Quotes about end
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“The self is coming from a state of pure awareness from the state of being. All the rest that comes about in a outward manifesation of the physical world, including fluctuations which end up as thoughts and actions”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Source: The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell

World

“For outlandish creatures like us, on our way to a heart, a brain, and courage, Bethlehem is not the end of our journey but only the beginning - not home but the place through which we must pass if ever we are to reach home at last.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Source: The Magnificent Defeat

Way, Home, Courage, Heart

“She nods. You're good for the ones you love. You want to be good for the ones you love, because you know that your time with them will end up being too short, no matter how long it is.”

Stephen King book Lisey's Story

Source: Lisey's Story

Love, Time

“In my view, suicide is not really a wish for life to end.'
What is it then?'
It is the only way a powerless person can find to make everybody else look away from his shame. The wish is not to die, but to hide.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Shadow

Source: Ender's Shadow

Life, Way, Suicide, Personality

“The next generation will always surpass the previous one. It's one of the never-ending cycles in life.”

Masashi Kishimoto (1974) Japanese manga artist

Life

“Neither you nor I can know your destiny. You may never know it! Destiny isn't always like a party at the end of the evening. Sometimes it's nothing more than struggling through life from day to day.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Life

“Ah! when will this long weary day have end,
And lende me leave to come unto my love?

- Epithalamion”

Edmund Spenser (1552–1599) English poet

Source: Amoretti and Epithalamion

Love

“Cowardice rightly understood begins with selfishness and ends with shame.”

José Rizal book Noli Me Tángere

Source: Noli Me Tángere

Selfishness

“Some old guy once said that the meaning of life is that it ends.”

Lee Child book A Wanted Man

Source: A Wanted Man

Life, Guy

“What I thought was an end
turned out to be a middle.
What I thought was a brick wall
turned out to be a tunnel.
What I thought was an injustice
turned out to be a color of the sky.”

Tony Hoagland (1953–2018) American writer

Color

“It's funny whom we end up choosing to love and who ends up choosing to love us. It's rarely the people we think it should be.”

Robin Jones Gunn (1955) American writer

Source: Gardenias for Breakfast

Love, People, Thinking

“Ending is better than mending.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Source: Brave New World

“To me, these days will never end. I am always there, in that room with her,
or if not I, the imprint of myself - my fossil-love”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Powerbook

Love

“I've never had inner turmoil about all this. You find a lot of people these days who cannot stand to be alone. You could lock me up in solitary for weeks on end, and I'd keep myself amused.”

Keith Richards (1943) British rock musician, member of The Rolling Stones

People

“But now and then, a woman walks up, full blossom, a woman just bursting out of her dress…a sex creature, a curse, the end of it all.”

Charles Bukowski book Post Office

Source: Post Office

Sex

“I return to problems i can't solve, not because i am an idiot, but because the real problems can't be solved. The universe is expanding. The more we see, the more we discover there is to see. Always a new beginning, a different end.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

Problem, Universe

“Endings are beginnings, and beginnings are ours to turn into something good.”

Elizabeth Chandler (1954) writer

Source: Everlasting

“Are you mine?”
Yes.
“Are you mine?”
Yes.
“Are you mine?”
No.
“No?”
No. I loved being yours. But now I’m mine, which is all I ever was, in the end.”

Emma Forrest (1976) British journalist, novelist and screenwriter

Source: Your Voice in My Head

Love

“I thought climbing the Devil's Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

Life, Dreams, Mountain, Change

“Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness without beginning or end.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

“Like all Herondales, his ability to love without measure, without end, was both his great gift and his great curse.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Lost Herondale

Love

“Now begin in the middle, and later learn the beginning; the end will take care of itself.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

Learning

“Should I just bite you, and end it all?", he whispered. "I would never have to think about you again. Thinking about you is an annoying habit and one I want to be rid of.”

Charlaine Harris book Dead as a Doornail

Source: Dead as a Doornail

Thinking

“In her way, she was a hard one. Faith in any sort of natural justice was nothing but a night light; she knew of that. Whatever she did, she would end the same way with everyone does: flat on her back with a tube in her nose, wondering, "Is this all?”

Thomas Harris Red Dragon

Source: Red Dragon

Faith, Justice, Way, Nature

“The present is the only things that has no end.”

Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) Austrian physicist

“It is only the darkness in our own hearts that will defeat us, in the end.”

Alison Croggon book The Crow

Source: The Crow

Heart

“In the end, I think that I will like that we were sitting on the bed, talking & wondering where the time had gone.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Thinking, Time

“He had a heart that could have held the entire empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar.”

Gaston Leroux book The Phantom of the Opera

Source: The Phantom of the Opera

World, Heart

“You used to be able to tell a person's nationality by the face. Immigration ended that. Next you discerned nationality via the footwear. Globalization ended that.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

Personality

“I wanted to cry but I didn't, I probably should have cried, I should have drowned us there in the room ending our suffering.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Suffering, Cry

“Other people sound flat to my ear; their words just hang in the air. But when my mother says something, the ends curl.”

Augusten Burroughs book Running with Scissors

Source: Running with Scissors

People

“Three things see no end-
A flower blighted ere it bloomed,
A message that was wasted,
And a journey that was doomed.”

Mercedes Lackey book By the Sword

Source: By the Sword

Flowers

“To be a human is to state the obvious. Repeatedly. Over and over, until the end of time.”

Matt Haig (1975) British writer

Source: The Humans

Time

“Live not for Battles Won.
Live not for The-End-of-the-Song.
Live in the along.”

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) American writer

Source: Report from Part One

“If you risked love, it took you wherever you wanted to go. If you repressed it, you ended up unhappy.”

Wally Lamb book She's Come Undone

Source: She's Come Undone

Love

“Nobody ever gets enough appreciation when they're behaving themselves, but there's no end to hearing about it when they're not.”

Jean Ferris (1939–2015) American children's writer

Source: Once Upon a Marigold

“Show me slowly what I only
know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Source: Leonard Cohen: Poems and Songs

Love, Dance

“You were designed to be very smart, Max,' she told me. 'We electrically stimulated your synaptic nerve endings while your brain was developing.' (The director)
And yet I still can't program my DVD player,' I said." (Max)”

James Patterson (1947) American author

“Let's face it: a date is a job-interview, that lasts all night. The only difference between a date and a job interview is: not many job-interviews is there a chance you'll end up naked at the end of it.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

I'm Telling You for the Last Time (1998)
Context: What is a date, really, but a job interview that lasts all night? The only difference is there aren't many job interviews where there's a chance you'll end up naked at the end of it. "Well, Bill, the boss thinks you're the right man for the job; why don't you strip down and meet some of the people you'll be working with?"

Chance, Night

“When you expect the world to end at any moment, you know there is no need to hurry. You take your time, you do your work well.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

World, Time

“Some stories don’t have happy endings. Even love stories. Maybe especially love stories.”

Kristin Hannah book The Nightingale

Source: The Nightingale

Love, Happiness

“When first love ends, most people eventually know there will be more to come. They are not through with love. Love is not through with them. It will never be the same as the first, but it will be better in different ways.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Love, People, Way

“She doesn't want to end up like me. At least I'm giving someone an example not to follow.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

“He was reading from the beginning so that he could get to the end, where the reader was assured that the knight and the fair maiden lived together happily ever after.”

Kate DiCamillo book The Tale of Despereaux

Source: The Tale of Despereaux

Reading

“I wondered about the explorers who'd sailed their ships to the end of the world. How terrified they must have been when they risked falling over the edge; how amazed to discover, instead, places they had seen only in their dreams.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

World, Dreams

“For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Source: Night

Memory

“A good book should leave you…. slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.”

William Styron (1925–2006) American novelist and essayist

Interview in Writers at Work, First Series (1958), edited by George Plimpton
Variant: A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.
Source: Conversations with William Styron

Books, Reading

“Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you're any wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

Variant: Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.

World

“Life's not black-and-white. Sometimes the ends justifies the means.”

Emily Giffin Something Borrowed

Source: Something Borrowed

Life

“Inertia iseasy—don't fix what's not broken. Leave well enough alone. So we end up accepting whatbroken, mistaking complaining for action, procrastinating for deliberation.”

Justina Chen (1968) American writer

Source: North of Beautiful

“You're still alive. And that means you'll love and be loved… and in the end, nothing else really matters.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Best of Me

Source: The Best of Me

Love

“When a man writes a romance, the woman dies. When a woman writes one, it ends all tidy and sweet.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: What Happens in London

“People don't like being around despair. Our tolerance for the truly hopeless, for those who are irredeemably broken by life is strictly limited. The sob stories we like are the ones that end before we're bored.”

Salman Rushdie The Ground Beneath Her Feet

Source: The Ground Beneath Her Feet

Life, People, Despair

“Love knows no limits to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love still stands when all else has fallen.”

Tim McGraw (1967) American country singer

Love, Hope

“Someday, you do not know when, you will be driving down the road and someday, you do not now when, you will make a wrong tun. At the end of the road, when you're least expecting it, he (or indeed she) will be there.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: Margarettown

“I wonder how many people don't get the one they want, but end up with the one they're supposed to be with.”

Fannie Flagg book Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Source: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

People

“It doesn’t feel like the end of the world. (Davyn)
No, it doesn’t…(Stryker)
How does the song go, ‘It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine? (Apollymi)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

World, Feeling

“Being or nothing, that is the question. Ascending, descending, coming, going, a man does so much that in the end he disappears.”

Raymond Queneau book Zazie in the Metro

Source: Zazie in the Metro

Question

“When you cut pieces out of the truth to avoid looking like a fool you end up looking like a moron instead.”

Robin Hobb book Assassin's Apprentice

Source: Assassin's Apprentice

Truth, Fools

“Sometime, somewhere, life always comes to a fight, and peace always comes to an end.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Lord of Misrule

Life, Peace, Fight

“I once started out
to walk around the world
but ended up in Brooklyn,
that Bridge was too much for me.”

Lawrence Ferlinghetti book A Coney Island of the Mind

Source: A Coney Island of the Mind

World

“Still, we will let all this be a thing of the past, though it hurts us, and beat down by constraint the anger that rises inside us.
Now I am making an end of my anger. It does not become me, unrelentingly to rage on”

Homér Iliad

Source: The Iliad

Rage, Past, Hurt, Anger

“In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.”

Junot Díaz (1968) Dominican-American writer

Books, Personality

“We had a terrible start… doesn’t mean we can’t have a better ending.”

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

Source: The Heart of Betrayal

“We are biology. We are reminded of this at the beginning and the end, at birth and at death. In between we do what we can to forget.”

Mary Roach book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Source: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Death, Birth, Forgetting

“from the beginning, through the
middle years and up to the
end:
too bad, too bad, too bad.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way

“Every relationship has a hard part at the beginning. This is our hard part. It's not like a puzzle piece where there's an instant fit. With relationships, you have to shape the pieces on each end before they go perfectly together.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Parting

“Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn’t be more simple, nor the stakes higher.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Life, Game

“I always think of each night as a song. Or each moment as a song. But now I'm seeing we don't live in a single song. We move from song to song, from lyric to lyric, from chord to chord. There is no ending here. It's an infinite playlist.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

Thinking, Night

“The ending is always a surprise.”

Daniel Wallace book Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions

Source: Big Fish

“I know that when people pull apart, they usually employ misunderstanding as a weapon, deliberately getting hold of the stick's wrong end, impaling themselves on its point in order to prove the perfidy of the other.”

Salman Rushdie Fury

Source: Fury

People

“The fundamental basis of this nation’s laws was given to Moses on the Mount…If we don’t have a proper fundamental moral background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the State.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Law

“There it is!' he thought with rapture. 'When I was already in despair, and when it seemed there would be no end- there it is! She loves me. She's confessed it.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

Love, Despair

“In the end, we all lose it. Remember that. In the end, we own nothing.”

Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer

Source: Miles to Go

“He was the closest thing I'd ever had to something, or someone, that mattered. But in the end, close didn't count. You were either in, or you weren't.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

“Nico found a sort of freedom in knowing that eventually, no matter what happened, he would end up at the foot of his father’s throne.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Freedom

“An individual has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow horizons of his particular individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. And this is one of the big problems of life, that so many people never quite get to the point of rising above self. And so they end up the tragic victims of self-centeredness. They end up the victims of distorted and disrupted personality.”

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

Variants (Many of MLKs' speeches were delivered many times with slight variants): An Individual has not started living fully until they can rise above the narrow confines of individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of humanity. Every person must decide at some point, whether they will walk in light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment: Life's most persistent and urgent question is: 'What are you doing for others?'
As quoted in The Words of Martin Luther King, Jr. by Coretta Scott King, Second Edition (2011), Ch. "Community of Man", p. 3
1950s, Conquering Self-centeredness (1957)

Life, People, Problem, Personality