Quotes about fitness
page 3

“You invited him into bed?" Simon demanded, looking shaken. "Ridiculous, isn't it?" said Jace. "We would never have all fit.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“He burst into one of his rare fits of laughter as he turned away from the picture. I have not heard him laugh often, and it has always boded ill to somebody.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Hound of the Baskervilles

Source: The Hound of the Baskervilles

Laughter

“Sighing dismally, she acknowledged that some things just weren't humanly possible - not even Martha Stewart could fold fitted sheets.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

“You are the leader here. Obviiusly your skills are far superior to mine. I don't think I could fit into your life. I'm a loner, not the first lady.”

Christine Feehan book Dark Prince

Source: Dark Prince

Life, Thinking

“When a man must be afraid to drink freely from his country's river and streams that country is no longer fit to live in.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Drink, Country

“It was easy enough to kill yourself in a fit of despair. It was easy enough to play the martyr. It was harder to do nothing. To endure your life. To wait.”

Erica Jong book Fear of Flying

Source: Fear of Flying

Life, Waiting, Despair

“How terrible it is to have no cares, no longings. I do not fit. I feel too deeply and want too much. As cages go, it is a gilded one, but I shall not live well in it or any cage, for that matter.”

Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

Feeling

“To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Happiness

“It didn't fit her ideas of who was bad, and who was good, and what was a happy ending, and what wasn't.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Tiger Lily

Happiness, Idea

“Why should women have to fit into child sizes in order to be considered desirable? That is both sick and depressing.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Queen of Babble

Women

“Her old thoughts were going to come in handy now, but new words would have to be made and said to fit them.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Their Eyes Were Watching God

Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God

“In a sick society, women who have difficulty fitting in are not ill but demonstrating a healthy and positive response.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

Women

“We don't fit in, you and me," he said. "We're both oddities no one knows what to do with. But we fit together." He took her hand, pressed her palm to his, then laced their fingers through each other's. "We fit.”

Jennifer Ashley (1974) American author

Source: The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie

“Some women make it look so easy, the way they cast ambition off like an expensive coat that no longer fits.”

Jenny Offill book Dept. of Speculation

Source: Dept. of Speculation

Women, Way

“A book should be a garden that fits in the hands. Word-petals of color. Stems of strength. roots of truth. Turn a page and turn the seasons. Read the sentence and enjoy the roses.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Truth, Books, Color, Reading

“Such a small, pure object a poem could be, made of nothing but air a tiny string of letters, maybe small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. But it could blow everybody's head off.”

Mary Karr (1955) American writer

Source: Lit

“These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

The final lines of the poem.
The Waste Land (1922)
Source: The Waste Land and Other Poems

Madness

“I know what it's like to want to die. How it hurts to smile. How you try to fit in but you can't. How you hurt yourself on the outside to try to kill the thing on the inside.”

Susanna Kaysen (1948) American writer

Smile, Hurt

“I close my eyes, thinking that there is nothing like an embrace after an absence, nothing like fitting my face into the curve of his shoulder and filling my lungs with the scent of him.”

Jodi Picoult book Keeping Faith

Variant: simply-quotes Follow

I close my eyes, thinking that there is nothing like an embrace after an absence, nothing like fitting my face into the curve of his shoulder and filling my lungs with the scent of him.
Source: Keeping Faith

Thinking

“If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

"The Beauty of Life," a lecture before the Birmingham Society of Arts and School of Design (19 February 1880), later published in Hopes and Fears for Art: Five Lectures Delivered in Birmingham, London, and Nottingham, 1878 - 1881 (1882).

Beauty, Housing

“As soon as laws are necessary for men, they are no longer fit for freedom.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

As quoted in Short Sayings of Great Men: With Historical and Explanatory Notes‎ (1882) by Samuel Arthur Bent, p. 454

Men, Law, Freedom, Powerful

“I hated labels anyway. People didn’t fit in slots—prostitute, housewife, saint—like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Variant: I hated labels anyway. People didn't fit in slots--prostitute, housewife, saint--like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.
Source: White Oleander

Hate, People, Fear, Water

“doesn’t really fit the definition of banter, now does it?”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

Source: Reckoning

“Some women are meant to change the world, while others are meant to hold it together. And then there are those of us who simply don't want to be in it, because we know no matter how much we struggle, we can't comfortably fit.”

Jodi Picoult book Second Glance

Source: Second Glance

Women, World, Change

“But some women only require an emergency to make them fit for one.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd

Women

“And when you're young you want to fit in. Hell, I still want to fit in with certain humans, but as you get older you get a little more discriminating.”

Carrie Fisher book Wishful Drinking

Source: Wishful Drinking

Hell

“If you hate your life, you haven't' seen enough of it. If you hate your life, it's because your life is too small and doesn't' fit you.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Source: This Is How: Surviving What You Think You Can't

Life, Hate

“When I first met him, he did not care if a friend did not fit into his world, because at that time his world had not been born yet.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

World, Time

“I have a dress fitting to get to at three.' (Simon)
'Cool,' said Kyle, slinging his messenger bag over his shoulder and heading for the door. 'Get them to make you something in red. It's totally your color.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Color

“The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.”

George Bernard Shaw Man and Superman

Source: 1900s, Man and Superman (1903), p. 37

Time

“All of a sudden I didn't fit in anywhere. Not at school, not at home… and every time I turned around, another person I'd known forever felt like a stranger to me. Even I felt like a stranger to me.”

Wendelin Van Draanen Flipped

Source: Flipped

School, Home, Time, Personality

“A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading (1934): "Warning"
Misattributed

“Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory — let the theory go.”

Agatha Christie book The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Source: The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)

“But beauty is about finding the right fit, the most natural fit, To be perfect, you have to feel perfect about yourself --- avoid trying to be something you're not. For a goddess, that's especially hard. We can change so easily.
-Aphrodite”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Beauty, Feeling, Nature, Change

“There weren't any curtains in the windows, and the books that didn't fit into the bookshelf lay piled on the floor like a bunch of intellectual refugees.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

Books

“Jace wasn’t exactly prone to random fits of panic”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

“The present rearranges the past. We never tell the story whole because a life isn't a story; it's a whole Milky Way of events and we are forever picking out constellations from it to fit who and where we are.”

Rebecca Solnit book The Faraway Nearby

Source: The Faraway Nearby

Life, Way, Past

“Well, my dear," said Mr. Bennet, when Elizabeth had read the note aloud, "if your daughter should have a dangerous fit of illness—if she should die, it would be a comfort to know that it was all in pursuit of Mr. Bingley, and under your orders.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Reading, Daughters

“For as long as I can remember, I have always had the feeling of not quite fitting in, not being the same as everyone else.”

Jane Green (1968) British writer

Source: Summer Secrets

Feeling

“You'd be surprised how many people violate this simple principle every day of their lives and try to fit square pegs into round holes, ignoring the clear reality that Things Are As They Are.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

Source: The Tao of Pooh

People, Reality

“Close cycles. Not because of pride or arrogance, but because that no longer fits your life”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Variant: close some doors today. not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because they lead you nowhere

Life

“Thanks for putting me up for it…." As V's eyes flared, Butch said, "Yeah, I looked up what the word meant. 'Beloved Friend' fits you perfect as far as I'm concerned."

V Flushed. Cleared his throat. "Good Deal, cop. Good… deal.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Revealed

Source: Lover Revealed

Perfection

“why are trying so hard to fit in, when you're born to stand out”

Oliver James (1953) British psychologist

“The right belief is like a good cloak, I think. If it fits you well, it keeps you warm and safe. The wrong fit however, can suffocate.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Final Empire

Thinking

“The scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

The Analects, Chapter I, Other chapters
Variant: A scholar who loves comfort is not worthy of the name.
Source: The Analects of Confucius

Love

“We are like sculptors, constantly carving out of others the image we long for, need, love or desire, often against reality, against their benefit, and always, in the end, a disappointment, because it does not fit them.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Love, Disappointment, Reality

“Looking at him, she saw her future and felt all the ragged tears in her heart heal themselves. "I fit," she whispered in marvel, stepping into him. "I fit with you."
He nodded and wrapped his arms around her.
"Perfectly”

Jill Shalvis (1963) American writer

Source: Simply Irresistible

Tear, Future, Heart

“Instead of chopping yourself down to fit the world, chop the world down to fit yourself.”

D.H. Lawrence book Women in Love

Source: Women in Love

World

“In order that people may be happy in their work,
these three things are needed:
they must be fit for it;
they must not do too much of it;
and they must have a sense of success in it.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Happiness, People, Sense, Success

“For one change always leaves a dovetail into which another will fit.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince

Change

“Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Nature

“I've got an adjective that just fits you.”

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

“What if the puzzle of the world was a shape you didn't fit into? And the only way to survive was to mutilate yourself, carve away your corners, sand yourself down, modify yourself to fit? How come we haven't been able to change the puzzle instead?”

Jodi Picoult book Small Great Things

Source: Small Great Things

World, Way, Change

“Tatia: I think its too big to fit”

Paullina Simons book The Bronze Horseman

Source: The Bronze Horseman

Thinking

“Only he who has no use for the empire is fit to be entrusted with it.”

Zhuangzi (-369–-286 BC) classic Chinese philosopher

Source: The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu

“We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universe to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act … Our faculties are more fitted to recognize the wonderful structure of a beetle than a Universe.”

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

" Notebook N http://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/vanWyhe_notebooks.html" (1838) page 36 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=25&itemID=CUL-DAR126.-&viewtype=text <br class="br">quoted in [Darwin's Religious Odyssey, 2002, William E., Phipps, Trinity Press International, 9781563383847, 32, http://books.google.com/books?id=0TA81BTW3dIC&pg=PA32] <br class="br">also quoted in On Evolution: The Development of the Theory of Natural Selection (1996) edited by Thomas F. Glick and David Kohn, page 81 <br class="br">Other letters, notebooks, journal articles, recollected statements <br class="br">Source: Notebooks

Law, Universe, Sun

“Jesus," said Clary.
"I doubt he'd fit (in the wooden box)."
"." Clary was apalled.
-Clary & Jace, pg.255-”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Box

“But money spent while manic doesn't fit into the Internal Revenue Service concept of medical expense or business loss. So after mania, when most depressed, you're given excellent reason to be even more so.”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Money, Business, Loss

“But what they called him isn’t fit for mixed company and doesn’t bear repeating. Stupid fuckheads. (Hauk)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of the Night

Stupidity

“First wonder goes deepest; wonder after that fits in the impression made by the first.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

“Reading is awesome and flexible and fits around chores and earning money and building the future and whatever else I’m doing that day. My attitude towards reading is entirely Epicurean—reading is pleasure and I pursue it purely because I like it.”

Jo Walton (1964) Welsh Canadian writer

Money, Pleasure, Reading, Future

“The idea was fantastically, wildly improbable. But like most fantastically, wildly improbable ideas it was at least as worthy of consideration as a more mundane one to which the facts had been strenuously bent to fit.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Idea

“What happens to me if this slipper fits?"
"I turn you into a handsome frog.”

Judith McNaught (1944) American writer

Source: Double Standards

“If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable."
"Because you are not fit to go there," I answered. "All sinners would be miserable in heaven.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Source: Wuthering Heights

“when things break, it's not the actual breaking that prevents them from getting back together again. it's because a little piece gets lost -- the two remaining ends couldn't fit together even if they wanted to. the whole shape has changed.”

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Change

“Taking into account the public's regrettable lack of taste, it is incumbent upon you not to fit in.”

Janeane Garofalo (1964) comedian, actress, political activist, writer

Feel This Book, co-authored with Ben Stiller
from "Feel this Book"
Source: Feel This Book: An Essential Guide to Self-Empowerment, Spiritual Supremacy, and Sexual Satisfaction
Context: Many people feel that mass acceptance and smooth socialization are desirable life paths for a young adult... Many people are often wrong... Don't bother being nice. Being popular and well liked is not in your best interest. Let me be more clear; if you behave in a manner pleasing to most, then you are probably doing something wrong. The masses have never been arbiters of the sublime, and they often fail to recognize the truly great individual. Taking into account the public's regrettable lack of taste, it is incumbent upon you not to fit in.

“They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for ones country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Sweet and glorious it is to die for our country. ~ Horace in Odes, Book 3, Ode 2, Line 13, as translated in The Works of Horace by J. C. Elgood
Notes on the Next War (1935)

War, Dogs, Country

“Don't simply knock and wait for the door to be opened. Go look for the keys. Some fit the lock better than others.”

Christopher Pike book Sati

Source: Sati

Waiting

“I could never kill myself. I approve of suicide if you have horrible health. Otherwise it's the ultimate hissy fit.”

John Waters (1946) American filmmaker, actor, comedian and writer

Health, Suicide

“She was all the things I wasn't. And i was all the things she wasn't. she could paint circles around anyone; I couldn't even draw a straight line. She was never into sports; I've always been. Her hand, it fit mine.”

Jodi Picoult book The Pact

Source: The Pact

Sport, Drawing, Painting

“If accusations fit your prejudices, truth is easily pushed aside.”

Gerald N. Lund (1939) American Mormon leader

Truth

“Wonderful. What's the point of throwing a hissy fit without friends and family on hand to hear it?"
-Amy Cahill”

Gordon Korman book The Medusa Plot

Source: The Medusa Plot

Family

“Yoga allows you to rediscover a sense of wholeness in your life, where you do not feel like you are constantly trying to fit broken pieces together.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p.xiv

Life, Feeling, Sense

“She didn't want to have anything to do with the party. She was tired of feeling like she didn't fit in, but she didn't want to go home, either, because she was a tired of being lonely and she was a little drunk.”

Candace Bushnell (1958) American author

Feeling, Home

“I feel like you can look inside me and see all the places I am odd or unusual and fit your heart around them, for you are odd and unusual in just the same way. We are the same.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Way, Feeling, Heart

“I felt a Cleaving in my Mind—
As if my Brain had split—
I tried to match it—Seam by Seam—
But could not make it fit.”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse gift will find a fitting place.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1930s, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), p. 322
Context: Historically our own culture has relied for the creation of rich and contrasting values upon many artificial distinctions, the most striking of which is sex. It will not be by the mere abolition of these distinctions that society will develop patterns in which individual gifts are given place instead of being forced into an ill-fitting mould. If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.

“Want a reliable road to emotional and spiritual suicide? Spend your life trying to fit in.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Life, Suicide

“You suck, surprising no one!!!! If bad was a boot, you'd fit it!!!! You're a stupid poo-poo head! I had sexual relations with your mother! Your mother was not that good in bed! You, sir, are a wretched soul! I am rubber, you are glue!”

Bryan Lee O'Malley (1979) Artist

Source: Scott Pilgrim, Volume 2: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Stupidity, Soul

“I am a thornbush, bristling from the overattention of my parents, and he is a man of a million little fatherly stab wounds, and my thorns fit perfectly into them.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

Parent

“Maybe some love was guaranteed. Maybe it fit inside you and around you like skin and bones.”

Alice Hoffman The Story Sisters

Source: The Story Sisters

Love

“Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.”

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

Dependency

“there's something nice about knowing that i'm not the only one who doesn't quite fit the part.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Parting

“Yes'm, old friends is always best, 'less you can catch a new one that's fit to make an old one out of.”

Sarah Orne Jewett book The Country of the Pointed Firs

Source: The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896), Ch. 12

“The girl at her music sits in another sort of light, the fitful, overcast light of lie, by which we see ourselves and others only imprefectly, and seldom..-Girl, Interrupted”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted (1994)
Context: I've gone back to the Frick since then to look at her and at the two other Vermeers. Vermeers, after all, are hard to come by, and the one in Boston has been stolen. The other two are self-contained paintings. The people in them are looking at each other -- the lady and her maid, the soldier and his sweetheart. Seeing them is peeking at them through a hole in a wall. And the wall is made of light -- that entirely credible yet unreal Vermeer light. Light like this does not exist, but we wish it did. We wish the sun could make us young and beauitful, we wish our clothes could glisten and ripple against our skins, most of all, we wish that everyone we knew could be brightened simply by our looking at them, as are the maid with the letter and the soldier with the hat. The girl at her music sits in another sort of light, the fitful, overcast light of life, by which we see ourselves and others only imperfectly, and seldom.

Lie, Music, Girl, Light

“I am proud that I defy your categories. I am proud that I don't fit easily into any box. I am proud of all the things I am and all the things i can be. Question yourself every time you think you only see one thing in me.”

David Levithan book Wide Awake

Source: Wide Awake

Question, Thinking, Time, Box