Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977) Nigerian writer
Source: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/15-quotes-from-chimamanda-adichie-that-have-change/
Quotes about many page 16
“There are many kinds of delusion.”
Michael Ende book The Neverending Story
Source: The Neverending Story
Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter Nine: Appetite, Disappointment, Leningrad
Jack Kerouac book On the Road
Variant: I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another til I drop.
Source: On the Road
“How many people ask you to come share their life?”
Janet Fitch book White Oleander
Source: White Oleander
“No rose without a thorn but many a thorn without a rose.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher
Craig Nelson (1971) Scottish footballer
Source: Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations
Carl Sagan book The Demon-Haunted World
Source: From the book The Demon-Haunted World Sagan quoting from Kenneth V. Lanning, FBI Behavioral Science Research Unit, from an article Satanic, Occult and Ritualistic Crime in The Police Chief, Oct 1989 note: Misattributed
“Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
Amelia Atwater-Rhodes book Demon in My View
Source: Demon in My View
Katie MacAlister (1964) Author
Source: Hard Day's Knight
“Harry Dresden: Many things are not as they seem: The worst things in life never are.”
Jim Butcher book White Night
Source: The Dresden Files, White Night (2007), Chapter 1, Opening line
“I could have been a great many things.”
Louisa May Alcott book Little Women
Variant: I should have been a great many things, Mr Mayor
Source: Little Women
Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer
Source: The Hero With a Thousand Faces
“Too many people get credit for being good, when they are only being passive.”
Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter
As quoted in Seven Words to the Cross (1979) by Ellsworth Kalas, page 93
Context: Too many people get credit for being good, when they are only being passive. They are too often praised for being broadminded when they are so broadminded they can never make up their minds about anything.
“Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death”
John Keats Ode to a Nightingale
Stanza 6
Poems (1820), Ode to a Nightingale
Source: The Complete Poems
Context: Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain —
To thy high requiem become a sod.
“There are many ways to drown, only the most obvious wave their arms as they're going under.”
Nick Flynn book Another Bullshit Night in Suck City
Source: Another Bullshit Night in Suck City
“Many of the bravest never are known, and get no praise. [But]that does not lessen their beauty…”
Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) American novelist
“Most good things have been said far too many times and just need to be lived.”
Shane Claiborne (1975) American activist
Variant: Most good things have already been said far too many times and just need to be lived.
“Far too many people are looking for the right person, instead of trying to be the right person.”
Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist
“Many of the good things would never have happened if the bad events hadn't happened first.”
Suze Orman (1951) American author, television personality, motivational speaker, businesswoman, investor
Source: The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom: Practical and Spiritual Steps So You Can Stop Worrying
E. Lockhart (1967) American writer of novels as E. Lockhart (mainly for teenage girls) and of picture books under real name Emily J…
Source: The Boyfriend List: 15 Guys, 11 Shrink Appointments, 4 Ceramic Frogs and Me, Ruby Oliver
“Slowly, with many lost days, I come back to life.”
Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay
Source: Mockingjay
“Many people think that happiness comes from having more power or more money.”
François Lelord book Hector and the Search for Happiness
Source: Hector and the Search for Happiness
Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer
Variant: The area dividing the brain and the soul
Is affected in many ways by experience --
Some lose all mind and become soul:
insane.
Some lose all soul and become mind:
intellectual.
Some lose both and become:
accepted.
Source: You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
1920s, Viereck interview (1929)
Context: In America, more than anywhere else, the individual is lost in the achievements of the many. America is beginning to be the world leader in scientific investigation. American scholarship is both patient and inspiring. The Americans show an unselfish devotion to science, which is the very opposite of the conventional European view of your countrymen. Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves. It is not true that the dollar is an American fetish. The American student is not interested in dollars, not even in success as such, but in his task, the object of the search. It is his painstaking application to the study of the infinitely little and the infinitely large which accounts for his success in astronomy.
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
Source: Walden, or Life in the Woods
Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) American journalist
Give Me Liberty (1936)
Context: The picture of the economic revolution as the final step to freedom was false as soon as I asked myself that question. For, in actual fact, The State, The Government, cannot exist. They are abstract concepts, useful enough in their place, as the theory of minus numbers is useful in mathematics. In actual living experience, however, it is impossible to subtract anything from nothing; when a purse is empty, it is empty, it cannot contain a minus ten dollars. On this same plane of actuality, no State, no Government, exists. What does in fact exist is a man, or a few men, in power over many men.
“There are many kinds of joy, but they all lead to one: the joy to be loved.”
Michael Ende book The Neverending Story
Source: The Neverending Story
“I wonder how many people I have looked at all my life and never really seen.”
John Steinbeck book East of Eden
Variant: I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen.
Source: East of Eden
Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer
3 Minute Wonder, Episode 4
On Nature
Source: The Ricky Gervais Show - First, Second and Third Seasons
“To many women mistake a man's hostility for wit and his silence for depth.”
Sue Grafton (1940–2017) American writer
“Many a good argument is ruined by some fool who knows what he is talking about.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …
“Many of the insights of the saint stem from his experience as a sinner.”
Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher
“Power brings a man many luxuries, but a clean pair of hands is seldom among them.”
Robert Harris (1957) novelist
Source: Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome
“If he wrote it, he could get rid of it. He had gotten rid of many things by writing them.”
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist
“I'll bet there aren't too many people hooked on crack who can play the bagpipes.”
George Carlin book Brain Droppings
Source: Brain Droppings
Karen Joy Fowler book We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
Source: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy
Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author
Letter to Sylvia Payne (24 April 1906), from The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield (1984-1996), vol. I
“The straight line, a respectable optical illusion which ruins many a man.”
Victor Hugo book Les Misérables
Source: Les Misérables
“How many people have never raised their hand before?”
Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer
Source: Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer
Acceptance Speech for the Margaret Edwards Award (1998)
Source: A Circle of Quiet
Context: In Kenneth Grahame's beautiful book, The Wind In The Willows, Mole and Rat go to the holy island of the great god, Pan. It is a superb piece of religious writing, but because it has gone beyond fact, it is deeply upsetting and untruthful to some people. If a story is not specified as being Christian, it is not Christian. But that is not so.
I think that this scene is upsetting because it calls us beyond fact into the vast world of imagination, and imagination is a word of many dimensions.
“Stealing from one author is plagiarism; from many authors, research.”
Walter Moers book The City of Dreaming Books
Source: The City of Dreaming Books
“I do not know everything; still many things I understand.”
Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time
Source: A Wrinkle in Time