Quotes about end
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“Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily..”

Bernhard Schlink book The Reader

Source: The Reader

Memory, Happiness

“Be careful dear that you don’t end up as the queen of a lonely kingdom”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Tempt Me at Twilight

“I could almost see common sense and denial fighting away at each other within her. In the end, denial won, as it so often does.”

Jasper Fforde book Lost in a Good Book

Source: Lost in a Good Book

Sense, Fight

“All wisdom ends in paradox.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides

Source: The Virgin Suicides

Wisdom

“If I can't wait for you at the end of an aisle on your wedding day, I'll wait for you in heaven.”

Lurlene McDaniel (1944) American writer

Source: Don't Die, My Love

Wedding, Waiting

“I'm always learning something. Learning never ends.”

Raymond Carver book Cathedral

Source: Cathedral

Learning

“Mrs. May looked back at her. "Kate," she said after a moment, "stories never really end. They can go on and on and on. It's just that sometimes, at a certain point, one stops telling them.”

Mary Norton The Borrowers

Source: The Borrowers

“Three more days. That’s what Sven always told me. When you think you’re at the end of your rope, give it three more days. And then another three. Sometimes you’ll find the rope is longer than you thought.”

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

Source: The Heart of Betrayal

Thinking

“I watched the tears run down her cheeks and start to drip from the end of her chin. One part of me wanted to put my arms round her but I daren't. Do that and I'd never be able to let her go.”

Joseph Delaney book The Spook's Mistake

Source: The Spook's Mistake

Tear, Parting

“He can't really love anyone, you know, and in the end such people are always alone, no matter how much other people once loved them.”

Elizabeth Kostova book The Swan Thieves

Source: The Swan Thieves

Love, People

“Khufu carefully picked out everything that ended with-o—Doritos, Oreos, and some chunks of meat. Buffalo? Armadillo? I was scared to even ask.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

“In the end, life makes victims of us all.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of the Night

Life

“So you drive as far as you can, even when you can clearly read the sign. You want to think you are exempt, that it doesn’t apply to you. But it does. Life is still a dead end. And we still have a hard time believing it”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Life, Thinking, Time, Reading

“Because all bad little vampires see me in the end”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Kiss the Dead

Source: Kiss the Dead

“We do not start as dust. We do not end as dust. We make more than dust.

That's all we ask of you. Make more than dust.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Two Boys Kissing

“The church is like a swimming pool. Most of the noise comes from the shallow end.”

John Shelby Spong (1931) American bishop

Source: Eternal Life: A New Vision: Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell

“If life is a punishment, one should wish for an end; if life is a test, one should wish it to be short.”

Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737–1814) writer and botanist from France

Source: Paul and Virginia by Bernardin de St. Pierre, Fiction, Literary

Life

“He is always doing something--the very best thing, the thing we ourselves would certainly choose if we knew the end from the beginning. He is at work to bring us to our full glory.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

“In the end, the only person I truly want to comfort me is Haymitch, because he loves Peeta, too.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Love, Personality

“…she'll go and fall in love, and there's an end of peace and fun, and cozy times together.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Love, Peace, Time

“I don't know that I've ever felt as happy as I did that day, but then again, it was always like that when we were together. I never wanted it to end.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Best of Me

Source: The Best of Me

Happiness

“The opposite of the happy ending is not actually the sad ending--the sad endingsometimes the happy ending. The opposite of the happy ending is actually theending.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Sadness, Happiness

“You learned to accept, or you ended up in a small room writing letters home with Crayolas.”

Stephen King book Pet Sematary

Source: Pet Sematary

Home, Learning

“Sometimes fear made you angry. Perhaps after years anger cooled, like a sword taken from a forge. Perhaps in the end you were left with something very cold and very sharp.”

Frances Hardinge book Fly by Night

Source: Fly by Night

Fear, Anger

“She had opened a door… and now she was walking with demons. And at the end of her travels, she would have her revenge… Pain had made a sadist of her.”

Clive Barker book The Hellbound Heart

Source: The Hellbound Heart

Pain, Travel, Revenge

“They were more severely infected than the men, because while men were always getting furious, they calmed down in the end; women, who appeared to be silent, acquiescent, when they were angry flew into a rage that had no end.”

Elena Ferrante book My Brilliant Friend

Source: My Brilliant Friend

Women, Men, Appearance, Rage

“The end of life is not to be happy, nor to achieve pleasure and avoid pain, but to do the will of God, come what may.”

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

Life, God, Pain, Pleasure

“Every ending is a new beginning. Through the grace of God, we can always start again. (Page 120.)”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: Everyday Grace: Having Hope, Finding Forgiveness And Making Miracles

God

“Gravity was something you could beat; all it took was hydrogen, hot air, or even a bit of rope. But being a girl was a miserable, never-ending struggle.”

Scott Westerfeld (1963) American science fiction writer

Girl

“She'd ended up passing out, and sometime later, John must have gotten up to use the loo and left the light on. Probably to make sure she didn't feel lost if she woke up.
Because that's the kind of male he was.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Mine

Feeling, Light

“Whether consciousness is implanted in us by something divine, or whether it is created by the efforts of our brains, the end result is the same. We are.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: UnWholly

Effort

“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

“You have the rest of your lives to catch up together. After all, soulmates always end up together. […] Ey-girlfriends are easily forgotten. Best friends stay with you for ever.”

Cecelia Ahern book Love, Rosie

Variant: After all, soulmates always end up together. Silly Bethany won't even be remembered then. Ex-girlfriends are easily forgotten. Best friends stay with you for ever.
Source: Where Rainbows End

“The only way was forward, whatever lay at the end.”

Robert Jordan The Wheel of Time

Source: New Spring

Way

“Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

Source: The Odyssey

Way, Singing

“So many dreams, so many disappointments, so many promises. And in the end, they all just vanish.”

Haruki Murakami book Pinball, 1973

Source: Pinball, 1973

Dreams, Disappointment

“Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

"Reluctance", st. 4 (1913)
1910s

Love, Heart, Season

“Women still dream and hope, pin their emotions on some man who doesn't reciprocate, and end up in confusion.”

Elisabeth Elliot book Passion and Purity

Source: Passion and Purity

Women, Dreams, Hope

“When I stand and contemplate my fate and see the path along which you have led me, I reach my end, for artless I surrendered to one who is my undoing and my end.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Of Love and Other Demons

Source: Of Love and Other Demons

Fate

“I think you can do whatever you want. In the end, we all live the life we choose for ourselves.”

Nicholas Sparks book See Me

Source: See Me

Life, Thinking

“Life is chaotic and unpredictable. If a butterfly flaps its wings in
one part of the world, it could cause people at the opposite end of the globe to watch a Discovery Channel special on butterflies”

Stephen Colbert book I Am America (And So Can You!)

Source: I Am America

Life, People, World, Parting

“Stories took twists and turns down fairy-tale paths or down very human everyday ones. You think you’re at the end of the book, and it’s only the end of a chapter.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Story of Us

Books, Thinking

“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. a burn for a burn. a life for a life. that's how all this got started. and that's how it's going to end.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: Fire with Fire

Life

“Listen,' Clover said. 'Don't worry about not being able to come back, I've lived both places, and trust me, you won't be getting the short end of the stick if you end up in Foo. I mean, candy alone…”

Obert Skye (1970) American writer

“For me, Art is the restoration of order. It may discuss all sort of terrible things, but there must be satisfaction at the end. A little bit of hunger, but also satisfaction.”

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer

Interview with Don Swaim (1987)

Hunger, Art

“I am hopeful, though not full of hope, and the only reason I don't believe in happy endings is because I don't believe in endings.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Source: Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

Hope, Happiness

“It all ends in one of two ways: either someone gets eaten or something blows up.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

Way

“… A good Book, has no Ending…”

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

Books

“Man is born to live, to suffer, and to die, and what befalls him is a tragic lot. There is no denying this in the final end. But we must deny it all along the way.”

Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938) American writer

Way, Suffering

“We are going to fight. We are going to be hurt. And in the end, we will stand.”

Stephen King book The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three

Source: The Drawing of the Three

Fight, Hurt

“Fairy Tales always have a happy ending.' That depends… on whether you are Rumpelstiltskin or the Queen.”

Jane Yolen book Briar Rose

Source: Briar Rose

Dependency, Happiness

“In the end we are all caught in devices of our own making. I believe that. In the end we are all caught.”

Stephen King book Full Dark, No Stars

Source: Full Dark, No Stars

“He saw that no one owned anything really. It's all rented, or borrowed. Our possessions will outlast us, we'll desert them in the end.”

Ian McEwan Saturday

Source: Saturday

“We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.”

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

1960s, How Long, Not Long (1965)
Context: I must admit to you that there are still jail cells waiting for us, and dark and difficult moments. But if we will go on with the faith that nonviolence and its power can transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows, we will be able to change all of these conditions. And so I plead with you this afternoon as we go ahead: remain committed to nonviolence. Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding. We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man.

Peace

“We are not quite novels.
We are not quite short stories.
In the end, we are collected works.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“The wait is long, my dream of you does not end.”

Nuala O'Faolain (1940–2008) Irish writer

Source: My Dream of You

Dreams, Waiting

“Laila has moved on. Because in the end she knows that’s all she can do. That and hope.”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Hope

“the soul's certainty that the day will have to be not traversed but sort of climbed, vertically, and then that going to sleep again at the end of it will be like falling, again, off something tall and sheer.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest (1996)
Context: These worst mornings with cold floors and hot windows and merciless light—the soul’s certainty that the day will have to be not traversed but sort of climbed, vertically, and then that going to sleep again at the end of it will be like falling, again, off something tall and sheer.

Soul, Sleep

“But look what the Church has done to Jesus during the last two thousand years. What they have made of Him. How they have turned every word He spoke for their own vile ends. Jesus would be framed and in jail if he was living today.”

Carson McCullers book The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Source: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

“Go now. Our journey is done. And may we meet again, in the clearing, at the end of the path.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“Unpleasant?" he finished for her.
"Only on the days when my adoptive mother tosses me out of the house with instructions never to darken her door again. Usually, I'm remarkably good-natured. Try me on any day that doesn't end in y.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Nature, Housing

“Since the majority of me
Rejects the majority of you,
Debating ends forthwith, and we
Divide.”

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

“Carmen didn't like change, and she certainly didn't like endings.”

Ann Brashares The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Change

“We need a Napoleon. An Alexander. Except that Napoleon lost in the end, and Alexander flamed out and died young. We need a Julius Caesar, except that he made himself a dictator, and died for it.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

“Where every day doesn't start with an alarm clock and end with the television.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Diary

Source: Diary

“Tragedy is when someone ends up dead. Everything else is just a bump in the road. For the record, that was something Daddy used to say.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: All These Things I've Done

Dead

“And in the end, I lost him. I did it on purpose, the way Garance lost
Baptiste in the crowd. I needed to be alone, I felt. I wanted to be going on alone to my future.”

Susanna Kaysen (1948) American writer

Way, Future

“In the end, everyone loses everyone.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Attitude

“I think the only answer is to live life to the fullest while you can and collect memories like fools collect money. Because in the end, that's all you have - happy memories.”

Sarah Strohmeyer (1950) American writer

Source: Kindred Spirits

Life, Money, Fools, Thinking

“If I didn't know the ending of a story, I wouldn't begin. I always write my last lines, my last paragraph first, and then I go back and work towards it. I know where I'm going. I know what my goal is. And how I get there is God's grace.”

Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist

God

“I have found in life that everything, no matter how bad, comes to an end.”

Bryce Courtenay The Power of One

Source: The Power of One

Life

“Now that I've met you and spoken to you and felt you and tasted you, I'm done. That's it. You're the end for me.”

Christine Warren American writer

Source: Born to Be Wild

“Fatigue is here, in my body, in my legs and eyes. That is what gets you in the end. Faith is only a word, embroidered.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Faith

“The irony of the process of thought control: the more energy you put into trying to control your ideas and what you think about, the more your ideas end up controlling you.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Idea, Thinking

“When he died he would not end. The world would end.”

Don DeLillo book Cosmopolis

Source: Cosmopolis

World

“Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an aesthetic end.”

James Joyce book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Notebook entry, Paris (28 March 1903), printed in James Joyce: Occasional, Critical and Political Writing (2002) edited by Kevin Barry [Oxford University Press, 2002, <small> ISBN 0-192-83353-7</small>], p. 104
Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Art, Intelligence

“End of Construction. Thank you 'for your patience. " Inscription on Ruth Bell Graham's grave -- inspired hy a road sign she saw.”

Billy Graham (1918–2018) American Christian evangelist

Source: Nearing Home: Life, Faith, and Finishing Well

Patience

“Your going to come across people in your life that say all the right things at the right times. But in the end, it's always their actions you should judge them by. it's actions, not words, that matter.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Rescue

Variant: You're going to come across people in your life who will say all the right words at all the right times. But in the end, it's always their actions you should judge them by. It's actions, not words, that matter.
Source: The Rescue

Life, People, Time

“There is the sudden. There is the eventual.
And in between, there is the living.

We do not start as dust. We do not end as dust. WE make more than dust.

That's all we ask of you. Make more than dust.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Two Boys Kissing