.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

Happiness

“The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.”

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

1770s, A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)
Source: A Summary View of the Rights of British America: Reprinted from the Original Ed.,

Art

“We all have faults, mine is being wicked.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

“I’ll still be missing you as much as ever. I’l still smile at the memory of you. I’ll still be - Okay, I’ll say it again - loving you, but I won’t abandon myseld for you. I cannot be faithful to you without being faithful to myself.”

Jerry Spinelli book Love, Stargirl

Source: Love, Stargirl

Love, Faith, Smile, Memory

“One of the things I keep learning is that the secret of being happy is doing things for other people.”

Dick Gregory (1932–2017) American comedian, social activist, social critic, writer, and entrepreneur

Happiness, People, Secret, Learning

“Maybe I was being too picky. Maybe I didn't want to be close to anyone. Maybe I'd just be the type who couldn't feel love all the way or something. I couldn't tell what was wrong, but what was wrong was that it just wasn't right.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Secret Life of Prince Charming

Love, Way, Feeling

“One problem with being a leader, is that even among your friends you are alone, for it is you -- and you alone -- to whom the others look for final guidance.”

Trenton Lee Stewart The Mysterious Benedict Society

Source: The Mysterious Benedict Society

Problem

“She was good at playing abstract confusion in the same way that a midget is good at being short.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Way

“Give to every human being every right that you claim for yourself.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

"The Limitations of Toleration" (8 May 1888), in The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol VII
Source: The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child

“She was the one who was supposed to have walked with him through different lives, being born and loving and dying and being born again. They'd been born for each other, to help each other grow and blossom and discover and evolve.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Night World, No. 2

Love, Help

“There are times in this life when a person must do or say things he doesn't want to. Human beings and chains, it is the oldest acquaintanceship in the world.”

Nadeem Aslam book Maps for Lost Lovers

Source: Maps for Lost Lovers

Life, World, Time, Personality

“I love being a wizard. Every day is like Disneyland.”

Jim Butcher Turn Coat

Source: Turn Coat

Love

“The human being, whether he realises it or not, is trusting someone or something every moment of the day.”

Idries Shah (1924–1996) writer and Sufi teacher

Source: Sufi Thought and Action

“She’d already decided to be with him. If only to wipe him from her mind, get him out of her system and
stop the fantasies plaguing her. If only to prove to herself that being with him would not be pleasurable for
her.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Pleasure

Pleasure

“Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness.”

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) Austrian-American psychoanalyst

Source: The Function of the Orgasm (1927), Ch. V : The Development of the Character-Analytic Technique

Love, Nature

“And if you decide not to read anymore, hey, no problem, because you're not the one I was waiting for anyway. But if you decide to read on, then guess what? You're my kind of time being and together we'll make magic!”

Ruth Ozeki book A Tale for the Time Being

Source: A Tale for the Time Being

Problem, Time, Waiting, Reading

“A wedding is for daughters and fathers. The mothers all dress up, trying to look like young women. But a wedding is for a father and daughter. They stop being married to each other on that day.”

Sarah Ruhl Eurydice

Source: Eurydice

Women, Wedding, Daughters, For Father

“The trouble is not really in being alone, it's being lonely. One can be lonely in the midst of a crowd, don't you think?”

Christine Feehan book Dark Prince

Source: Dark Prince

Thinking

“This did not seem to reassure Nico.

“I don’t like being in the dark,” he muttered.

An odd complaint for a child of Hades, but I understood what he meant.”

Rick Riordan book The Hidden Oracle

Source: The Hidden Oracle

“I wonder if everyone who faces death hurts like this. It's as though for the first time I realize how much just being alive makes my body ache. But I don't want that ache to stop.”

Shannon Hale book Book of a Thousand Days

Source: Book of a Thousand Days

Death, Time, Hurt

“What is the soul? What color is it? I suspected my soul, being mischievous, might slip away while I was dreaming and fail to return. I did my best not to fall asleep, to keep it inside of me where it belonged.”

Patti Smith Just Kids

Source: Just Kids

Dreams, Color, Soul

“They spoke very little of their mutual feeling; pretty phrases and warm expressions being probably unnecessary between such tried friends.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Variant: They spoke very little of their mutual feelings: pretty phrases and warm attentions being probably unnecessary between such tried friends.
Source: Far from the Madding Crowd

Feeling

“Good-bye -- if you hear of my being stood up against a stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease or falling down the cellar stairs.”

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

Life, Age, Disease, Way

“People love to admit they have bad handwriting or that they can't do math. And they will readily admit to being awkward: 'I'm such a klutz!' But they will never admit to having a poor sense of humor or being a bad driver.”

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

Love, People, Sense

“I met an old lady once, almost a hundred years old, and she told me, there are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who's in charge?”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Love, History, Question

“As always, Blay was the anchor who kept him from being swept away.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Reborn

“We can redream this world and make the dream come real. Human beings are gods hidden from themselves.”

Ben Okri The Famished Road

Source: The Famished Road

God, World, Dreams

“How vast was a human being's capacity for suffering. The only thing you could do was stand in awe of it. It wasn't a question of survival at all. It was the fullness of it, how much could you hold, how much could you care.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Question, Suffering

“I said I liked being half-educated; you were so much more surprised at everything when you were ignorant.”

Gerald Durrell book My Family and Other Animals

Source: My Family and Other Animals (1956)

Education

“Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air — moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh — felt as if it were being exhaled into one's face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Source: Jitterbug Perfume (1984)

Secret, Nature

“Good-humoured, unaffected girls, will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They are two distinct orders of being.”

Jane Austen book Mansfield Park

Source: Mansfield Park

Women, Girl

“Compassion refers to the arising in the heart of the desire to relieve the suffering of all beings.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Suffering, Heart

“They say the secret of success is being at the right place at the right time, but since you never know when the right time is going to be, I figure the trick is to find the right place and just hang around.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Secret, Time, Success

“The fact is that being seductive is an addiction that can never be satisfied.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Strange Pilgrims

Source: Strange Pilgrims

“Wold domination is exhausting and cliche. People ought to just focus on being individual responsible citizens of the earth instead of assholes.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

People

“I have learned that one should say "Peace!" to those who shout their hatred for one's being and presence or at one's passage.”

Tariq Ramadan (1962) Swiss muslim scholar

Source: What I Believe

Peace, Learning

“All novels… are concerned with the enigma of the self. As soon as you create an imaginary being, a character, you are automatically confronted by the question: what is the self? How can it be grasped?”

Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature

Source: The Art of the Novel

Question

“It is so pleasant to come across people more stupid than ourselves. We love them at once for being so.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Source: Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Love, People, Stupidity

“Although according to certain philosophers it is quite difficult to distinguish the jester from the melancholic, life itself being a comic drama or a dramatic comedy.”

Comte de Lautréamont (1846–1870) French poet

Source: Maldoror and the Complete Works

Life

“A child who does not think about what happens around him and is content with living without wondering whether he lives honestly is like a man who lives from a scoundrel's work and is on the road to being a scoundrel.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

Martí : Thoughts/Pensamientos (1994)
Context: A child, from the time he can think, should think about all he sees, should suffer for all who cannot live with honesty, should work so that all men can be honest, and should be honest himself. A child who does not think about what happens around him and is content with living without wondering whether he lives honestly is like a man who lives from a scoundrel's work and is on the road to being a scoundrel.

Thinking

“It is by loving and not by being loved that one can come nearest to the soul of another.”

George MacDonald book Phantastes

Phantastes (1858)
Variant: It is by loving and not by being loved, that one can come nearest to the soul of another.
Context: I knew now, that it is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, and not the being loved by each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. I knew that love gives to him that loveth, power over any soul beloved, even if that soul know him not, bringing him inwardly close to that spirit; a power that cannot be but for good; for in proportion as selfishness intrudes, the love ceases, and the power which springs therefrom dies. Yet all love will, one day, meet with its return. All true love will, one day, behold its own image in the eyes of the beloved, and be humbly glad. This is possible in the realms of lofty Death.

Love, Soul