Quotes about being
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“I forgave you because I love you and I hate being without you. I hate it, my cat hates it. And because Catarina convinced me I was being stupid.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Love, Hate, Stupidity, Cats

“Life has no meaning, the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

Life

“as imperfect human beings, any of us, all of us, are subject at some time or another to make mistakes!”

Brenda Jackson (1953) American writer

Source: Perfect Timing

Time

“Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Lectures on Philosophy

Feeling, Understanding, Personality

“Being human means losing everything we love best in the world," she murmured as she released me. "But would you ask to be anything else?”

Alice Hoffman book The Dovekeepers

Source: The Dovekeepers

Love, World

“If I am truly to become an autonomous woman, then I must take over that role of being my own guardian… I not only have to become my own husband, but I need to be my own father, too.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

“The main trouble with being an honest man was that it lost you all your illusions.”

James Jones book From Here to Eternity

Source: From Here to Eternity

“You have decided being scared is caused mostly by thinking.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Thinking

“Besides, I could hardly complain to the administration that I was being forced to learn magic.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Learning

“Once you believe in yourself
and see your soul as divine and precious,
you'll automatically be converted
to a being who can create miracles.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

Soul

“Six hundred and forty fish later, the only thing I know is everything you love will die. The first time you meet someone special, you can count on them one day being dead and in the ground.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Survivor

Source: Survivor

Love, Fish, Time, Dead

“God will judge us, Mr. Harris, by--by what we did to relieve the suffering of our fellow human beings. I don't think God cares what doctrine we embrace.”

Abraham Verghese book Cutting for Stone

Source: Cutting for Stone

God, Thinking, Suffering

“She was smart and funny and vulnerable and just so goddamned beautiful, the kind of beautiful that was worth being shot down over.”

Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer

Source: How to Talk to a Widower

Beauty

“Evil doesn't die. It never dies. It just takes on a new face, a new name. Just because we've been touched by it once, it doesn't mean we're immune to ever being hurt again. Lightning can strike twice.”

Tess Gerritsen book The Surgeon

Source: The Surgeon

Evil, Hurt

“Love cannot thrive simply by being offered. Sooner or later it must be accepted and reciprocated. It must be seen for what it is and nourished according to its needs, or it will die.”

Cameron Dokey (1956) American writer

Source: Winter's Child: A Retelling of The Snow Queen

Love

“And all the time she felt the reflection of his hopelessness in her. She couldn't quite, quite love in hoplessness. And he, being hopeless, couldn't ever love at all.”

D.H. Lawrence book Women in Love

Source: Women in Love

Love, Time

“I was looking for the opposite, really -something that might put an end to being in love”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Love

“love being such, or such,
the normal corners of your heart
will never guess how much
my wonderful jealousy is dark”

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

Source: Complete Poems, 1904-1962

Love, Jealousy, Heart

“The talent for being happy is appreciating and liking what you have, instead of what you don't have.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Source: Woody Allen on Woody Allen

Happiness

“This is not going to be easy. I'm good at being bad, but I'm bad at being good. I don't know the first thing about good deeds.”

Neal Shusterman book Everlost

Source: Everlost

“We all belong here equally… Just by being born onto the earth we are accepted and the earth supports us. We don't have to be especially good. We don't have to accomplish anything. We don't even have to be healthy.”

Polly Horvath (1957) Author

Source: My One Hundred Adventures

Support

“I take much pleasure in being alone
but there is also a strange warm grace in not being alone.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Pleasure

“we are human beings, we are born full of guilt; we feel terrified when happiness becomes a real possibility.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

Happiness, Feeling

“But let us not put our sights too high. We do not have to be saviours of the world! We are simply human beings, enfolded in weakness and in hope, called together to change our world one heart at a time. (163)”

Jean Vanier (1928–2019) Canadian humanitarian

Source: Becoming Human

World, Hope, Change, Time

“Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from.”

Al Franken (1951) American comedian and politician

Oh, the Things I Know (2002)

Parting

“Cultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete. And, worse than that, the more deeply it goes the less complete it is. It is a strange science whose most telling assertions are its most tremulously based, in which to get somewhere with the matter at hand is to intensify the suspicion, both your own and that of others, that you are not quite getting it right. But that, along with plaguing subtle people with obtuse questions, is what being an ethnographer is like.”

Clifford Geertz book The Interpretation of Cultures

Source: The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), p. 29

People, Question, Science

“The attempt to force human beings to despise themselves… is what I call hell.”

André Malraux (1901–1976) French novelist, art theorist and politician

Section 2
La condition humaine [Man's Fate] (1933)

Hell

“The problem with being nuts, she thought, is that you don't always feel as if you're nuts. Sometimes, in fact, you feel perfectly sane, and there just happens to be a trailer-shaped dragon crouching in the lot next door.”

Christopher Moore (1957) American writer of comic fantasy

Feeling, Problem

“I have not ceased being fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

Fear, Courageous

“A woman must be nursed into subsistence by love, where a man can become stronger by being hated." - from 'Cows in Art Class”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Love, Hate, Art

“You can either practice being right or practice being kind.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

“I'm tired of being your best friend. I'm tired of being second best. I won't settle for that anymore. It's all or nothing, Schuyler. You have to decide. Him or me.

- Oliver Hazzard-Perry”

Melissa de la Cruz book Revelations

Source: Revelations

“I suppose we must work on being gracious and grateful until we can do for ourselves. Someday the wheel of fate will put us in a position to be of use to them, and we will remember how much easier it is to give help than it is to accept it.”

Patricia Briggs book River Marked

Source: River Marked

Fate, Help

“I never could stand being forced to do something I didn't want to do at a time I didn't want to do it. Whenever I was able to do something I liked to do, though, when I wanted to do it, and the way I wanted to do it, I'd give it everything I had.”

Haruki Murakami book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Way, Time

“My flesh looked like it wasn't trying. It looked like it hated being part of me.”

Charles Bukowski book Pulp

Source: Pulp

Hate, Parting

“But chance runs like a river through all our lives, and being prepared for surprise is the best we can do.”

Kenneth Oppel Skybreaker

Source: Skybreaker

Chance

“He's always, always in my mind — not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself — but as my own being.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Catherine Earnshaw (Ch. IX).
Source: Wuthering Heights (1847)
Context: I can not express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is, or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of creation if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning; my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger. I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff - he's always, always in my mind - not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself - but as my own being; so, don't talk of our separation again - it is impracticable.

Pleasure

“And I just want to tell you, at some point it doesn’t matter who was right and who was wrong. At some point, being
angry is just another bad habit, like smoking, and you keep poisoning
yourself without thinking about it.”

Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer

Source: This is Where I Leave You

Thinking

“Will-," Tessa began but it was too late, Church made a yowling noise at being woken, and lashed out with his claws. Will began to swear. Tessa left, unable to hide the slightest of smiles as she went.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Smile

“Religion humanizes this universe, makes us feel important and loved. We are not animals governed by uncontrollable drives, animals that die for no apparent reason, but creatures made in the image of supreme being”

Robert Greene book The Art of Seduction

Source: The Art of Seduction

Love, Religion, Feeling, Universe

“God, if you ever loved me, open my eyes for me when I'm being this stupid! (Ron)”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Once Dead, Twice Shy

Love, God, Stupidity

“Better to be a laughing-stock than lose the fort for fear of being one.”

Rosemary Sutcliff book The Eagle of the Ninth

Source: The Eagle of the Ninth

Fear

“You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

“Good habits are worth being fanatical about.”

John Irving (1942) American novelist and screenwriter

“If you can wait and not be tired of waiting, or being lied about, don't deal in lies. Or being hated, don't give way to hating, and yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise.”

Rudyard Kipling book The Second Jungle Book

Stanza 1.
The Second Jungle Book (1895), If— (1896)
Source: If: A Father's Advice to His Son
Context: If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise.

Hate, Way, Waiting

“He suddenly understood the message of so many spiritual teachers that the only revolution that can work is the inner transformation of every human being.”

Stanislav Grof (1931) Czech pychiatrist

Source: The Holotropic Mind: The Three Levels of Human Consciousness and How They Shape Our Lives

Teachers

“When I meet someone I like being with more than I like being alone, I'll marry her.”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

“Statistically the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you would think the mere fact of existence would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise.”

Lewis Thomas book The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

"On Probability and Possibility"
The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974)
Context: Statistically the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you would think the mere fact of existence would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise. We are alive against the stupendous odds of genetics, infinitely outnumbered by all the alternates who might, except for luck, be in our places.

Thinking

“Patti, did art get us?'
I looked away, not really wanting to think about it. 'I don't know, Robert. I don't know.'
Perhaps it did, but no one could regret that. Only a fool would regret being had by art; or a saint.”

Patti Smith Just Kids

Source: Just Kids

Fools, Art, Thinking

“But adulthood," continued the barely twentysomething, "doesn't give you power over what matters most. It doesn't protect you from pain, loss, fate. That's part of being human.”

Cynthia Leitich Smith (1967) American writer and poet

Source: Tantalize

Pain, Fate, Loss, Parting

“If you appeal to the crowd, either by being humorous or brutal or eccentric, you gain favor.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“Our task is to educate their (our students) whole being so they can face the future. We may not see the future, but they will and our job is to help them make something of it.”

Ken Robinson (1950) UK writer

Source: The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

Education, Future, Help

“All the opportunities you let slip by! The idea, the inspiration just doesn´t come fast enough. Instead of being open, you´re closed up tight. That´s the worst sin of all - the sin of omission.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Mandarins

Source: The Mandarins

Idea

“The thing about grown ups is that they're always wanting you to be this Great Hero and Leader. What's wrong with being NORMAL, for Thor's sake? What's wrong with just being SO-SO at stuff? They're just totally unrealistic…”

Cressida Cowell book How to Steal a Dragon's Sword

Source: How to Steal a Dragon's Sword

“The thrill of being ignored!”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

“Many people will find this book disrespectful. There is nothing amusing about being dead, they will say. Ah, but there is.”

Mary Roach book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Source: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

People, Books, Dead

“She was so tired of being strong.”

Kristin Hannah book The Nightingale

Source: The Nightingale

Strong

“Human beings live in their myths. They only endure their realities.”

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

Reality

“That was the thing about being on the inside: the world was just going on, even when it seemed like time for you had stopped for good.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

World, Time

“Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story, instead of the actor in it.”

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

Change

“Choose to be kind over being right and you'll be right everytime.”

Richard Carlson (1961–2006) Author, psychotherapist and motivational speaker

Variant: Choose being kind over being right and you'll be right every time.

“Would you like to meet him? I could summon him up in a trice of you like. Being a warlock, and all.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“Being average means you are as close to the bottom as you are to the top.”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

Source: Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court

“To be a child means to owe one's existence to another, and even in our adult life we never quite reach the point where we no longer have to give thanks for being the person we are.”

Hans Urs Von Balthasar (1905–1988) Swedish Catholic theologian

Source: Unless You Become Like This Child

Life, Personality

“Do you really want to be happy? You can begin by being appreciative of who you are and what you've got. Do you want to be really miserable? You can begin by being discontented.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

That Sort of Bear.
Source: The Tao of Pooh (1982)

Happiness

“My life looked good on paper - where, in fact, almost all of it was being lived.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Source: Experience: A Memoir

Life

“By morning she was dead. She had not died of starvation or committed suicide by any conventional means. She had simply willed herself to die, and being a strong-willed woman, she had succeeded. She had missed dying on her birthday by two days.”

John Berendt Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Source: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Birthday, Suicide, Strong, Dead

“You've never been in love," she said. "You don't understand."

"If being in love means giving up your freedom, not to mention your opportunities," Caitlin said, "Then I haven't missed anything.”

Judy Blume Summer Sisters

Source: Summer Sisters

Love, Understanding, Freedom

“Being smart as a whip includes knowing when not to crack it.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“Being here? With you? I've met my subconscious, and he's not that sick.”

Jim Butcher book Ghost Story

Source: Ghost Story

“Vampires were always either trying to kill me, or own me. God I hated being popular.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Cerulean Sins

Source: Cerulean Sins

God, Hate

“In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present - I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world?”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

World

“You keep showing up here? Being who you are?' There was a pause. 'I'm going to fall in love with you.' -Rehvenge”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Avenged

Love

“A beast does not know that he is a beast, and the nearer a man gets to being a beast, the less he knows it.”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

“She was sitting in a garden more beautiful than even her rampaging imagination could ever have conjured up, and she was being serenaded by trees.”

Lynn Kurland (2000) American writer

Source: Spellweaver

Beauty, Imagination, Tree

“There are times when it will go so wrong that you will barely be alive, and times when you realise that being barely alive, on your own terms, is better than living a bloated half-life on someone else's terms.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Life, Time

“It was always the becoming he dreamed of, never the being.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book This Side of Paradise

Source: This Side of Paradise

Dreams

“Life is merely terrible; I feel it as few others do. Often — and in my inmost self perhaps all the time — I doubt whether I am a human being.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Life, Feeling, Time

“Using supernatural beings to build the perfect weapon? Intriguing idea."

"Not really," I said. "They did it on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A sub-par season. I slept through half the episodes.”

Kelley Armstrong book Stolen

Source: Stolen

Idea, Perfection, Season

“We have in fact only two certainties in this world—that we are not everything and that we will die. To be conscious of not being everything, as one is of being mortal, is nothing. But if we are without a narcotic, an unbreathable void reveals itself. I wanted to be everything, so that falling into this void, I might summon my courage and say to myself: “I am ashamed of having wanted to be everything, for I see now that it was to sleep.” From that moment begins a singular experience. The mind moves in a strange world where anguish and ecstasy coexist.”

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

Source: L’Expérience Intérieure (1943), p. xxxii

World, Courage, Sleep

“You have grown abominably lazy, and you like gossip, and waste time on frivolous things, you are contented to be petted and admired by silly people, instead of being loved and respected by wise ones.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Love, People, Time

“Hide-and-seek, grown-up style. Wanting to hide. Needing to be sought. Confused about being found.”

Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer

Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things

“Being good felt like a heavy coat, so I took it off.”

Naomi Shihab Nye (1952) American writer

“There are few things harder than being born into the wrong body.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

“Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion.”

John Berger book Ways of Seeing

Source: Ways of Seeing (1972), p. 148

Envy, Personality

“There comes a time when you're losing a fight that it just doesn't make sense to keep on fighting. It's not that you're being a quitter, it's just that you've got the sense to know when enough is enough.”

Christopher Paul Curtis book Bud, Not Buddy

Source: Bud, Not Buddy

Sense, Time, Fight

“Tory a father isn’t supposed to fear his fourteen-year-old daughter. That being sad, you terrify me.”

Kathy Reichs book Seizure

Source: Seizure

Sadness, Fear, Daughters

“Life was all about being in a certain place, at a certain time.”

Jodi Picoult book Second Glance

Source: Second Glance

Life, Time

“A non-doer is very often a critic-that is, someone who sits back and watches doers, and then waxes philosophically about how the doers are doing. It's easy to be a critic, but being a doer requires effort, risk, and change.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

Effort, Change

“It's different being afraid when there's the hope it will amount to something.”

Justin Cronin The Passage

Source: The Passage

Hope

“We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.”

Stephen R. Covey (1932–2012) American educator, author, businessman and motivational speaker

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, in The Phenomenon of Man [Le Phénomène Humain] (1955); Covey quotes this in Living the 7 Habits : Stories of Courage and Inspiration (2000), p. 47
Variant: We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.
A paraphrase of De Chardin's statement which has also become misattributed to Covey.
Misattributed
Variant: We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.

“Most dancers I know, especially the talented and successful ones, seem to possess [my dog's] knack for living moment to moment. You see, their idea of time is related to those infinitely short moments when they are onstage being their superselves.”

Paul Taylor (1923–2015) american philosopher, born 1923

Source: Private Domain: An Autobiography

Dogs, Idea, Time, Success