Quotes about making
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“I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter
and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs.(IAGO, ActI, SceneI)”

William Shakespeare Othello

Source: Othello

Daughters

“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Motivational, Wise, Deep, Success

“It makes no difference where you go, there you are. And it makes no difference what you have, there’s always more to want. Until you are happy with who you are, you will never be happy because of what you have.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

Happiness

“If pain must come, may it come quickly. Because I have a life to live, and I need to live it in the best way possible. If he has to make a choice, may he make it now. Then I will either wait for him or forget him.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Life, Pain, Way, Waiting

“I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Love, Life

“We don’t do what we do for the glory or the fame or the credit; we do it for the quiet satisfaction of making the world a better place, saving the lives of innocents, and being better than you are.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Dark Days

World

“Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.”

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

“There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn't matter anymore.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

“… to speak of them out loud, to speak of their hunger and pain and loneliness and humour, to make them visible so that can not be ravaged in the dark without great consequence.”

Eve Ensler book The Vagina Monologues

Source: The Vagina Monologues

Hunger, Pain, Loneliness

“You don't ask people with knives in their stomachs what would make them happy; happiness is no longer the point. It's all about survival; it's all about whether you pull the knife out and bleed to death or keep it in…”

Nick Hornby book How to Be Good

Source: How to Be Good

Death, Happiness, People

“It's not what you've got, it's what you use that makes a difference.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

“Wait until next time," he warned. "I'll do things that'll make you lose control within seconds.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Variant: Next time I will do things to you that will make you lose controll in seconds"
-Dimitri.
Source: Last Sacrifice

Time, Waiting

“No boy is worth crying over, and the one who is won't make you cry.”

Sarah Kane (1971–1999) playwright from England

Boy, Cry

“Although random mutations influenced the course of evolution, their influence was mainly by loss, alteration, and refinement… Never, however, did that one mutation make a wing, a fruit, a woody stem, or a claw appear. Mutations, in summary, tend to induce sickness, death, or deficiencies. No evidence in the vast literature of heredity changes shows unambiguous evidence that random mutation itself, even with geographical isolation of populations, leads to speciation.”

Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) American evolutionary biologist

Source: Acquiring Genomes: A Theory Of The Origin Of Species

Death, Literature, Appearance, Change

“To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. 'Tis much better to do a little with certainty, & leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Statement from unpublished notes for the Preface to Opticks (1704) quoted in Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (1983) by Richard S. Westfall, p. 643

Age, Nature

“It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.”

Joseph Conrad book An Outcast of the Islands

Source: An Outcast of the Islands (1896), Pt. 3, Ch. 2; possibly an adaptation of a Polish proverb, "Ten się nie myli, kto nic nie robi" — "One is not wrong, who does nothing."

“To be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing.”

Raymond Williams (1921–1988) philosopher

Resources of Hope (published posthumously in 1989), p. 118

Hope, Despair

“We all love best not those who offend us least, nor those who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Love, Forgiveness

“Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts. There are seven words that will make a person love you. There are ten words that will break a strong man’s will. But a word is nothing but a painting of a fire. A name is the fire itself.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 86, “The Fire Itself” (pp. 672-673)

Love, Men, Tear, Light

“Things do not grow better; they remain as they are. It is we who grow better, by the changes we make in ourselves.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Change

“If you make a deal with a fool, don't be surprised when they act foolishly.”

Jeffrey Archer book Only Time Will Tell

Source: Only Time Will Tell

Fools

“Don't try to make me grow up before my time…”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Time

“Now he knew: They were real. Who’d make up a thing like this? Okay, one of them was a cheese that rolled around of its own accord, but nobody was perfect.”

Terry Pratchett book Wintersmith

Source: Wintersmith

Perfection

“Its very variety, subtlety, and utterly irrational, idiomatic complexity makes it possible to say things in English which simply cannot be said in any other language.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Stranger in a Strange Land

Source: Stranger in a Strange Land

“…because talent isn't genius, and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

“In my experience, we don't make thoughts appear, they just appear. One day, I noticed that their appearance just wasn't personal. Noticing that really makes it simpler to inquire.”

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Source: Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life

Appearance, Personality

“Creators aren't gods. They make places, which is quite hard. It's men that make gods. This explains a lot.”

Terry Pratchett book The Last Continent

Source: The Last Continent

Men, God

“Banning books gives us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight.”

Stephen Chbosky (1970) American writer

Books, Silence

“I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

The Ballot or the Bullet (1964), Speech in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964)
Context: I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate. Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American. Why, if birth made you American, you wouldn't need any legislation; you wouldn't need any amendments to the Constitution; you wouldn't be faced with civil-rights filibustering in Washington, D. C., right now.

“The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. / What matter where, if I be still the same…”

John Milton book Paradise Lost

i.254-255
Paradise Lost (1667)
Variant: The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.
Source: Paradise Lost: Books 1-2

Hell

“D’you know what happens when you hurt people?’ Ammu said. ‘When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

Love, People, Hurt

“A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

Error, Motivational, Back To Work

“Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Actually a statement by American advertising executive and author Howard W. Newton (1903–1951); attributions to Isaac are relatively recent, those to Howard date at least to Sylva Vol. 1-3 (1945), p. 57 https://books.google.com/books?id=-QUcAQAAMAAJ&q=%22Tact+is+the+knack+of+making+a+point+without+making+an+enemy%22&dq=%22Tact+is+the+knack+of+making+a+point+without+making+an+enemy%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=jtmwVJrZN43ksATPmID4BA&ved=0CNkBEOgBMCQ, where it is cited to an earlier publication in Redbook. <br class="br">Misattributed <br class="br">Variant: Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy. <br class="br">Variant: Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.

Art

“The world doesn't make sense until you force it to.”

Frank Miller (1957) American writer, artist, film director

World, Sense

“Falling hard for somebody makes you do things you never thought you'd do before. Like pulling off an A in History or finally facing the truth about yourself”

Steve Kluger book Almost Like Being in Love

Source: Almost Like Being in Love

Truth, History

“Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Soul, Fashion, Water

“It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want—oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Spring, Heart

“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”

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

Reading

“Someone who makes you laugh is a comedian. Someone who makes you think and then laugh is a humorist.”

George Burns (1896–1996) American comedian, actor, and writer

Thinking

“Punishment is not the answer. Punishment is easy. It’s lazy. Redemption is hard. Redemption makes you work.”
-Skulduggery”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: The Dying of the Light

“When our actions do not, our fears do make us traitors”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Fear

“Too much honesty makes you sound insincere.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Variant: Too much truth confuses the facts. Too much honesty makes you sound insincere
Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 26, “Lanre Turned” (p. 203)
Context: “All stories are true,” Skarpi said. “But this one really happened, if that’s what you mean.” He took another slow drink, then smiled again, his bright eyes dancing. “More or less. You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way. Too much truth confuses the facts. Too much honesty makes you sound insincere.”

“A man can sleep around, no questions asked, but if a woman makes nineteen or twenty mistakes she's a tramp.”

Joan Rivers (1933–2014) American comedian, actress, and television host

As quoted in Funny Ladies (2001), by B. Adler, p. 147

Question, Sleep

“It's strange how pain marks our faces, and makes us look like family.”

Stephen King book The Green Mile

Source: The Green Mile

Pain, Family

“Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

Music, Star, Dance

“Remembrance restores possibility to the past, making what happened incomplete and completing what never was. Remembrance is neither what happened nor what did not happen but, rather, their potentialization, their becoming possible once again.”

Giorgio Agamben (1942) Italian philosopher

Source: Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy

Past

“Make your work to be in keeping with your purpose”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Back To Work

“The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

The universe is flux, life is opinion.
The universe is transformation: life is opinion. (Long translation)
ὁ κόσμος ἀλλοίωσις, ὁ βίος ὑπόληψις.
IV, 3
Variant: Our life is what our thoughts make it.
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book IV

Life, Universe, Change, Cute

“Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig. (150)”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: Outliers: The Story of Success

Dance

“You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry”

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

“If you don't make a few ememies now and then, you're a coward-or worse. Besides, it as worth it to see his reaction. Oh, he was angry!
- Angela to Eragon”

Christopher Paolini book Inheritance

Source: Inheritance

“They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings steal a little and they throw you in jail. Steal a lot and then they make you king.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

“Yes, very sensible… People die of common sense, Dorian, one lost moment at a time. Life is a moment. There is no hereafter. So make it burn always with the hardest flame.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Life, People, Sense, Time

“It's your life-but only if you make it so.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Source: You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

Life, Heart Touching

“Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love
And sing them loud even in the dead of night.”

William Shakespeare Twelfth Night

Source: Twelfth Night

Love, Soul, Singing, Housing

“A man's allowed to make lots of small mistakes, and there's nothing wrong with that. But if the mistakes are big ones and they weigh him down, his only solution is to stop taking himself seriously. It's the only way to avoid suffering - suffering, prolonged, can be fatal.”

Pedro Juan Gutiérrez (1950) Cuban writer

Source: Dirty Havana Trilogy

Way, Suffering

“To philosophize means to make vivid.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

“How often it is a small, almost unconscious event that makes a turning point.”

Corrie ten Boom book The Hiding Place

Source: The Hiding Place

“Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Waiting, Motivational

“I know what loves are trembling into fire; how jealousy shoots its green flashes hither and thither; how intricately love crosses love; love makes knots; love brutally tears them apart. I have been knotted; I have been torn apart.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves

Love, Jealousy, Tear

“If you love someone but rarely make yourself available to him or her, that is not true love.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Living Buddha, Living Christ

Love

“So early in my life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Source: The Autobiography Of Malcolm X

Life, Learning

“Money makes people rich; it is a fallacy to think it makes them better, or even that it makes them worse. People are what they do, and what they leave behind.”

Terry Pratchett book Dodger

Source: Dodger

Money, People, Thinking

“He's probably their battle poet, too."
"You mean he makes up heroic songs about famous battles?"
"No, no. He recites poems that frighten the enemy…. When a well-trained gonnagle starts to recite, the enemy's ears explode.”

Terry Pratchett book The Wee Free Men

Source: The Wee Free Men

Training

“I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

I believe that the law was made for man and not man for the law; that government is the servant of the people and not their master.

I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.

I believe that thrift is essential to well-ordered living and that economy is a prime requisite of a sound financial structure, whether in government, business or personal affairs.

I believe that truth and justice are fundamental to an enduring social order.

I believe in the sacredness of a promise, that a man's word should be as good as his bond, that character—not wealth or power or position—is of supreme worth.

I believe that the rendering of useful service is the common duty of mankind and that only in the purifying fire of sacrifice is the dross of selfishness consumed and the greatness of the human soul set free.

I believe in an all-wise and all-loving God, named by whatever name, and that the individual's highest fulfillment, greatest happiness and widest usefulness are to be found in living in harmony with His will.

I believe that love is the greatest thing in the world; that it alone can overcome hate; that right can and will triumph over might.”

John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) American business magnate and philanthropist

Love, Life, God, Hate

“So she was considering in her own mind… whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up & picking the daisies…”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

Pleasure

“The earth is speaking to us, but we can't hear because of all the racket our senses are making. Sometimes we need to erase them, erase our senses. Then - maybe - the earth will touch us. The universe will speak. The stars will whisper.”

Jerry Spinelli book Stargirl

Source: Stargirl

Star, Sense, Universe

“I love making, I love doing. I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying and dead at heart.”

John Fowles book The Collector

Source: The Collector

Love, Heart, Dead

“If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young (1894)
Variant: The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by being always absolutely over-educated
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest
Context: The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by being always absolutely over-educated.

Education

“There are moments in life that you wish with all your heart you could take back. Like, just erase from existence. Like, if you could, you'd erase yourself right out of existence too, just to make that moment not exist.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

Life, Heart

“Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it’s unbelievable.”

Roald Dahl book Matilda

Source: Matilda said, "Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it's unbelievable...

“I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.”

Mark Twain book The Innocents Abroad

Source: The Innocents Abroad (1869), Ch. 7

“The trick is that as long as you know who you are and what makes you happy, it doesn't matter how others see you.”

Wendy Mass book Every Soul a Star

Variant: As long as you know who you are, and see what makes you happy, it doesn't matte how others see you
Source: Every Soul a Star

Happiness

“My only point, the only point that I'm making, is life has got to be allowed to continue even after theof life is--all--over….”

Tennessee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Source: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Life

“Cherish all your happy moments: they make a fine cushion for old age.”

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

Happiness, Age, Birthday

“The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Source: Jitterbug Perfume

Love, For Him

“There comes a point when you either embrace who and what you are, or condemn yourself to be miserable all your days. Other people will try to make you miserable; don't help them by doing the job yourself.”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

People, Help

“Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Source: The Second Sin (1973), P. 49.

“People don't like change. But make the change fast enough and you go from one type of normal to another.”

Terry Pratchett book Making Money

Source: Making Money

People, Change

“I wanted to do things to Richard that would make the sun grow cold with horror.”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

Source: My Work is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror

Sun

“I need the pain of loneliness to make my imagination work.”

Orhan Pamuk (1952) Turkish novelist, screenwriter, and Nobel Prize in Literature recipient

Pain, Imagination, Loneliness

“If I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
No vanity's displayed:
I'm looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

World

“Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie We Should All Be Feminists

Source: We Should All Be Feminists
Source: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/15-quotes-from-chimamanda-adichie-that-have-change/

Women, People

“Emotions are what make us human. Make us real. The word 'emotion' stands for energy in motion. Be truthful about your emotions, and use your mind and emotions in your favor, not against yourself.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki book Rich Dad Poor Dad

Source: Rich Dad, Poor Dad

Truth

“Anyone can hide. Facing up to things, working through them, that's what makes you strong.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Strong, For women, Courageous

“Holding onto something that's gone only makes a sickness inside.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

“How do you make your pictures?
— I don’t know, it’s not important.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) French photographer

“Belief in God and a future life makes it possible to go through life with less of stoic courage than is needed by skeptics.”

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

Source: Education and the Social Order

Life, God, Courage, Future

“All kings is mostly rapscallions, as fur as I can make out.”

Mark Twain book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“All human accomplishment has the same origin, identically. Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination. It converts to actual. It sustains, it alters, it redeems!”

Saul Bellow book Henderson the Rain King

General sources
Source: Henderson the Rain King (1959) [Viking/Penguin, 1984, ISBN 0-140-07269-1], ch. XVIII, p. 271

Imagination, Nature, Personality

“The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them.”

Orson Scott Card book Xenocide

Source: Xenocide

“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Variant: Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

Life