Quotes about completion
page 8

“We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Education, Intelligence

“That she had so completely recovered her sanity was a source of sadness to her. One should never be cured of one's passion.”

Marguerite Duras book The Ravishing of Lol Stein

Source: The Ravishing of Lol Stein

Sadness, Passion

“when we release our dark side, it will completely overshadow the best in us.”

Paulo Coelho book Adultery

Source: Adultery

“If the guy you’re dating doesn’t seem to be completely into you, or you feel the need to start ‘figuring him out,’ please consider the glorious thought that he might just not be that into you. And then free yourself to go find someone that is.”

Greg Behrendt (1963) American comedian

Guy, Feeling

“He made me realize that hard work--that the act of finishing, of completing, of accomplishing a task--is joyous”

Sherman Alexie book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Source: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“All his life he would hold this moment as exemplary of what love was. It was not wanting anything more, nor was it expecting people to exceed what they had just accomplished; it was simply feeling so complete.”

John Irving book A Widow for One Year

Source: A Widow for One Year

Love, Life, People, Feeling

“There's a point, you know, where treachery is so complete and unashamed that it becomes statesmanship.”

George MacDonald Fraser Flashman and the Mountain of Light

Source: Flashman and the Mountain of Light

“That’s what I like about sports. No matter if everyone playing the game speaks completely different languages, on the field, or the court, wherever they are playing, the language of moves and passes and scores is all the same. Universal.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Game, Sport, Universe

“She seems to have had the ability to stand firmly on the rock of her past while living completely and unregretfully in the present.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Past

“Some men […] choose to seek greatness, while others are forced to it. It is always better to choose than to be forced.
A man who is forced is never completely his own master. He must dance on the strings of those who forced him.”

Robert Jordan The Great Hunt

Source: The Great Hunt

Men, Dance

“Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.”

Jane Austen book Emma

Source: Emma

Truth

“Is my paranoia getting completely out of hand, or are you mongoloids really talking about me?”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

“I try to be a careful person. Most of the time my carelessness is completely unintentional.”

David Levithan book Every You, Every Me

Source: Every You, Every Me

Time, Personality

“Because love, love is never finished. It circles and circles, the memories out of order and not always complete.”

Sara Zarr (1970) American children's writer

Source: Sweethearts

Love, Memory

“A horse must be a bit mad to be a good cavalry mount, and its rider must be completely so.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Source: The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great

Horse, Madness

“Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

Books, Feeling, Idea

“Love is needing someone. Love is putting up with someone's bad qualities because they somehow complete you.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

Love

“…I learned that it's possible to go on, no matter how impossible it seems, and that in time, the grief…lessens. It may not ever go away completely, but after a while it's not overwhelming.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Tim Wheddon, Chapter 20, p. 265
Source: 2000s, Dear John (2006)

Time

“What are you? (Nick)
Completely perplexed. You remember everything that happened. (Acheron)
Yeah. Duh. Not like you’re going to forget the killer zombie stalkers and psyched-out kitchen staff. What kind of freak show is this? (Nick)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

Forgetting

“How is it that we never completely comprehend our love for someone until they’re gone?”

Patti Smith M Train

Source: M Train

Love

“He was waving. "Saukerl," she laughed, and as she held up her hand, she knew completely that he was simultaneously calling her a Saumensch. I think that's as close to love as eleven-year-olds can get.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Love, Thinking

“I have almost completed a long novel, but it is unpublishable until my death and England's.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Death

“Miracles don't happen. You make them happen. They're not wishes or dreams or candles on a cake. They're not impossible. Reality is real. It's totally and completely under my control.”

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

Source: Far from Xanadu

Dreams, Reality

“No," said Luis, "You can't date the Lord of the Night Court."
"Well, I'm not, he dumped me."
"You can't get dumped by the lord of the night court."
"Oh, yes, you can. You so completely can.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Source: Ironside

Night

“To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from.”

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

“Because to me, there is no logic of any kind behind misogyny. Therefore, it’s funny, because it’s so completely random to me. It’s senseless.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

“We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we've lived through, or feel we've had enough time.”

Kazuo Ishiguro book Never Let Me Go

Source: Never Let Me Go

Feeling, Understanding, Time

“When I pictured myself, it was always like just an outline in a coloring book, with the inside not yet completed. All the standard features were there. but the colors, the zigzags and plaids, the bits and pieces that made up me, Halley, weren't yet in place. Scarlett's vibrant reds and golds helped some, but I was still waiting.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Someone Like You (1998)

Books, Color, Waiting, Help

“I am completely a loner. In my head I want to feel I can be anywhere. There is a sort of recklessness that being a loner allows me.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

Feeling

“if he goes and dies on me now, I know I'll go completely insane.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“Human beings are such knotted, desperate pieces of work-it's a rare thing to know one completely, to the core, and still love him.”

Dean Koontz book Your Heart Belongs to Me

Source: Your Heart Belongs to Me

Love

“When are you going to trust me Max?" asked Fang.
"When I go completely bonkers," I laughed.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

“Very
soon he
will vanish

completely in the wings

of his own
wordless
stanza”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“Sex pleasure in woman, as I have said, is a kind of magic spell; it demands complete abandon; if words or movements oppose the magic of caresses, the spell is broken.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Second Sex

Bk. 2, Pt.. 4, Ch. 3: Sexual Initiation. p. 396
The Second Sex (1949)

Pleasure, Sex

“AMANDA: I think very few people are completely normal really, deep down in their private lives.”

Noel Coward (1899–1973) English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer

Source: Private Lives an Intimate Comedy in Three Acts

People, Thinking

“From the first time I saw you, I've belonged to you completely. I still do. If you want me. -Jace”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Variant: Since the first time i saw you, I've belonged to you completely.
Source: City of Glass

Time

“This is why dreams can be such dangerous things: they smolder on like a fire does, and sometimes they consume us completely.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Dreams

“The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Source: The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

World, Idea

“Of course in the present day […] the world of work begins to become — threatens to become — our only world, to the exclusion of all else. The demands of the working world grow ever more total, grasping ever more completely the whole of human existence.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, pp. 64–65
Source: Leisure: The Basis Of Culture

World

“I don't know about the rest of you who have little voices, but something about mine made me feel completely compelled to listen to it.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

Feeling

“Love is not a thing, it is not lost when given. You can offer your love completely to hundreds of people and still retain the same love you had originally.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Love, People

“At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Variant: ... and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.
Source: Fight Club

Life, Time

“April 27. Incapable of living with people, of speaking. Complete immersion in myself, thinking of myself. Apathetic, witless, fearful. I have nothing to say to anyone - never.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Source: Diaries of Franz Kafka

People, Fear, Thinking

“Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love. Hatred which is completely vanquished by love, passes into love; and love is thereupon greater, than id hatred had not preceded it.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Love

“An average person who develops the habit of setting clear priorities and getting important tasks completed quickly will run circles around a genius who talks a lot and makes wonderful plans but gets very little done.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

Personality

“Love is finding that the things you like best about yourself are not in you at all, but in the person who completes you”

Orson Scott Card Sarah

Source: Sarah

Love, Personality

“Poor Finnick. Is this the first time in your life you haven't looked pretty?" I say.
"It must be. The sensation is completely new. How have you managed it all these years?" he asks.
"Just avoid mirrors. You'll forget about it," I say.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Life, Time, Forgetting

“Yet what keeps me from dissolving right now into a complete fairy-tale shimmer is this solid truth, a truth which has veritably built my bones over the last few years--I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Truth

“"Poor Finnick. Is this the first time in your life you haven't looked pretty?" I say.
"It must be. The sensation's completely new. How have you managed it all these years?"”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Katniss and Finnick, p. 316
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire (2009)

Life, Time

“Deliver me from Swedish furniture. Deliver me from clever art. May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Art, Perfection

“Her legs swing complete afternoons away.”

Jill Eisenstadt (1963) American writer

Source: From Rockaway

“Why try to pursue what is completed?”

Mikhail Bulgakov book The Master and Margarita

Source: The Master and Margarita

“Desire consumes you, it takes you over. You forget yourself completely. All you can think about is the other, the one you desire, your self is just a fire.”

Marilyn French (1929–2009) Novelist, critic

Source: Her Mother's Daughter

Thinking, Forgetting

“Agh-uhh!” the baboon grunted. He turned and waddled up the stairs. Unfortunately, the Lakers jersey didn’t completely cover his multicolored rear.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

“Love was a feeling completely bound up with color, like thousands of rainbows superimposed one on top of the other.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Love, Color, Feeling

“How does it feel? To be on your own, with no direction home, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone?”

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

Song lyrics, Highway 61 Revisited (1965), Like a Rolling Stone

Feeling, Home

“The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

As quoted in Mad about Physics : Braintwisters, Paradoxes, and Curiosities (2001) by Christopher Jargodzki

“There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.”

Jack London book Call of the Wild

Source: The Call of the Wild

Life, Forgetting

“It was completely fifth garde and completely silly and I loved it, because he wasn't afraid to be silly. It was like kissing him first - I could do whatever I wanted and not have to worry what he'd think of me.”

Kelley Armstrong The Gathering

Source: The Gathering

Love, Kiss, Thinking

“All my life I've thought I needed someone to complete me, now I know I need to belong to myself.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Mermaid Chair

Source: The Mermaid Chair

Life

“Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.”

Roald Dahl (1916–1990) British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot and screenwriter

People

“Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Bk. XV, ch. 1
Source: War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869)

Joy

“Zee said, grumpily, “Liebling, this is not a good idea.”
“Zee,” I told him, “I am completely out of good ideas and am doing my best with the bad ones I have left.”

Patricia Briggs book Frost Burned

Source: Frost Burned

Idea

“Nothing important is completely explicable.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Section 3.9
Source: The Crosswicks Journal, A Circle of Quiet (1972)

“You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it? Yes. Mrs. Whatsit said. You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: A Wrinkle in Time: With Related Readings

Freedom

“Even mocking people helped their face stats. In the reputation economy, the only real way to hurt anyone was to ignore them completely. And it was pretty hard to ignore someone who made your blood boil.”

Scott Westerfeld book Extras

Source: Extras

People, Way, Help, Hurt

“He likes driving very fast on the wrong side of the road," said Sarah. "Which I can completely understand.”

Hilary McKay book Saffy's Angel

Source: Saffy's Angel

Understanding

“… in the end, all I want is to be with him. It's the only way my life feels complete.”

Alyson Nöel book Shadowland

Source: Shadowland

Life, Way, Feeling

“A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.”

Edward de Bono (1933) Maltese physician

Memory

“Nothing but writing rests me; only then do I seem completely myself!”

Kate Douglas Wiggin (1856–1923) American writer

“I glanced at George half naked in his towel, then at Barkley, completely naked in his… nothing. A vampire and a werewolf.
I shook my head. It was obvious. I was having one of my Anita Blake dreams again.”

Michelle Rowen (1971) Canadian writer

Source: Fanged & Fabulous

Dreams

“One of the oddest things about being grown-up was looking back at something you thought you knew and finding out the truth of it was completely different from what you had always believed.”

Patricia Briggs book Bone Crossed

Source: Bone Crossed

Truth

“I don't believe in guilt, I believe in living on impulse as long as you never intentionally hurt another person, and don't judge people in your life. I think you should live completely free”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

Variant: I don't believe in guilt, I believe in living on impulse as long as you never intentionally hurt another person, and don't judge people in your life. I think you should live completely free...

Life, People, Thinking, Hurt

“A friendship can weather most things and thrive in thin soil; but it needs a little mulch of letters and phone calls and small, silly presents every so often - just to save it from drying out completely.”

Pam Brown (1948) Australian poet

Friendship, Weather

“It was not the feeling of completeness I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

Feeling

“There are only two ways of telling the complete truth--anonymously and posthumously.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Truth, Way

“I've never had a moment's doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life. Cee”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Love, Life

“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

“She glared at him, feeling the old frustration. Sometimes in his presence she felt the deepest connection to him, and other times she felt completely alone-as though any bond to him was her own bitter imagination.”

Ann Brashares (1967) American children's writer

Feeling, Imagination, Time

“All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003)

Children, Youth, Parent, Help

“It is completely unimportant. That is why it is so interesting.”

Agatha Christie book The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Source: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

“Who's your daddy?'
Myrnin stared at him as if he'd gone completely mental.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Black Dawn

“No: I am not tired. I have a curious constitution. I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely." ~ Sherlock Holmes”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Sign of the Four

Source: The Sign of Four

Feeling

“… and I realized that Garrett was right about one thing- I had flipped.
Completely.”

Wendelin Van Draanen Flipped

Source: Flipped

“no project is completed until its objective has been achieved.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

“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

“There are a few moments in your life when you are truly and completely happy, and you remember to give thanks. Even as it happens you are nostalgic for the moment, you are tucking it away in your scrapbook.”

David Benioff (1970) writer

Source: When the Nines Roll Over and Other Stories

Life, Happiness

“No one is completely unhappy at the failure of his best friend.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

From his book Groucho and Me. It is a variation of a maxim by 17th-century French nobleman François de La Rochefoucauld: "In the adversity of our best friends, we often find something that is not displeasing." (Maxim 99 from Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims, 1665 edition.)

Failure

“Yes. Yes I am. I am a completely demented misogynist.”

Bret Easton Ellis (1964) American novelist

“There is a fatigue so great that the body cries, even in its sleep. There are times of complete frustration; there are daily small deaths.”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

Death, Sleep, Time

“True, you're the weakest of us all, but you're still one of the five, and there is power in collecting the complete set."
He paused, then grinned. "The complete Set! That's funny! Now let's consume your energy and entomb your soul, shall we?”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Soul

“the search for meaning is really the search for the lost chord. When the lost chord is discovered by humankind, the discord in the world will be healed and the symphony of the universe will come into complete harmony with itself.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

World, Search, Universe

“Gazing into the mirror, I saw myself as I was-a black silhouette in the room, a woman whose darkness had completely leaked through.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Mermaid Chair

Source: The Mermaid Chair

“May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect. Deliver me, Tyler, from being perfect and complete.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, Chapter 5

Perfection

“This world has been connected… tied to the darkness… soon to be completely eclipsed… there is very much to learn… you understand so little… a meaningless effort… one who knows nothing cannot understand nothing.”

Shiro Amano (1976) Japanese manga artist

Source: Kingdom Hearts, Vol. 1

World, Understanding, Effort, Learning

“Old pain doesn't completely die. Time may soothe it, stoke over it until it looks like it has healed, but it never dies properly. It stays with you, it lives in the cracks of your soul, waiting for moments when you feel true pain”

Dorothy Koomson (1971) British writer

Source: Goodnight, Beautiful

Pain, Feeling, Soul, Time

“Every intimacy carries secreted somewhere below its initial lovely surfaces, the ever-coiled makings of complete catastrophe.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Love, Secret

“A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A self is always becoming.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Section 1.10 
Source: The Crosswicks Journal, A Circle of Quiet (1972)
Context: We do have to use our minds as far as they will take us, yet acknowledging that they cannot take us all the way.
We can give a child a self-image. But is this a good idea? Hitler did a devastating job at that kind of thing. So does Chairman Mao. … I haven't defined a self, nor do I want to. A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A self is always becoming.

“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

“Gossip is one thing, hurtful gossip is completely another, and even in high school we weren't THAT mean.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

School, Hurt

Quotes about completion page 8

Quotes about completion
page 8