Quotes about difference
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“All little creatures are beautiful… every living thing when it first sees life is born in beauty. What they grow to be is a different matter.”

Brian Jacques book Outcast of Redwall

Source: Outcast of Redwall

Life, Beauty

“She was the one who was supposed to have walked with him through different lives, being born and loving and dying and being born again. They'd been born for each other, to help each other grow and blossom and discover and evolve.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Night World, No. 2

Love, Help

“They had just showed up, Amatis had said. Which meant Simon had spent thenight at Isabelle's. She stared at him. He didn'tany different.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

“Art has always been the raft onto which we climb to save our sanity. I don't see a different purpose for it now.”

Dorothea Tanning (1910–2012) American artist

Art

“Sandwich outdoors isn’t a sandwich anymore. Tastes different than indoors, notice? Got more spice. Tastes like mint and pinesap. Does wonders for the appetite.”

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Source: Dandelion Wine

“Where I come from, family's defined as those who don't screw you over a paycheck. Blood makes no difference. If you can trust them with your life and know that they'll be there come whatever hell rains down, then they're your family.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of Shadows

Life, Family, Hell

“Even though Cammie is fluent in fourteen languages and capable of killing a man seven different ways with her bare hands, she has no idea what to do when she meets an ordinary boy who thinks she's an ordinary girl.”

Ally Carter I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Source: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Way, Girl, Boy, Idea

“Freedom has a high price, as high as that of slavery; the only difference is that you pay with pleasure and a smile, even when that smile is dimmed with tears.”

Paulo Coelho book The Zahir

Source: The Zahir

Pleasure, Smile, Tear, Freedom

“We all have different desires and needs, but if we don't discover what we want from ourselves and what we stand for, we will live passively and unfulfilled.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

“Once, I was easy. Now, I was choosy. See? Big difference.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

“I'm not broken, I'm ruined. Do you understand the difference? With broken maybe you can fix things. Ruined? All you can do is wait to bury me.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Awakened

Understanding, Waiting

“The complexity embedded in the different levels of meaning that go along with the words "I love you" ought to be a whole mindfuck of a video game”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

Love, Game

“Any fool can spend money. But to earn it and save it and defer gratification—then you learn to value it differently.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

Money, Fools, Learning

“Splendid to arrive alone in a foreign country and feel the assault of difference. Here they are all along, busy with living; they don't talk or look like me. The rhythm of their day is entirely different; I am foreign.”

Frances Mayes book Under the Tuscan Sun

Source: Under the Tuscan Sun

Feeling, Business, Country

“All families are psychotic. Everybody has basically the same family - it's just reconfigured slightly different from one to the next.”

Douglas Coupland (1961) Canadian novelist, short story writer, playwright, and graphic designer

Source: All Families are Psychotic

Family, Family

“It makes you a different person, to not have a past. It eats away at who you are, until what’s left is all construct, all artifice.”

Holly Black book Black Heart

Source: Black Heart

Past, Personality

“There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.”

Martin Gardner (1914–2010) recreational mathematician and philosopher

The Mathematical Magic Show (1978)

“There are many differences between a baby and an I-Pod. And one of the biggest is, no ones going to mug you for your baby.”

Nick Hornby book Slam

Source: Slam

Baby

“Today I will go to wait for her again, because I cannot help it, because my whole being seems now to be bound up in the being of one so different from myself and yet so exquisitely familiar that I can scarely understand what has happened.”

Elizabeth Kostova book The Historian

Source: La historiadora

Understanding, Waiting, Help

“Perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively involved in a given relationship.”

Carl Sagan book Contact

Source: Contact

Love

“Jace: 'I don't like keeping her in the dark.'
Sebastian: 'We'll tell her in a week. What difference does a week make?'
Jace: 'Two weeks ago you were dead.'
Sebastian: 'Well, I wasn't suggestingweeks. That would be insane.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Variant: I don’t like keeping her in the dark,” Jace said.
“We’ll tell her in a week. What difference does a week make?”
Jace gave him a look. “Two weeks ago you were dead.”
“Well, I wasn’t suggesting two weeks,” said Sebastian. “That would be insane.
Source: City of Lost Souls

Dead

“People tend to stick to their own size group because it's easier on the neck. Unless they are romantically involved, in which case the size difference is sexy. It means: I am willing to go the distance for you.”

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

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

People

“What you need to learn, children, is the difference between right and wrong in every area of life. And once you learn the difference, you must always choose the right.”

Jeanne DuPrau The City of Ember

Source: The City of Ember

Life, Children, Learning

“Using a fetching face to make men do as you wish is no different from a man using muscle to force a woman to his will. Both are base, and both will fail a person as they age.”

Brandon Sanderson book Words of Radiance

Source: Words of Radiance

Men, Age, Personality

“I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced that they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference after another.”

Ellen Goodman (1941) American journalist and writer

Attributed

People, World, Change

“Stay mad, but behave like normal people. Run the risk of being different, but learn to do so without attracting attention.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

People, Learning, Madness

“The only difference between me and others is that they think they can change something with cute little poems, nice cards or embracing trees and being nice to little lapdogs.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Thinking, Tree, Change, Cute

“You have ruthlessness in your bones and ice in your heart, Clarissa. Don't tell me any differently.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Heart

“Thats beautiful! Sad and beautiful," murmured Meggie. Why were sad stories often so beautiful? It was different in real life.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkheart

Life, Sadness, Beauty

“The people who make a difference
are not the ones with the credentials
but the ones with the concern.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

People

“Fate isn’t one straight road…there are forks in it, many different routes to different ends. We have the free will to choose the path.”

Dean Koontz Odd Thomas

Source: Odd Thomas

Fate

“No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.”

Amy Tan (1952) American novelist

World, Reality

“It's Will," she said. "He's being absolutely ridiculous in the dining room."
Charlotte looked puzzled. "How is this different from him being totally ridiculous in the library or the weapons room or any of the other places he's usually ridiculous?”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves”

Jared Diamond (1937) American scientist and author

Source: Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

People, History

“Other men look up and down, left and right; but men like us are different. We are visionaries.”

Eoin Colfer book Airman

Source: Airman

Men

“He spent six hours examining things, trying to find a difference from their appearance on the previous day in the hope of discovering in them some change that would reveal the passage of time.”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Hope, Appearance, Change, Time

“There's a difference between writing for a living and writing for
life. If you write for a living, you make enormous compromises….
If you write for life, you'll work hard; you'll do what's honest,
not what pays”

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer

Life

“every story written is
marks upon a page
The same marks,
repeated, only
differently arranged”

Max Barry (1973) Australian writer

Source: Lexicon

“Shura, I’m yours. You may not like it today, you may not want it tonight, you may wish for it all to be different now, but it remains, and I remain, as always, only yours. Nothing can change that. Not your wrath, your fists, your body or your death.”

Paullina Simons book Tatiana and Alexander

Source: Tatiana and Alexander

Death, Change

“None of us alone can save the nation or the world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so. (p. 109)”

Cornel West book Race Matters

Source: Race Matters

World

“Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing! but I have never been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall. And, without love, I am sure I should be a fool to change such a situation as mine.”

Jane Austen book Emma

Source: Emma

Love, Fools, Way, Nature

“And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you
I will show you fear in a handful of dust”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land

Fear

“One person of integrity can make a difference.”

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

Personality

“All change brings bad things and good things to replace the bad and good things that were before. It is natural to look back and say it was better before—but that does not make it true. Different is not worse. It is just different.”

Patricia Briggs book River Marked

Source: River Marked

Nature, Change

“Originality is being different from oneself, not others.”

Philip Larkin (1922–1985) English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian

Source: Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

“What a different result one gets by changing the metaphor!”

George Eliot book The Mill on the Floss

Source: The Mill on the Floss

Change

“We'll meet again. We'll meet when years have passed, and years make such a difference, don't they?”

Ayn Rand book We the Living

Source: We the Living

“In dreams you don't need to make any distinctions between things. Not at all. Boundaries don't exist. So in dreams there are hardly ever collisions. Even if there are, they don't hurt. Reality is different. Reality bites. Reality, reality.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

Dreams, Reality, Hurt

“On the other hand, you have different fingers.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“I'm drawn to people who look different. I'm not exploiting. I'm not making fun of them. I'm drawn to them.”

Amy Sedaris (1961) American comedian

People

“Dying for love might be pitiable, but it wasn't much different, finally, from any other kind of dying.”

Richard Yates book Cold Spring Harbor

Source: Cold Spring Harbor

Love

“There is a difference between being poor and being broke. Broke is temporary, and poor is eternal.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki book Rich Dad Poor Dad

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!
Source: Rich Dad, Poor Dad

“Traveling-to-a-place energy and living-in-a-place energy are two fundamentally different energies”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Travel

“Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk - and to act.”

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

Idea, Failure, Courage, Success

“For men and women alike, this journey is a the trajectory between birth and death, a human life lived. No one escapes the adventure. We only work with it differently.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn (1944) American academic

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

Life, Death, Women, Men

“I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

“People fear anyone who differs from what is considered normal, and in a small town the idea of normal can be as narrow as the streets.”

Elizabeth Chandler (1954) writer

Source: The Back Door of Midnight

People, Fear, Idea

“The difference between stupid and intelligent people – and this is true whether or not they are well-educated – is that intelligent people can handle subtlety.”

Neal Stephenson (1959) American science fiction writer

Source: The Diamond Age: or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

People, Stupidity, Education, Intelligence

“There is a great deal of difference between a penis and a heart.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Variant: There is a great difference between being fearless and being brave.
Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Heart

“The world is a dream, you say, and it’s lovely, sometimes. Sunset. Clouds. Sky.”

“No. The image is a dream. The beauty is real. Can you see the difference?”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Love, World, Beauty, Dreams

“It's strange how memory gets twisted and pulled like taffy in its retelling, how a single event can mean something different to everyone present.”

Lisa Unger book Beautiful Lies

Source: Beautiful Lies

Memory

“We all have our different skills. You’re patient to a fault, which sometimes doesn’t work to your advantage. I, on the other hand, have the patience of a wet cat. Only on rare occasions does that come in handy.”

Mary E. Pearson book The Kiss of Deception

Source: The Kiss of Deception

Cats, Patience

“I believe that you can reach the point where there is no longer any difference between developing the habit of pretending to believe and developing the habit of believing.”

Umberto Eco book Foucault's Pendulum

Source: Foucault's Pendulum

“Everything, in the end, comes down to timing. One second, one minute, one hour could make all the difference.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

Time

“While it is true that most people never see or understand the difference they make, or sometimes only imagine their actions having a tiny effect, every single action a person takes has far-reaching consequences.”

Andy Andrews (1959) author and corporate speaker

Source: The Noticer: Sometimes, All a Person Needs Is a Little Perspective

People, Imagination, Understanding, Personality

“I mean, how would anyone learn anything if they weren't curious? How would scientists make discoveries? -- We all have the right to be different, don't we?”

Annette Curtis Klause (1953) American writer and librarian

Learning

“Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.”

Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking

Source: The Year of Magical Thinking

Life

“Getting something and having the wits to use it… those are two different things.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

“I think people understand things different when they get older. It’s not a question of getting soft, or seeing things in the gray areas instead of black and white. I really believe I’m just understanding things different. Better.”

Jeff Lindsay book Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Source: Darkly Dreaming Dexter

People, Understanding, Question, Thinking

“In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

People, Question

“Imagination is a gift given to us from God and each one of us use it differently.”

Brian Jacques (1939–2011) British fiction writer known for Redwall animal fantasy novels

God, Imagination

“There's a difference between playing and playing games. The former is an act of joy, the latter — an act.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

Game, Joy

“dare to be different”

Jan Jansen

“Clearly, sharing something could take you a long way, or at least to a different place than you'd planned. Like a friendship or a family, or even jsut alone on a curb on a Saturday, trying to get your bearings as best you can.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

Friendship, Family, Way

“I know there is strength in the differences between us,
And I know there is comfort where we overlap.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Overlap
Song lyrics

Cute, Romantic, For Her, love

“There's a difference between really loving someone and loving the idea of her.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

Love, Idea

“I had some ambition. I meant everything to be different with me. I thought I had more strength and mastery. But the most terrible obstacles are such as nobody can see except oneself.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Source: Middlemarch

“The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: Keep a Quiet Heart

Secret, Christ

“Find the person who will love you because of your differences and not in spite of them and you have found a lover for life.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Love, Life, Lovers, Personality

“We all have souls of different ages”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

Age, Soul

“To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.”

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

20 December 1822
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)

World, Hell

“Why is marijuana against the law? It grows naturally on our planet, serves a thousand different functions, all of them positive. To make marijuana against the law is like saying that God made a mistake. Like on the seventh day God looked down, "There it is. My Creation, perfect and holy in all ways. Now I can rest. [Gives shocked expression] Oh my Me! I left fuckin' pot everywhere. I should never have smoked that joint on the third day. Hehe, that was the day I created the possum. Still gives me a chuckle. But if I leave pot everywhere, that's gonna give people the impression they're supposed to … use it. Now I have to create Republicans."”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

" … and God wept", I believe is the next part of that story.
Chicago '91 (1991)

God, People, Law, Way

“It was a sign of growing up, when the dark made no more difference to you than the day.”

Roddy Doyle book Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

Source: Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

“Unfortunately, Susan didn't remember what Jane Fulton once said, 'Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.”

Rita Mae Brown (1944) Novelist, poet, screenwriter, activist

Source: Sudden Death

“Someone told me much later that you always know the people who are going to make a difference in your life, from the very first time you set eyes on them, even if you do not like them at all. And I had noticed him, as he had me. God help us.”

Sarah Dunant book The Birth of Venus

Source: The Birth of Venus

Life, God, People, Time

“It was a day as different from other days as dogs are from cats and both of them from chrysanthemums or tidal waves or scarlet fever.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent

Dogs, Cats

“Ideology knows the answer before the question has been asked.

Principles are something different: a set of values that have to be adapted to circumstances but not compromised away.”

George Packer (1960) American journalist and writer

Question

“If other people see you differently, you’ll end up seeing them differently, too.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

People

“Lots of different ways to live and lots of different ways to die. But in the end that doesn't make a bit of difference. All that remains is a desert.”

Haruki Murakami book South of the Border, West of the Sun

Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun

Way

“People can start out one way, and by the time life gets through with them they end up completely different.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Life, People, Way, Time

“Do not judge the way i show my feelings. It's weird, it's different, but it's true.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Way, Feeling

“One never realizes how different a husband and wife can be until they begin to pack for a trip.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

“You have to know I wouldn’t wish for a different life," she said. "This life brought me you”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Life

“What difference does it make after all? — anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven, for what's heaven? what's earth? All in the mind.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Part Three, Ch. 11
Source: On the Road (1957)
Context: In 1942 I was the star in one of the filthiest dramas of all time. I was a seaman, and went to the Imperial Café on Scollay Square in Boston to drink; I drank sixty glasses of beer and retired to the toilet, where I wrapped myself around the toilet bowl and went to sleep. During the night at least a hundred seamen and assorted civilians came in and cast their sentient debouchements on me till I was unrecognizably caked. What difference does it make after all? — anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven, for what's heaven? what's earth? All in the mind.

Men, World