Quotes about being
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“This much is certain, that we have no theological right to set any sort of limits to the loving-kindness of God which has appeared in Jesus Christ. Our theological duty is to see and understand it as being still greater than we had seen before.”

Karl Barth (1886–1968) Swiss Protestant theologian

Source: The Humanity of God

Love, God, Understanding, Appearance

“The only thing that guarantees an open-ended collaboration among human beings, the only thing that guarantees that this project is truly open-ended, is a willingness to have our beliefs and behaviors modified by the power of conversation.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Behavior

“You can learn to change the world or go on being changed by it.”

Laurence Yep book Dragon's Gate

Source: Dragon's Gate

World, Learning, Change

“Being good is something that one must choose over and over again, every day, throughout the day, for the rest of one’s life.”

Cate Tiernan (1961) American novelist

Source: Immortal Beloved

Life

“The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings.”

Martin Buber (1878–1965) German Jewish Existentialist philosopher and theologian

World

“One of the advantages of being disorganized is that one is always having surprising discoveries.”

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author

“Being happy or unhappy - is that really the most important thing? Knowing the truth would be a different kind of happiness - a more satisfying kind, I think, even if it turned out to be a sad kind.”

Ira Levin book This Perfect Day

Source: This Perfect Day

Happiness, Truth, Sadness, Thinking

“She seemed glad to see me when I appeared in the kitchen, and by watching her I began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Pt. 2, ch. 12
Jean Louise (Scout) Finch
Source: To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Girl, Thinking, Appearance

“Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

“If people can't stand being alone, they have no choice but to die”

Natsuo Kirino book Grotesque

Source: Grotesque

People

“Darkness was and darkness was good. As with light. Light and Darkness dancing together, born together, born of each other, neither preceding, neither following, both fully being, in joyful rhythm.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Light, Dance

“There, in the tin factory, in the first moment of the atomic age, a human being was crushed by books.”

John Hersey book Hiroshima

Source: Hiroshima

Books, Age

“Their house had real hard-cover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read.”

David Sedaris book Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls

Variant: Their house had real hardcover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read.
Source: Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls

Books, Lying, Reading, Housing

“Men go where they will, they do as they must; it is not a woman's part to bid them to stay, nor yet to reproach them for being what they are-or for not coming back.”

Diana Gabaldon book The Fiery Cross

Source: The Fiery Cross

Men, Parting

“You couldn't be satisfied with being an amateur asshole, could you, Jimbo! You had to go and turn pro on me!”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: Heaven, Texas

“You are using your own moral intuitions to authenticate the wisdom of the Bible - and then, in the next moment, you assert that we human beings cannot possibly rely upon our own intuitions to rightly guide us in the world.”

Sam Harris Letter to a Christian Nation

Source: Letter to a Christian Nation

Wisdom, World

“If we can forgive what's been done to us… If we can forgive what we've done to others… If we can leave our stories behind. Our being victims and villains. Only then can we maybe rescue the world.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted

Source: Haunted (2005), Chapter 21

World, Forgiveness

“He wondered if what he had taken for the richness of silence was really the poverty of never being heard […]. How could he have forgotten what he had always known: there is no match for the silence of God.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

God, Silence

“What?" He cut a grin at Kat when he saw the impressed look on her face. "Corporate espionage is my second greatest passion.'

"With your first being…" Kat prompted.

"Gelato," Hale said, and turned back to the group.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Perfect Scoundrels

Passion

“I always thought I was happy being the dark star to your supernova.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Happiness, Star

“Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.”

Agnes de Mille (1905–1993) American dancer and choreographer

“Being interesting has been replaced by being identifiable.”

Chuck Klosterman book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

Source: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

“It didn't pay to trust another human being. Humans didn't have it, whatever it took.”

Charles Bukowski book Ham on Rye

Source: Ham on Rye

“Turn," Liz said, trying not to hide her impatience at being forced to read at non-speed-of-light pace.”

Ally Carter book Only the Good Spy Young

Source: Only the Good Spy Young

Light, Reading, Speed

“Being poor is not an indication of potential or worth. It’s a lack of resources.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: A Perfect Blood

“Each day of not writing, of comfort, of being that which he despised, dulled his ability and softened his will to work so that, finally, he did no work at all.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Source: The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories

“The fact that no one knows where I am is my only happiness. If only I could prolong this forever! It would be far more just than death. I am empty and futile in every corner of my being, even in my unhappiness.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Felice

Source: Letters to Felice‎

Death, Happiness

“Many have died; you also will die. The drum of death is being beaten. The world has fallen in love with a dream. Only sayings of the wise will remain.”

Kabir (1440–1518) Indian mystic poet

Source: The Bijak of Kabir

Love, Death, World, Dreams

“One of the few downsides to being awakened is that we no longer require sleep; therefore we also no longer dream. It's a shame, because if I could dream, I know I'd dream about you.”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

Dreams, Sleep

“Actors need a kind of aggression, a kind of inner force. Don't be only one-sided, sweet, nice, good. Get rid of being average. Find the killer in you.”

Stella Adler (1901–1992) American actress and teaching coach

Source: The Art of Acting

“Far from being the father of jihad, Mohammad was a peacemaker, who risked his life and nearly lost the loyalty of his closest companions because he was determined to effect a reconciliation with Mecca.”

Karen Armstrong (1944) author and comparative religion scholar from Great Britain

Source: Muhammad: A Biography of The Prophet (2001)

Life, Loyalty

“I just thought I was empty and now I'm being filled… and I just wanted to keep being filled.”

Laura Hillenbrand book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Source: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

“Only human beings can look directly at something, have all the information they need to make an accurate prediction, perhaps even momentarily make the accurate prediction, and then say that it isn't so.”

Gavin de Becker (1954) American engineer

Source: The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence

“The eternal problem of the human being is how to structure his waking hours”

Eric Berne book Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships

Source: Games People Play

Problem

“billions of women must be out there on this seven-billion-person planet being told that they are not reliable witnesses to their own lives, that the truth is not their property, now or ever.”

Rebecca Solnit book Men Explain Things To Me

Source: Men Explain Things to Me

Women, Truth, Personality

“More exists among human beings than can be answered by the simplistic question I'm hit with every day of my life: "Are you a man or a woman?”

Leslie Feinberg (1949–2014) activist and author known for authoring Stone Butch Blues

Life, Question

“Two lost things that had survived the seas and arrived on a coastline. What did they do? They implanted themselves in the sand and grew into trees and lined the beaches. Sometimes a lot can come of being all washed up. You can really grow.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: The Book of Tomorrow

Tree, Sea

“Hooking on scuba gear and blindly diving into zombie-infested water is a wonderful way to mix the two childhood terrors of being eaten and drowning.”

Max Brooks book The Zombie Survival Guide

Source: The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead

Way, Water, Childhood

“Your being born makes your parents God. You owe them your life, and they can control you. Then puberty makes you Satan, just because you want something better.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Life, God, Parent

“Modern mass culture, aimed at the "consumer", the civilisation of prosthetics, is crippling people's souls, setting up barriers between man and the crucial questions of his existence, his consciousness of himself as a spiritual being.”

Andrei Tarkovsky book Sculpting in Time

Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 42

People, Soul, Question

“You're probably wondering what's going to happen to you. That's easy. The same thing is going to happen to you that has happened to every other human being who has ever lived. You're going to die. We all die. That's just how it is.”

Ernest Cline book Ready Player One

Source: Ready Player One

“That we are capable only of being what we are remains our unforgivable sin.”

Gene Wolfe The Claw of the Conciliator

Source: The Claw of the Conciliator

“As I see it, part of the art of being a hero is knowing when you don't need to be one anymore.”

Alan Moore book Watchmen

Source: Watchmen

Art, Parting

“While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it we do suddenly realize — sometimes with astonishment — how happy we had been.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Zorba the Greek

Source: Zorba the Greek (1946), Ch. 6

Happiness, Past

“Being with a man incapable of telling a lie – a whole lot of awesome. Being with a man who could taste when you lied – sucked the big one.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Wicked Nights

Lie

“It's so graceless, being a martyr. It's honoring your adversaries too much.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

“We never sit anything out. We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.”

Ray Bradbury book Zen in the Art of Writing

Variant: We never sit anything out. We are cups, quietly and constantly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.
Source: Zen in the Art of Writing (1990) 
Context: From now on I hope always to educate myself as best I can. But lacking this, in future I will relaxedly turn back to my secret mind to see what it has observed when I thought I was sitting this one out. We never sit anything out. We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

Beauty

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides.”

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

Suffering

“Only when a book is written out of passion is there much hope of its being read with passion.”

Jean Fritz (1915–2017) American children's writer

Books, Hope, Passion, Reading

“So you see, Good and Evil have the same face; it all depends on when they cross the path of each individual human being.”

Paulo Coelho book The Devil and Miss Prym

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym

Evil, Dependency

“What one does in one's art, that is the breath of one's being. What one does in one's life, that is a bagatelle for the outsiders to fuss about.”

D.H. Lawrence book Women in Love

Source: Women in Love

Life, Art

“I couldn't stand the idea of a woman having to have a single pure life and a man being able to have a double life, one pure and one not.”

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

Life, Idea

“When I first arrived in London, I so quickly tired of being surrounded by so many people that it was only with great difficulty that I refrained from seizing the next unfortunate who crossed my path and committing violent acts upon their person.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

People, Personality

“Living with him is like being told a perpetual story: his mind is the biggest, most imaginative I have ever met. I could live in its growing countries forever.”

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

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Imagination, Country

“You are human, you will make mistakes, and it’s one of the most beautiful things about being human, but you must learn from your mistakes, otherwise your life will have a lot of unnecessary pain.”

Rhonda Byrne book The Magic

Source: The Magic

Life, Pain, Beauty, Learning

“He was being about as protective as a can-opener.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Gaudy Night

Source: Gaudy Night

“How does one become a butterfly?" she asked.
"You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.”

Trina Paulus Hope for the Flowers

Variant: How does one become a butterfly? They have to want to learn to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.
Source: Hope for the Flowers

Flying

“Heaven is for thee too high
To know what passes there; be lowly wise.
Think only what concerns thee and thy being;
Dream not of other worlds, what creatures there
Live, in what state, condition, or degree,
Contented that thus far hath been revealed.”

John Milton book Paradise Lost

Source: Paradise Lost

World, Dreams, Thinking

“Every human being must be viewed according to what it is good for. For not one of us, no, not one, is perfect. And were we to love none who had imperfection, this world would be a desert for our love.”

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

Love, World, Perfection

“I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"Queen of the Black Coast" (1934)
Source: Conan the Barbarian Omnibus -The Original Stories
Context: He shrugged his shoulders. "I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom's realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer's Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content."

Love, Life

“Which of us can resist the temptation of being thought indispensable?”

Margaret Atwood book The Penelopiad

Source: The Penelopiad

“That was courage, Keller thought. Not doing something without being afraid, but doing something even though you were afraid.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Witchlight

Courage

“Most people would rather be certain they're miserable, than risk being happy.”

Robert Anthony (1982) professional wrestler

Happiness, People

“I don't go in for being sorry for people. For one thing it's insulting. One is only sorry for people if they are sorry for themselves. Self-pity is the biggest stumbling block in our world today.

~Jessop”

Agatha Christie book Destination Unknown

Source: Destination Unknown

People, World

“I try not to think. It interferes with being nuts -Leo Valdez”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Thinking

“Why are you being so mean?"
"Friends tell friends the truth."
"yeah, but not to hurt, to help.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Truth, Help, Hurt

“Everyone is the other, and no one is himself. The they, which supplies the answer to the who of everyday Da-sein, is the nobody to whom every Da-sein has always already surrendered itself, in its being-among-one-another.”

Martin Heidegger book Being and Time

Stambaugh translation
Source: Being and Time (1927)

“When I hear modern people complain of being lonely then I know what has happened. They have lost the cosmos.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Source: Apocalypse

People

“There is one rule, above all others, for being a man. Whatever comes, face it on your feet.”

Robert Jordan The Great Hunt

al'Lan Mandragoran
(15 November 1990)
Source: The Great Hunt

For Men

“Highs and lows make you feel that things matter, but they're nothing." "So what's something?" "Being reliable is something. Being good.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

William Black talking with Oskar
"A Simple Solution to an Impossible Problem" (p. 297)
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)
Context: "It's easy to be emotional. You can always make a scene... Highs and lows make you feel that things matter, but they're nothing." "So what's something?" "Being reliable is something. Being good."

Feeling

“I was being paid to do what I loved, and there's no gig on earth better than that; it's like a license to steal.”

Stephen King book Bag of Bones

Source: Bag of Bones

Love

“It's good to be just plain happy, it's a little better to know that you're happy; but to understand that you're happy and to know why and how and still be happy, be happy in the being and the knowing, well that is beyond happiness, that is bliss.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Happiness, Understanding

“Human beings are the only creatures that allow their children to come back home.”

Bill Cosby (1937) American actor, comedian, author, producer, musician, activist

Children, Home

“The problem is not that it's too difficult for children, but that it's too difficult for grown ups. Much of the world view of Einstein's thinking wasn't being taught when the grown ups were in school, but the children were comfortably familiar with it.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Acceptance Speech for the Margaret Edwards Award (1998)
Context: I've always believed that there is no subject that is taboo for the writer. It is how it is written that makes a book acceptable, as a work of art, or unacceptable and pornographic. There are many books circulating today, for the teen-ager as well as the grown up, which would not have been printed in the fifties. It is still amazing to me that A Wrinkle In Time was considered too difficult for children. My children were seven, ten, and twelve while I was writing it, and they understood it. The problem is not that it's too difficult for children, but that it's too difficult for grown ups. Much of the world view of Einstein's thinking wasn't being taught when the grown ups were in school, but the children were comfortably familiar with it.

Children, World, School, Problem

“I was so scared about being discovered, but nobody came. Nobody heard. In my own ears, though, my sobs sounded primal and scary, like something I would have turned off if I'd been able to.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

“I’m being ironic. Don't interrupt a man in the midst of being ironic, it’s not polite.”

Ray Bradbury book The Martian Chronicles

Usher II (1950)
Source: The Martian Chronicles (1950)

“Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts…”

William Gibson book Neuromancer

Source: Neuromancer (1984)
Context: Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts… A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding...

Children, Mathematics