Quotes about likeness
page 17

“I've caught belief like a disease. I've fallen into belief like I fell in love.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Source: The End of the Affair

Love, Disease

“… but it doesn't feel crazy to us.
It feels like what we do.”

Sharon Creech book Heartbeat

Source: Heartbeat

Feeling

“We are dancing in the hollow of nothingness. We are one flesh, but separated like stars.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Star, Dance

“My mind turned by anxiety, or other cause, from its scrutiny of blank paper, is like a lost child–wandering the house, sitting on the bottom step to cry.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

5 December 1919
A Moment's Liberty (1990)
Source: A Writer's Diary
Context: This last week L. has been having a little temperature in the evening, due to malaria, and that due to a visit to Oxford; a place of death and decay. I'm almost alarmed to see how entirely my weight rests on his prop. And almost alarmed to see how intensely I'm specialised. My mind turned by anxiety, or other cause, from its scrutiny of blank paper, is like a lost child – wandering the house, sitting on the bottom step to cry.

Housing, Cry

“Love isn’t soft, like those poets say. Love has teeth which bite and the wounds never close.”

Stephen King book The Body

Source: The Body

Love

“If you really want to upset a witch, do her a favor which she has no means of repaying. The unfulfilled obligation will nag at her like a hangnail.”

Terry Pratchett book Lords and Ladies

Source: Lords and Ladies

“He was chugging brown pop from a can Jack had handed him while he stuffed nacho cheese Doritos in his face. I was glad to see he looked lots better, almost completely like himself, which proves Doritos and brown pop really are health foods.”

P. C. Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

Health, Food

“We are born at a given moment, in a given place, and like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season in which we are born.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Wine, Season

“Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?
Polonius: By the mass, and ‘tis like a camel, indeed.
Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel.
Polonius: It is backed like a weasel.
Hamlet: Or like a whale?
Polonius: Very like a whale.”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet

“A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.”

Richard Avedon (1923–2004) American photographer

Truth

“Everyone likes talking about himself. - Hercule Poirot”

Agatha Christie book Death in the Clouds

Source: Death in the Clouds

“If Disneyland was indeed the Happiest Place on Earth, you'd either keep it a secret or the price of admission would be free and not equivalent to the yearly per capita income of a small sub-Saharan African nation like Detroit.”

Paul Beatty book The Sellout

Source: The Sellout

Secret

“Falling in love was like falling off a cliff. It felt pretty much like flying until you hit the ground.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Dragon Heir

Love, Flying

“I like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

People, Music, Time

“Depression is like a bruise that never goes away. A bruise in your mind. You just got to be careful not to touch it where it hurts. It's always there, though.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Marriage Plot

Source: The Marriage Plot

Hurt, Depressing

“Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.”

Joseph Campbell book Creative Mythology

Source: Creative Mythology

Life, Question

“Having sex is like bridge. If you don't have a good partner, you'd better have a good hand.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Sex

“I shall have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love, love, love, above all. Love as there has never been in a play. Unbiddable, ungovernable, like a riot in the heart and nothing to be done, come ruin or rapture.”

Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright

Love, Life, Heart

“IT'S THE EXPRESSION ON THEIR LITTLE FACES I LIKE, said the Hogfather.
"You mean sort of fear and awe and not knowing whether to laugh or cry or wet their pants?"
YES. NOW THAT IS WHAT I CALL BELIEF.”

Terry Pratchett book Hogfather

Source: Hogfather

Fear, Cry

“I like books whose virtue is all drawn together in a page or two. I like sentences that don't budge though armies cross them.”

Virginia Woolf book Jacob's Room

Source: Jacob's Room

Books

“If you put butter and salt on it, it tastes like salty butter.”

Terry Pratchett book Moving Pictures

Source: Moving Pictures

“My mission in life is to make everybody as uneasy as possible. I think we should all be as uneasy as possible, because that's what the world is like.”

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

Source: Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey

Life, World, Thinking

“I mean, it's not surprising, really. Once you love something, you always love it in some way. You have to. It's, like, part of you for good.”

Sarah Dessen book What Happened to Goodbye

What Happened To Goodbye (2011)
Source: What Happened to Goodbye

Love, Way, Parting

“…He is driven by bitterness and anger. You can understand that.’
Nico wanted to yell, Like you know what I feel?”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Feeling, Understanding, Anger

“I can see we're going to get along like a house on fire," said Miss Tick. "There may be no survivors.”

Terry Pratchett book The Wee Free Men

Source: The Wee Free Men

Housing

“He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Life, World, Smile, Hope

“Do you ever just put your arms out and just spin and spin and spin? Well, that's what love is like; everything inside of you tells you to stop before you fall, but for some reason you just keep going.”

Alice Hoffman book Practical Magic

Source: Practical Magic

Love

“Confusion is a good state to be in. It means you are looking, constantly looking. People ask me, "Why do you confuse us like this?" I want you to understand, if you can be confused by anybody, it means you do not know. If you are fanatical, you cannot be confused. Or if you are realized, you cannot be confused. Between ignorance and enlightenment is a very thin line. But they are worlds apart.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Of Mystics & Mistakes

People, World, Understanding

“Her affection for him was now the breath and life of Tess's being; it enveloped her as a photosphere, irradiated her into forgetfulness of her past sorrows, keeping back the gloomy spectres that would persist in their attempts to touch her—doubt, fear, moodiness, care, shame. She knew that they were waiting like wolves just outside the circumscribing light, but she had long spells of power to keep them in hungry subjection there.”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Life, Fear, Light, Waiting

“She felt… how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach.”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

Source: To the Lighthouse

Life

“Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Joke during his 1965 campaign for Governor of California, as quoted by Leo E. Litwak in The New York Times Magazine (14 November 1965), p. 174 http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50F13FC3B591B7A93C6A8178AD95F418685F9. <br class="br">Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other. <br class="br">As quoted in The Reagan Wit (1981) by Bill Adler, p. 30 <br class="br">1960s

Baby

“Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator. Don't stop to think, don't interrupt the scream, exhale, release life's rapture.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

Life, Thinking

“Frank Sinatra stopped his car. The light was red. Pedestrians passed quickly across his windshield but, as usual, one did not. It was a girl in her twenties. She remained at the curb staring at him. Through the corner of his left eye he could see her, and he knew, because it happens almost every day, that she was thinking, It looks like him, but is it? Just before the light turned green, Sinatra turned toward her, looked directly into her eyes waiting for the reaction he knew would come. It came and he smiled. She smiled and he was gone.”

Gay Talese (1932) American writer

"Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" (Esquire, April 1966)

Smile, Cars, Girl, Thinking

“You know, some people think Shadowhunters are just myths. Like mummies and genies." Kyle grinned at Jace. "Can you grant wishes?"

"That depends," he said. "Do you wish to be punched in the face?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

People, Thinking, Dependency

“I did not like this feeling of having feelings.”

Jeff Lindsay book Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Source: Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Feeling

“High and fine literature is wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes water.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Literature, Water, Wine

“We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

As attributed in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1899) by James Wood, p. 624

People

“There's no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.”

Christopher Morley (1890–1957) American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet

Variant: There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.
Source: Pipefuls

Love, Books

“Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Second Sex

Source: The Second Sex

Men, Truth, World

“To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Happiness, People, Effort, Personality

“She was like a crinkled poppy; with the desire to drink dry dust.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves

Drink

“Human nature. I don’t like human nature, but I do like human beings.”

Ellen Glasgow book In This Our Life

Source: In This Our Life

Nature

“I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Color, Change

“Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Water

“I like coffee exceedingly…”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Coffee

“One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“We all shine on… like the moon and the stars and the sun… we all shine on… come on and on and on…”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Variant: Yeah we all shine on, like the moon, and the stars, and the sun.
Source: Song Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)

Star, Sun

“Like many isolated people, they were wrapped up in themselves and not too interested in the world outside.”

V.S. Naipaul A Bend in the River

Source: A Bend in the River

People, World

“It was awkward, revisiting a world you have never seen before: like coming home, after a long journey, to someone else’s house.”

Umberto Eco book The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana

Source: The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana

World, Home, Housing

“That's what you want to do? Then nothing beats a trial but a failure. Give it everything you've got. I've told you many times, 'Cant do is like Dont Care.' Neither of them have a home.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Home, Failure, Time

“Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Variant: Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.

Love, Time, Cute, Heart Touching

“In times like the present men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and in eternity.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Second State of the Union address (1862)

Men, Time

“when your down on your luck and you've lost all your dreams theres nothing like a campfire and a can of beans”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

Dreams

“When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Love, People, Parting

“So the crow spirals down through a collapsed dream and the only sound it makes in like a concave scream.”

James O'Barr The Crow

Source: The Crow

Dreams

“Whole new theories of money were growing here like mushrooms: in the dark and based on bullshit.”

Terry Pratchett book Making Money

Source: Making Money

Money

“Stanley:
Delicate piece she is.
Stella:
She is. She was. You didn't know Blanche as a girl. Nobody, nobody, was tender and trusting as she was. But people like you abused her, and forced her to change.”

Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire

Source: A Streetcar Named Desire

People, Girl, Change

“What she felt was a lighthearted sort of compassion, almost like laughter. A swish of tender hilarity, getting the better of all her sores and hollows, for the time given.”

Alice Munro (1931) Canadian novelist

Laughter, Time

“Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1930s, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)

Men, Sleep

“It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.
I admire you, beloved, for the trap you've set. It's like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over.”

Frank O'Hara book Meditations in an Emergency (book)

Source: Meditations in an Emergency

Beauty, Appearance, Reading

“Better was it to go unknown and leave behind you an arch, a potting shed, a wall where peaches ripen, than to burn like meteor and leave no dust.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando: A Biography (1928), Ch. 2

“When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth.”

Terry Pratchett book Carpe Jugulum

Source: Carpe Jugulum

People, Truth

“Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive,
Half wishing they were dead to save the shame.
The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow;
They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats,
And flare up bodily, wings and all. What then?
Who's sorry for a gnat… or a girl?”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Source: A Little Book Of Love Poems

Life, Girl, Dead

“It's a mystery of human chemistry and I don't understand it, some people, as far as their senses are concerned, just feel like home.”

Nick Hornby book High Fidelity

Source: High Fidelity

People, Feeling, Home, Understanding

“This I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fair opportunities, and without a positive hump, may marry whom she likes.”

William Makepeace Thackeray Vanity Fair

Vol. I, ch. 4. Compare: "I should like to see any kind of a man, distinguishable from a gorilla, that some good and even pretty woman could not shape a husband out of", Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Professor at the Breakfast Table; "The whole world is strewn with snares, traps, gins and pitfalls for the capture of men by women", Bernard Shaw, Epistle Dedicatory to Man and Superman.
Source: Vanity Fair (1847–1848)

Truth