Quotes about making
page 15

“I know all those words, but that sentence makes no sense to me.”

Matt Groening (1954) American cartoonist

Sense, Family

“It takes a lot of spine and stomach to make yourself into something when no one gives you a foundation.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

“he who thinks great thoughts often makes great errors”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

Error, Thinking

“Jack: Actually, I was found.
Lady Bracknell: Found?
Jack: Uh, yes, I was in… a handbag.
Lady Bracknell: A handbag?
Jack: Yes, it was…
[makes gestures]
Jack: an ordinary handbag.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

“The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

As quoted in My Favorite Quotations (1990) by Norman Vincent Peale

Success

“Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. LIX
Following the Equator (1897)

Books

“Goodwin scowled at her cup. "With all due respect, my lord, I hate it when you make sense.”

Tamora Pierce book Bloodhound

Source: Bloodhound

Hate, Sense

“If fate doesn't make you laugh, you just don't get the joke.”

Gregory David Roberts (1952) Australian writer and bank robber

Fate

“Now he found out a new thing--namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.”

Mark Twain book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Variant: To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.
Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Ch. 22.

World, Way

“The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty and to someone else if she is plain.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Algernon, Act I
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Love, Making love, Way

“This was after stew. But then, so is everything. When the first man crawled out of the slime and went to make his home on land, what he had for dinner that night was stew.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

Home, Night

“A lie is an act of theft. It steals peoples faith and makes them resent themselves”

James Lee Burke (1936) Novelist, short story writer

People, Lie, Faith

“All he knew was that you couldn't hope to try for the big stuff, like world peace and happiness, but you might just about be able to achieve some tiny deed that'd make the world, in a small way, a better place. Like shooting someone.”

Terry Pratchett book The Fifth Elephant

Source: The Fifth Elephant

Happiness, World, Peace, Hope

“She stared at her reflection in the glossed shop windows as if to make sure, moment by moment, that she continued to exist.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

“People who don't take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

People

“In my view, philanthropy goes against the grain; therefore it generates a lot of hypocrisy and many paradoxes. Here are some examples: Philanthropy is supposed to be devoted to the benefit of others, but philanthropists are primarily concerned with their own benefit; philanthropy is supposed to help people, yet it often makes people dependent and turns them into objects of charity; applicants tell foundations what they want to hear, then proceed to do what the applicant wants to do.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

People, Help, Dependency

“Dear Non-American Black, when you make the choice to come to America, you become black. Stop arguing. Stop saying I'm Jamaican or I'm Ghanaian. America doesn't care.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book Americanah

Source: Americanah

“Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

As quoted in Sunbeams : A Book of Quotations (1990) by Sy Safransky, p. 42

Solitude, Patience

“We make our way through Everything like thread passing through fabric, giving shape to images that we ourselves do not know.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Way

“I don't think that people accept the fact that life doesn't make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

As quoted in My Love Affair with David Lynch and Peachy Like Nietzsche: Dark Clown Porn Snuff for Terrorists and Gorefiends (2005) by Jason Rogers, p. 7
Context: I don't think that people accept the fact that life doesn't make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it.

Life, People, Thinking, Sense

“People wanted the world to be a story, because stories had to sound right and they had to make sense. People wanted the world to make sense.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

People, World, Sense

“One of the most poisonous of all Satan’s whispers is simply, “Things will never change.” That lie kills expectation, trapping our heart forever in the present. To keep desire alive and flourishing, we must renew our vision for what lies ahead. Things will not always be like this. Jesus has promised to “make all things new.” Eye has not seen, ear has not heard all that God has in store for his lovers, which does not mean “we have no clue so don’t even try to imagine,” but rather, you cannot outdream God. Desire is kept alive by imagination, the antidote to resignation. We will need imagination, which is to say, we will need hope.”

John Eldredge

Source: The Sacred Romance Drawing Closer To The Heart Of God

God, Lie, Hope, Imagination

“It’s like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

E.L. Doctorow (1931–2015) novelist, editor, professor

On his writing style
Interview in Writers at Work (1988)
Variant: Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
Source: Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews

Cars, Way, Night, Cute

“To ask me to verify my life by giving you my statistics is like using science to validate sorcery. It robs the world of its magic and makes milestones out of us all.”

Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author

Life, World, Science

“Death and disaster are at our shoulders every second of our lives, trying to get at us. Missing, a lot of the time. A lot of miles on the motorway without a front wheel blow-out. A lot of viruses that slither through our bodies without snagging. A lot of pianos that fall a minute after we've passed. Or a month, it makes no difference.
So unless were going to get down on our knees and give thanks every time disaster misses, it makes no sense to moan when it strikes.”

Hugh Laurie book The Gun Seller

Source: The Gun Seller (1996)

Death, Sense, Time

“You have to be a bastard to make it, and that's a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

“Nature has made all her truths independent of one another. Our art makes one dependent on the other.”

Blaise Pascal Pensées

Source: Pensées

Truth, Art, Nature, Dependency

“Live, and be happy, and make others so.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Justine Moritz in Ch. 8
Frankenstein (1818)

Happiness

“You have made flowers grow where I cultivated dust and stones. Remember this, on this journey you insist on making. If you die, I will not survive you long.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Source: Starscape Boxed Set B Mixed

Flowers

“Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red.”

William Shakespeare Macbeth

Source: Macbeth

Sea

“The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Fear

“But when we sit together, close,’ said Bernard, ‘we melt into each other with phrases. We are edged with mist. We make an unsubstantial territory.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves

“I [who] am perpetually making notes in the margin of my mind for some final statement…”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“No people in history have ever survived, who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies.”

Dean Acheson (1893–1971) Statesman and lawyer

People, History, Freedom

“(Raven) "Makes me think of werewolves. Do you think a man can change into an animal?"
(Alexander) "If he's with the right girl.”

Ellen Schreiber book Vampire Kisses

Source: Vampire Kisses

Girl, Thinking, Change, Animals

“Some things in life are out of your control. You can make it a party or a tragedy.”

Nora Roberts Vision in White

Source: Vision in White

Life

“All men desire peace, but very few desire those things that make for peace.”

Thomas à Kempis book The Imitation of Christ

Source: The Imitation of Christ

Men, Peace

“Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

The Critic as Artist (1891), Part I

History

“Our care of the child should be governed, not by the desire to make him learn things, but by the endeavor always to keep burning within him that light which is called intelligence.”

Maria Montessori (1870–1952) Italian pedagogue, philosopher and physician

Intelligence, Light, Learning

“To romanticize the world is to make us aware of the magic, mystery and wonder of the world; it is to educate the senses to see the ordinary as extraordinary, the familiar as strange, the mundane as sacred, the finite as infinite.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

As quoted in "Bildung in Early German Romanticism" by Frederick C. Beiser, in Philosophers on Education : Historical Perspectives (1998) by Amélie Rorty, p. 294

World, Education, Sense

“There is no word for our kind of friendship. Two people who don't
see each other a lot, but can make each other effortlessly happy”

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

Friendship, Happiness, People

“Trying to please everybody is impossible - if you did that, you'd end up in the middle with nobody liking you. You've just got to make the decision about what you think is your best, and do it.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Source: The Beatles Anthology

Thinking, Decision

“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Life, Happiness, Way, Thinking

“I must admit that I personally measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her or his fellow human beings.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1970s, Margaret Mead: Some Personal Views (1979), p. 249

Success, Personality

“Make love’s quick pants”

William Shakespeare Othello

Othello

Love, Making love

“Peace is only possible when one of the warring sides takes the first step, the hazardous initiative, the risk of opening up dialogue, and decides to make the gesture that will lead not only to an armistice but to peace.”

Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) French philosopher (1930-2004)

War, Peace

“I think the best evenings are when we have messages, things that make us think, but we can also laugh and enjoy each other's company.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Thinking

“I know it's not clothes that make women beautiful or otherwise, nor beauty care, nor expensive creams, nor the distinction of costliness of their finery. I know the problem lies elsewhere. I don't know where. I only know it isn't where women think.”

Marguerite Duras book The Lover

Source: The Lover

Women, Beauty, Problem, Thinking

“You ride as a man, fight as a man, and you think as a man-"
"I think as a human being," she retorted hotly. "Men don't think any differently from women- they just make more noise about being able to.”

Tamora Pierce The Woman Who Rides Like a Man

Source: The Woman Who Rides Like a Man

Women, Men, Thinking, Fight

“Tomorrow is always another day to make things right.”

Lauryn Hill (1975) American singer, rapper, songwriter, record producer, actress

“Great calm, generous detachment, selfless love, disinterested effort: these are what make for success in life. If you can find peace in yourself and can spread comfort around you, you will be happier than an empress.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Love, Life, Peace, Effort

“I think it's fair rude to make him a tree and not know what kind he is.”

Tamora Pierce book Wolf-Speaker

Source: Wolf-Speaker

Thinking, Tree

“One makes mistakes; that is life. But it is never a mistake to have loved.”

Romain Rolland (1866–1944) French author

As quoted in On Relationships: A Book for Teenagers (1999) by Kimberly Kirberger

Love, Life

“Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties. And not to Democrats alone do I make this appeal, but to all who love these great and true principles.”

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

Speech at Kalamazoo, Michigan (27 August 1856) http://www.mrlincolnandfreedom.org/inside.asp?ID=14&subjectID=2, Collected Works 1:391 http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln2/1:391?rgn=div1;view=fulltext <br class="br">1850s

Love

“Whoever it is you fall in love with for the first time, not just love but be in love with, is the one who will always make you angry, the one you can't be logical about.”

Jeanette Winterson book The Passion

Source: The Passion

Love, Time

“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 keep turning over new leaves, and spoiling them, as I used to spoil my copybooks; and I make so many beginnings there never will be an end. (Jo March)”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

“What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it heaven.

As translated by Michael Hamburger”

Friedrich Hölderlin book Hyperion

Hyperion
Original: (de) Immerhin hat das den Staat zur Hölle gemacht, daß ihn der Mensch zu seinem Himmel machen wollte.

Hell

“Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.”

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

Freedom, Personality

“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Preface
1910s, The Doctor's Dilemma (1911)
Variant: A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
Context: Attention and activity lead to mistakes as well as to successes; but a life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

Life, Deep, Life, Heart Touching

“Someone once said that every man is trying to live up to his father's expectations or make up for their father's mistakes….”

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

Source: The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

For Father

“Making a million legally has always been difficult. Making a million illegally has always been a little easier. Keeping a million when you have made it is perhaps the most difficult of all.”

Jeffrey Archer book Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less

Source: Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less

“To see evil and call it good, mocks God. Worse, it makes goodness meaningless. A word without meaning is an abomination, for when the word passes beyond understanding the very thing the word stands for passes out of the world and cannot be recalled.”

Stephen R. Lawhead book Arthur

Source: Arthur

God, World, Understanding, Evil

“What makes night within us may leave stars.”

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

Variant: Whatever causes night in our souls may leave stars.
Source: Ninety-Three

Star, Night, Deep

“The Judge does not make the law. It is people that make the law. Therefore if a law is unjust, and if the Judge judges according to the law, that is justice, even if it is not just.”

Alan Paton book Cry, the Beloved Country

Source: Cry, the Beloved Country

People, Justice, Law

“Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

Hope, Hope

“Practice doesn’t make perfect. It makes better.”

Frank E. Peretti (1951) American writer

Source: Illusion

“It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.”

John Irving book The Hotel New Hampshire

Source: The Hotel New Hampshire

Life, Art

“The love of a single heart can make a world of difference.”

Immaculée Ilibagiza (1972) Rwandan writer

Source: Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

Love, World, Heart

“He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it — namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.”

Mark Twain book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Ch. 2

Law, Boy

“This country will not be a permanently good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a reasonably good place for all of us to live in.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Chicago, IL http://www.trsite.org/content/pages/speaking-loudly (17 June 1912) <br class="br">1910s

Country

“THAT’S MORTALS FOR YOU, Death continued. THEY’VE ONLY GOT A FEW YEARS IN THIS WORLD AND THEY SPEND THEM ALL IN MAKING THINGS COMPLICATED FOR THEMSELVES. FASCINATING.”

Terry Pratchett book Mort

Source: Mort

Death, World

“If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Time

“When people cared about each other, they always found a way to make it work.”

Nicholas Sparks book True Believer

Source: True Believer

People, Way

“The words in this book are all phooey. When you say them, your lips will make slips and back flips and your tongue may end up in Saint Looey!”

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

Books

“Circumstances do not make a man, they reveal him.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

“Virginia Woolf helps. Her novels make mine possible.”

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

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Help

“Life is what we make of it. Travel is the traveler. What we see isn't what we see but what we are.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Original: (pt) Viajar? Para viajar basta existir. [...] Para quê viajar? Em Madrid, em Berlim, na Pérsia, na China, nos Pólos ambos, onde estaria eu senão em mim mesmo, e no tipo e género das minhas sensações?

A vida é o que fazemos dela. As viagens são os viajantes. O que vemos não é o que vemos, senão o que somos.
Source: The Book of Disquiet, p. 360
Context: To travel? In order to travel it's enough to be. […] Why travel? In Madrid, in Berlin, in Persia, in China, at the Poles both, where would I be but in myself, and in the sort and kind of my sensations?

Life is what we make of it. Travels are travellers. What we see is not what we see but what we are.

Life, Travel

“There is never a second opportunity to make a first impression.”

Andrzej Sapkowski book Sword of Destiny

Source: Sword of Destiny

“Make voyages. Attempt them. There's nothing else.”

Tennessee Williams Camino Real

Source: Camino Real

“You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn't I? I mean it was careless of me to makes such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person I thought it was your secret pride."

"I'm thirty," I said. "I'm five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor."

She didn't answer. Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Love, Lie, Secret, Personality

“I do not exist to impress the world. I exist to live my life in a way that will make me happy.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Life, Happiness, World, Way

“That's the way it was. Privilege, which just means 'private law.' Two types of people laugh at the law; those that break it and those that make it.”

Terry Pratchett book Night Watch

Source: Night Watch

People, Law, Way

“The first thing every mage should learn is that magic makes fools of us. Now you may call yourself a mage. You have learned the most important lesson.”

Tamora Pierce book Melting Stones

Source: Melting Stones

Fools, Learning

“Hide your intentions not by closing up (with the risk of appearing secretive, and making people suspicious) but by talking endlessly about your desires and goals-just not the real ones.”

Robert Greene book The 48 Laws of Power

Source: The 48 Laws of Power

People, Secret, Appearance

“Humor is almost always anger with its make-up on.”

Stephen King book Bag of Bones

Source: Bag of Bones

Anger

“I must be lean & write & make worlds beside this to live in.”

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

World

“I wonder if anyone can ever succeed in making their children content.”

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

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

Children

“Don't think about making women fit the world -- think about making the world fit women.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Women, World, Thinking

“When people say that animal rescuers are crazy, what they really mean is that animal rescuers share a number of fundamental beliefs that makes them easy to marginalize. Among those is the belief that Rene Descartes was a jackass.”

Steven Kotler (1967) American journalist

Source: A Small Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life

People, Animals

“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

“The greatest miracle that God can do today is to take an unholy man out of an unholy world and make him holy, then put him back into that unholy world and keep him holy in it.”

Leonard Ravenhill (1907–1994) British writer

God, World

“I prefer to have some beliefs that don't make logical sense.”

Louise Erdrich (1954) writer from the United States

Sense

“Never make your home in a place. Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You'll find what you need to furnish it- memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things. That way it will go with you wherever you journey.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 42, “Beneath the Uduntree” (p. 718).
Context: “Never make your home in a place,” the old man had said, too lazy in the spring warmth to do more than wag a finger. “Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You’ll find what you need to furnish it—memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things.” Morgenes had grinned. “That way it will go with you wherever you journey. You’ll never lack for a home—unless you lose your head, of course...”

Love, Way, Home, Learning

“Sweetheart, never listen to what my enemies say. They're very confused people. I know they are because I've spent years making them that way.”

Tamora Pierce book Mastiff

Source: Mastiff

People, Way