Quotes about doing
page 81

“Now, Max, I think we both know your parents aren't missionaries."
I opened my eyes wide. "No? Well, for God's sake, don't tell them. They'd be crushed. Thinking they're doing the
Lord's work and all.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: School's Out—Forever

God, Thinking, Parent

“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

“If it's true, why do they leave us to live like this? With the hunger and the killings and the Games?" And suddenly I hate this imaginary underground city of District 13 and those who sit by, watching us die. They're no better than the Capitol.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Hunger, Hate, Game

“Destiny is usually just around the corner. Like a thief, a hooker, or a lottery vendor: its three most common personifications. But what destiny does not do is home visits. You have to go for it.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Home

“The truth is, almost everything we do is done poorly when we first start doing it – that’s how we learn.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

Truth, Learning

“Hobbes: Do you think there's a God?
Calvin: Well, somebody's out to get me!”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

God, Thinking

“I get in the dumps at times, and don't open my mouth for days on end. You must not think I am sulky when I do that. Just let me alone, and I'll soon be right.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book A Study in Scarlet

Source: A Study in Scarlet

Thinking, Time

“In short, heroism means doing the right thing regardless of the consequences.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: A World Without Heroes

“Sometimes that's all you can do. Hope.”

Natasha Friend (1972) American writer

Source: My Life in Black and White

Depressing, Hope

“You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness.”

Cheryl Strayed book Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Source: Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Wisdom, Age, Forgiveness

“Are some people destined for a great fate, or to do great things? Or is it only that they're born somehow with that great passion -- and if they find themselves in the right circumstances, then things happen? It's the sort of thing you wonder…”

Diana Gabaldon book Voyager

Source: Voyager

Fate, People, Passion

“So take my advice: whatever you do? Don’t blink”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Abandon

“I sat down next to her. Took her hand. This can work, I said. All we have to do is try.”

Junot Díaz book This Is How You Lose Her

Source: This Is How You Lose Her

“Lacuna peered at my shirt. "Aer-O-Smith. Arrowsmith. Does the shirt belong to your weapon dealer?"

"No."

"Then why do you wear the shirt of someone else's weapon dealer?”

Jim Butcher book Cold Days

Source: Cold Days

“What I do know is sometimes we love the wrong people and sometimes we marry them.”

Terry McMillan book Getting to Happy

Source: Getting to Happy

Love, People

“I've been burdened by questions I've asked myself a thousand times since the last time we were together.
Why did I do it? And would I do it again?
It was I, you see, who ended it.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Question, Time

“I do believe that his given name is something odd. Peregrine, Penrose- Piers, that's it."
"He sounds like a dock." Lord Sundron put in.
"Mrs. Hutchins called me a light frigate this morning," Linnet said "a dock might be just the thing for me.”

Eloisa James (1962) American academic

Source: When Beauty Tamed the Beast

Light

“All a person can do in this life is gather about him his integrity, his imagination, and his individuality – and with these ever with him, out front and in sharp focus, leap into the dance of experience.”

Tom Robbins Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Source: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Life, Imagination, Dance, Personality

“I don't know what's wrong with me. It's like all I can do is keep writing this gibberish to keep from breaking apart.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Can you imagine what it would be like to know that your life was just going to be a series of days that were
all the same, that were do-overs?”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Between the Lines

Life, Imagination

“Be patient, hand," he said. "I do this for you.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Old Man and the Sea

Source: The Old Man and the Sea

“I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are.”

Philip Pullman book The Amber Spyglass

Source: The Amber Spyglass

People, Evil

“Teach her that if you criticize X in women but do not criticize X in men, then you do not have a problem with X, you have a problem with women.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

Source: Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

Women, Men, Problem

“Attitude is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than what people do or say. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill.”

W.C. Fields (1880–1946) actor

Attitude, Money, People, Education

“We do not need more intellectual power, we need more spiritual power. We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

“I was doing something I'd never done before. And what will I be able to do tomorrow that I cannot yet do today?”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Variant: And what will I be able to do tomorrow that I cannot yet do today?
Source: Eat, Pray, Love

“How're the Broncos doing?"
"Like a bunch of carrots."
"Is that bad?"
"Can carrots play baseball?"
"I guess not."
"Then you have your answer.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Lucky One

Source: The Lucky One

“You have to trust the words. They do not create anything more than themselves.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“I'm talking about doing something good for mankind. Imagine how awesome everyone would feel if they knew all that holy stuff was real." -Gregori
"Stuff? Four years of giving sermons, and that what I get back? Holy stuff?”

Kerrelyn Sparks (1955) American writer

Source: Vampire Mine

Feeling, Imagination

“I had a million plans. I knew what I was going to do. I had the next few years of my life all figured out.
But what I didn’t know was that within a few hours all those plans would change. Ms. Know-it-all didn’t quite know it all so much then.”

Cecelia Ahern book Love, Rosie

Source: Love, Rosie

Life, Change

“No chance. It'd be like cutting off our hands."
"Then learn to live without your hands."
"No, because then we won't be able to do this," Ben says, giving him the finger […]”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

Learning, Chance

“Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God's will.”

Eric Metaxas (1963) American journalist

Source: Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

God, Courage

“Do you love me?
What?
Do you?
I love you. I don't know if I trust you.
Maybe you shouldn't do either.
Maybe I'm the one who should decide!”

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

Love

“I do not find it easy to talk to people I don't know.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

People

“Other people do not see you at all, but guess at you by uncertain conjectures.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Source: The Complete Essays

People

“I think about how people use the devil as an alias for the things they fear. The cause and effect is backward. The devil doesn't make anyone do anything. People just do things and blame the devil after.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

People, Fear, Thinking

“I still stand by what I said. Do you want me to lie about it?' he asks.
'No, I want you to rethink it and come up with the right opinion,' I tell him.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Lie

“It sends out a very clear message: "Mess with us and we'll do something worse than kill you. We'll kill your children.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Children

“I should just listen to my gut and then do the opposite.”

Gillian Flynn book Dark Places

Source: Dark Places

“"How do you feel?"
"Terrible. I must have gone to bed sober."”

Dashiell Hammett book The Thin Man

Nora & Nick
Source: The Thin Man (1929)

Feeling

“You are the one who calls the law of attraction into action, and you do it through your thoughts.”

Rhonda Byrne book The Secret

Source: The Secret

Law

“A love that does not discriminate seems to me to forfeit a part of its own value, by doing an injustice to its object; and secondly, not all men are worthy of love.”

Sigmund Freud book Civilization and Its Discontents

Source: Civilization and Its Discontents

Love, Men, Parting

“Percy," my father said, "what exactly do you mean?" "Kronos couldn't have risen if it hadn't been for a lot of demigods who felt abandoned by their parents," I said. "They felt angry, resentful, and unloved, and they had a good reason.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

Parent

“That's the most stupid expression in the world. 'I fell in love'—as if you had no choice. There's a moment, there's always a moment; I can do this, I can give in to this or I can resist it. I don't know when your moment was but I bet there was one.”

Patrick Marber Closer

Source: Closer

Love, Stupidity, World

“Knowing the precies answers is not as crucial as the certainty that the answers do, in fact, exist.”

Chris Heimerdinger (1963) American writer

Source: Feathered Serpent, Part 2

“I'm so afraid of losing something I love that I refuse to love anything,' maybe that would have made the impossible possible. Maybe, but I couldn't do it, I had buried too much too deeply inside me. And here I am, instead of there.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Love

“It's like all those quiet people, when they do lose their tempers they lose them with a vengeance.”

Agatha Christie book The A.B.C. Murders

Source: The A.B.C. Murders

People

“There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand. I am practically industrious — painstaking, a workman to execute with perseverance and labour — but besides this there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Robert Walton in "Letter 2"
Source: Frankenstein (1818)

Love, Men, Soul, Understanding

“Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Book III, Ch. 13
Essais (1595), Book III
Source: Montaigne: Essays

Business, Nature, Chance

“Maybe… because for the first time… there was a chance I could keep him,” I say.
“So now that you've got me, what are you going to do with me?”
“Put you somewhere you can't get hurt.”
And when he kisses me, people in the room actually sigh.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

People, Kiss, Chance, Time

“If we can’t stand up to the never good enough and who do you think you are? we can’t move forward.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

Thinking

“Love has nothing to do with good reasons.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

Love

“Intelligence is based on how efficient a species became at doing the things they need to survive.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

Intelligence

“If I get a new idea today—or any day—I won't run from it. I won't trash it. If it's something I really want to do—I'll do it.”

Jerry Spinelli (1941) American children's writer

Source: Today I Will: A Year of Quotes, Notes, and Promises to Myself

Idea

“I do not have any other way of saying it. I think it happens but once and only to the very young when it feels like your skin could ignite at the mere touch of another person. You get to love like that but once.”

Pat Conroy book Beach Music

Source: Beach Music

Love, Way, Feeling, Thinking

“If men only felt about death as they do about sleep, all terrors would cease… Men sleep contentedly, assured that they will wake the following morning. They should feel the same about their lives.”

Richard Matheson book What Dreams May Come

Source: What Dreams May Come

Death, Men, Feeling, Sleep

“This is not a story of heroic feats, or merely the narrative of a cynic; at least I do not mean it to be. It is a glimpse of two lives running parallel for a time, with similar hopes and convergent dreams.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Source: The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

Dreams, Hope, Time

“We do not need to operate according to the idea of a predetermined program for our lives.”

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

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Idea

“Givers have to set limits because takers rarely do.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

“It is a remarkable question- Do all the wonderful things happen when we are not aware of them?”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Question

“We do learn and develop when we are exposed to those who are greater than we are. Perhaps this is the chief way we mature.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage

Way, Learning

“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

“But what now? What am I supposed to do with all these feelings?”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Feeling

“But kids don't stay with you if you do it right. It's the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won't be needed in the long run.”

Barbara Kingsolver Pigs in Heaven

Source: Pigs in Heaven

For Mother

“[Harriet] hated math. She hated math with every bone in her body. She spent so much time hating it that she never had time to do it.”

Louise Fitzhugh book Harriet the Spy

Source: Harriet the Spy

Hate, Time

“Adventures do occur, but not punctually.”

E.M. Forster book A Passage to India

Source: A Passage to India (1924), Ch. 3

“Prolong not the past
Invite not the future
Do not alter your innate wakefulness
Fear not appearances
There in nothing more than this”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Fear, Appearance, Past, Future

“Oh! Do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.”

Jane Austen book Mansfield Park

Source: Mansfield Park

“He thought each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins. As in a party game. Say the words and pass it on. So be sparing. What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

Game, Reality, Memory

“Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

Source: Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

People, Books

“It’s not the pain that’s inflicted on us by others that destroys us. It’s the pain we let inside our hearts that does that. Don’t let the human’s anger become yours. It can drive you mad if you do. (M'Adoc)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Upon the Midnight Clear

Pain, Heart, Madness, Anger

“I sure do miss that woman. Smart. Funny. Sweet. She never gave me a moment's trouble."

"Gosh, I'm sorry about that. I knew it was boring between you two, but not that bad.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: Call Me Irresistible

“How do you invent a religion?” Evie asked.

Will looked over the top of his spectacles. “You say, ‘God told me the following,’ and then wait for people to sign up.”

Libba Bray book The Diviners

Source: The Diviners

God, People, Religion, Waiting

“You…you got rid of that dress fast," I pointed out between heavy breaths. "I thought you liked it."
"I do like it," he said. His breathing was as heavy as mine. "I love it."
And then he took me to the bed.”

Richelle Mead Vampire Academy

Source: Vampire Academy

Love

“You can't think for other people. Nor can you feel for them or be them. They have to do that for themselves.”

Melina Marchetta book Looking for Alibrandi

Source: Looking for Alibrandi

People, Feeling, Thinking

“The real hell of Hell is that it is forever.' Sula said that. She said doing anything forever and ever was hell.”

Toni Morrison book Sula

Source: Sula

Hell

“Simi? You got some free time? (Kat)
Of course I do. You know akri on Olympus with that heifer-goddess I want to eat, but he won’t let the Simi have no dinner. So why you calling me, little akra-kitty? (Simi)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Devil May Cry

Time

“… there’s also nothing noble about being fearless. How much do you wanna bet the last man standing in a battle is usually the biggest fool of all?” - Paul Hudson”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

Fools

“When you paint Spring, do not paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots, but just paint Spring. To paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots is to paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots - it is not yet painting Spring.”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

Spring, Painting

“(Zarek attacks Valerius.)
Cease! I know it’s been a long time since you were around another Dark-Hunter, Z, but remember, whatever you do to him, you will feel it tenfold. (Acheron)
Pain I can take, it’s him I can’t. (Zarek)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Night Embrace

Source: Night Embrace

Pain, Feeling, Time

“Follow me,' Myrnin said. 'And do stay together. And by the way, this is the last time I go anywhere with you people. You are all insane.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Bite Club

People, Way, Time

“Always do what you're afraid to do.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

“… no one is born a great cook, one learns by doing.”

Julia Child My Life in France

Source: My Life in France

Learning, Cooking

“I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.”

Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man

Source: Invisible Man (1952), Chapter 21.

“Why do some memories live only on your tongue or in your nose? Why do others always stay in your heart?”

Amy Tan (1952) American novelist

Memory, Heart

“Wait," said Butler. "Just wait, Holly. Artemis has a plan." He squinted through the green dome. "What is your plan, Artemis?"
All Artemis could do was smile and shrug.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Last Guardian

Smile, Waiting

“Perfectionism is a self destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

Pain, Feeling, Perfection

“Grown up, and that is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Childhood

“Character is that which can do without success.”

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

Success

“I want to keep feeling the way I feel when I'm with you. Just tell me what I have to do. And give me some room to screw up. I've never done this before. There's a learning curve.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

Way, Feeling, Learning

“Never be afraid of doing the thing you know in your heart is right, even if others don't agree.”

Elizabeth Berg (1948) American novelist

Source: Dream When You're Feeling Blue

Heart

“Usually the people I do know are sufficient to spawn any number of nightmares without inventing any.”

Patricia Briggs book River Marked

Source: River Marked

People

“It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable.”

Molière (1622–1673) French playwright and actor

“My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. I do not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more definite than a novel and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we called Knowledge before — a discovery that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Walking (June 1862)
Source: Civil Disobedience and Other Essays

Dreams, Intelligence, Knowledge

“Vampires don't live at all," she points out, "neither do we."
She has me there. "Fine, I'll go. But when Kurt leads his minions in a march around the cemetary with our heads on sticks, don't say I didn't warn you.”

Cynthia Leitich Smith (1967) American writer and poet

Source: Eternal

“Do you understand the sadness of geography?”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

Sadness, Understanding

“You know,” he said, “this is why I love you so much.”
Her tone was heartbreakingly warm. “What do you mean?”
You don’t ask me to go inside because it’s cold. You just want to make it easier for me to be where I want to stand.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Avenged

Love

“There's a serendipity to real life that the Internet can't duplicate. Do you use the library? For anything? Well, sometimes you end up picking up the book next to the one you were looking for, and it's that book that changes your life.”

Laura Lippman (1959) Detective fiction writer

Source: Hardly Knew Her

Life, Books, Change

“To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that's real power.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Quotes about doing page 81

Quotes about doing
page 81