Quotes about making
page 58

“If people try to judge you or shame you for doing safe, consensual things that make you happy, I can guarantee you they're bad people.”

Tucker Max book Assholes Finish First

Source: Assholes Finish First

Happiness, People

“Remember, despite the fact that this book is being sold as a 'fantasy' novel, you must take all of the things it says extremely seriously, as they are quite important, are in no way silly, and always make sense.

Rutabaga.”

Brandon Sanderson Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

Source: Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

Books, Way, Sense

“if you’re making sense, you’ve just unmade confusion.”

Karen Marie Moning book Darkfever

Darkfever

Sense

“The habit of reading is the only one I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will be there to support you when all other resources are gone. It will be present to you when the energies of your body have fallen away from you. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.”

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) English novelist (1815-1882)

As quoted in Forbes (April 1948), p. 42
Variant: The habit of reading is the only one I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will be there to support you when all other resources are gone. . . . It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.

Pleasure, Support, Reading

“It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future”

Yogi Berra (1925–2015) American baseball player, manager, coach

The earliest citations of this proverb, from the mid-twentieth century, refer to it as Danish in origin. See http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/10/20/no-predict/
Disputed, Misattributed

Future

“All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.”

Charlie Chaplin book My Autobiography

Source: My Autobiography (1964), Ch. 10

Girl

“Success does not consist in never making blunders, but in never making the same one a second time.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

H. W. Shaw (Josh Billings), as quoted in Scientific American, Vol. 31 (1874), p. 121, and in dictionaries of quotations such as Excellent Quotations for Home and School (1890) by Julia B. Hoitt, p. 117 https://archive.org/stream/excellentquotat00hoitgoog/excellentquotat00hoitgoog#page/n138/mode/1up and Many Thoughts of Many Minds: A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age (1896) by Louis Klopsch, p. 266 https://archive.org/stream/manythoughtsman00klopgoog/manythoughtsman00klopgoog#page/n268/mode/1up. <br class="br">Misattributed

Time, Success

“The real problem with being around James was that he was always the hero. And what did that make you? Either the sidekick or the villain.”

Lev Grossman The Magicians

Source: The Magicians

Problem

“Sometimes I doubt and sometimes I believe. And I like not making myself believe when I am doubting, and not making myself doubt when I am believing. Surely neither God nor Accident need my consistency.”

Hugh Prather (1938–2010) American writer

Source: I Touch the Earth, the Earth Touches Me

God

“Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

Truth

“Love and kindness are never wasted. They always make a difference. They bless the one who receives them, and they bless you, the giver.”

Barbara De Angelis (1951) American psychologist

Love, Relationship, love

“It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

Time

“Nonsense is that which does not fit into the prearranged patterns which we have superimposed on reality… Nonsense is nonsense only when we have not yet found that point of view from which it makes sense.”

Gary Zukav (1942) American writer and revivalist

Reality, Sense

“You know how some people, when they're together, they somehow make you feel more hopeful? Make you feel like the world is not the insane place it really is?”

Rebecca Wells book Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Source: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

People, World, Hope, Feeling

“We spent our lives making livings.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.”

James Baldwin book Giovanni's Room

Source: Giovanni's Room

Pain, People, Way

“… some people aren't worth the trouble of being kind to, because they have neither the brains nor the power to make something for themselves out of your kindness.”

Rob Sheffield (1966) American music journalist

Source: Love Is a Mix Tape

People

“You're dangerous."he says.
Why?"
Because you make me believe in the impossible."
— Simone Elkeles (Rules of Attraction)”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Suffragist and Women's Rights activist

“the only perfect people are dead people, because their the only ones who can't make mistakes!”

Eric Jerome Dickey (1961) American author

Source: Liar's Game

People, Perfection, Dead

“But listen to me when I say this. You are an exceptional, talented, and brilliant young woman. Do not ever let anyone make you feel invisible. Do not let anyone - not even a teacher who constantly sends you for coffee - push you around.”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

Feeling, Coffee, Teachers

“The Bird of Hermes is my name, eating my wings to make me tame.”

Kohta Hirano (1973) Japanese manga artist

Source: Hellsing, Vol. 01

Bird

“A slap in the face is more effective than ten lectures. It makes you understand very quickly.”

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch book Venus in Furs

Source: Venus in Furs

Understanding

“If we're all going to hell in a handbasket, we might as well make it a party on the way down”

James St. James (1966) American writer

Source: Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland

Way, Hell

“I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn't happiness.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Source: The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)

Happiness

“Make no mistake, those who write long books have nothing to say.
Of course those who write short books have even less to say.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

Books

“Man's right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word FREEDOM should ever be more than an empty political slogan.”

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) Austrian-American psychoanalyst

Response to FDA complaint (1954)
Context: Inquiry in the realm of Basic Natural Law is outside the judicial domain of this or ANY OTHER KIND OF SOCIAL ADMINISTRATION ANYWHERE ON THIS GLOBE, IN ANY LAND, NATION, OR REGION.
Man's right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word FREEDOM should ever be more than an empty political slogan.

Error, Freedom, Learning

“Cosmetic surgery processes the bodies of woman-made women, who make up the vast majority of its patient pool, into man-made women.”

Naomi Wolf book The Beauty Myth

Source: The Beauty Myth

Women

“When a person knows and can't
make the others understand, what does he do?”

Carson McCullers book The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Source: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Understanding, Personality

“Health makes good propaganda. “'Proof' that women's activities outside the home are detrimental to the health and welfare of themselves, their families and the country as a whole” lent impetus, writes Ann Oakley, to the nineteenth-century cult of domesticity. The ovaries were seen as collective property rather than the woman's own business, as the face and body outline are seen today. Who can argue with health?”

Naomi Wolf book The Beauty Myth

Source: The Beauty Myth (1991), Chapter 7 : 'Violence', p. 227

Women, Health, Family, Home

“Your children make it impossible to regret your past. They're its finest fruits. Sometimes the only ones.”

Anna Quindlen book Black and Blue

Source: Black and Blue

Children, Past

“You forget who submits, Eva,” he said gruffly. “I’ve given up control for you. I’ve bent and adjusted for you. I’ll do anything to keep you and make you happy. But I can’t be tamed or topped. Don’t mistake indulgence for weakness.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

Happiness, Forgetting

“Unrequited love is a ridiculous state, and it makes those in it behave ridiculously.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Love

“Every woman has to have something which singles her out, which catches the eyes, which makes her the center of attention. I am going to be french.”

Philippa Gregory book The Other Boleyn Girl

Source: The Other Boleyn Girl

“Psychotics, say what you want about them, tend to make the first move.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

“Why did death make life taste so much sweeter? Why could the heart love only what it could also lose?”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkdeath

Love, Life, Death, Heart

“It will hurt." said Petra. "But let's make the most of what we have, and not let future pain ruin present happiness.”

Orson Scott Card book Shadow Puppets

Source: Shadow Puppets

Pain, Happiness, Future, Hurt

“My job is a decision-making job, and as a result, I make a lot of decisions.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Decision

“Seeing her sitting there unresponsive makes me realize that silence has a sound.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Silence

“I don't believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

People, Birth, Sister, Siblings

“Such is human memory… you forget the truth and believe what makes you feel better.”

Rick Riordan book The Sword of Summer

Source: The Sword of Summer

Truth, Feeling, Memory, Forgetting

“Sometimes I imagined stitching all of our little touches together. How many hundreds of thousands of fingers brushing against each other does it take to make love? Why does anyone ever make love?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)
Context: I put my hand on him. Touching him has always been important to me, it was something I lived for. I never could explain why. Little, nothing touches, my fingers against his shoulder, the outsides of our thighs touching as we squeeled together on the bus. I couldnt explain it, but I needed it. Sometimes I imagined stiching all of our little touches together. How many hundreds of thousands of fingers brushing against each other does it take to make love?

Love, Making love, Imagination

“You wouldn't say ' You've got the crappest eyes I've ever seen. Your eyes make me physically sick.”

Louise Rennison book Withering Tights

Source: Withering Tights

“For you, my darlings, freedom to do what you like is the discovery of how unlikable what you like to do makes you. Not that that stops you doing what you like, since you like doing what you like more than you like liking what you do…
[Lucifer]”

Glen Duncan (1965) British writer

Freedom

“The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of myself.”

Jane Addams (1860–1935) pioneer settlement social worker

“To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Wisdom, Error, Learning, Future

“Dogs are the leaders of the planet. If you see two life forms, one of them's making a poop, the other one's carrying it for him, who would you assume is in charge.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

Life, Dogs

“Life itself is neither a good nor an evil: life is where good or evil find a place, depending on how you make it for them.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Source: The Essays: A Selection

Life, Evil, Dependency

“Excuse our appearances. We are taking apart yesterday, to make way for tomorrow”

Megan McCafferty (1973) American novelist

Source: Perfect Fifths

Way, Appearance

“Let us keep courage and try to be patient and gentle. And let us not mind being eccentric, and make distinction between good and evil.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Courage, Evil

“What God asks of men, said [Billy] Graham, is faith. His invisibility is the truest test of that faith. To know who sees him, God makes himself unseen.”

Laura Hillenbrand book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Source: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Men, God, Faith

“Mountains make poor receptacles for dreams.”

Jon Krakauer (1954) American outdoors writer and journalist

Dreams, Mountain

“She had wondered, when he’d looked into her eyes and said that he’d had to learn to make do without mirrors in the Wild Hunt, whose eyes he’d been looking into for all those years. Who’d been his mirror.
Now she knew.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

Learning

“There are no hopeless situations, sweetheart, only people who have grown hopeless about them. You still have choices you can make.”

Andy Andrews (1959) author and corporate speaker

Source: The Heart Mender: A Story of Second Chances

People

“What is I? It's what you are, not what others make of you.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

“When the stakes are this high- when calling God by the right name can make the difference between eternal happiness and eternal suffering, it is impossible to respect the beliefs of others who don't believe as you do.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

God, Happiness, Suffering

“You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Life, Way

“Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.”

Andy Rooney (1919–2011) writer, humorist, television personality

“When people make a contract with the devil and give him an air-conditioned office to work in, he doesn't go back home easily.”

James Lee Burke (1936) Novelist, short story writer

Source: In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead

People, Home, Back To Work

“That is the trick of good government. To make folk desire to live in such a way that there is no need for its intervention.”

Robin Hobb book Assassin's Apprentice

Source: Assassin's Apprentice

Way

“No matter how bad things get, you can always see the beauty in them. The worse things get, the more you have to make yourself see the magic in order to survive.”

Francesca Lia Block (1962) American children's writer

Source: Pink Smog

Beauty

“Hello, I'm Shellie's new boyfriend and I'm out of my mind.
If you so much as talk to her or even think her name, I'll cut you in ways that'll make you useless to a woman.”

Frank Miller book The Big Fat Kill

Source: The Big Fat Kill

Way, Thinking

“Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

Happiness, Deep, Attitude

“Let the people who never find true love
keep saying that there's no such thing.

Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

Source: View With a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems

Love, People, Faith

“Sometimes you've got to make a mess before you clean it up.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Secret Life of Prince Charming

“love make us poets, and the approach of death should make us philosophers.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Love, Death

“Don't make everyone know about your sadness.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Sadness

“Believe me, Being gay is not a choice. Noone would choose to make life harder than it has to be.”

Jodi Picoult book Sing You Home

Source: Sing You Home

Life

“Against his own will, almost, Will felt himself understanding; he would have done anything, he thought, told any lie, taken any risk, to make Tessa love him.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Love, Lie, Understanding

“if they make me watch that movie one more time, I will fall down on my knees and beg for mercy”

Wendy Mass (1967) American children's writer

Source: Finally

Time

“Three things no one has ever said about me:

You make it look so easy.

You are very mysterious.

You need to take yourself more seriously.”

Jenny Offill book Dept. of Speculation

Source: Dept. of Speculation

“Dear, don't think of getting out of bed yet. I've always suspected that early rising in early life makes one nervous.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book This Side of Paradise

Source: This Side of Paradise

Life, Thinking

“A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous.”

Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) Founding Father of the United States

Personality

“I am a lover and have not found my thing to love. That is a big point if you know enough to realize what I mean. It makes my destruction inevitable, you see. There are few who understand that.”

Sherwood Anderson book Winesburg, Ohio

Source: Winesburg, Ohio

Love, Lovers, Understanding

“A high degree of intellect tends to make a man unsocial.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Source: The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims

“… no woman can love a weak man hard enough to make him strong.”

Pearl Cleage (1948) American novelist

Source: Just Wanna Testify

Love, Strong

“The young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

Variant: the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat

Problem, Heart

“He was so damn perverse, he preferred to dream it than to make it come true.”

Janet Fitch (1955) American writer

Source: Paint it Black

Dreams

“The secret is not to make your music louder, but to make the world quieter.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto: A Novel

Secret, World, Music

“No matter what your age or your life path, whether making art is your career or your hobby or your dream, it is not too late or too egotistical or too selfish or too silly to work on your creativity.”

Julia Cameron book The Artist's Way

Source: The Artist's Way

Life, Age, Dreams, Art

“… When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occassional cheese dip.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

“Good artists exist in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.”

Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them… Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Book I, Ch. 20
Attributed

Life, Dependency

“Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all others were making ships.”

Charles Simic (1938) American poet

“The art of life is to live in the present moment and to make that moment as perfect as we can by the realization that we are the instruments and expression of God himself.”

Emmet Fox (1886–1951) American New Thought writer

Life, God, Art, Perfection

“A stupid person can make only certain, limited types of errors; the mistakes open to a clever fellow are far broader.”

Steven Brust book Iorich

Source: Iorich (2010), p. 172  <br class="br">Context: A stupid person can make only certain, limited types of errors; the mistakes open to a clever fellow are far broader. But to the one who knows how smart he is compared to everyone else, the possibilities for true idiocy are boundless.

Stupidity, Error, Personality

“When one is writing a letter, he should think that the recipient will make it into a hanging scroll.”

Tsunetomo Yamamoto book Hagakure

Source: Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

Thinking

“Do you just want to get by? Or do you want to make me proud?”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

“I cover my face with my arms because this isn't happening. It isn't possible. For someone to make Peeta forget he loves me… no one can do that.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Love, Forgetting

“Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it's there and sitting down

on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you”

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

Love, Life, Death, Hate

“Tell me a story.
In this century, and moment, of mania,
Tell me a story.
Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.
The name of the story will be Time,
But you must not pronounce its name.
Tell me a story of deep delight.”

Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989) American poet, novelist, and literary critic

"Tell me A Story"

Time

“These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.”

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

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Context: These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.
This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself, unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and character they chance to see, —painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point of view which those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them, and are willing to let the words go; for, at any time, they can use words as good when occasion comes. If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn.

God, Time, Perfection