Quotes about many
page 20

“Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.”

John Irving book Until I Find You

Source: Until I Find You (2005), ch. 25, p. 493

Life, Decision, Sense

“When you are young, there are many things which appear dull and lifeless. But as you get older, you will find these are the very things that are most important to you.”

Kazuo Ishiguro book An Artist of the Floating World

Source: An Artist of the Floating World

Appearance

“With how many things are we on the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

“In many respects, the United States is a great country. Freedom of speech is protected more than in any other country. It is also a very free society. In America, the professor talks to the mechanic. They are in the same category.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Freedom, Country

“Vampire? Such a provocative word, wrapped in too many clichés and girly novels.”

Matt Haig book The Radleys

Source: The Radleys

“It is life, I think, to watch the water. A man can learn so many things.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Life, Thinking, Learning, Water

“Too many of us take great pains with what we ingest through our mouths, and far less with what we partake of through our ears and eyes.”

Brandon Sanderson book The Way of Kings

Source: The Way of Kings

Pain

“If this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so many enemies.”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

“It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Source: Collected Essays: Notes of a Native Son / Nobody Knows My Name / The Fire Next Time / No Name in the Street / The Devil Finds Work / Other

“A pessimist is a person who has had to listen to too many optimists.”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

Personality, Funny

“I think many people love their problems. Gives them all sorts of excuses for not growing up and getting on with life.”

Louise Penny book Still Life

Source: Still Life

Love, Life, People, Problem

“A Chinese poet many centuries ago noticed that to re-create something in words is like being alive twice.”

Frances Mayes book Under the Tuscan Sun

Source: Under the Tuscan Sun

“Many people believe that evil is the presence of something. I think it's the absence of something.”

Lisa Unger book Sliver of Truth

Source: Sliver of Truth

People, Thinking, Evil

“He has fought many battles with us" (Jace)
By which you mean one battle" muttered Simon. "Two if you count the one I was a rat”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

“How many times already had I encountered the painful lesson that although we may wish for the barb to be pulled from our flesh, it leaves a welt that doesn't heal?”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Pain, Time

“There are many great authors of the past who have survived centuries of oblivion and neglect, but it is still an open question whether they will be able to survive an entertaining version of what they have to say.”

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) Jewish-American political theorist

Question, Past

“Ladies' hearts are like china on a mantelpiece. There are so many of them, and it is so easy to break them without noticing.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Vampires, Scones, and Edmund Herondale

Heart

“Tennis taught me so many lessons in life. One of the things it taught me is that every ball that comes to me, I have to make a decision. I have to accept responsibility for the consequences every time I hit a ball.”

Billie Jean King (1943) American tennis player

Life, Decision, Time

“Not all monsters were three-ton reptiles with poisonous breath. Many wore human faces.”

Rick Riordan book The Hidden Oracle

Source: The Hidden Oracle

“Words are like spices. Too many is worse than too few.”

Joan Aiken (1924–2004) English fiction writer

Source: The Last Slice of Rainbow and Other Stories

“Hinged to forgetfulness like a door,
she slowly closed out of sight,
and she was the woman I loved,
but too many times she slept like
a mechanical deer in my caresses,
and I ached in the metal silence
of her dreams.”

Richard Brautigan (1935–1984) American novelist, poet, and short story writer

Source: Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt

Love, Dreams, Silence, Time

“There are as many worlds as there are kinds of days, and as an opal changes its colors and its fire to match the nature of a day, so do I.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

World, Color, Nature, Change

“Computers are great because when you're working with them you get immediate results that let you know if your program works. It's feedback you don't get from many other things.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

“if we could act a little more according to common sense, and a good deal less according to fashion, we should find many things work easier;”

Anna Sewell book Black Beauty

Source: Black Beauty

Fashion, Sense

“If I can't have too many truffles, I'll do without truffles”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

As quoted in Close to Colette by Maurice Goudeket
Attributed

“He found himself still with too many questions and not enough answers.”

Stephen King book The Long Walk

Source: The Long Walk

Question

“I would not know how I am supposed to feel about many stories if not for the fact that the TV news personalities make sad faces for sad stories and happy faces for happy stories.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Sadness, Feeling, Personality, Happiness

“And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being loved is intolerable to many.”

Carson McCullers (1917–1967) American writer

Source: The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories

Love, Truth, Secret, Way

“At first it upset me to realize how many people are, at heart, selfish. Now I take that in stride, but people's loneliness still gets to me.”

Janette Rallison (1966) American writer

Source: Just One Wish

People, Heart, Loneliness, Selfishness

“Never be ashamed of your love," he said gently. "The only thing to be ashamed of is denying your love. That is what makes the shadow grow within your heart; that is the darkening of the Light. And we all have many loves.”

Alison Croggon book The Riddle

Source: The Riddle

Love, Light, Heart

“I've got mixed feelings about poetry cause done well poetry is fantastic. But not many people are capable of doing it well. I think you should have some kind of license to perform poetry. A poetic license perhaps.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

People, Feeling, Thinking

“I've since discovered that many human beings need no supernatural mentoring to commit acts of savagery; some people are devils in their own right, their telltale horns having grown inward to facilitate their disguise.”

Dean Koontz Odd Thomas

Source: Odd Thomas

People

“Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come at you in so many ways.”

Neal Stephenson book Anathem

Part 2, Apert; Orolo to Raz
Source: Anathem (2008)

Love, Beauty, Way

“There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That’s perfectly all right: it’s the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

33 min 20 sec
Source: Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Heaven and Hell [Episode 4]
Context: There are many hypotheses in science that are wrong. That's perfectly alright; it's the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny.
Context: There are many hypotheses in science that are wrong. That's perfectly alright; it's the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny. The worst aspect of the Velikovsky affair is not that many of his ideas were wrong or silly or in gross contradiction to the facts; rather, the worst aspect is that some scientists attempted to suppress Velikovsky's ideas. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge and there is no place for it in the endeavor of science. We do not know beforehand where fundamental insights will arise from about our mysterious and lovely solar system, and the history of our study of the solar system shows clearly that accepted and conventional ideas are often wrong and that fundamental insights can arise from the most unexpected sources.

Science

“Southerners make good novelists: they have so many stories because they have so much family.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Family

“There are too many idiots in this world. And having said it, I have the burden of proving it.”

Frantz Fanon book Black Skin, White Masks

Source: Black Skin, White Masks (1952)

World

“We shared the smile of recognizing ourselves in each other, how many imposters do I have? Do we all make the same mistakes, or has one of us gotten it right, or even just a bit less wrong, am I the imposter?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Smile

“Life was so short; so many beautiful things slipped away.”

Kate DiCamillo The Magician's Elephant

Source: The Magician's Elephant

Life, Beauty

“I'm tired of making people sad and I'm tired of disappointing them and I'm tired of seeing them break. I have seen this too many times. He will be the last.”

James Frey book A Million Little Pieces

Source: A Million Little Pieces

People, Sadness, Disappointment, Time

“It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case." --”

Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986) American journalist

“We can count how many seeds are in the apple, but not how many apples are in the seed.”

Ken Kesey (1935–2001) novelist

“There is no truth on this island of yours. Rather, there are as many truths as there are stars in the sky; and every one of them different.”

Juliet Marillier book Daughter of the Forest

Source: Daughter of the Forest

Truth, Star

“The value of your travels does not hinge on how many stamps you have in your passport when you get home -- and the slow nuanced experience of a single country is always better than the hurried, superficial experience of forty countries.”

Rolf Potts (1970) American writer

Source: Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel

Travel, Home, Country

“A soldier is a "Yahoo" hired to kill in cold blood as many of his own Species, who have never offended him, as possibly he can.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

“Some people talk to animals. Not many listen though. That's the problem.”

A.A. Milne book Winnie-the-Pooh

Source: Winnie-the-Pooh

People, Problem, Animals

“Creativity arises from our ability to see things from many different angles.”

Keri Smith Canadian writer

Source: How to Be an Explorer of the World: Portable Life Museum

“How many times have I told you not to believe everything you hear? Seek truth for yourself.”

Isabel Allende book Kingdom of the Golden Dragon

Source: Kingdom of the Golden Dragon

Truth, Time

“The small things of life were often so much bigger than the great things, she decided, wondering how many writers and philosophers had said this before her, the trivial pleasures like cooking, one's home, little poems especially sad ones, solitary walks, funny things seen and overheard.”

Barbara Pym book Less than Angels

Less than Angels (1955), chapter 9

Life, Pleasure, Sadness, Home

“So many miracles have not yet happened.”

Kate DiCamillo (1964) American children's writer

Source: Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures

“They were inlove, but they hadn't been lovers; they were friends and yet also strangers for so many years”

Nicholas Sparks book The Best of Me

Source: The Best of Me

Lovers

“It is easy to love and there are so many ways to do it.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin

Love, Way

“She was with me. She did all of those things and so many more, things I would never tell anyone, and she never even loved me. Now that’s love.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

Love

“LIBERTY!
FREEDOM!
DEMOCRACY!
True anyhow no matter how many
Liars use those words.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

Democracy, Freedom

“Books are educational; so you can buy as many as you want." Sophie Kinsella, shopping at the Limelight Marketplace”

Sophie Kinsella (1969) British writer

Books, Education

“Because I foresee many romantic picnics in our future. You, drinking a virgin pina colada. Me, drinking the blood of a virgin.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Simon to Clary, pg. 217
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Ashes (2008)

Drink, Future

“Don’t you, when strangers and friends come to call, straighten the cushions, kick the books under the bed and put away the letter you were writing? How many of us want any of us to see us as we really are? Isn’t the mirror hostile enough?”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Hostility, Books

“Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process — a way of solving problems”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Kennedy's "focus on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution of human institutions." was quoted by Barack Obama in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
1963, American University speech
Context: I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal. Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace — based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions — on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace — no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process — a way of solving problems.

Peace, Way, Problem, Change