Quotes about day
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“Nothing is worse than being alone on the evening of the day when one's cow has exploded.”

Source: Odd Thomas

Tracie Peterson (1959) American writer

Summer of the Midnight Sun

“Someday you're really going to have to describe to me in more detail what life is like on the planet you live on. Because it sounds really great, and I'd like to visit there one day.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Queen of Babble in the Big City

Life

“I’ve had a tense couple of days. And I’ve got to tell you, burning someone’s face off sounds like a great way to relax.”

Jim Butcher book Small Favor

Source: Small Favor

Way

“My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That's heaven. That's gold and anything else is just a waste of time.”

Cormac McCarthy (1933) American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter

Time, Perfection

“One impossible day, of an impossible month, of an impossible year.”

Haruki Murakami book The Elephant Vanishes

Source: The Elephant Vanishes

“One fine day, in the middle of the night, two dead boys got up to fight. Back to back they faced each other. They pulled out their swords and shot one another. One deaf cop, on the beat heard the noise, and came and shot the two dead boys.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Source: Valiant

Boy, Fight, Night, Dead

“Trapped for days, years, centuries maybe. Dead, but not allowed to die. Alive, but as good as dead. So alone that anyone, anything no matter how loathsome would be welcome.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Dead

“You go to work the next day pretending nothing happened.
Your co-workers ask
if everything's okay and you tell them
you're just tired.
And you're trying to smile. And they're trying to smile.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Smile

“Work freely and rollickingly as though you were talking to a friend who loves you. Mentally (at least three or four times a day) thumb your nose at all know-it-alls, jeerers, critics, doubters.”

Brenda Ueland (1891–1985) Journalist and writer

Source: If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

Love, Time

“The 1st day, I stood in the kitchen leaning against the counter watching Annie feed the cats, and I knew I wanted to do that forever.”

Nancy Garden book Annie on My Mind

Source: Annie on My Mind

Cats

“Poets speak of hope in ladies smiles, but give me a smirk any day, I say.”

Lois McMaster Bujold book Paladin of Souls

Source: Paladin of Souls

Smile, Hope

“By the time I finish with the two of you, you will be begging me to let you die. (Desiderius)
Desi dearest, I have never begged a day in my life, and the sun will surely splinter before I ever plead for anything from the likes of you. (Kyrian)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Night Pleasures

Source: Night Pleasures

Life, Time, Sun

“Do you live each day as if it's your first or your last? Either way you should probably have a diaper on.”

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

Source: Seriously... I'm Kidding

Way

“Actually, I jade very quickly. Once is usually enough. Either once only, or every day. If you do something once it’s exciting, and if you do it every day it’s exciting. But if you do it, say, twice or just almost every day, it’s not good any more.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

“As far as we know, we are the only species on the planet who have been given the gift-or curse, perhaps-of awareness about our own mortality. Everything here eventually dies; we're just the lucky ones who get to think about this fact every day.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Thinking

“This is terrific! What fun! Maybe tomorrow I can go to the prom with my brother. The day after, perhaps I can wear white pants and unexpectedly get my period.”

Jen Lancaster (1967) American writer

Source: Such a Pretty Fat: One Narcissist's Quest to Discover If Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, or Why Pie Is Not the Answer

“State propaganda, when supported by the educated classes and when no deviation is permitted from it, can have a big effect. It was a lesson learned by Hitler and many others, and it has been pursued to this day.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Source: Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda

Education, Support, Learning

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

" Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night http://www.internal.org/view_poem.phtml?poemID=92" (1952) <br class="br">Source: Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Age, Light, Rage, Night

“There were silences in my head. I could abandon myself completely to the pleasure of multiple relationships, to the beauty of the day, to the joys of the day. It was as if a cancer in me had ceased gnawing me. The cancer of introspection.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Pleasure, Beauty, Silence, Joy

“Passing time isn't a steady thing. People try to measure it, but some days seem to have years packed into them, and others pass in the blink of an eye. Some days matter, and others don't.”

Blue Balliett book The Calder Game

Source: The Calder Game

People, Time

“There is a common, worldly kind of Christianity in this day, which many have, and think they have enough-a cheap Christianity which offends nobody, and requires no sacrifice-which costs nothing, and is worth nothing.”

J.C. Ryle (1816–1900) Anglican bishop

Thinking

“It seemed like this day could go in so many directions, like a spiderweb shooting out toward endless possibilities.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

“Backward we traveled to reclaim the day
Before we fell, like Icarus, undone;
All we find are altars in decay
And profane words scrawled black across the sun.

--From the poem "Doom of the Exiles", written 16 April 1954”

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

Source: The Collected Poems

Travel, Sun

“Nico leaned over and plucked a grape. Probably that was the guy’s entire diet for the day.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Guy

“You are going to survive. And good things are going to start to happen again. And one day you are going to look back and this will not even be such a bad thing”

Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American writer and lecturer

“Get a day job, make your money from that, and write to please yourself.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

Money

“It was worth it, Lia,” He said. “Every mile, every day. I’d do it all again. I’d chase you across three continents if that’s what it took to be with you.”

Mary E. Pearson (1955) young-adult fiction writer

Source: The Heart of Betrayal

“… do every day or two something for no other reason that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Source: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 4
Source: Habit
Context: Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.

Drawing

“Ancient Rule of Twenty-one: if you do anything for twenty-one days in a row, it will be installed as a habit.”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Source: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Remarkable Story About Living Your Dreams

“That's what gets me through the day. Knowing that I could do it. That I'm strong enough to do it and I can get it done.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

Strong

“He bent to put his cheek against hers. His breath against her ear made her shudder with each deliberately spoken word. "I have wanted to do this," he said, "every moment of every hour of every day that I have been with you since the day I met you.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

“Some days in late August at home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar…”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury

Sadness, Home

“One wondering thought pollutes the day”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

“Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's a day you've had everything to do and you've done it.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

“Sometimes when I'm alone, I take the pearl from where it lives in my pocket and try to remember the boy with the bread, the strong arms that warded off nightmares on the train, the kisses in the arena. To make myself put a name to the thing I've lost. But what's the use? It's gone. He's gone. Whatever existed between us is gone. All that's left is my promise to kill Snow. I tell myself this ten times a day.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Katniss (p. 195)
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay (2010)

Boy, Kiss, Strong, Time

“Life is grace. Sleep is forgiveness. The night absolves. Darkness wipes the slate clean, not spotless to be sure, but clean enough for another day's chalking.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Source: The Alphabet of Grace (1970)

Life, Forgiveness, Sleep, Night

“Today is the sort of day where the sun only comes up to humiliate you.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Variant: Today is just one of those days the sun comes out to really humiliate you.
Source: Fight Club

Sun

“The lifetime of a human being is measured by decades, the lifetime of the Sun is a hundred million times longer. Compared to a star, we are like mayflies, fleeting ephemeral creatures who live out their lives in the course of a single day.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

Star, Time, Sun

“It is so pleasant to learn about new things. Every day I find how little I know, but I do not feel discouraged since God has given me an eternity in which to learn more.”

Helen Keller book The Story of My Life

Source: The Story of My Life

God, Feeling, Learning

“Autumn that year painted the countryside in vivid shades of scarlet, saffron and russet, and the days were clear and crisp under harvest skies.”

Sharon Kay Penman book Time and Chance

Source: Time and Chance

Autumn, Painting, Beauty

“No, Michael was all good. Killed, dismembered, buried, reborn…yeah, just another day in the life.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: The Dead Girls' Dance

Life

“There are no days more full than those we go back to.”

Colum McCann Zoli

Source: Zoli

“The only trap I must beware not to fall into, is to think that each day is the same as the next. In fact, each morning brings with it a hidden miracle, and we must pay attention to this miracle.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Warrior of the Light

Thinking

“This is what one thirsts for, I realize, after the smallness of the day, of work, of details, of intimacy - even of communication, one thirsts for the magnitude and universality of a night full of stars, pouring into one like a fresh tide.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh book Gift from the Sea

Source: Gift from the Sea

Star, Communication, Universe, Night

“Some days are like that. Even in Australia.”

Judith Viorst book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Source: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

“Jamie, I had found out by accident a few days previously, had never mastered the art of winking one eye. Instead, he blinked solemnly, like a large red owl.”

Diana Gabaldon book Outlander

Variant: That's not precisely what I had in mind."
Jamie, I had found out by accident a few days previously, had never mastered the art of winking one eye. Instead, he blinked solemnly, like a large red owl.
Source: Outlander

Art

“The first rose on my rose-tree
Budded, bloomed, and shattered,
During sad days when to me
Nothing mattered.

Grief of grief has drained me clean;
Still it seems a pity
No one saw,—it must have been
Very pretty.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

Source: Renascence and Other Poems

Sadness, Tree

“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Works and Days
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870)

Heart, Courageous, Positive, Good Morning

“Your best days are still out in front of you”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

“Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, sermons and soda water the day after.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Women, Laughter, Water, Wine

“Come a day there won’t be room for naughty men like us to slip about at all. This job goes south, there well may not be another. So here is us, on the raggedy edge. Don’t push me, and I won’t push you. Dong le ma?”

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

Men

“No, I don’t live in heartache. I don’t cry myself to sleep or any of that. I am, I tell myself, over it. But I do feel a void, icky as that sounds. And—like it or not—I still think about her every single day.”

Harlan Coben book Six Years

Source: Six Years

Feeling, Thinking, Sleep, Cry

“Ralph… would treat the day's decisions as though he were playing chess. The only trouble was that he would never be a very good chess player.”

William Golding book Lord of the Flies

Source: Lord of the Flies

Decision

“It was just a normal day, a day like any other. But most of all it was a day in which everything was exactly the way it should be.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Choice

Source: The Choice

Way

“If for nine years I have possessed a goodly apple that is rotten at the core and discover its rottenness only in nine years and six months less four days, isn't it true to say that for nine years I possessed a goodly apple?”

Ford Madox Ford book The Good Soldier

Part One, Ch. I (p. 7)
Source: The Good Soldier (1915)
Context: No, by God, it is false! It wasn't a minuet that we stepped; it was a prison — a prison full of screaming hysterics, tied down so that they might not outsound the rolling of our carriage wheels as we went along the shaded avenues of the Taunus Wald.
And yet I swear by the sacred name of my creator that it was true. It was true sunshine; the true music; the true splash of the fountains from the mouth of stone dolphins. For, if for me we were four people with the same tastes, with the same desires, acting — or, no, not acting — sitting here and there unanimously, isn't that the truth? If for nine years I have possessed a goodly apple that is rotten at the core and discover its rottenness only in nine years and six months less four days, isn't it true to say that for nine years I possessed a goodly apple?

“Your thoughts and beliefs of the past have created this moment, and all the moments up to this moment. What you are now choosing to believe and think and say will create the next moment and the next day and the next month and the next year.”

Louise L. Hay (1926–2017) American writer

Thinking, Past

“Confucius say, man with hand in pocket feel cocky all day”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

Feeling

“Don't cry so bitterly, but remember this day, and resolve with all your soul that you will never know another like it.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Soul, Cry

“If you place your head in a lion's mouth, then you cannot complain one day if he happens to bite it off.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

“The day obedience becomes a quest and not an irritation is the day you gain power.”

Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

“One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your hear that every day is the best day of the year.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Life, Decision

“Jump to the day we'll all be dead and none of this will matter. Jump to the day another house will stand here and the people living there won't know we ever happened.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

People, Housing, Dead

“I never waited for my Irish Cream coffee to be the right temperature, with a storm happening outside and my fireplace crackling… I wrote every day, at home, in the office, whether I felt like it or not, I just did it.”

Stephen J. Cannell (1941–2010) American television producer, writer, novelist and occasional actor

Home, Coffee, Waiting

“One day at a time, sweet Jesus. Whoever wrote that one hadn’t a clue. A day is a fuckin’ eternity”

Roddy Doyle Paula Spencer

Source: Paula Spencer

Time

“Hippo in a skirt: this was a comic reference to one of Solomon's principal wives, the one from Moab. Childish? Yes. But in the days before printing we had limited opportunities for satire.”

Jonathan Stroud book The Ring of Solomon

Source: The Ring of Solomon

“You know, one of these days, I'm actually going to take offense if people keep throwing out these slurs. And then things are going to get rather ugly. When we Skandians do take offense, we do it with a battleax.”

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

Source: Erak's Ransom

People

“I still doubt it will work."
"You'd doubt the sun's rising if you weren't proven wrong each day," Raoden
said with a smile.”

Brandon Sanderson Elantris

Source: Elantris

Smile, Sun

“To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Fate, World, Indifference

“Kaoru: Grownups are so tiresome. They fake their smiles all day long and they try to force us to do the same. It's no fun at all.”

Bisco Hatori (1975) Japanese manga artist

Source: Ouran High School Host Club, Vol. 7

Smile

“But to mean it when I say that I want my life to count for His glory is to drive a stake through the heart of self - a painful and determined dying to me that must be a part of every day I live.”

Louie Giglio (1958) American clergy

Life, Pain, Heart, Parting

“The truth is, some relationships are supposed to last forever, and some are only supposed to last a few days. That’s the way life is.”

Sophie Kinsella book Can You Keep a Secret?

Source: Can You Keep a Secret?

Life, Truth, Way

“You can have pride in what you do each day, but not arrogance in what you were born with.”

Amy Tan book The Bonesetter's Daughter

Source: The Bonesetter's Daughter

“One day I was talking to Cora. She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying

People

“And why had Deb's last boyfriend dumped her?
I dumped him.
Maybe you didn't French-kiss him enough.
I promise you that wasn't it.
Tell me how many times a day you kissed, and I'll say if it was enough.
Four hundred.
Not enough.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Kiss, Time

“I just listened to the music, and breathed in the day, and remembered things. Things like walking around the neighborhood and looking at the houses and the lawns and the colorful trees and having that be enough.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Music, Color, Tree, Housing

“Maybe you don't like your job, maybe you didn't get enough sleep--
But nobody likes their job, nobody got enough sleep.
Maybe you just had the worst day of your life;
Well, you know, there's no escape.
That's no excuse. Just suck up and be nice.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Pixie
Song lyrics
Source: Ani Difranco - Little Plastic Castle

Life, Sleep

“Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.”

Michael Landon Jr. (1964) American television director

Life

“Teach us…… that we may feel the importance of every day, of every hour, as it passes.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Feeling

“All the light of the day, fleeing the earth, seemed for one brief moment to take refuge in the sky; pink clouds spiralled round the full moon that was as green as pistachio sorbet and as clear as glass; it was reflected in the lake.”

Irène Némirovsky (1903–1942) French novelist who died at the age of 39 in Auschwitz

Source: Suite Française

Light

“There's no escaping fate, it just keeps going. Day and night, the future just keeps coming at you.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Fate, Future, Night

“And he respects Owl, because you can't help respecting anyone who can spell Tuesday, even if he doesn't spell it right; but spelling isn't everything. There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn't count.”

A.A. Milne book The House at Pooh Corner

Source: The House at Pooh Corner (1928), Chapter Five - Rabbit, speaking of Christopher Robin.

Help

“Wow. When he started looking back on the war with Kronos as the good old days--that was sad.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

War, Sadness

“Some days are meant to be counted, others are meant to be weighed.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

Source: Eat, pray, love: one woman's search for everything

“Every day, God gives us the sun — and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Variant: Everyday God gives us a moment in which it is possible to change everything that makes us unhappy.
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

God, Change, Sun