Quotes about being
page 42

“Learning was of two kinds: the one being the things we learned and knew, and the other being the training that taught us how to find out what we did not know?”

George S. Clason book The Richest Man in Babylon

Source: The Richest Man in Babylon

Learning, Training

“… classical Arabic, being the language of the Qur'an, has not changed at all in fourteen centuries, making the writings of the early Islamic scholars as accessible today as they were then.”

Jim Al-Khalili (1962) British theoretical physicist, author and broadcaster

Change

“Often, moreover, it is… that aspect of our being that society finds eccentric, ridiculous, or disagreeable, that holds our sweet waters, our secret well of happiness, the key to our equanimity in malevolent climes.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Source: Still Life with Woodpecker

Happiness, Secret, Water

“That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

Depressing

“Helplessness is such a rotten feeling. There's nothing you can do about it. Being helpless is like being paralyzed. It's sickness. The cure calls for a monumental effort to stand up and start walking somewhere, anywhere. But that takes some doing.”

Chuck Barris (1929–2017) American game show creator, producer, and host

Source: You and Me, Babe

Feeling, Effort

“Amazing how he could make her feel. Safe in a vacant lot, warm in the middle of the night. Just being this close to him, being able to touch his thoughts and feel his presence, was comforting-and dizzying.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Dark Visions

Feeling, Night

“I never said that. I just didn't correct you when you were, you know, wrong. Anyway, I just saved you from being burned to death, so I figure you're not allowed to be mad." -Jace”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Death, Madness

“Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

People, Way

“Yes, men are pigs. Except your brother, of course. He's actually a decent human being. Almost a woman.

-Jillian's mother”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Catch a Mate

Men

“I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.”

Peter de Vries (1910–1993) American editor and novelist

Love

“Phone calls like ours only happen when you've spent several years hurting and being hurt, until every work you utter or hear becomes coded and loaded, as complicated and full of subtext as a bleak and brilliant play.”

Nick Hornby book How to Be Good

Source: How to Be Good

Hurt

“That was one of the virtues of being a pessimist: nothing was ever as bad as you thought it would be.”

James Jones book From Here to Eternity

Source: From Here to Eternity

“How is Ty? There is nothing wrong with Ty, but he is different, and the Clave hates all that is different. They will try to punish him, for being who he is. They would punish a star for burning.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Bitter of Tongue

Hate, Star

“I urge you to examine in your own mind the assumptions which must lay behind using the police power to insist that once-sovereign spirits have no choice but to submit to being schooled by strangers.”

John Taylor Gatto (1935–2018) American teacher, book author

School

“You do have the idea of being ‘just good friends?’”
He gave her a sideways look. “For so high and honorable an estate,” Roshaun said, “ ‘just’ seems a poor modifier to choose.”

Diane Duane Wizards at War

Source: Wizards at War

Idea

“All of us started normal. All of us started out as functioning human beings with the potential to do almost anything we wanted, but somewhere along the paths of our lives, we got lost.”

James Frey book A Million Little Pieces

page 332
Source: A Million Little Pieces (2003)
Context: All of us started out normal. All of us started out as functioning human beings with the potential to do almost anything we wanted, but somewhere along the paths of our lives we got lost. Though we are here at this Clinic trying to find our way back, we all know that most of us will never get there. Things like the fight allow us to dream, and take us away from here, and allow us to imagine what the normal World must be like and how normal people must live in it.

“Ivan tells Anna: "I used to imagine that being embraced by a woman… as something so wonderful that it would make me forget everthing… [But] happiness, it turns out, will be to share with you the burden I can't share with anyone else.”

Vasily Grossman (1905–1964) Soviet writer and journalist who originally trained as an engineer

Source: Everything Flows

Happiness, Imagination, Forgetting

“You can not stop you from being who you are.”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

“its not bad to be different. Sometimes it's the mark of being very very talented.”

Chris Van Allsburg (1949) US children's writer and illustrator

“Reality - Dreams = Animal Being
Reality + Dreams = A Heart-Ache (usually called Idealism)
Reality + Humor = Realism (also called Conservatism)
Dreams - Humor = Fanaticism
Dreams + Humor = Fantasy
Reality + Dreams + Humor = Wisdom”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living

Wisdom, Dreams, Reality, Heart

“It is a terrible thing to be happy! How pleased we are with it! How all-sufficient we think it! How, being in possession of the false aim of life, happiness, we forget the true aim, duty!”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Life, Happiness, Thinking, Falseness

“I wonder if being sane means disregarding the chaos that is life, pretending only an infinitesimal segment of it is reality.”

Rabih Alameddine book Koolaids: The Art of War

Source: Koolaids: The Art of War

Life, Reality

“I wasn't a misanthrope and I wasn't a misogynist but I liked being alone. It felt good to sit alone in a small space and smoke and drink. I had always been good company for myself.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Drink

“I miss everyone. I can remember being young and feeling a thing and identifying it as homesickness, and then thinking well now that’s odd, isn’t it, because I was home, all the time. What on earth are we to make of that?”

David Foster Wallace book The Broom of the System

Source: The Broom of the System

Feeling, Home, Thinking, Time

“Being noticed can be a burden. Jesus got himself crucified because he got himself noticed. So I disappear a lot.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

“What a blessed if painful thing, this business of being alive.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: NOS4A2

Pain, Business

“Dustfinger still clearly remembered the feeling of being in love for the first time. How vulnerable his heart had suddenly been! Such a trembling, quivering thing, happy and miserably unhappy at once.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkheart

Love, Happiness, Feeling, Time

“The self is coming from a state of pure awareness from the state of being. All the rest that comes about in a outward manifesation of the physical world, including fluctuations which end up as thoughts and actions”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Source: The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell

World

“She nods. You're good for the ones you love. You want to be good for the ones you love, because you know that your time with them will end up being too short, no matter how long it is.”

Stephen King book Lisey's Story

Source: Lisey's Story

Love, Time

“I feel guilty for being a member of the human race.”

Jack Kerouac book Big Sur

Source: Big Sur (1962)

Feeling

“A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.”

Ansel Adams (1902–1984) American photographer and environmentalist

Feeling, Sense

“A blade of grass is a commonplace on Earth; it would be a miracle on Mars. Our descendants on Mars will know the value of a patch of green. And if a blade of grass is priceless, what is the value of a human being?”

Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot

Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

Grass

“When she didn't say anything more, he frowned, thinking this was the pair of them in a nutshell: Standing three feet away from each other and being separated by miles.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Thinking

“I find there is a quality to being alone that is incredibly precious. Life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid, fuller than before.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh book Gift from the Sea

Source: Gift from the Sea

Life

“Once you best a man, never gloat. Be generous and find something in his actions to praise. He won't enjoy being bested but he'll make a good face about it. Show him you appreciate it. Praise can win you a friend. Gloating will only ever make enemies.”

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

Source: The Ruins of Gorlan

“But I didn't understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

South of the Border, West of the Sun

Understanding, Hurt, Personality, Depressing

“I think being a woman is like being Irish… Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the same.”

Iris Murdoch book The Red and the Green

The Red and the Green (1965), ch. 2, p. 30.

Thinking

“Life, unfortunately, doesnʹt seem to care what we want. Act now while you can actually stop it from being a disaster.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

Life

“The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn (1944) American academic

Source: Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

Way

“Chris:I forgive you.
Annie: For killing my children and my sweet husband?
Chris: For being so wonderful a guy would choose hell over heaven just to be around you.”

Richard Matheson book What Dreams May Come

Source: What Dreams May Come

Children, Guy, Forgiveness, Hell

“(On being in a position of leadership) Even if it's your dog, you've got authority over somebody. Start treating him better.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Dogs

“Man is a being of varied, manifold and inconstant nature. And woman, by God, is a match for him.”

Dorothy Dunnett (1923–2001) British writer

Source: The Disorderly Knights

God, Nature

“How to seperate the humiliation from the loss, that's the catch. You can never be sure if what tortures you is the pain of being without someone you love or the embarrassment of admitting that you have been rejected.”

Stephen Fry book Making History

Source: Making History

Love, Pain, Loss

“Being a writer is a good, good thing.”

Shannon Hale (1974) American fantasy novelist

“He was too perfect, despite being one of the most imperfect people I knew.”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

People, Perfection

“Stop being so fruitlessly busy and. Use your. Reach out into the unknown and dream of how you can enlarge your experience and improve your mind and your soul and your world.”

Mary Balogh (1944) Welsh-Canadian novelist

World, Dreams, Soul, Business

“Practice sharing the fullness of your being, your best self, your enthusiasm, your vitality, your spirit, your trust, your openness, above all, your presence. Share it with yourself, with your family, with the world.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn (1944) American academic

Source: Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

World, Family

“Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.”

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

Change

“I do not feel inhibited or bound by what I am. That does not mean that I have never had bad scenes relating to being Black and/or a woman, it means that other people’s craziness has not managed to make me crazy.”

Lucille Clifton (1936–2010) American poet

People, Feeling

“The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

The Art of Fiction http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/artfiction.html (1884)

“Act out being alive, like a play. And after a while, a long while, it will be true.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“Ford carried on counting quietly. This is about the most aggressive thing you can do to a computer, the equivalent of going up to a human being and saying "Blood… blood… blood… blood…”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Happiness is not a state of being. Happiness is a vector, it is movement.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: Bruiser

Happiness

“Peace fell upon her spirit. Strong comfort and assurance bathed her whole being. Life was so solid and splendid, and so good.”

Thomas Wolfe book You Can't Go Home Again

Source: You Can't Go Home Again

Life, Peace, Strong

“I like the idea of being whoever I want to be.”

Dita Von Teese (1972) American burlesque dancer, model and actress

Variant: I've always loved the idea of not being what people expect me to be.

Idea

“What are you afraid of then?
Not Being able to see, I think not seeing because your obsessed by something that blots out the world.”

Eva Ibbotson book A Song for Summer

Source: A Song for Summer

World, Thinking

“Are you mine?”
Yes.
“Are you mine?”
Yes.
“Are you mine?”
No.
“No?”
No. I loved being yours. But now I’m mine, which is all I ever was, in the end.”

Emma Forrest (1976) British journalist, novelist and screenwriter

Source: Your Voice in My Head

Love

“The sandwich he made was bologna and cheese, his favorite. All the sandwiches he made were his favorites; that was one of the advantages of being single.”

Stephen King book 'Salem's Lot

Source: 'Salem's Lot

“I'm tired and I'm sick to death of being without you.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Source: The End of the Affair

Death

“An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't. It's knowing where to go to find out what you need to know, and it's knowing how to use the information once you get it.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

The first two sentences of this statement first appear as attributed to France in the 1990s, but the full statement is earlier attributed to William Feather, as quoted in Telephony, Vol. 150 (1956), p. 23 http://books.google.com/books?id=Wm0jAQAAMAAJ&q=%22being+able+to+differentiate+between+what+you+do+know%22&dq=%22being+able+to+differentiate+between+what+you+do+know%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=qYJOU9dAzoXRAYumgcAP&ved=0CMsCEOgBMDQ <br class="br">Misattributed

Education, Memory

“A person's birthday should be a special day, a wonderful day, a day of pure celebration for the luck of being born!”

Elise Broach Masterpiece

Source: Masterpiece

Birthday, Personality

“You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: Wild Geese

Life

“To philosophize is only another way of being afraid and leads hardly anywhere but to cowardly make-believe.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) French writer

Way

“If my work has a theme, I suspect it is a simple one: that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies their tragedy.”

Richard Yates (1926–1992) Novelist, short story writer

“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Thinking, Personality

“there is no harm in being afraid. The only harm is in doing what Fear tells you. Fear is not your master! Laugh in his face and he will run away.”

George MacDonald book Lilith

Source: Lilith

Fear

“You're giving up. You're slipping into being miserable and if you are being miserable, then it's all about you again. But it's not all about you. Love doesn't work that way.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

Love, Way

“Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.”

George Lucas (1944) American film producer

Source: The Empire Strikes Back

“There is one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to you to be free in life, all else being beyond your power: that is to recognize and profess the truth.”

Leo Tolstoy The Kingdom of God Is Within You

Source: The Kingdom of God Is Within You

Life, Truth

“If theater is ritual, then dance is too… It's as if the threads connecting us to the rest of the world were washed clean of preconceptions and fears. When you dance, you can enjoy the luxury of being you.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Witch Of Portobello

World, Fear, Dance

“I know I can walk through the world, along the shore or under the trees, with my mind filled with things of little importance, in full self-attendance. A condition I can't really call being alive.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: A Thousand Mornings

World, Tree

“When I am constantly running there is no time for being. When there is no time for being there is no time for listening.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

Time

“When you read you can have every adventure. In the pages of a book you can be anyone you ever dreamed of being… They can never tell you you're too young to slay the dragon -- because it all happens right here, where it's safe.”

Janette Oke (1935) Canadian writer

Source: Love Comes Softly

Books, Dreams, Reading

“Because it gives him and excuse to be around her--without making it look like he gave in first. That way, he can still seem manly."

"That's ridiculous." Especially the part about Christian being manly.

"Guys do ridiculous things for love.”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

Love, Way, Guy, Parting

“Hope is the most treacherous thing in the world. It lifts you and lets you plummet. But as long as you're being lifted you don't worry about plummeting.”

Elizabeth Wein book Rose Under Fire

Source: Rose Under Fire

World, Hope

“Sometimes we are blessed with being able to choose
the time, and the arena, and the manner of our revolution,
but more usually
we must do battle where we are standing.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

Source: Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

Time

“In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Love

“The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control.”

Bell Hooks book All About Love: New Visions

Source: All About Love: New Visions

Love, Pain, Loss, Hurt

“What's wrong with being number 2?”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

“… freedom being the sauce best beloved by the boyish soul.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Soul, Freedom

“Being a wizard gives you more power than most, but it doesn't change your heart. We're all human. We're all of us equally naked before the jaws of pain.”

Jim Butcher book White Night

Source: White Night

Pain, Change, Heart

“Grim sighed heavily. "I swear I'm getting a migraine."
"My mom suffers from those a lot, too."
"Being around you, I imagine she does.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Invincible

Imagination, Moms, Suffering

“Philosophizing is simply one way of being afraid, a cowardly pretense that doesn't get you anywhere.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night

Way

“Actually, watching television and surfing the Internet are really excellent practice for being dead.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Damned

Source: Damned (2011)
Context: If you can watch much television, then being dead will be a cinch. Actually, watching television and surfing the Internet are really excellent practice for being dead.

Dead

“He's being sarcastic. I hate when people are sarcastic. It's so cheap.”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Hate, People

“Being a victim is more palatable than having to recognize the intrinsic contradictions of one's own governing philosophy.”

Tom Clancy book The Hunt for Red October

Source: The Hunt for Red October

“I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Variant: I don’t think people are really seeking the meaning of Life. I think we’re seeking an experience of being alive…we want to feel the rapture of being alive

Life, People

“Being an adult means accepting those situations where no action is possible.”

John D. MacDonald book The Green Ripper

Source: The Green Ripper