Quotes about making
page 39
Source: Taggerung
Source: My Name Is Memory
Source: Quiet, Please: Dispatches From A Public Librarian
Source: How to Kill a Rock Star
“Love makes everything complicated.”
Source: Howl's Moving Castle
Multiple variations of this quote can be found, but the earliest one on Google Books which uses the phrase "friendly or hostile" and attributes it to Einstein is The Complete Idiot's Guide to Spiritual Healing by Susan Gregg (2000), p. 5 http://books.google.com/books?id=XLQ8X67PozAC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA5#v=onepage&q&f=false, and this book gives no source for the quote.
A variant is found in Irving Oyle's The New American Medicine Show (1979) on p. 163, where Oyle writes: 'There is a story about Albert Einstein's view of human existence. Asked to pose the most vital question facing humanity, he replied, "Is the universe friendly?"' This variant is repeated in a number of books from the 1980s and 90s, so it probably pre-dates the "friendly or hostile" version. And the idea that the most important question we can ask is "Is the universe friendly?" dates back much earlier than the attribution to Einstein, for example in Emil Carl Wilm's 1912 book The Problem of Religion he includes the following footnote on p. 114 http://books.google.com/books?id=nWYiAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA114#v=onepage&q&f=false: 'A friend proposed to the late F. W. H. Myers the following question: "What is the thing which above all others you would like to know? If you could ask the Sphinx one question, and only one, what would the question be?" After a moment's silence Myers replied: "I think it would be this: Is the universe friendly?"'
Misattributed
Source: Caldecott and Co.: Notes on Books and Pictures
“If you make 10,000 regulations you destroy all respect for the law.”
In the House of Commons (3 February 1949), as quoted in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 17 ISBN 1586486381
Post-war years (1945–1955)
Source: The Virgin Suicides
Source: Why People Don't Heal and How They Can: A Practical Programme for Healing Body, Mind and Spirit
Howard Gardner (1983), "Multiple approaches to understanding," in: Charles M. Reigeluth (ed.) Instructional-design Theories and Models: A new paradigm of ..., Volume 2. p. 69-90
“I think her flaws make me love her even more. She's not perfect, but she's perfect to me”
Source: Between the Lines
Source: The Phantom Tollbooth
“The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think.”
Source: Perfect Timing
“In my opinion, too much attention to weather makes for instability of character.”
Source: The Little White Horse
“You make mistakes, mistakes don't make you”
“I don't trust easily, so when I tell you I trust you, don't make me regret it.”
Source: A Fine Balance
“You promise me, he said. That you love him. Enough to marry him and make him happy.”
Source: Clockwork Prince
Source: The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
“Making a journey by night is more wonderful than anything in the world.”
Source: Moominpappa at Sea
“I don't know what it is about accents that makes me want to get undressed and high-five myself.”
Source: My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands
Source: All Wound Up: The Yarn Harlot Writes for a Spin
Source: Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga
Source: Kiss of a Demon King
“I've heard that the best way to help poor people is to make sure you don't become one of them”
Source: The Leader Who Had No Title: A Modern Fable on Real Success in Business and in Life
“No one can grant you happiness. Happiness is a choice we all have the power to make.”
Source: Life Expectancy
Source: Fresh Faith: What Happens When Real Faith Ignites God's People
“Perhaps not," said Will, who had ears like a bat's. "But I would make a radiant bride.”
Source: Clockwork Princess
“Things usually make sense in time, and even bad decisions have their own kind of correctness.”
As quoted in Violence Unveiled (1996) by Gil Bailie, p. xv
Variant: Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Source: The Living Wisdom of Howard Thurman: A Visionary for Our Time
Source: Reasons to Stay Alive
Source: The Christmas List
Variant: What the hell makes you so smart?" I asked. "I wouldn't go for coffee with you, " she answered. "Listen -- I wouldn't ask you." "That, "she replied "is what makes you stupid.
Source: Love Story
“For life makes no mistakes and always gives man that which man first gives himself.”
Source: The Law and Other Essays on Manifestation
“The things that go wrong often make the best memories.”
Source: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
Source: Fugitive Pieces
“If you're going to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh; otherwise they'll kill you.”
Credited to Shaw in the lead in to the mockumentary C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (2004) and other recent works, but this or slight variants of it are also sometimes attributed to W. C. Fields, Charlie Chaplin, and Oscar Wilde. It might possibly be derived from Shaw's statement in John Bull's Other Island (1907): "My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world."
Another possibility is that it is derived from Shaw's characteristic of Mark Twain: "He has to put things in such a way as to make people who would otherwise hang him believe he is joking."
Variants:
If you are going to tell people the truth, you'd better make them laugh. Otherwise, they'll kill you.
If you're going to tell people the truth, you'd better make them laugh. Otherwise, they'll kill you.
Disputed
Referencing Oscar Wilde from the preface of "The Picture of Dorian Gray"; "All art is quite useless".
1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)
Source: Moab Is My Washpot
Context: … but love, like all art, as Oscar said, it's quite useless. It is the useless things that make life worth living and that make life dangerous too: wine, love, art, beauty. Without them life is safe but not worth bothering with.
“We must spoil our women, boy. A happy woman makes a happy home. An unhappy one makes us drink.”
Source: Styxx
page 119
Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
Source: Tough Shit: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good
“I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse.”
“You're never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true.”
Variant: You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
“Books make dangerous devils out of women.”
Source: The Conquest
Source: Lord of the Silver Bow
“You gave me the key to your heart, my love, then why did you make me knock?”
“What makes earth feel like Hell is our expectation that it should feel like Heaven.”
Variant: No, it's not fair, but what makes earth feel like Hell is our expectation that it should feel like Heaven.
Source: Damned (2011)
Source: Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting
“Data! data! data!" he cried impatiently. "I can't make bricks without clay.”
Source: The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
Statement in Mainliner (July 1977), as quoted in Creativity and the writing process (1982) by Olivia Bertagnolli, p. 182; also partly quoted in Survival Skills for Managers (1981) by Marlene Wilson, p. 19
Variant: Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.
As quoted in The Evaluation and Treatment of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (1999) by Nils R. Varney and Richard J. Roberts, p. 303
Context: My son's a painter. All through school his teachers tell him he's a genius. I tell him to paint me an apple that looks like and apple before he paints me one that doesn't. Go where you can go, but start from someplace recognizable. Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.
“If a man doesn't know how to dance he doesn't know how to make love, there I said it!”
Source: Winter Moon
“But we survived, didn’t we? That makes it an adventure. If you get killed it’s a tragedy.”
Source: The Magicians
“Sometimes it’s only madness that makes us what we are.”
Source: Batman: Arkham Asylum - A Serious House on Serious Earth
“In the end, life makes victims of us all.”
Source: Born of the Night
Sane Man (1989)
Context: Rick Astley? Have you seen this banal incubus at work? Boy, if this guy isn't heralding Satan's imminent approach to Earth, huh. "Don't ever wanna make you cry, never wanna make you sigh … never gonna break your heart" … oh, I wouldn't worry about that without a dick, buddy. You got a corn nut! You got a clit! You're not even a guy! You're an AIDS germ that got off a slide! They're puttin' music to AIDS germs, they're puttin' a drum machine behind them in a metronome beat and Ted Turner's colorizing 'em, God damn it! These aren't even people man! It's a CIA plot to make you think malls are good!! Don't ya see? (Imitates stereotypical American in a robotic manner) "But Bill, malls are good! Malls allow us to shop 365 days of the year at a 72 degree heat. That must be good."
“So he stalked her again. Love makes hunters of us all.”
Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West