Quotes about many
page 21

“Tonight, I feel like my whole body is made out of memories. I'm a mix-tape, a cassette that's been rewound so many times you can hear the fingerprints smudged on the tape.”

Rob Sheffield (1966) American music journalist

Source: Love Is a Mix Tape

Feeling, Memory, Time

“A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Source: A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays

Pain, Pleasure, Imagination

“Why is it," he said, one time, at the subway entrance, "I feel I've known you so many years?"
"Because I like you," she said, "and I don't want anything from you.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Relationship, Feeling, Time

“Too many adults wish to 'protect' teenagers when they should be stimulating them to read of life as it is lived.”

Margaret A. Edwards (1902–1988) American librarian

Life, Reading

“You've got to have as many good times as bad, or it all becomes too painful and too much work.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

Pain, Time

“I have loved others, and I do love many, Sassenach—but you alone hold all my heart, whole in your hands,” he said softly. “And you know that.”

Diana Gabaldon book Written in My Own Heart's Blood

Source: Written in My Own Heart's Blood

Love, Heart

“If you kin see de light at daybreak, you don't keer if you die at dusk. It's so many people never seen de light at all.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Their Eyes Were Watching God

Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God

People, Light

“Still clutching each other by the arm, they turned to watch the last stones plummet over the edge.

“I don't know how many times a day I can stand to watch you almost die,” Seregil gasped.

“Twice is my limit,” croaked Alec, sinking to his knees.”

Lynn Flewelling Luck in the Shadows

Source: Luck in the Shadows

Time

“There's only so many times you can kick a dog before it turns viscous. (Julian)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Fantasy Lover

Variant: There were only so many kicks a dog could take before it turned vicious.’ (Acheron)
Source: Fantasy Lover

Dogs, Time

“There are more than two chances– many more. I know now, after fifty years, that the finding/losing, forgetting/remembering, leaving/returning, never stops. The whole of life is about another chance, and while we are alive, till the very end, there is always another chance.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? (2011), p.38
Source: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Life, Chance, Forgetting

“It is important to keep in mind that our bodies must work pretty well, or their wouldn't be so many humans on the planet.”

Ina May Gaskin (1940) American midwife

Source: Ina May's Guide to Childbirth

“The greatest of love letters are always coded for the one and not the many.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

Love

“I can offer you my life, though it is a short life. I can offer you my heart, though I have no idea how many beats it shall sustain. But I love you enough to hope the rest of my life-whatever its length-happy, by spending it with you.-Jem.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Love, Life, Hope, Idea

“If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything, it is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few.”

Shunryu Suzuki (1904–1971) Japanese Buddhist missionary

“God knows I've got so many frailties myself, I ought to be able to understand and forgive them in others. But I don't.”

Ava Gardner (1922–1990) American actress

Source: Ava: My Story

God, Forgiveness, Understanding

“However many years she lived, Mary always felt that 'she should never forget that first morning when her garden began to grow'.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden

Source: The Secret Garden

Forgetting

“Who needs make-believe monsters when there are so many real ones.”

Jennifer Donnelly (1963) American writer

Source: The Winter Rose

“I allowed myself to forget how totally I had fallen in love with Lestat's iridescent eyes, that I'd sold my soul for a many-colored and luminescent thing, thinking that a highly reflective surface conveyed the power to walk on water.”

Anne Rice book Interview with the Vampire

Source: Interview with the Vampire

Love, Color, Soul, Thinking

“We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.”

D.H. Lawrence book Lady Chatterley's Lover

Source: Lady Chatterley's Lover

“Many girls have been romanced under the moon, and I don’t mean to say moonlight is overrated, but few I think have known the magic of a sunrise kiss.”

Jerry Spinelli book Love, Stargirl

Source: Love, Stargirl

Girl, Kiss, Thinking

“When you've come face-to-face with the dark side of the school yard, life doesn't hold many surprises.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: Half-Moon Investigations

Life, School

“So many things you promise yourself you won't get used to, and then you do.”

Kamila Shamsie book Burnt Shadows

Source: Burnt Shadows

“God gives us the vision, then he takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of the vision, and it is in the valley that so many of us faint and give way. Every vision will be made real if we will have patience.”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

Source: My Utmost for His Highest: Traditional Updated Edition

God, Way, Patience

“So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.”

Christopher Reeve (1952–2004) actor, director, producer, screenwriter

Speech at the Democratic National Convention (26 August 1996) http://www.chrisreevehomepage.com/sp-dnc1996.html

Courageous, Graduation, Dreams

“And it's a pity too that I've no right to open your letters. I hope you don't get many, or my conscience will give me no peace.”

Diana Wynne Jones Charmed Life

Source: Charmed Life

Peace, Hope

“I'd watched too many schoolmates graduate into mental institutions, into group homes and jails, and I knew that locking people up was paranormal - against normal, not beside it. Locks didn't cure; they strangled.”

Scott Westerfeld book The Last Days

Source: The Last Days

People, Home

“Have you any idea how many children it takes to turn off one light in the kitchen Three. It takes one to say What light and two more to say I didn't turn it on.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

Children, Idea, Light

“We are all born sexual creatures, thank God, but it's a pity so many people despise and crush this natural gift.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Beauty, God, People, Nature

“Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Life, Literature

“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

“Do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in few!”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

Wise

“But she never looked back with regret. There were so many ways for things to get better.
-Jing-mei”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club

Way

“This is life. Things get taken away. You will learn to start over many times -- or you will be useless.”

Mitch Albom book The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto

Source: The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto

Life, Learning, Time

“It takes a huge effort to free yourself from memory, but when you succeed, you start to realize that you’re capable of far more than you imagined. You live in this vast body called the Universe, which contains all the solutions and all the problems. Visit your soul; don’t visit your past. The Universe goes through many mutations and carries the past with it. We call each of those mutations a ‘life,’ but just as the cells in your body change and yet you remain the same, so time does not pass, it merely changes.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

Life, Soul, Imagination, Problem

“For I found myself embarrassed with so many doubts and errors that it seemed to me that the effort to instruct myself had no effect other than the increasing discovery of my own ignorance”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

Error, Effort

“Being a practiced liar doesn't mean you have a powerful imagination. Many good liars have no imagination at all;”

Philip Pullman book Northern Lights

Source: His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass (1995), Ch. 15 : The Dæmon Cages
Context: Being a practiced liar doesn't mean you have a powerful imagination. Many good liars have no imagination at all; it's that which gives their lies such wide-eyed conviction.

Imagination

“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

“Like so many other nerdy, disaffected young people of that time, I dreamed of becoming an 'artist', i. e., somebody whose adult job was original and creative instead of tedious and dronelike.”

David Foster Wallace book The Pale King

Source: The Pale King

People, Dreams, Time

“Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful!”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

When asked how the world had changed following the September 11, 2001 attacks <br class="br"> Has the world changed? http://books.guardian.co.uk/writersreflections/story/0,1367,567546,00.html, The Guardian (October 11, 2001)

People, Faith, Religion, Confidence

“Science was many things, Nadia thought, including a weapon with which to hit other scientists.”

Kim Stanley Robinson Mars trilogy

Source: Red Mars (1992)

Science

“In order for this to happen, your entire frame of reference will have to change, and you will be forced to surrender many things that you now scarcely know you have.”

James Baldwin book The Fire Next Time

Source: The Fire Next Time

Change

“having too many ideas is not always a good thing.”

Paul Arden (1940–2008) writer

Source: Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite

Idea

“Writers don't write from experience, although many are hesitant to admit that they don't…. If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.”

Nikki Giovanni (1943) American writer and academic

Books

“Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

People, Hope, Joy, Happiness

“I never knew there were this many stars."

"I can't see them," he told me. "I just see you."

"That's one of your cheesier lines," I told him.

"It's the altitude," he told me. "I don't have enough oxygen in my brain."

"I see.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: United We Spy

Star

“In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Although I have been through all that I have, I do not regret the many hardships I met, because it was they who brought me to the place I wished to reach.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

“Life gives you lots of chances to screw up which means you have just as many chances to get it right.”

Candace Bushnell book Sex and the City

Source: Sex and the City

Life, Chance

“The best way to know life is to love many things”

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

1880s, 1880, Letter to Theo (Cuesmes, July 1880)
Variant: I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.
Context: I think that everything that is really good and beautiful, the inner, moral, spiritual and sublime beauty in men and their works, comes from God, and everything that is bad and evil in the works of men and in men is not from God, and God does not approve of it.
But I cannot help thinking that the best way of knowing God is to love many things. Love this friend, this person, this thing, whatever you like, and you will be on the right road to understanding Him better, that is what I keep telling myself. But you must love with a sublime, genuine, profound sympathy, with devotion, with intelligence, and you must try all the time to understand Him more, better and yet more. That will lead to God, that will lead to an unshakable faith.

Love, Life, Way

“And again, as always, after so many years we were still in the same place we always were.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Source: Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“We're all made up of many parts, other halves. Not just me.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

Parting

“She could not explain in so many words, but she felt that those who prepare for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Source: Howard's End

Life, Joy

“Shame was an emotion he had abandoned years earlier. Addicts know no shame. You disgrace yourself so many times you become immune to it.”

John Grisham book The Testament

Source: The Testament

Time

“There were only so many ways a man‟s heart could break, and he had a feeling his couldn‟t survive another puncture.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: When He Was Wicked

Way, Feeling, Heart

“How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which today are fables for us?”

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

Combien de choses nous servoyent hier d’articles de foy, qui nous sont fables aujourd’huy?
Book I, Ch. 27
Essais (1595), Book I
Source: The Complete Essays

Faith

“There are many reasons why novelists write but they all have one thing in common a need to create an alternative world.”

John Fowles (1926–2005) British writer

World

“Thinking is hard work, which is why you don't see many people doing it.”

Sue Grafton (1940–2017) American writer

People, Thinking

“Silence has many advantages. When you do not speak, other people presume you to be deaf or feeble-minded and promptly make a show of their own limitations.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

People, Silence

“Those prancing little pants-wetters come here to learn the colorful and gentlemanly art of fencing, with its many sportingand its proscriptions againstengagements. You on the other hand, you are going to learn how to.”

Scott Lynch The Lies of Locke Lamora

Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora

Art, Color, Learning

“Because I know you, Percy Jackson. In many ways, you are impulsive, but when it comes to your friends, you are as constant as a compass needle. You are unswervingly loyal, and you inspire loyalty. You are the glue that will unite the seven.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

Way, Loyalty

“When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

This is attributed to Pirsig by Richard Dawkins in the Preface to The God Delusion (2006), p. 28, but cannot be found prior to that. It is obviously a paraphrase of the following from Pirsig's Lila - An Inquiry Into Morals (1991): „An insane delusion can't be held by a group at all. A person isn't considered insane if there are a number of people who believe the same way. Insanity isn't supposed to be a communicable disease. If one other person starts to believe him, or maybe two or three, then it's a religion." ( books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=51i6WkGn6qYC&q=%22An+insane+delusion%22; books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=WZtRAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA426) <br class="br">Disputed <br class="br">Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

People, Religion, Suffering, Personality

“And also, there are so many times when you need to make a quick escape, but humans don't have their own wings, or not yet, anyway, so what about a birdseed shirt?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Time

“I know
it’s stupid to not own a gun yet have

so many triggers, but in some other world
gigantic seashells hold humans

to their ears and listen to the echo
of machines.”

Jeffrey McDaniel (1967) American writer

Stupidity, World

“Human females, they're kind of crazy during this time aren't they?

If you chose to believe the stories written by male writers.

They heard a bang and thump from the kitchen. Followed by Meg yelling at something.

That many males can't be wrong.”

Anne Bishop book Murder of Crows

Source: Murder of Crows

Time

“Because viewing my naked chest has caused many women to seriously injure themselves stampeding to get to me.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Women

“Hopes are like hair ornaments. Girls want to wear too many of them. When they become old women they look silly wearing even one.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Women, Hope, Girl

“Burned and squashed to death in a silver vat of soup. There must be worst ways to go. But not many.”

Jonathan Stroud book Ptolemy's Gate

Source: Ptolemy's Gate

Death, Way

“Lets dedicate ourselves to what the ancient greeks wrote so many years ago, to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

Speech on the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1968)
Context: And let's dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.

Life, World

“Courage, like so many other things, was not something one did or didn't have; it was a decision, a choice.”

Linda Lael Miller (1949) American writer

Source: The Creed Legacy

Courage, Decision

“I've played the powerless in too many dark scenes. I was blessed with a birth and a death and I guess I just want some say in between”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Talk To Me Now
Song lyrics
Variant: I was blessed with a birth and a death, and I guess I just want some say in-between.

Death, Birth

“One of Us:
Someday, the light will shine like a sun through my skin & they will say, What have you done with your life? & though there are many moments I think I will remember, in the end, I will be proud to say, I was one of us.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Life, Thinking, Light, Sun

“Too many people seem to believe that silence was a void that needed to be filled, even if nothing important was said.”

Nicholas Sparks book Nights in Rodanthe

Source: Nights in Rodanthe

People, Silence

“That sounds almost practiced, James Carstairs. How many girls have you made swoon with that observation?"
"There is only one girl I care to make swoon," he said. "The question is, does she?"
She smiled at him. "She does.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Smile, Girl, Question

“It doesn't matter how many times you say it. It'll still be true.'
'And it doesn't matter what you won't let me say, that'll still be true too.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Time

“Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Source: An Economist's Protest: Columns in Political Economy (1966), p. 107

People, Problem

“Whenever you write on a subject that questions the status quo, there are bound to be many who wrestle with the issues”

Ted Dekker (1962) American writer

Source: The Slumber of Christianity: Awakening a Passion for Heaven on Earth

Question

“So many things are possible just as long as you don't know they're impossible.”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Variant: So many things are possible as long as you don't know they're impossible.
Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

“It has been said that life has treated me harshly; and sometimes I have complained in my heart because many pleasures of human experience have been withheld from me…if much has been denied me, much, very much, has been given me…”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Source: The Open Door

Life, Pleasure, Heart

“Each person is only given so many evenings and each wasted evening is a gross violation against the natural course of your only life.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Life, Nature, Personality

“I have been a friend to Shadowhunters. I know many of your families, going back for hundreds of years."
"There is nothing we can do to correct the questionable judgments of our ancestors," Lucian said.
Magnus hated this guy.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Last Stand of the New York Institute

Hate, Family, Guy, Question

“She thought of how precious it was to be able to know another person over many years. There was incomparable richness in it.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

Personality

“That is the paradox of the epidemic: that in order to create one contagious movement, you often have to create many small movements first.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

“What she mostly wanted, he learned, was the same thing many people want--someone to notice she was there.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

People, Learning

“It was like having a genie. I'd only get so many wishes.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

“Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

World

“If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Love, Men, Heart

“A small but noteworthy note. I've seen so many young men over the years who think they're running at other young men. They are not. They are running at me.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Men, Thinking

“Forever [is] so many different things. It is always changing… it is twenty minutes, or a hundred years, or just this instant, or any instant I wish would last and last”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Change

“There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened.”

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

Life

“Who does ever get what they want? It doesn’t seem to happen to many of us if any at all. It’s always two people bumping against each other blindly, acting out old ideas and dreams and mistaken understandings.”

Kent Haruf (1943–2014) Novelist

Source: Our Souls at Night

People, Dreams, Idea, Understanding

“Too many of us are hung up on what we don't have, can't have, or won't ever have. We spend too much energy being down, when we could use that same energy – if not less of it – doing, or at least trying to do, some of the things we really want to do.”

Terry McMillan (1951) American author

Source: Disappearing Acts

“Many religions have attempted to make statues of their gods very large, and the idea, I suppose, is to make us feel small. But if that's their purpose, they can keep their paltry icons. We need only look up if we wish to feel small.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Source: The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)

God, Religion, Feeling, Idea

“I have tried many times to express my feelings, but at each attempt, I find myself tongue-tied.”

Kate Cary book Bloodline

Source: Bloodline

Feeling, Time

“I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art.”

Chaim Potok book My Name Is Asher Lev

Source: My Name Is Asher Lev

Fear, Art

“The farther you go… the harder it is to return. The world has many edges and it's easy to fall off.”

Anderson Cooper (1967) journalist and author

Variant: The farther you go, however, the harder it is to return. The world has many edges, and it's easy to fall off.
Source: Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival

World

“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Speech in the House of Commons, also known as "The Few", made on 20 August 1940. However Churchill first made his comment, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few" to General Hastings Ismay as they got into their car to leave RAF Uxbridge on 16 August 1940 after monitoring the battle from the Operations Room.
The Second World War (1939–1945)
Context: The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. All hearts go out to the fighter pilots, whose brilliant actions we see with our own eyes day after day; but we must never forget that all the time, night after night, month after month, our bomber squadrons travel far into Germany, find their targets in the darkness by the highest navigational skill, aim their attacks, often under the heaviest fire, often with serious loss, with deliberate careful discrimination, and inflict shattering blows upon the whole of the technical and war-making structure of the Nazi power.