Quotes about making
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“Men in plural […] can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk with and make sense to each other and themselves.”

Hannah Arendt book The Human Condition

Source: The Human Condition

Men, Sense

“What we would like to do is change the world--make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute--the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words--we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

Love, God, People, World

“The small amount of foolery wise men have makes a great show.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Men

“I don't know. They could put up a warning sign or something. Hello. Welcome to Hindstrap. We will murder you in the night and eat your bloody face if you stay past sunset. Try the pies. Martna Maily makes them fresh daily.”

Robert Jordan The Wheel of Time

Source: The Gathering Storm

Past, Night

“Now art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)
Context: Art is this intense form of individualism that makes the public try to exercise over it an authority that is as immoral as it is ridiculous, and as corrupting as it is contemptible. It is not quite their fault. The public have always, and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity. Now Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.

Art

“Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Variant: great people are those who make others feel that they, too, can become great.

People, Feeling, Deep, Success

“Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.”

Umberto Eco book The Name of the Rose

Temi, Adso, i profeti e coloro disposti a morire per la verità, ché di solito fan morire moltissimo con loro, spesso prima di loro, talvolta al posto loro. William of Baskerville http://books.google.com/books?id=XY2vXKsHbzIC&q=&quot;Fear+prophets+adso+and+those+prepared+to+die+for+the+truth+for+as+a+rule+they+make+many+others+die+with+them+often+before+them+at+times+instead+of+them&quot;&pg=PA549#v=onepage Source: The Name of the Rose (1980)

Truth, Fear, Time

“Pleasures may turn a heart to stone, riches may make it callous, but sorrows cannot break it. Hearts live by being wounded.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Pleasure, Heart

“Stronger than lover's love is lover's hate. Incurable, in each, the wounds they make.”

Euripidés Medea

Source: Medea

Love, Hate, Lovers

“I want to make Romeo jealous! I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Pain, World, Sadness, Lovers

“When you reach out to hurting people, that’s when God is going to make sure your needs are supplied. When you focus on being a blessing, God makes sure that you are always blessed in abundance.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

God, People, Hurt

“I hope I remember everything," said Toni.
"You won't," said Trapp. "That's how you learn. But after you make the same mistake one, or two, or five times, you'll eventually get it. And then you'll make new mistakes.”

Louis Sachar (1954) American writer of children's books

Source: The Cardturner: A Novel about a King, a Queen, and a Joker

Hope, Learning, Time

“In this instant, shaken to her very depths, this ecstatic human being has a first inkling that the soul is made of stuff so mysteriously elastic that a single event can make it big enough to contain the infinite.”

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) Austrian writer

Source: The Post-Office Girl

Soul

“They suffered from the terrible delusion that something could be done. They seemed prepared to make the world the way they wanted it or die in the attempt, and the trouble with dying in the attempt was that you died in the attempt.”

Terry Pratchett book Sourcery

Source: Sourcery

World, Way, Suffering

“I'm not saying it's going to be easy. Nothing in life is easy. But that's no reason to give up. You'll be surprised what you can accomplish if you set your mind to it. After all, you only have one life, so you should try to make the most of it.”

Louis Sachar (1954) American writer of children's books

Life

“it’s important to make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Way

“Never mind what I say. I am always saying what I shouldn't say. In fact, I usually say what I really think. A great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be misunderstood.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Source: An Ideal Husband

Thinking

“It is strange how a scrap of poetry works in the mind and makes the legs move in time to it along the road.”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own

Time

“How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author

Source: The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh

For women, Missing You, Goodbye, Graduation

“Bring the mind into sharp focus and make it alert so that it can immediately intuit truth, which is everywhere. The mind must be emancipated from old habits, prejudices, restrictive thought processes and even ordinary thought itself.”

Bruce Lee book Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Source: Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Truth

“Reality is not easy, but all this make-believe doesn't make it easier.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel

Reality

“Summer is the season of motion, winter is the season of form. In summer everything moves save the fixed and inert. Down the hill flows the west wind, making wavelets in the shorter grass and great billows in the standing hay; the tree in full leaf sways its heavy boughs below and tosses its leaves above; the weed by the gate bends and turns when the wind blows down the road. It is the shadow of moving things that we usually see, and the shadows are themselves in motion. The shadow of a branch, speckled through with light, wavers across the lawn, the sprawling shadow of the weed moves and sways across the dust.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Source: The Northern Farm: A Glorious Year on a Small Maine Farm

Tree, Light, Grass, Winter

“Poetry is an act of peace. Peace goes into the making of a poet as flour goes into the making of bread.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Peace

“I've found that there is always some beauty left — in nature, sunshine, freedom, in yourself; these can all help you. Look at these things, then you find yourself again, and God, and then you regain your balance. A person who's happy will make others happy; a person who has courage and faith will never die in misery!”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

7 May 1944
(1942 - 1944)
Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

God, Happiness, Faith, Beauty

“Our lives are fashioned by our choices. First we make our choices. Then our choices make us.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Fashion

“The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.”

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

Art, Future

“Life isn't as serious as my mind makes it out to be.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Variant: Life isn't as serious as the mind makes it out to be.
Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Life, Motivational

“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”

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

Often misquoted as: "I have found that most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." or "People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be."
This quote is not found in the various Lincoln sources which can be searched online (e.g. Gutenberg). Niether does Lincoln appear more generally to use the phrase "making up {one's} mind". The saying was first quoted, ascribed to Lincoln but with no source given, in 1914 by Frank Crane and several times subsequently by him in altered versions. It was later quoted in How to Get What You Want (1917) by Orison Swett Marden (Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1917), 74, again without source. Alternative versions quoted are: "I have found that most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be" and "People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be."

Source: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/20/happy-minds/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CPeople%20are%20about%20as%20happy,up%20their%20minds%20to%20be.%E2%80%9D&text=Remember%20Lincoln's%20saying%20that%20%E2%80%9Cfolks,up%20their%20minds%20to%20be.%E2%80%9D

Curiously in later books Crane, e.g. Four Minute Essays, 1919, Adventures in Common Sense, 1920, "21", 1930, Crane mentions other routes to happiness and does not again use this quote.

Marden used a great many quotes in his writings, without giving sources. Whilst sources for many of the quotes can be found, this is not true for all. For instance he mentions another story in which Lincoln says "Madam, you have not a peg to hang your case on"; this also does not seem to found in Lincoln sources.

Happiness, Motivational, Wise, Deep

“Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low, cease to be perceived as contradictions.”

André Breton book Manifestoes of Surrealism

Source: Manifestoes of Surrealism

Life, Death, Imagination, Past

“I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.”

Booker T. Washington book Up from Slavery

Variant: I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.
Source: 1900s, Up From Slavery (1901), Chapter XI: Making Their Beds Before They Could Lie On Them. This statement was quoted in Charm and Courtesy in Conversation (1904) by Frances Bennett Callaway, p. 153 as "I permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him." It has also often been paraphrased in various other ways: I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him. I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him. I let no man drag me down so low as to make me hate him.
Source: Up from Slavery

Hate, Soul

“It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward.”

Louis Sachar (1954) American writer of children's books

“In conversation we are sometimes confused by the tone of our own voice, and mislead to make assertions that do not at all correspond to our opinions.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Source: Human, All Too Human

“Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”

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

His response when "accused of treating his opponents with too much courtesy and kindness, and when it was pointed out to him that his whole duty was to destroy them", as quoted in More New Testament Words (1958) by William Barclay; either this anecdote or Lincoln's reply may have been adapted from a reply attributed to Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund: :* Some courtiers reproached the Emperor Sigismond that, instead of destroying his conquered foes, he admitted them to favour. “Do I not,” replied the illustrious monarch, “effectually destroy my enemies, when I make them my friends?” ::* "Daily Facts" in The Family Magazine Vol. IV (1837), p. 123 http://books.google.de/books?id=aW0EAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA123&dq=destroy; also quoted as simply in "Do I not effectually destroy my enemies, in making them my friends?" in The Sociable Story-teller (1846) Disputed

Friendship, Powerful, For Friend, For Bestfriend

“To love makes one solitary.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

Love

“Just because you call an electric eel a rubber duck doesn't make it a rubber duck, does it? And God help the poor bastard who decides they want to take a bath with the duckie.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Jace to Clary, pg. 83
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

God, Help

“Now produce your explanation and pray make it improbable.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

“Nature does not make mistakes. Right and wrong are human categories.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

Nature

“The way you make an omelet reveals your character.”

Anthony Bourdain (1956–2018) Chef and food writer

Way

“I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things, then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love from henceforth!”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Gay Science

Source: Gay Science

Love, Beauty, Learning

“True Islam taught me that it takes all of the religious, political, economic, psychological, and racial ingredients, or characteristics, to make the Human Family and the Human Society complete.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Family

“Fear is a strange soil. It grows obedience like corn, which grow in straight lines to make weeding easier. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground.”

Terry Pratchett book Small Gods

Source: Small Gods

Fear

“Simple it's not, I'm afraid you will find, for a mind maker-upper to make up his mind”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Source: Oh, The Places You'll Go!

“A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow

People, Truth, Way

“We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.”

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

Per Amica Silentia Lunae (1918): Anima Hominis, part v

“A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”

Walter Benjamin book Theses on the Philosophy of History

Source: Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), IX

Angels, History, Past, Future

“One who makes himself a worm cannot complain afterwards if people step on him.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Original: (de) Wer sich aber zum Wurm macht, kann nachher nicht klagen, dass er mit Füßen getreten wird.
Source: Part two: Metaphysical Principles of Virtue page 98. note: Metaphysics of Morals (1797)

People

“If you want to make a permanent change, stop focusing on the size of your problems and start focusing on the size of you!”

T. Harv Eker (1954) American writer

Source: Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth

Problem, Change, Motivational, Success

“Happiness isn't something that depends on our surroundings… It's something we make inside ourselves.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

Happiness, Dependency

“Solemnity, I don't know what it's for. I mean, what is the point of it? The two most beautiful memorial services that I've ever attended both had a lot of humor. It somehow freed us all and made the services inspiring and cathartic. But solemnity, it serves pomposity. The self important always know at some level of their consciousness that their egotism is going to be punctured by humor. That's why they see it as a threat! And so, dishonestly, they pretend that their deficiency makes their views more substantial.”

John Cleese (1939) actor from England

Beauty, Memory

“When you make mistakes, whether they are from this life or another, learn from them- then they become opportunities”

P. C. Cast book Tempted

Source: Tempted

Life, Learning

“Pain or love or danger makes you real again….”

Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums

Source: The Dharma Bums

Love, Pain

“Some people, if they didn't make it hard for themselves, might fall asleep.”

Saul Bellow book The Adventures of Augie March

Source: The Adventures of Augie March

People

“If some things don't make you lose your sense of reason, then you have none to lose.”

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781) writer, philosopher, publicist, and art critic

Sense

“When I makes tea I makes tea, as old mother Grogan said. And when I makes water I makes water.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

Water, Tea

“No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando: A Biography (1928), Ch. 3
Context: No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high. Whigs and Tories, Liberal party and Labour party — for what do they battle except their own prestige?

Happiness, Sense, Rage, Passion

“In Genua, someone set out to make dreams come true. Remember some of your dreams?”

Terry Pratchett book Witches Abroad

Source: Witches Abroad

Dreams

“If the devil cannot make us bad, he will make us busy.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

Business

“To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

A Poet's Advice (1958)
Context: Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel …
the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.
To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

World, Fight, Night

“Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Music, Feeling

“The ego says, ‘I shouldn’t have to suffer,’ and that thought makes you suffer so much more. It is a distortion of the truth, which is always paradoxical. The truth is that you need to say yes to suffering before you can transcend it.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Truth, Suffering

“I love him wholly and unconditionally and without reservation. I love him enough to sacrifice a friendship. I love him enough to accept my own happiness and use it, in turn, to make him happy back.”

Emily Giffin Something Borrowed

Source: Something Borrowed

Love, Friendship, Happiness