Quotes about being
page 40

“I call upon you to draw from the depths of your being — to prove that we are a human race, to prove that our love outweighs our need to hate, that our compassion is more compelling than our need to blame”

Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011) British-American actress

Love, Hate, Drawing

“Not knowing is half the fun," Aphrodite said, "Exquisitely painful isn't it? Not being sure who you love and who loves you? Oh, you kids! It's so cute I'm going to cry!”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

Love, Pain, Cry

“Do you think we’ll be waiting long?” Valkyrie asked,
keeping her voice low.
“The last time we were in this building, we accused the
Grand Mage of being a traitor,” Skulduggery said. “Yes, I think
we’ll be waiting long.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: The Faceless Ones

Thinking, Time, Waiting

“The Great Depression in the United States, far from being a sign of the inherent instability of the private enterprise system, is a testament to how much harm can be done by mistakes on the part of a few men when they wield vast power over the monetary system of a country.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Source: (1962), Ch. 3 The Control of Money, p. 50

Men, Parting, Country

“Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all -- the apathy of human beings.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

My Religion / Light in My Darkness, Ch 6 (1927)
Context: Self-culture has been loudly and boastfully proclaimed as sufficient for all our ideals of perfection. But if we listen to the best men and women everywhere … they will say that science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all — the apathy of human beings.

Science, Evil

“It turned out that my curiosity did not outweigh my courage after all. Sometimes love means not being able to bear seeing the one you love the way they are, when they're not what you hoped for.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Tiger Lily

Love, Hope, Way, Courage

“Grief is a curious thing, when it happens unexpectedly. It is a Band-aid being ripped away, taking the top layer off a family. And the underbelly of a household is never pretty, ours no exception.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Family

“He scowled at Jason. "And please, I don't like being touched. Don't ever grab me again.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

“Some folks are happier not being saved.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Sugar Daddy

“Sometimes you never feel meaner than the moment you stop being mean.”

Rebecca Stead book When You Reach Me

Source: When You Reach Me

Feeling

“Since I am not actually a real human being, my emotional responses are generally limited to what I have learned to fake.”

Jeff Lindsay book Dearly Devoted Dexter

Source: Dearly Devoted Dexter

Learning

“I felt myself being invaded through and through, I crumbled, disintegrated, and only emptiness remained.”

Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) Polish science fiction author

Source: Solaris by Stanislaw Lem | Summary & Study Guide

“Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

"Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour"
Collected Poems (1954)
Variant: We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.
Context: We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.
Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.

Light

“Suffering pulls us farther away from other human beings. It builds a wall made of cries and contempt to separate us.”

Elie Wiesel book Day

Source: Day

Suffering

“Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of.”

Jane Austen book Emma

Emma (1815)
Works, Emma

Nature, Personality

“I mean, I can understand not being as pricey as Percy or Jason, maybe… but am I worth, like, two Franks, or three Franks?”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Understanding

“If you're going to insist on being reasonable, I'm going to stop hanging with you.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Unbound

Source: Lover Unbound

“We should not shed tears
That is a surrender of the body to the heart
It is only proof
That we are beings that do not know
What to do with out hearts”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

Source: Bleach, Volume 01

Tear, Heart

“The taste of the usual was like cinders in his mouth, and there were moments when he felt as if he were being buried alive under his future.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

Future

“As for myself, I always willingly acknowledge my own self as the principal cause of every good and of every evil which may befall me; therefore I have always found myself capable of being my own pupil, and ready to love my teacher.”

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

Memoirs (trans. Machen 1894), book 1, Preface http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/c/casanova/c33m/preface2.html <br class="br">Referenced <br class="br">Source: Geschichte Meines Lebens

Love, Teachers, Evil

“The important thing was that we were being polite and not saying all the things that were making us unhappy, which was the only way we knew how to love each other.”

Ruth Ozeki book A Tale for the Time Being

Source: A Tale for the Time Being

Love, Way

“We were, the two of us, still fragmentary beings, just beginning to sense the presence of an unexpected, to be-aquired reality that would fill us and make us whole.”

Haruki Murakami book South of the Border, West of the Sun

Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun

Reality, Sense

“I was completely astonished by the beauty of nature. Our eyes see just a small fraction of the light in the world. It is a trick to make a colored world, which does not exist outside of human beings.”

Albert Hofmann (1906–2008) Swiss chemist

World, Beauty, Color, Nature

“Vivo sin vivir en mí… muero porque no muero. (I live without really being alive… I die because I am not dying.)”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

“We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Source: The Power of Myth

Forgetting

“But the downside of being con artist is that it very hard to con. Even if the lies you tell are to yourself.”

Ally Carter book Heist Society

Source: Heist Society

“A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense, and is, thereby, a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety.”

Ansel Adams (1902–1984) American photographer and environmentalist

"A Personal Credo" (1943), published in American Annual of Photography (1944), reprinted in Nathan Lyons, editor, Photographers on Photography (1966), reprinted in Vicki Goldberg, editor, Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to the Present (1988)

Life, Feeling, Sense

“Do we still have to floss?" Tommy asked. "I mean, what's the point of being immortal if we have to floss?”

Christopher Moore (1957) American writer of comic fantasy

Source: You Suck

“a poet is someone who is abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement. Which is to say the highest form of concentration possible: fascination; to report on the electrifying experience of being”

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

“Of course I alienate myself from society. It's the only way I know of not being constantly reminded of all the ways I'm alienated from society.”

Joshua Ferris book To Rise Again at a Decent Hour

Source: To Rise Again at a Decent Hour

Way

“The sweetest part of being a couple is sharing your life with someone else.
But my life, evidently, had not been good enough to share.”

Charlaine Harris book Club Dead

Source: Club Dead

Life, Parting, Sad, Heartbreaking

“the work of salvation, in its full sense, is (1) about whole human beings, not merely souls; (2) about the present, not simply the future; and (3) about what God does through us, not merely what God does in and for us.”

N.T. Wright (1948) Anglican bishop

God, Soul, Sense, Future

“My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”

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

Life, Happiness

“You really want to know what being an X-Man feels like? Just be a smart bookish boy of color in a contemporary U. S. ghetto. Mamma mia! Like having bat wings or a pair of tentacles growing out of your chest.”

Junot Díaz book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Source: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Color, Feeling, Boy

“You can’t help being young, but it’s past time that you stopped being stupid.”

Scott Lynch The Lies of Locke Lamora

Interlude “Locke Stays for Dinner” section 1 (p. 121)
Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora (2006)

Stupidity, Time, Past, Help

“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

“Oh, I'm starting to cry again. That's what happens when you think about life being fair. And I can't explain why it isn't… I don't think it's something anybody knows.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Life, Thinking, Cry

“To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Part 1, Chapter 1
Brideshead Revisited (1945)
Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

Love, Wisdom

“Women are still in emotional bondage as long as we need to worry that we might have to make a choice between being heard and being loved.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: A Woman's Worth

Love, Women

“Everyone knows what falling in love is like but being in love is what people have lost. That intimacy to be in bed with somebody and just laugh and not hold anybody accountable for what they say.”

Mark Polish (1970) American film actor, screenwriter and producer

Love, People

“That's one of the central problems of history, isn't it, sir? The question of subjective versus objective interpretation, the fact that we need to know the history of the historian in order to understand the version that is being put in front of us.”

Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending

Source: The Sense of an Ending

History, Understanding, Question, Problem

“Foaly twitched his tail contentedly. Genius. No point in being humble about it.”

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

Source: The Arctic Incident

“This is the hard part about having best friends that I feel no attachment to -- I don't give them any benefit of the doubt. And being best friends is always about the benefit of the doubt.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Feeling, Parting

“Two bubbles found they had rainbows on their curves.
They flickered out saying:
"It was worth being a bubble, just to have held that rainbow thirty seconds.”

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American writer and editor

“You’ll never regret being a good friend.”

Emily Giffin Something Borrowed

Source: Something Borrowed

“Imagine being served a plate of sushi. But this plate also holds all of the animals that were killed for your serving of sushi. The plate might have to be five feet across.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Eating Animals

Source: Eating Animals

Imagination, Animals

“I would like to perfect the art of being studiously aloof”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Source: Ani Difranco - Little Plastic Castle

Art, Perfection

“It is by being fully involved with every detail of our lives, whether good or bad, that we find happiness, not by trying to look for it directly.”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934) Hungarian American psychologist

Happiness

“I'm not telling you that suicidal people aren't so far away from people who can get by; I'm telling you that people who can get by aren't so far away from being suicidal.”

Nick Hornby book A Long Way Down

Source: A Long Way Down

People, Suicide

“Owning a dog is slightly less expensive than being addicted to crack.”

Jen Lancaster (1967) American writer

Source: Bitter Is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass, Or, Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office

Dogs

“No one so dislikes being punished unjustly as the person who might have been punished justly on scores of previous occasions, if he had only been found out.”

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

Source: Tales of St. Austin's

Personality

“He felt his heart, which no longer beat, contract, and he wondered if there was anything in the world as painful as not being able to protect the people you loved.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Love, Pain, People, World

“Something is wrong here: sex has been with us since the human race began its existence, yet I would estimate that 90 percent of human beings still suffer enormous inhibitions in this area.”

Xaviera Hollander (1943) Dutch prostitute

Sex, Suffering

“Men… performed better when they understood why they were being asked to carry out a task.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: The Invaders

Men

“Listen up—there’s no war that will end all wars,’ Crow tells me. ‘War breeds war. Lapping up the blood shed by violence, feeding on wounded flesh. War is a perfect, self-contained being. You need to know that.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

War, Perfection

“Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

“When someone has been mean to you, why would you want to be good to them?' 'You wouldn't want to. That's what makes it hard. You do it anyway. Being good is hard. Much harder than being bad.”

Jeanne DuPrau The People of Sparks

Source: The People of Sparks

“You don't blame us for being here, do you? After all, we have no place to go. No home… Incidentally, what an excellent day for an exorcism…”

William Peter Blatty book The Exorcist

Source: The Exorcist

Home

“Imagine that human existence is defined by an Ache: the Ache of our not being, each of us, the center of the universe; of our desires forever outnumbering our means of satisfying them.”

Jonathan Franzen book How to Be Alone

Source: How to Be Alone

Imagination, Universe

“When I hear people talk about juggling, or the sacrifices they make for their children, I look at them like they're crazy, because 'sacrifice' infers that there was something better to do than being with your children.”

Chris Rock (1965) American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director

Children, People

“The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it's their fault.”

Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) United States Secretary of State

People, Thinking

“What the hell?" I asked. Is this daring escape being sponsored by Honda?”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

Hell

“Strange, what being forced to slow down could do to a person.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

Personality

“All the human and animal manure which the world wastes, if returned to the land, instead of being thrown into the sea, would suffice to nourish the world.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

World, Animals, Sea

“It wouldn't be fair to ask you to be around me when I'm so sick of being around me.”

David Levithan book Another Day

Source: Another Day

“Being unheard is the ground floor of giving up, and giving up is the ground floor of doing yourself in. It’s not so much, what’s the point? It’s more like, what’s the difference?”

Mitch Albom For One More Day

Source: For One More Day

“I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting. It has taken me so many years to be okay with being different, and with being this alive, this intense. (xxvi)”

Eve Ensler (1953) American playwright, performer, feminist, activist and artist

Source: I am an Emotional Creature

Love

“Shopping is a woman thing. It's a contact sport like football. Women enjoy the scrimmage, the noisy crowds, the danger of being trampled to death, and the ecstasy of the purchase.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

Death, Women, Sport, Football

“I will call no being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow creatures; and if such a creature can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go.”

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) British philosopher and political economist

Source: An examination of Sir William Hamilton's philosophy, and of the principal philosophical questions discussed in his writings

Hell

“So this is how a person can come to despise himself-knowing he's doing the wrong thing and not being able to stop.”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Source: Flowers for Algernon

Personality

“Writing is one of the few careers for which you essentially train yourself, the other two major ones being juggling and pickpocketing.”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Training

“The thing everyone should realize is that the key to happiness is being happy for yourself and yourself.”

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

Source: Seriously... I'm Kidding

Happiness, Happy

“If you've ever had that feeling of loneliness, of being an outsider, it never quite leaves you. You can be happy or successful or whatever, but that thing still stays within you.”

Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker

Happiness, Feeling, Success, Loneliness

“Being in love made you especially vulnerable.”

James Jones (1921–1977) American author

Love

“The person doing the worrying experiences it as a form of love; the person being worried about experiences it as a form of control.”

John Lanchester book Capital

Source: Capital

Love, Personality

“I feel no grief for being called something
which
I am not;
in fact, it's enthralling, somehow, like a good
back rub”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

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

Feeling

“Nakata's empty inside… Do you know what it means to be completely empty? Being empty is like a vacant house. An unlocked, vacant house. Anybody can come in, anytime they want. That's what scares me the most”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Housing

“In the deepest sense, the being in a state of sin is the sin, the particular sins are not the continuation of sin, they are expressions of its continuation.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening

Sense

“But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Variant: We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self destruction.
Source: Mockingjay

Stupidity, Thinking, Memory

“Better be," Eve said. She mock-bit at his finger. "I could totally date somebody else, you know."
"And I could rent out your room."
"And I could put your game console on eBay."
"Hey," Shane protested. "Now you're just being mean.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Lord of Misrule

Game

“Human beings can always be relied upon to assert, with vigor, their God-given right to be stupid.”

Dean Koontz book Seize the Night

Seize the Night (1999)

God, Stupidity

“The truth is we never stop being children, terrible children covered in sores and knotty veins and tumors and age spots, but ultimately children, in other words we never stop clinging to life because we are life.”

Roberto Bolaño book 2666

Source: 2666

Life, Children, Truth, Age

“Part of being a writer is defending your vision and not caving in to outside pressures.”

Jennifer Crusie (1949) American writer

Parting

“I'm not interested in being a "lover." I'm interested in only being love.”

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

Love, Lovers

“There were thousands and thousands of forms of joy in the world, but that all were essentially one and the same, namely, the joy of being able to love.”

Michael Ende book The Neverending Story

Source: The Neverending Story

Love, World, Joy

“I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

Thinking

“Being a teenager and figuring out who you are is hard enough without someone attacking you”

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

“Suffering is always the effect of wrong thought in some direction. It is an indication that the individual is out of harmony with himself, with the Law of his being.”

James Allen book As a Man Thinketh

Source: As a Man Thinketh

Law, Suffering

“Being productive. Ugh. It's such a human concept. It implies you have limited time (LOL) and have to work hard to make something happen (double LOL).”

Rick Riordan book The Dark Prophecy

Source: The Dark Prophecy

Time

“I think of myself as an intelligent, sensitive human being with the soul of a clown which always forces me to blow it at the most important moments.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Soul, Intelligence, Thinking

“Being the best was as equal to being in the middle, which was equal to being the worst. All were merely a state of being. It was how a person felt in that state and why they were in that state that was the important thing.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: The Gift

Personality

“I cut you out because I couldn't stand being a passing fancy.”

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

“I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous, everyone hasn't met me yet.”

Rodney Dangerfield (1921–2004) American actor and comedian

Quoted in Bob Fenster, Laugh Off: The Comedy Showdown Between Real Life and the Pros (2005), p. 37
Variant: I told my psychiatrist everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous; everyone hasn't met me yet.

Hate