Quotes about difference (8542 quotes, page 12)

“… the only difference between a young person at the height of their exuberance and a very old person who is frail and physically wasted is time.”

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

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Time , Personality

“I'm a million different things every day of the week.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: P.S. I Love You

“Oh, yes. I mean to marry him. But not because I want him to give me a life. I want to marry him to share the life I already have. The difference, I think you will find, is a significant one.”

Deanna Raybourn (1968) American writer

Source: Silent on the Moor

Life , Thinking

“So far I’m not seeing a lot of difference between me and a carnival con-man.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

“But oh, Mesdames, if you are not allowed to touch the heart sometimes in spite of syntax, and are not to be loved until you all know the difference between trimeter and tetrameter, may all Poetry go to the deuce, and every schoolmaster perish miserably!”

William Makepeace Thackeray Vanity Fair

Vol. I, ch. 12.
Source: Vanity Fair (1847–1848)

Love , Heart

“Your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a ‘real’ experience.”

Maxwell Maltz (1889–1975) Plastic surgeon, self-help author

Source: Psycho-Cybernetics, A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life

Imagination

“I saw my earlier selves as different people, acquaintances I had outgrown. I wondered how I could ever have been some of them.”

Roger Zelazny The Courts of Chaos

Source: The Courts of Chaos

People

“Keeping vigil over her are two monsters of very different breeds but monster just the same.
Death on her left.
Devil on her right.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Iced

Death

“It was different with you, Leo. In the eyes and ears of my heart, you and the magic are one and the same.”

Jerry Spinelli book Love, Stargirl

Source: Love, Stargirl

Heart

“There were eleven of us.
Each more different than the next.
All with the same mindset.
Things weren't the way they were meant to be.
It was our job to make things right.
We were the soldiers of Halla.
It was time for us to take it back.”

D.J. MacHale (1955) American television director and producer

Way , Time

“I know of witches who whistle at different pitches, calling things that don't have names.”

Helen Oyeyemi (1984) British author

Source: White is for Witching

“Maybe that's what love is. Having someone who guides you through different experiences, coaxes you to try news things but still makes you feel safe.”

Wally Lamb (1950) american novelist

Source: We Are Water

Love , Feeling

“A romantic man often feels more uplifted with two women than with one: his love seems to hit the ideal mark somewhere between two different faces.”

Elizabeth Bowen book The Death of the Heart

Source: The Death of the Heart

Love , Women , Feeling

“The normal is that which nobody quite is. If you listen to seemingly dull people very closely, you'll see that they're all mad in different and interesting ways, and are merely struggling to hide it.”

Robert Anton Wilson book Masks of the Illuminati

Source: Masks of the Illuminati

People , Way , Madness

“I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Variant: What I write is different from what I say, what I say is different from what I think, what I think is different from what I ought to think and so it goes further into the deepest darkness.

Way , Thinking

“It's bullshit to think of friendship and romance as being different. They're not. They're just variations of the same love. Variations of the same desire to be close.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

Love , Friendship , Thinking

“What difference does it make if you live in a picturesque little outhouse surrounded by 300 feeble minded goats and your faithful dog? The question is: Can you write?”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Faith , Dogs , Question

“What I'm not sure about, is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. 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

People , Feeling , Understanding , Time

“Know what's weird? Day by day, nothing seems to change. But pretty soon, everything's different.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Variant: You know what's weird? Day by day, nothing seems to change, but pretty soon... everything's different.

Change

“what time is it? its is by every star
a different time, and each most falsely true…”

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

Source: Selected Poems

Star , Time , Falseness

“Life is a million different dots making one gigantic picture. And maybe the big picture is nice, maybe it's amazing, but if you're standing with your face pressed up against a bunch of black dots, it's really hard to tell.”

Rebecca Stead book Liar & Spy

Source: Liar & Spy

Life

“I had a feeling that Pandora's box contained the mysteries of woman's sensuality, so different from man's and for which man's language was inadequate. The language of sex had yet to be invented. The language of the senses was yet to be explored. D. H. Lawrence began to give instinct a language, he tried to escape the clinical, the scientific, which only captures what the body feels.”

Anaïs Nin book Delta of Venus

As quoted in D. H. Lawrence and Nine Women Writers (1996) by Leo Hamalian, p. 90
Source: Delta of Venus

Sex , Feeling , Sense , Box

“She now knew that it was possible to love two people at once—because you could love them in different ways.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Dark Visions

Love , People , Way

“Risk always looks different when you're beating the system than when you've been beaten.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

“There's a difference between living and just surviving. Do something you love, and find someone to love who loves that you love what you do.
It is really that simple.
And that hard.”

John Connolly (1968) author

Source: The Infernals

Love

“There seemed to be no end to this wood, and no beginning, and no difference in it, and, worse of all, no way out”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Source: The Wind in the Willows

Way

“But there is a different between mending someone who's broken and finding someone who makes you complete.”

Jodi Picoult book Sing You Home

Source: Sing You Home

“if you think of a relationship as a living entity, I guess it's one thing if the missing two percent is, like, a fingernail. But when it's the heart, that's a whole different ball of wax.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Thinking , Heart

“Butler could kill you a hundred different ways without use of his armoury. Though I'm sure one would be quite sufficient.”

Eoin Colfer Artemis Fowl

Source: Artemis Fowl

Way

“He's a boy, Kat. I hate to break it to you, but we are fundamentally different.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Perfect Scoundrels

Hate , Boy

“I used to be afraid of dying. Now I’m afraid of not living. There’s a difference. We go through life planning for a future, but sometimes that future never comes.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: Challenger Deep

Life , Future

“My insides don't match up with my outsides. -Do anyone's inside and outsides match up? -I don't know. I'm only me. -Maybe that's what a person's personality is: the difference between the inside and the outside.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Oskar during a visit to his therapist, Dr. Fein
"Happiness, Happiness" (p. 201)
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)
Context: "I feel too much. That's what's going on." "Do you think one can feel too much? Or just feel the wrong ways? "My insides don't match up with my outsides." "Do anyone's inside and outsides match up?" "I don't know. I'm only me." "Maybe that's what a person's personality is: the difference between the inside and the outside." "But it's worse for me." "I wonder if everyone thinks it's worse for him." "Probably. But it really is worse for me."

Personality

“Love is like the sea. It's a moving thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from the shore it meets, and it's different with every shore.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Their Eyes Were Watching God

Variant: Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.
Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God

Love , Sea

“The old woman I shall become will be quite different from the woman I am now. Another I is beginning.”

George Sand (1804–1876) French novelist and memoirist; pseudonym of Lucile Aurore Dupin

“She said she thought there were different ways of loving someone, and there were some she used to think were the most important, and now she had changed her mind.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Tiger Lily

Love , Way , Thinking , Change

“There’s a big difference between death threats and love letters–even if the person writing the death threats still claims to actually love you. Of course, considering I once tried to kill someone I loved, maybe I had no right to judge.”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

Love , Death , Personality

“Out of the frying pan into the fire! What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many? No different!”

Angela Carter book Nights at the Circus

Source: Nights at the Circus

Marriage

“There is no moral difference between a Stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. They both kill innocent people for political reasons.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Question Time (22 March 2007).
2000s
Context: I was born about a quarter of a mile from where we are sitting now and I was here in London during the Blitz. And every night I went down into the shelter. 500 people killed, my brother was killed, my friends were killed. And when the Charter of the UN was read to me, I was a pilot coming home in a troop ship: 'We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind.' That was the pledge my generation gave to the younger generation and you tore it up. And it's a war crime that's been committed in Iraq, because there is no moral difference between a stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. Both kill innocent people for political reasons.

People , Suicide

“…. there is a difference between hearing and listening. You can't always help what you hear. But you can control what holds your interest, what you choose to dwell on.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary

Help

“That was the thing. You just never knew. Forever was so many different things. It was always changing, it was what everything was really all about.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Change

“the juniors were acting different because they are now the seniors. They even had T-shirts made. I don't know who plans these things.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“I love the Olympics, because they enable people from all over the world to come together and--regardless of their political or cultural differences--accuse each other of cheating.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Source: Boogers Are My Beat: More Lies, But Some Actual Journalism!

Love , People , World , Cheating

“It was so weird, because usually I was totally nervous talking to guys. But Eli was different. He made me want to say more, not less. Which was maybe not a good thing.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

Guy

“Difference between motivation and inspiration - Motivation is external and short lived. Inspiration is internal and lifelong”

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (1956) spiritual leader

Motivation

“If you want a lover I'll do anything you ask.

If you want a different kind of love I'll wear a mask.

If you want to strike me down in anger here I stand.

If you want a partner in life take my hand.

I'm your man.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Love , Life , Lovers , Anger

“I mean, to me, freaking out is different. More of a running away, not telling anyone what's wrong, slowly simmering until you burst kind of thing.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

“I had spent my whole life feeling homesick. The only difference between the two of us was that I didn't know what or where home was.”

Marian Keyes Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married

Source: Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married

Life , Feeling , Home

“When you're different, sometimes you don't see the millions of people who accept you for what you are. All you notice is the person who doesn't.”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

People , Personality

“The best protection against rape, stalking, and domestic violence is to raise men who both understand that women are different, and would never dare take advantage of this difference.”

Wendy Shalit (1975) American writer

Source: A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue

Women , Men , Understanding

“All people are the same; only their habits differ.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

People

“It would probably astound each of us beyond measure to be let into his neighbors mind and to find how different the scenery was there from that of his own.”

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

“All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Men , Fraud

“Different time, different place,” I said. “Things can change. People can change.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

People , Change , Time

“I'm small, I'm young - and I'm so different. You've always respected that difference, and you've always trusted it. Trust me now. There's a reason I am the way I am, and there's a reason I was born to you. There's always a reason. We belong together.”

Dean Koontz book Relentless

Source: Relentless

Way

“…when writing, always hook the reader with your first sentence…in love, never settle…value yourself first and this will help you to value others…life is short, so enjoy it to the fullest…everyone in the world is different, and that’s ok…”

Spider Robinson (1948) Canadian author

Love , Life , World , Help

“If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1962, Address at Independence Hall
Context: Acting on our own, by ourselves, we cannot establish justice throughout the world; we cannot insure its domestic tranquility, or provide for its common defense, or promote its general welfare, or secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. But joined with other free nations, we can do all this and more. We can assist the developing nations to throw off the yoke of poverty. We can balance our worldwide trade and payments at the highest possible level of growth. We can mount a deterrent powerful enough to deter any aggression. And ultimately we can help to achieve a world of law and free choice, banishing the world of war and coercion.

World , Help

“One reason we have children I think is to learn that parts of ourselves we had given up for dead are merely dormant and that the old joys can re emerge fresh and new and in a completely different form.”

Anne Fadiman (1953) American essayist, journalist and magazine editor

For Parents , Children , Thinking , Learning

“Tis strange,-but true; for truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction: if it could be told,
How much would novels gain by the exchange!
How differently the world would men behold!”

George Gordon Byron Don Juan

Source: Don Juan

Men , Truth , World

“A book read by a thousand different people is a thousand different books.”

Andrei Tarkovsky book Sculpting in Time

Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 177

People , Books , Reading

“A positive attitude means all the difference in the world.”

Jenny Holzer (1950) American conceptual artist

World

“Don't be like anybody else. Be different. Then you can make a
contribution. Otherwise, you just echo something; you're just a reflection.”

Hugh Nibley (1910–2005) Religious scholar

“The difference between a dreamer and a visionary is that a dreamer has his eyes closed and a visionary has his eyes open”

Martin Luther King, Jr. I Have a Dream

Source: I Have a Dream

“There is a difference between listening and hearing, just as there is a difference between seeing and knowing.”

Meg Cabot book All American Girl

Source: All-American Girl

“I've been fighting my entire adult life for men and women everywhere to be equal and to be different. But there is one right I would not grant anyone. And that is the right to be indifferent.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

Life , Women , Men , Fight

“The problem to be faced is: how to combine loyalty to one's own tradition with reverence for different traditions.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

Problem , Loyalty

“There are such things as ghosts. People everywhere have always known that. And we believe in them every bit as much as Homer did. Only now, we call them by different names. Memory. The unconscious.”

Donna Tartt book The Secret History

Source: The Secret History

People , Memory

“We are All Unique But Not Different..”

Jan Jansen

“Better by far to be good and courageous and bold and to make difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you.”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

World , Courage , Change

“It is not easy to be different, and even less so to be unique.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

“Weren’t all books ultimately related? After all, the same letters filled them, just arranged in a different order. Which meant that, in a certain way, every book was contained in every other!”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkdeath

Books , Way

“Reality whistles a different tune underwater.”

Tom Robbins Skinny Legs and All

Source: Skinny Legs and All

Reality

“I don't know -- maybe the world has two different kinds of people, and for one kind the world is this completely logical, rice pudding place, and for the other it's all hit-or-miss macaroni gratin.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

People , World

“Growth comes through analogy; through seeing how things connect, rather than only seeing how they might be different.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“Let no one think of me that I am humble or weak or passive; let them understand I am of a different kind: dangerous to my enemies, loyal to my friends. To such a life glory belongs.”

Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

Source: Medea and Other Plays: Medea / Alcestis / The Children of Heracles / Hippolytus

Life , Understanding , Thinking

“The human animal is adapted to, and apparently can thrive on, an extraordinary range of different diets, but the Western diet, however you define it, does not seem to be one of them.”

Michael Pollan (1955) American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism

Source: In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

Animals

“In another time and place, she might have felt differently, but thinking along those lines was pointless now.”

Nicholas Sparks book True Believer

Source: True Believer

Thinking , Time

“We're so different. You're an intellectual. I'm an idiot."
"Don't say that," I yelled. "You're not an idiot, you stupid idiot.”

Melina Marchetta book Looking for Alibrandi

Source: Looking for Alibrandi

Stupidity

“You're only a man! You've not our gifts! I can tell you! Why, a woman can think of a hundred different things at once, all them contradictory!”

Georgette Heyer (1902–1974) British historical romance and detective fiction novelist

Source: Powder And Patch

Thinking

“We’re a different sort of thief here, Lamora. Deception and misdirection are our tools. We don’t believe in hard work when a false face and a good line of bullshit can do so much more.”

Scott Lynch The Lies of Locke Lamora

Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora

Falseness

“Life takes us on different paths… It's not up to us to evaluate or judge them, merely respect and embrace them.
(Lara Lington - to Sadie Lancaster)”

Sophie Kinsella book Twenties Girl

Source: Twenties Girl

Life

“You know the difference between news and gossip, don't you? News tells you what people did. Gossip tells you how much they enjoyed it.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

People

“How do you have five children in a row, each on a different say?”
“They’re gods,” Carter said. “They can do stuff like that.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

God , Children

“If you are the type of person who thinks too much about stuff then there is nothing lonelier in the world than being surrounded by a load of people on a different wavelength.”

Matt Haig book Reasons to Stay Alive

Source: Reasons to Stay Alive

People , World , Thinking , Personality

“Just tell me how to be different in a way that makes sense.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Way , Sense

“Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing. It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“There was a difference between people looking at you because they wanted to be like you, and people looking at you because your misfortune brought them one rung higher.”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

People

“God deals us all different hands. How we play 'em is up to us.”

Jeannette Walls book Half Broke Horses

Source: Half Broke Horses

God

“I’m an incurable romantic. The essence of romance is an unshakable conviction that next time will be different.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 135, “Taglios: The Mad Season” (p. 747)

Time

“Here's another piece of advice, only date people who have read a different set of books than you have read, it will save you lots of time in the library.”

Tony Kushner (1956) American playwright and screenwriter

People , Books , Time , Reading

“We may come from different places and have different stories, but we share common hopes, and one very American dream.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Source: 2015, Supreme Court Decision on Marriage Equality (June 2015)
Context: I know that Americans of goodwill continue to hold a wide range of views on this issue. Opposition in some cases has been based on sincere and deeply held beliefs. All of us who welcome today’s news should be mindful of that fact; recognize different viewpoints; revere our deep commitment to religious freedom. But today should also give us hope that on the many issues with which we grapple, often painfully, real change is possible. Shifts in hearts and minds is possible. And those who have come so far on their journey to equality have a responsibility to reach back and help others join them. Because for all our differences, we are one people, stronger together than we could ever be alone. That’s always been our story. We are big and vast and diverse; a nation of people with different backgrounds and beliefs, different experiences and stories, but bound by our shared ideal that no matter who you are or what you look like, how you started off, or how and who you love, America is a place where you can write your own destiny.

Dreams , Hope

“That, in essence, is the catastrophe of suicide for those who survive: not only the loss of someone, but the loss of the chance to persuade that person to act differently, the loss of the chance to connect.”

Andrew Solomon book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Source: The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Suicide , Loss , Chance , Personality

“Is your inner vampire different from your… outer vampire?'
'Definitely. He wants me to wear midriff-baring shirts and a fedora.'
'So your inner vampire is Magnus?”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

“You’re different,” he said, touching my face.
Of course I was. The man I loved had killed for me. A lot of things became inconsequential after a sacrifice like that.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Entwined with You

Love

“Disagreement is part of being a person who has choices. One of those choices is to respect others and engage in intelligent conversation about differences of opinion without becoming enemies, eventually allowing us to move forward to compromise.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: One Nation: What We Can All Do to Save America's Future

Intelligence , Parting , Personality

“every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. and, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. it really is the most poetic thing i know about physics: you are all stardust.”

Lawrence M. Krauss (1954) American physicist

"A Universe From Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss, AAI 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo#t=16m49s (16:50-17:23)
Context: The amazing thing is that every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution - weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way they could get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.

Star