Quotes about doing
page 73

“You've done so many things and read so many books. Do you still believe in happy endings?"
"Oh my Lord, yes." Bernadette's hands were pressed against each other like a book, like a prayer. "I guess I would. I've had about a hundred of them.”

Karen Joy Fowler The Jane Austen Book Club

Source: The Jane Austen Book Club

Books, Reading, Happiness

“What are you doing?"
"Looking for my fangs."
"We don't grow fangs you idiot!”

Darren Shan book Cirque du Freak

Source: A Living Nightmare

“I don't know myself, what to do, where to go… I lie in the crack of a book for my comfort… it's what the world offers… please leave me alone to dream as I fancy.”

William H. Gass book Omensetter's Luck

Source: Omensetter's Luck

Lie, Books, World, Dreams

“there are things you do because they feel right and they may make no sense and they may make no money and it may be the real reason we are here: to love each other and to eat each other's cooking and say it was good.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Variant: Real Reason:
There are things you do because they feel right & they may make no sense & they may make no money & it may be the real reason we are here: to love each other & to eat each other's cooking & say it was good.

Love, Money, Feeling, Sense

“When I'm writing, I know I'm doing the thing I was born to do.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

“Living is a constant process of deciding what we are going to do.”

José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955) Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist

“There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment.”

Tsunetomo Yamamoto book Hagakure

Hagakure (c. 1716)
Source: Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai
Context: There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment.
Everyone lets the present moment slip by, then looks for it as though he thought it were somewhere else.

Life, Understanding, Success

“Work is what you do for others, liebchen. Art is what you do for yourself.”

Stephen Sondheim (1930) American composer and lyricist

Source: Sunday in the Park With George

Art

“Memories and thoughts age, just as people do. But certain thoughts can never age, and certain memories can never fade.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

People, Age, Memory

“Magnus's eyes went back to Alec. They were gold-green, as unreadable as the eyes of the cat he held on his lap. "Not my favorite topic, Smedley."
"Simon", said Simon. "If I'm going to die for you all, the least you could do is remember my name.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Cats

“Inconceivable!"
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

Thinking

“How weightless
words are when nothing will do.”

Philip Levine (1928–2015) Poet

Source: Breath

“But-Jace what are you doing?'
'Finishing my shower. And if you‘ve made me run through all the hot water, I‘ll be very annoyed.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Water

“Life is not easy. We all have problems-even tragedies-to deal with, and luck has nothing to do with it. Bad luck is only the superstitious excuse for those who don't have the wit to deal with the problems of life.”

Joan Lowery Nixon (1927–2003) American children's writer and journalist

Source: In The Face of Danger

Life, Bad luck, Problem

“No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Farewell to Arms

Source: A Farewell to Arms (1929)

Wisdom, Men

“The Vedanta recognizes no sin it only recognizes error. And the greatest error, says the Vedanta is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner, a miserable creature, and that you have no power and you cannot do this and that.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Error

“If you have a story that seems worth telling, and you think you can tell it worthily, then the thing for you to do is to tell it, regardless of whether it has to do with sex, sailors or mounted policemen.”

Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961) American writer

Sex, Thinking

“You're better than this. Better than whatever it is you're going to do now.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

“Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for.”

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

Source: Self-Reliance and Other Essays

“This is how the entire course of a life can be changed - by doing nothing.”

Ian McEwan book On Chesil Beach

Page 166.
Source: On Chesil Beach (2007)

Life, Change

“There is never one absolutely right thing to do. All you can do is honor what you believe, accept the consequences of your own actions, and make the best out of what happens.”

Garth Nix book Superior Saturday

Source: Superior Saturday

“Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.”

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

Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 1 : A tough mind and a tender heart
Context: The tough mind is sharp and penetrating, breaking through the crust of legends and myths and sifting the true from the false. The tough-minded individual is astute and discerning. He has a strong austere quality that makes for firmness of purpose and solidness of commitment.
Who doubts that this toughness is one of man's greatest needs? Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.

Men, Pain, People, Thinking

“She stared at me. "Fly,; ole, in an airplane, which you were warned never to do lest Zeus strike you out of the sky, AND carrying a weapon that has more destructive power than a nuclear bomb?"
"Yeah," I said. "Pretty much exactly like that.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

Flying

“Because when I look at you, I forget everything. I lose all track of what I’m saying or doing. I can see only your eyes.”

Jennifer Ashley (1974) American author

Source: The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie

Forgetting

“Stories never really end… even if the books like to pretend they do. Stories always go on. They don't end on the last page, any more than they begin on the first page.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkspell

Books

“The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Notes on Hospitals 3rd Edition (1863), Preface
Variant: It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm.
Source: Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not

“Simon-"From now on I will only adress people by nodding at them." Clary-"That's stupid why would you do that?" Simon-"Because it says that 'I am a badass, and I recognive that you too, are a badass”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

People, Stupidity