Quotes about end
page 19

Richelle Mead photo
Roald Dahl photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
Donna Tartt photo
Zadie Smith photo
Charles Bukowski photo

“the worst thing," he told me,
"is bitterness, people end up so
bitter.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

Gabrielle Zevin photo
Ned Vizzini photo
Sister Souljah photo
Steven Erikson photo
Janet Evanovich photo
Sam Harris photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government…”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

1770s, Declaration of Independence (1776)
Context: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Karen Marie Moning photo
Ellen DeGeneres photo
Guillermo del Toro photo
Cecelia Ahern photo
David Levithan photo
John F. Kennedy photo

“Mankind must put an end to war - or war will put an end to mankind.”

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

1961, UN speech
Context: Mankind must put an end to war — or war will put an end to mankind.
So let us here resolve that Dag Hammarskjold did not live, or die, in vain. Let us call a truce to terror. Let us invoke the blessings of peace. And as we build an international capacity to keep peace, let us join in dismantling the national capacity to wage war.
Context: We meet in an hour of grief and challenge. Dag Hammarskjold is dead. But the United Nations lives. His tragedy is deep in our hearts, but the task for which he died is at the top of our agenda. A noble servant of peace is gone. But the quest for peace lies before us.
The problem is not the death of one man — the problem is the life of this organization. It will either grow to meet the challenges of our age, or it will be gone with the wind, without influence, without force, without respect. Were we to let it die, to enfeeble its vigor, to cripple its powers, we would condemn our future. For in the development of this organization rests the only true alternative to war — and war appeals no longer as a rational alternative. Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes. It can no longer concern the great powers alone. For a nuclear disaster, spread by wind and water and fear, could well engulf the great and the small, the rich and the poor, the committed and the uncommitted alike. Mankind must put an end to war — or war will put an end to mankind.
So let us here resolve that Dag Hammarskjold did not live, or die, in vain. Let us call a truce to terror. Let us invoke the blessings of peace. And as we build an international capacity to keep peace, let us join in dismantling the national capacity to wage war.

L. Frank Baum photo

“Everything has to come to an end, sometime.”

Source: The Marvelous Land of Oz

Stephen King photo
Tim McGraw photo
Thomas E. Sniegoski photo
Edward Albee photo

“What could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived it”

Edward Albee (1928–2016) American playwright

Variant: You're alive only once, as far as we know, and what could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived it?

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo
Sarah Dessen photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Robert Jordan photo

“If the world is ending, a woman will want time to fix her hair. If the world's ending, a woman will take time to to tell a man something he's done wrong.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Matrim Cauthon
(15 October 1994)
Source: The Wheel of time series by Robert Jordan

Marya Hornbacher photo
Gabriel García Márquez photo
Aaron Allston photo
Ani DiFranco photo

“Art is the reason I get up in the morning, but the definition ends there. It doesn't seem fair that I'm living for something I can't even define.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Out of Habit
Song lyrics
Variant: Art is why I get up in the morning; my definition ends there.
You know it doesn't seem fair,
That I'm living for something I can't even define.
And there you are right there, in the mean time.

A.A. Milne photo
Louisa May Alcott photo

“Love is the only thing that we can carry with us when we go, and it makes the end so easy.”

Source: Little Women (1868), Ch. 40 : The Valley Of The Shadow
Source: Little Women Book Two Book: Good Wives

Roberto Bolaño photo
Melissa de la Cruz photo

“Remember all fairy tales end at some point.”

Melissa de la Cruz (1971) American writer

Source: Lost in Time

Denzel Washington photo
Richard Bach photo

“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

William Blake photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Dylan Thomas photo
Alan Moore photo
Eoin Colfer photo

“Perhaps we can win, he thought. But there will be no happy ending”

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

Source: The Last Guardian

Dorothy L. Sayers photo
Drew Barrymore photo

“Life is very interesting… in the end, some of your greatest pains, become your greatest strengths.”

Drew Barrymore (1975) American actress, director and producer

Variant: In the end, some of your greatest pains become your greatest strengths.

Sarah Dessen photo
Yann Martel photo
Anthony Kiedis photo
David Gilmour photo

“… the second time you see something is really thetime. You need to know how it ends before you can appreciate how beautifully it's put together from the beginning.”

David Gilmour (1946) guitarist, singer, best known as a member of Pink Floyd

Source: The Film Club: A True Story of a Father and Son

Paulo Coelho photo
Anaïs Nin photo

“Stories do not end.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica
Isobelle Carmody photo
Wayne W. Dyer photo
Jean Paul Sartre photo
Richard Bach photo
Jodi Picoult photo
Douglas Coupland photo

“Please stop putting quotes from Nietzsche at the end of your emails. Five years ago you were laughing your guts out over American Pie 2. What — suddenly you’ve magically turned into Noam Chomsky?”

Source: JPod (2006)
Context: You know what? When you read a book, you’re totally lost in your own private world, and society says that’s a good and wonderful thing. But if you play a game by yourself, it’s this weird, fucked-up, socially damaging activity.
In my neighbourhood, all the teenage boys are dying because they’re driving their cars using videogame physics instead of real-world physics. They turn too quickly and change lanes too quickly. They don’t understand traction or centripetal force. And they’re dropping like flies.
Please stop putting quotes from Nietzsche at the end of your emails. Five years ago you were laughing your guts out over American Pie 2. What — suddenly you’ve magically turned into Noam Chomsky?
Don’t discuss Sony like it’s a great big benevolent cartoon character who lives next door to Astro Boy. Like any company, Sony is comprised of individuals who are fearful for their jobs on a daily basis, and who make lame decisions based pretty much on fear and conforming to social norms — but then, that’s every corporation on earth, so don’t single out one specific corporation as lovable and cute. They’re all evil and greedy. They’re all sort of in the moral middle ground, where good and bad cancel each other out, so there’s nothing really there — which, in it’s own way, far darker than any paranoid or patriarchal theory of Sony.
Here’s a much simpler example of geeks and neural processing malfunctions: Has anybody experienced a geek environment in which said geeks wear perfume or deodorant? Chances are no. While advanced microautistics are more commonly men than women, both share a marked dislike of scent.

Margaret Atwood photo
Alan Moore photo
Emily Brontë photo
Mark Rowlands photo

“In the end, it is our defiance that redeems us. If wolves had a religion – if there was a religion of the wolf – that it is what it would tell us.”

Mark Rowlands (1962) British philosopher

Source: The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death, and Happiness

Jean-Luc Godard photo

“A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.”

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic

Variant: A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end... but not necessarily in that order.

Susan Elizabeth Phillips photo
William Wharton photo
Rachel Cohn photo

“Wherever I went, I was on the wrong end of the stampede.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Cheryl Strayed photo
David Hume photo
Jeanette Winterson photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
David Levithan photo
Alan Moore photo
Stephen King photo
Paulo Coelho photo
Rick Riordan photo
Margaret Atwood photo

“You can be as mad as a mad dog at the way things went, you can curse the fates, but when it comes to the end, you have to let go.”

Eric Roth (1945) American screenwriter

Source: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Screenplay

Jenna Blum photo
Clarence Darrow photo

“I have always felt that doubt was the beginning of wisdom, and the fear of God was the end of wisdom.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Source: The Story of My Life (1932), Ch. 4 "Called To The Bar"

Lee Child photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“The never-ending task of self improvement.”

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