“Sorrow is a fruit. God does not make it grow on limbs too weak to bear it.”
Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist
Quotes about making page 6
“Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.”
Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love
Time Enough for Love (1973)
“I am going to make everything around me beautiful - that will be my life.”
Elsie De Wolfe (1865–1950) American interior decorationinterior decorator
Stephen Hawking book A Brief History of Time
Source: A Brief History of Time (1988), Ch. 12
Context: Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?
“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?”
Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice
Source: Pride and Prejudice (1813)
“You have a grand gift for silence, Watson. It makes you quite invaluable as a companion.”
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish physician and author
Source: The Complete Sherlock Holmes
“Beer makes you feel the way you ought to feel without beer”
Henry Lawson (1867–1922) Australian writer and poet
Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher
Source: The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language
“Breathing is hard. When you cry so much, it makes you realize that breathing is hard.”
David Levithan book Love Is the Higher Law
Source: Love Is the Higher Law
“Nobody is worth your tears, and the one who is won't make you cry”
Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist
Source: The Alchemist
“We make war that we may live in peace.”
Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy
“What does not kill him, makes him stronger.”
Friedrich Nietzsche book Ecce homo
… was ihn nicht umbringt, macht ihn stärker
"Why I Am So Wise", 2
Cf. Twilight of the Idols (1888), "Maxims and Arrows", aphorism 8: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.
Ecce Homo (1888)
“Make your mistakes, take your chances, look silly, but keep on going. Don’t freeze up.”
Thomas Wolfe book You Can't Go Home Again
Source: You Can't Go Home Again
“The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.”
Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary
Intercontinental Press (Vol. 3 January-April 1965); also, in Che Guevara speaks: Selected Speeches and Writings (1967)
“The power of imagination makes us infinite.”
John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author
1 September 1875, page 226
John of the Mountains, 1938
Context: How infinitely superior to our physical senses are those of the mind! The spiritual eye sees not only rivers of water but of air. It sees the crystals of the rock in rapid sympathetic motion, giving enthusiastic obedience to the sun's rays, then sinking back to rest in the night. The whole world is in motion to the center. So also sounds. We hear only woodpeckers and squirrels and the rush of turbulent streams. But imagination gives us the sweet music of tiniest insect wings, enables us to hear, all round the world, the vibration of every needle, the waving of every bole and branch, the sound of stars in circulation like particles in the blood. The Sierra canyons are full of avalanche debris — we hear them boom again, for we read past sounds from present conditions. Again we hear the earthquake rock-falls. Imagination is usually regarded as a synonym for the unreal. Yet is true imagination healthful and real, no more likely to mislead than the coarser senses. Indeed, the power of imagination makes us infinite.
“What makes life interesting are the challenges we face.”
Paulo Coelho book Like the Flowing River
Source: Like the Flowing River
“The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.”
Robert Henri (1865–1929) American painter
Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician
Positive Vibration, from the album Rastaman Vibration (1976)
Disputed
Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby
Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 3
Context: Old George Orwell got it backward. Big Brother isn't watching. He's singing and dancing. He's pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you're awake. He's making sure you're always distracted. He's making sure you're fully absorbed. He's making sure your imagination withers. Until it's as useful as your appendix. He's making sure your attention is always filled. And this being fed, it's worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what's in your mind. With everyone's imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world.
“I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) English essayist
“The only performance that makes it, that makes it all the way is the one that achieves madness.”
Mick Jagger (1943) British rock musician, member of The Rolling Stones
William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet
Variant: When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
Source: Romeo and Juliet
“Works of art make rules but rules do not make works of art.”
Claude Debussy (1862–1918) French composer
As quoted in Companion to Contemporary Musical Thought (1992) by John Paynter, p. 590
Unsourced variant: Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art.
“Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple.”
Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) American singer-songwriter and folk musician
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer
Source: 1920s, "Picasso Speaks" (1923), p. 315.
Morrie Schwartz (1916–1995) American sociologist
“So does that mean you're going to fall in love with me again?
What makes you think i ever stopped?”
Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer
Source: Hidden Riches
George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist
Reflections on Gandhi (1949)
Source: In Front of Your Nose: 1945-1950
Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) Catholic saint and founder of the Franciscan Order
Widely known as The Prayer of St. Francis, it is not found in Esser's authoritative collection of Francis's writings. <br class="br">[Fr. Kajetan, Esser, OFM, ed., Opuscula Sancti Patris Francisci Assisiensis, Rome, Grottaferrata, 1978]. Additionally there is no record of this prayer before the twentieth century. <br class="br">[Fr. Regis J., Armstrong, OFM, Francis and Clare: The Complete Works, New York, Paulist Press, 1982, 10, 0-8091-2446-7]. Dr. Christian Renoux of the University of Orleans in France traces the origin of the prayer to an anonymous 1912 contributor to La Clochette, a publication of the Holy Mass League in Paris. It was not until 1927 that it was attributed to St. Francis. <br class="br"> The Origin of the Peace Prayer of St. Francis, 2013-06-28, Renoux, Christian http://www.franciscan-archive.org/franciscana/peace.html,. <br class="br">[Christian, Renoux, La prière pour la paix attribuée à saint François: une énigme à résoudre, Paris, Editions franciscaines, 2001, 2-85020-096-4]. <br class="br">Misattributed
“Some people look for a beautiful place, others make a place beautiful.”
Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927) Indian Sufi
Alexis De Tocqueville (1805–1859) French political thinker and historian
12 September 1848, "Discours prononcé à l'assemblée constituante le 12 Septembre 1848 sur la question du droit au travail", Oeuvres complètes, vol. IX, p. 546 https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Tocqueville_-_%C5%92uvres_compl%C3%A8tes,_%C3%A9dition_1866,_volume_9.djvu/564; Translation (from Hayek, The Road to Serfdom): <br class="br">Original text:<br>La démocratie étend la sphère de l'indépendance individuelle, le socialisme la resserre. La démocratie donne toute sa valeur possible à chaque homme, le socialisme fait de chaque homme un agent, un instrument, un chiffre. La démocratie et le socialisme ne se tiennent que par un mot, l'égalité; mais remarquez la différence : la démocratie veut l'égalité dans la liberté, et le socialisme veut l'égalité dans la gêne et dans la servitude. <br class="br">1840s
“Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright
“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.”
George Orwell book 1984
Variant: Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
Source: 1984
“You don't take a photograph, you make it.”
Ansel Adams (1902–1984) American photographer and environmentalist
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
Disputed <br class="br">Variant: No one can make you feel inferior without your permission. <br class="br">Source: Sometimes claimed to appear in her book This is My Story, but in The Quote Verifier by Ralph Keyes (2006), Keyes writes on p. 97 that "Bartlett's and other sources say her famous quotation can be found in This is My Story, Roosevelt's 1937 autobiography. It can't. Quotographer Rosalie Maggio scoured that book and many others by and about Roosevelt in search of this line, without success. In their own extensive searching, archivists at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York, have not been able to find the quotation in This Is My Story or any other writing by the First Lady. A discussion of some of the earliest known attributions of this quote to Roosevelt, which may be a paraphrase from an interview, can be found in this entry from Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/03/30/not-inferior/.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
“I usually make up my mind about a man in ten seconds, and I very rarely change it.”
Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician
“Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully.”
Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker
Ziglar has often used this saying, but it originates with Phillips Brooks, as quoted in Primary Education (1916) by Elizabeth Peabody.
Misattributed
“The problem is not making up the steps but deciding which ones to keep.”
Mikhail Baryshnikov (1948) Soviet-American dancer, choreographer, and actor born in Letonia, Soviet Union
“If you can make a woman laugh, you can make her do anything.”
Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer
“O my body, make of me always a man who questions!”
Frantz Fanon book Black Skin, White Masks
Variant: Oh my body, make of me a man who always questions!
Source: Black Skin, White Masks
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
Robert Jordan The Shadow Rising
al'Lan Mandragoran to Nynaeve al'Meara
(15 September 1992)
Source: The Shadow Rising
“Come sleep with me: We won't make Love, Love will make us.”
Julio Cortázar (1914–1984) Argentinian writer
Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian
The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (1944)
Source: The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses
“From what we get, we can make a living. What we give; however, makes a life.”
Arthur Ashe (1943–1993) American tennis player
“Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.”
Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) United States Secretary of State
As quoted in The Other 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (1984) by Robert Byrne
1980s
Variant: Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow
Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 5, "Cognitive ease", page 62 (ISBN 9780141033570).
“The roots below the earth claim no rewards for making the branches fruitful.”
Rabindranath Tagore Stray Birds
134
Source: Stray Birds (1916)
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology
“It is fatal to look hungry. It makes people want to kick you.”
George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London
Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 9; a remark by Boris
Source: Down and Out in Paris and London
“When the choice is to be right or to be kind, always make the choice that brings peace”
Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist