Quotes about import
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“I know it's important to do more than just complain when there's something you don't like. You need to try to do something about it, or you're nothing but a whiner.”

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

Source: Twice Upon a Marigold

“Your "I CAN" is more important than your IQ.”

Robin S. Sharma book The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

Source: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

“… for the shield may be as important for victory, as the sword or spear.”

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

Source: The Origin of Species

Victory

“And suddenly she knew exactly why Catherine had fallen in love with him. It wasn't that he was unusually attractive, or ambitious, or even charming. He was partly those things, but more important, he seemed to live life on his own terms.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

Love, Life

“My survival was up to me. I had nothing and I had no one. What I did have, I told myself, was my mind, my imagination, my memory, my feelings, my spirit. These were important and powerful things.”

John Marsden (1950) author

Source: A Killing Frost

Feeling, Imagination, Memory

“Explaining something makes it go away, so to speak; what's important is left after you have explained everything else.”

Edward Gorey (1925–2000) American writer, artist, and illustrator

Source: Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey

“Nothing important, or meaningful, or beautiful, or interesting, or great ever came out of imitations. The thing that is really hard and really amazing is to give up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

Beauty, Perfection

“It's a good idea always to do something relaxing prior to making an important decision in your life.”

Paulo Coelho book The Pilgrimage

Source: The Pilgrimage

Life, Idea, Decision

“That's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and WORTH the doing.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

“I think that the most important thing a woman can have - next to talent, of course - is her hairdresser.”

Joan Crawford (1904–1977) American actress

Interview, Hollywood Reporter (1942)

Thinking

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

World, Imagination, Knowledge, Drawing

“Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud…”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi (2001), Chapter 1, p. 6
Context: The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity — it's envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.

Love, Life, Death, Beauty

“Never forget that anticipation is an important part of life. Work's important, family's important, but without excitement, you have nothing. You're cheating yourself if you refuse to enjoy what's coming.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Source: Three Weeks With My Brother

Life, Family, Parting, Cheating

“The rulers of this country have always considered their property more important than our lives.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

Source: Assata: An Autobiography

Country

“It is a good idea sometimes to think of the importance and dignity of our every-day duties. It keeps them from being so tiresome; besides, others are apt take us at our own valuation.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867–1957) American children's writer, diarist, and journalist

Idea, Thinking

“We never get accustomed to being less important to other people than they are to us — Martins felt the little jab of dispensability.”

Graham Greene book The Third Man

Source: The Third Man (1949)

People

“Even if we no longer have much in common, we would have always had the past, which, in some ways, is just as important as the present or future. It is where we come from, what makes us who we are.”

Emily Giffin book Where We Belong

Source: Where We Belong

Way, Past, Future

“Nothing comes unannounced, but many can miss the announcement. So it's very important to actually listen to your own intuition rather than driving through it.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

“We're just fragile machines programmed with a false sense of our own importance. And every now and then the universe sends a reminder that we don't really matter to it…”

Neil Strauss book Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life

Source: Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life

Sense, Universe, Falseness

“But sometimes you have to be brave. Sometimes you have to show people what's important in life.”

Sophie Kinsella book I've Got Your Number

Source: I've Got Your Number

Life, People

“really important meetings are planned by the souls
long before the bodies see each other.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

Soul

“Answers were always important, but they were seldom easy.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Source: The Slow Regard of Silent Things

“There is nothing more important than appearing to be religious.”

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) Italian politician, Writer and Author

Appearance

“There is a tendency at every important but difficult crossroad to pretend that it's not really there.”

Bill McKibben book The End of Nature

Source: The End of Nature

“If everything is important, then nothing is.”

Patrick Lencioni (1965) American writer

Faith, For Father

“Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Source: This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

Support, Universe, Personality

“Words are not that important when you recognize intentions.”

Isabel Allende book City of the Beasts

Source: City of the Beasts

“Ragnor's important business was probably getting together to write a burn book with Raphael. Magnus could see them now, sharing a bench and scribbling happily away about Magnus's stupid hair.”

Cassandra Clare The Bane Chronicles

Source: The Bane Chronicles

Books, Stupidity, Business

“I have learned that trying again is important and decisivness is good.

I have learned that silence hurts.

I have learned about starting over
and releasing pride.”

Sabrina Ward Harrison (1975) Canadian writer

Source: Spilling Open: The Art of Becoming Yourself

Silence, Learning, Hurt

“True or false, that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Variant: What is said about men often has as much influence upon their lives, and especially upon their destinies, as what they do.
Source: Les Misérables

Men, Falseness

“… it's not just learning that's important. It's learning what to do with what you learn and learning why you learn things that matters.”

Norton Juster (1929) American children's writer, academic, and architect

Variant: …it’s not just learning that’s important. It’s learning what to do with what you learn and learning why you learn things that matters.

Learning

“Before embarking on important undertakings sit quietly calm your senses and thoughts and meditate deeply. You will then be guided by the great creative power of Spirit.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

Sense

“Remember that the most important thing is to try and love other people as much as they love you.”

David Sedaris book Holidays on Ice

Source: Holidays on Ice

Love, People

“Memory is so crazy! It's like we've got these drawers crammed with tons of useless stuff. Meanwhile, all the really important things we just keep forgetting, one after the other.”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark

Memory, Forgetting

“Important things are inevitably cliché.”

Chuck Klosterman book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs (2003)
Source: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

“In the end, it is important to remember that we cannot become what we need to be, by remaining what we are.”

Max DePree (1924–2017) American businessman and writer

Variant: We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are.
Source: Leadership Is an Art

“Their mother had always stressed the importance of taking care of yourself first, your family second and everyone else not at all..

darkest surrender”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Family

“The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.”

Anthony Burgess book A Clockwork Orange

Variant: The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.
Source: A Clockwork Orange

Life, Evil

“You confuse what's important with what's impressive.”

E.M. Forster book Maurice

Source: Maurice

“Life is like a snowball. The important thing is finding wet snow and a really long hill.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Life

“Chick Lit uses humor to reflect life back to us. It's a very comforting genre, and it's the first time our generation has had a voice. It's a very important genre for all of those reasons.”

Marian Keyes (1963) Irish writer

Life, Time

“Don't diss me, Danvers. I'm warning you.'

'I'm not dissing you,' Claire sighed. 'I'm ignoring you. There's a difference. Dissing you implies I think you're actually important.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Ghost Town

Thinking

“Roger speaking to Brianna:
It's too important. You don't forget having a dad."
You do remember your father?"
No. I remember yours.”

Diana Gabaldon (1952) American author

Source: An Echo in the Bone

Forgetting

“But I think the most important thing those books gave me was a kind of faith. My books promised me that life wasn’t just made up of workaday tasks and prosaic things. The world is bigger and more colorful and more important than that.”

Laura Amy Schlitz (1955) children's author

Source: The Hired Girl

Life, Books, World, Faith

“Sorry but nothing of much importance ever happened to me… I'm just a girl who forgot to look both ways before crossing the street.”

Gabrielle Zevin book Elsewhere

Source: Elsewhere

Way, Girl

“It is not as important how we start (our past), but how we finish.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Past

“It’s not so important who starts the game but who finishes it.”

Sara Shepard (1973) Author

Source: Stunning

Game

“Reminding ourselves of the gospel is the most important daily habit we can establish.”

C.J. Mahaney (1953) American clergyman

Source: The Cross Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel The Main Thing

“When life doesn't meet your expectations, it was important to take it with grace.”

Patricia Briggs (1965) American writer

Source: When Demons Walk

Life

“The way I see it, ignoring things is important.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Tiger Lily

Way

“Everything has boundaries. The same holds true with thought. You shouldn't fear boundaries, but you should not be afraid of destroying them. That's what is most important if you want to be free: respect for and exasperation with boundaries.”

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Fear

“You're the last Olympian,' I said. 'And the most important.'
And why is that, Percy Jackson?'
Because Hope survives best at the hearth,' I said.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Hope

“The imprint of Miss Hepburn is absolutely, totally present. Like it or not, she will be the most important look of the twentieth century.”

Manolo Blahnik (1942) Spanish fashion designer

“Once you've chosen a man, don't try to change him', I wrote with more confidence. 'It can't be done. More important-don't let him try to change you.”

Diana Gabaldon book Voyager

Source: Voyager

Confidence, Change

“It was important for him to believe that he'd spent his life among people who kept missing the point.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise (1984)

Life, People

“It's important to read a book, but also to hold the book, to smell the book… it's perfume, it's incense, it's the dust of Egypt…”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Books, Reading

“The important task of literature is to free man, not to censor him, and that is why Puritanism was the most destructive and evil force which ever oppressed people and their literature: it created hypocrisy, perversion, fears, sterility.”

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

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947

People, Fear, Literature, Evil

“How disturbing it is that our illusions are often our most important beliefs.”

Hanif Kureishi (1954) English playwright, screenwriter, novelist

Source: Intimacy: das Buch zum Film von Patrice Chéreau

“No, this trick won't work. The same trick does not work twice. How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

A comment to T. H. Morgan, as recalled by Henry Borsook. Einstein was visiting Cal Tech where Morgan and Borsook worked, and Morgan explained to Einstein that he was trying to bring physics and chemistry to bear on the problems of biology, to which Einstein gave this response. Borsook's recollection was published in Symposium on Structure of Enzymes and Proteins (1956), p. 284 http://books.google.com/books?id=H4QjXb4gnEIC&q=%22so+important+a+biological%22#search_anchor, as part of a piece titled "Informal remarks 'by way of a summary'". Context for this story is also given in The Molecular Vision of Life by Lily E. Kay (1993), p. 95 http://books.google.com/books?id=vEHeNI2a8OEC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA95#v=onepage&q&f=false <br class="br">Attributed in posthumous publications

Love

“The importance of reading, for me, is that it allows you to dream.

Reading not only educates, but is relaxing and allows you to feed your imagination - creating beautiful pictures from carefully chosen words.”

Eric Ripert (1965) French chef

Education, Beauty, Dreams, Imagination

“I've forgotten most of what I've read and, frankly, it never seemed very important to me or to the world.”

Leonard Cohen book Beautiful Losers

Source: Beautiful Losers

World, Reading

“Choose the least important day in your life. It will be important enough.”

Thornton Wilder Our Town

Source: Our Town

Life

“Never forget that anticipation is an important part of life.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Life, Parting, Forgetting

“In the phrase ' human being,' the word 'being' is much more important than the word 'human.”

Karen Joy Fowler book We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Source: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

“Why do people give each other flowers? To celebrate various important occasions, they’re killing living creatures? Why restrict it to plants? 'Sweetheart, let’s make up. Have this deceased squirrel.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

People, Flowers

“Happiness lies for those who cry, those who hurt, those who have searched, and those who have tried for only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched their lives.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Happiness, People, Search, Hurt

“Benjamin, we’re meant to lose the people we love. How else would we know how important they are to us?”

Eric Roth (1945) American screenwriter

Source: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Screenplay

Love, People

“Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise.”

James Surowiecki The Wisdom of Crowds

Source: The Wisdom of Crowds

Decision

“We depict hatred, but it is to depict that there are more important things. We depict a curse, to depict the joy of liberation.”

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

Proposal for Princess Mononoke http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/mh/story_proposal.txt

Joy

“physical beauty should have no importance in a lasting relationship.”

Julie Garwood (1946) American writer

Source: Gentle Warrior

Beauty

“You know, I think that only if one feels immensely important can one feel truly light.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Feeling, Thinking, Light

“I didn't set out to discover a truth. I was actually sent to the Outer Fringes to conduct a chair census and learn some humility. But the truth inevitably found me, as important truths often do, like a lost thought in need of a mind.”

Jasper Fforde (1961) British novelist

Source: Shades of Grey

Truth, Learning

“… because where we are is always the most important place.”

Philip Pullman book The Amber Spyglass

Source: The Amber Spyglass

“What kind of scholar was I? Or was I a scholar at all? My ignorance was enormous. Beside it my knowledge was nothing. My hunger for learning, not so much to improve my lot as to understand my world, had led me to study and to thought. Reading without thinking is as nothing, for a book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.”

Louis L'Amour book The Walking Drum

Source: The Walking Drum (1984), Ch. 25

Hunger, Books, World, Understanding

“Don't get starry-eyed about somebody you can't have, especially if it blinds you to somebody who's really important.”

Rick Riordan book The Throne of Fire

Source: The Throne of Fire

“Most important thing in life is learning how to fall.”

Jeannette Walls book Half Broke Horses

Source: Half Broke Horses

Life, Learning, For Him

“If it's easy to be friendly she will be. If the wind blows the other way her friendship will be gone. And I'm thinking the wind is blowing the other way. She has found some other way to be an important person in her own right by hating others.”

Charlaine Harris book All Together Dead

Source: All Together Dead

Hate, Friendship, Way, Thinking

“It was in a way a comforting idea; if there was all the time in the world, then the happenings of a given moment became less important.”

Diana Gabaldon book Outlander

Source: Outlander

World, Way, Idea, Time

“Just because something doesn't last forever, it doesn't mean it wasn't meaningful while it did last. It doesn't mean it wasn't important.”

Candace Bushnell book Summer and the City

Source: Summer and the City

“Reading is more important than writing.”

Roberto Bolaño (1953–2003) Chilean author

Source: The Last Interview and Other Conversations

Reading

“Of course reading and thinking are important but, my God, food is important too.”

Iris Murdoch book The Sea, the Sea

Source: The Sea, the Sea

God, Food, Thinking, Reading

“One of the most important resources that a garden makes available for use, is the gardener's own body. A garden gives the body the dignity of working in its own support. It is a way of rejoining the human race.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Way, Support

“It is the message, not the man, which is important to the Sufis.”

Idries Shah book The Sufis

Source: The Sufis

“The important question is, How many hands have I shaked?”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Question

“You forgot something important!
-What?
-It's under my sweater!
-WHAT?!
-Me!”

Cornelia Funke book The Thief Lord

Source: The Thief Lord

“Courage is not the absence of fear but the awareness that something else is more important.”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Foreword to Prisoners of our Thoughts : Viktor Frankl's Principles at Work (2004), by Alex Pattakos, p. x
This statement has also been attributed to James Neil Hollingsworth (AKA: Ambrose Redmoon) in an article entitled "No Peaceful Warriors!" for Gnosis Magazine #21, in 1991.
Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

Fear, Courage

“It is important for this country to make its people so obsessed with their own liberal individualism that they do not have time to think about a world larger than self.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Black Genius: African-American Solutions to African-American Problems

People, World, Thinking, Time

“It's important to have your private enjoyments because sometimes that's all we have.”

Kay Ryan (1945) American poet

“The key thing is managed awareness of your role in the world and history. Think too much and you know you are nothing. Think just enough and you know you are small, but important to some. That's the best you can do.”

Dave Eggers book A Hologram for the King

Source: A Hologram for the King

World, History, Thinking

“A book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Education of a Wandering Man

Books, Thinking

“The Eskimo has fifty-two names for snow because it is important to them; there ought to be as many for love.”

Margaret Atwood book Surfacing

Surfacing (1972) p. 107 <br class="br">The premise for this quote is now known to be a linguistic myth stemming from the early 20th century work of Franz Boas. This quote by Atwood has been cited as an example of the perpetuation of this myth https://books.google.ca/books/about/White_Lies_about_the_Inuit.html?id=i-osjdNH3g8C. <br class="br">Variant: The Eskimos had 52 names for snow because it was important to them; there ought to be as many for love.

Love