Quotes about many
page 22

“In what disorder we lived, how many fragments of ourselves were scattered, as if to live were to explode into splinters.”

Elena Ferrante (1943) Italian writer

Source: The Story of the Lost Child

“Books are keys that open many doors.”

James Rollins (1961) American writer

Books

“However many blessings we expect from God, His infinite liberality will always exceed all our wishes and our thoughts.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

God

“One can never had too many librarian friends.”

Jennifer Chiaverini (1969) American writer

Source: The Wedding Quilt

“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”

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

1961, Inaugural Address
Variant: If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
Context: To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required — not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

Help

“Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; and hereafter she may suffer--both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Source: Dracula

Dreams, Sleep, Suffering, Heart

“A great many men are mad, and no one knows it. They do not know it themselves”

Agatha Christie The Secret Adversary

Source: The Secret Adversary

Men, Madness

“A choir is made up of many voices, including yours and mine. If one by one all go silent then all that will be left are the soloists.

Don’t let a loud few determine the nature of the sound. It makes for poor harmony and diminishes the song.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

Nature

“There are parts of Texas where a fly lives ten thousand years and a man can't die soon enough. Time gets strange there from too much sky, too many miles from crack to crease in the flat surface of the land.”

Katherine Dunn book Geek Love

Source: Geek Love

Time, Parting, Flying

“Yes," replied Darcy, who could contain himself no longer, "but that was when I first knew her; for it is many months since I have considered her as one of the handsomest women of my acquaintance.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Women

“So many people come to church with a genuine desire to hear what we have to say, yet they are always going back home with the uncomfortable feeling that we are making it too difficult for them to come to Jesus.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer book The Cost of Discipleship

Source: The Cost of Discipleship

People, Feeling, Home

“All my friends seem to be smart arses. Don't ask me why. Like many things, it is what it is.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: I Am the Messenger

“Many young men started down a false path to their true destiny. Time and fortune usually set them aright.”

Mario Puzo The Godfather

Source: The Godfather

Men, Time, Falseness

“There are lots of things we never understand, no matter how many years we put on, no matter how much experience we accumulate.”

Haruki Murakami book The Elephant Vanishes

Source: The Elephant Vanishes

Understanding

“You have deep-seated survival anxieties. And you don't like bigots, bullies, snobs or hypocrites. Subconsciously there are many people you hate."

"Consciously, sir, consciously," Yossarian corrected in an effort to help. "I hate them consciously.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22

Hate, People, Effort, Help

“Many of us have made our world so familiar that we do not see it anymore. An interesting question to ask yourself at night is, What did I really see this day?”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

World, Question, Night

“I know many lives worth living.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

“It was bewildering and humbling to keep discovering how many brave things people can fail to talk themselves out of doing.”

Rob Sheffield (1966) American music journalist

Source: Love Is a Mix Tape

People

“We made too many wrong mistakes.”

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

What Time Is It? You Mean Now?: Advice for Life from the Zennest Master of Them All, Simon and Schuster, 2003, ISBN 0743244532, p. 75
On why the Yankees lost the 1960 series to the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Yogiisms

“There are so many things we've been brought up to believe that it takes you an awfully long time to realize that they aren't you.”

Edward Gorey (1925–2000) American writer, artist, and illustrator

Time

“Hatori: "That being said, Yuki… when did you become a woman?"

Yuki: "How dare you say that after you've seen me naked so many times…”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Source: Fruits Basket, Vol. 2

Time

“Beer's intellectual. What a shame so many idiots drink it.”

Ray Bradbury book The October Country

Source: The October Country

Drink, Beer

“My love for those I love -- not many -- not very many, but don't I love them so?”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Love

“No matter how many times Percy killed them and watched them crumble to powder, they just kept re-forming like large evil dust bunnies.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Evil, Time

“I may not be as stong as I think, but I know many tricks and I have resolution.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Old Man and the Sea

Source: The Old Man and the Sea

Thinking

“There are so many ways to go wrong. All we've got are metaphors, and they're never exactly right. You can never just Say. The. Thing.”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

Way

“Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it.”

Richard Adams book Watership Down

Source: Watership Down

Feeling, Winter

“Scent:
When she wore the hat, even many years later, she could always smell her mother's perfume & it was hard to remember she was supposed to be alone.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

“… if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom…”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Scarlet Letter

Source: The Scarlet Letter

Truth

“Percy, lesser beings do many horrible things in the name of the gods. That does not mean we gods approve. The way our sons and daughters act in our names… well, it usually says more about THEM than it does about us.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

God, Way, Daughters

“Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number —
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you —
Ye are many — they are few.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

St. 91
(1819)
Source: The Masque of Anarchy: Written on Occasion of the Massacre at Manchester

Sleep

“Don't look now, but there's one man too many in this room, and I think it's you.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

Thinking

“I have so many different personalities in me and I still feel lonely.”

Tori Amos (1963) American singer

Feeling, Personality

“Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

“Sleep every chance you get. Eat every chance you get. Those were two of the many lessons that Kat learned at her father’s knee and her uncle’s table.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Perfect Scoundrels

Sleep, Learning, Chance

“How many Sundays – how many hundreds of Sundays like this – lay ahead of me? “Quiet, peaceful and lonely,” I said aloud to myself. On Sundays i didn't wind my spring.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Peace, Spring

“She gave so many reasons that I've forgotten them all.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

“How weird was it that so many bits and pieces, all diverse, could make something whole. Something with potential. 'Perfect.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Perfection

“Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. And so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it. … We need wilderness preserved — as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds — because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed. The reminder and the reassurance that it is still there is good for our spiritual health even if we never once in ten years set foot in it.”

Wallace Stegner (1909–1993) American historian, writer, and environmentalist

Wilderness Letter http://wilderness.org/bios/former-council-members/wallace-stegner (1960) <br class="br">Source: The Sound of Mountain Water

People, Health, Books, World

“He [Nico] regarded Jason, as if waiting for an attack. 'If the others found out-'
'If the others found out,' Jason said, 'You'd have that many more people to back you up, and to unleash the fury of the gods on anybody who gives you trouble.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

God, People, Waiting

“I had as many doubts as anyone else. Standing on the starting line, we're all cowards.”

Alberto Salazar (1958) American track coach and long-distance runner born in Cuba

“Many people are more like the earth than we know. Maybe they have fault lines that sooner or later are going to split open under pressure.”

Rebecca Wells book Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Source: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

People

“All the greatest things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: Freedom; Justice; Honour; Duty; Mercy; Hope.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

United Europe Meeting, Albert Hall, London (May 14, 1947). Cited in Churchill by Himself, ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs (2008), p. 26 ISBN 1586486381
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Justice, Hope, Freedom

“How many people came and stayed a certain time,
Uttered light or dark speech that became part of you
Like light behind windblown fog and sand
Filtered and influenced by it, until no part
Remains that is surely you.”

John Ashbery (1927–2017) poet from the United States

People, Light, Time, Parting

“there was something about
that city, though
it didn't let me feel guilty
that I had no feeling for the
things so many others
needed.
it let me alone.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Feeling

“Men cannot grieve as dogs do. But they grieve for many years.”

Robin Hobb book Assassin's Apprentice

Source: Assassin's Apprentice

Men, Dogs

“Many who have gazed upon me have compared the experience to gazing at the radiance of the sun.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Sun

“Many people see happiness only in their future.”

François Lelord book Hector and the Search for Happiness

Source: Hector and the Search for Happiness

People, Future, Happiness

“I would take them in a bowl,” said Mark with a winning gaze. “It has been many years since I have eaten freely at my choice, fair one, and a plate of strawberries is all that I desire.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

“Animals can be driven crazy by placing too many in too small a pen. Homo sapiens is the only animal that voluntarily does this to himself.”

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love

Source: Time Enough for Love

Animals

“Not many people are interested in what somebody else is thinking, or what they have to say. The best you can hope for is they'll listen to you just so you'll have to listen to them.”

William Wharton book Birdy

Source: Birdy

People, Hope, Thinking

“Many people are alive but don't touch the miracle of being alive.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation

People

“how can the world in all its chaos come up with so many coincidences, so many similarities and exact opposites?”

Amy Tan (1952) American novelist

World

“People go on marrying because they can't resist natural forces, although many of them may know perfectly well that they are possibly buying a month's pleasure with a life's discomfort.”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Source: Jude the Obscure

Life, People, Pleasure, Nature

“He had been so many things. Seductive as silver and deadly as a cobra. And vulnerable like a hurt child underneath it all.”

L.J. Smith The Forbidden Game

Source: The Forbidden Game

Hurt

“Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every
generation may not come that far, but none comes further.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Faith, Passion

“So many of us find ourselves saying, “but he was so great!” Yes, and the people who got on the Titanic thought they were going on vacation. Things changed and it’s important to remember that they did.”

Greg Behrendt (1963) American comedian

Source: It's Called a Breakup Because It's Broken: The Smart Girl's Break-Up Buddy

People, Change

“There had not been this many words sounded in our house for a long time, and it was going to take a while to clean them out.”

Shirley Jackson book We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Source: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Time, Housing

“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

Books

“He was a lovely man in many ways. But he kept on insisting on forgiving me when there was nothing to forgive.”

Angela Carter book Wise Children

Source: Wise Children

Love, Way, Forgiveness

“When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don't suppose many people try to do it.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

People, Books, Imagination, Reading

“I cannot help but wonder how many of us walk through our lives, day after day, feeling slightly broken and alone, surrounded all the time by others who feel exactly the same way.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Source: The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Way, Feeling, Time, Help

“Trying to write about love is ultimately like trying to have a dictionary represent life. No matter how many words there are, there will never be enough.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Love, Life

“Hugo is a raven, and, as such he knows many things. I, meanwhile, am Hodge Starkweathe, a professor of history, as such, I do not know nearly enough.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

History

“We’ve died so many times now that we can only wonder why we still care.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Time

“That's the thing about the internet. It's really good at giving you pointless facts like how many horses a star owns, but not important things like how to invade his trailer.”

Janette Rallison (1966) American writer

Source: Just One Wish

Star, Horse

“There are many women whose lives would be immeasurably improved by widowhood, but one should not always point that out.”

Alexander McCall Smith book Espresso Tales

Source: Espresso Tales

Women

“So she loved him. She just did immediately and again often and clearly naturally and soundly and obviously and many others.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Source: Adverbs

Love, Nature

“When a man takes up arms, he does so for many reasons. Sometimes to punish, sometimes to intimidate or frighten. But when a woman picks up a weapon, she means to kill.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Clean Sweep

“Whenever a woman requires too many things from a man, he’ll resent it. Let him give what he wants to give freely; then observe who he is.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl-A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship

“The trickster, the riddler, the keeper of balance, he of the many faces who finds life in death and who fears no evil; he who walks through doors.”

Christopher Paolini book Brisingr

Source: Brisingr

Life, Death, Fear, Evil

“There's a sunrise and a sunset every single day, and they're absolutely free. Don't miss so many of them.”

Jo Walton (1964) Welsh Canadian writer

“Vampires smiled for many reasons, but when a vampire male smiled at you from this distance with that kind of look in his eyes it was done for one purpose only: to impress. Look at my big teeth. I’m an apex predator. My genetic material is awesome.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Clean Sweep

Smile

“How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

Life, Books, Reading

“I don't believe anything, but I have many suspicions.”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

"RAW Thoughts" at rawilson.com http://www.rawilson.com/thoughts.html

“Wholeheartedness. There are many tenets of Wholeheartedness, but at its very core is vulnerability and worthiness; facing uncertainty, exposure, and emotional risks, and knowing that I am enough.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

“We shall never achieve harmony with land, any more than we shall achieve justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations the important thing is not to achieve, but to strive. … The problem, then, is how to bring about a striving for harmony with land among a people many of whom have forgotten there is any such thing as land, among whom education and culture have become almost synonymous with landlessness. This is the problem of 'conservation education.”

Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American writer and scientist

"Conservation" (c. 1938); Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 155.
1930s
Source: Round River: From the Journals of Aldo Leopold

People, Education, Justice, Problem

“parenting isn't a noun but a verb--an ongoing process instead of an accomplishment. And that no matter how many years you put into the job, the learning curve is, well, fairly flat.”

Jodi Picoult book House Rules

Source: House Rules

Parent, Learning

“The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things,
I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
frog voice; now,
he said, and now,
and never once mentioned forever

from, One or Two Things”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: Dream Work

God, Dogs, Grass, Time

“Through many waters borne, brother, I am come to thy sad grave, that I may give these last gifts to the dead. Forever and ever, brother, hail. Forever and ever, farewell.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Princess

Sadness, Water, Dead

“When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don't take are snuffed out like candles, as if they'd never existed.”

Philip Pullman book The Amber Spyglass

Source: His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000), Ch. 2 : Balthamos and Baruch
Context: Will considered what to do. When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don’t take are snuffed out like candles, as if they’d never existed. At the moment all Will’s choices existed at once. But to keep them all in existence meant doing nothing. He had to choose, after all.

Way

“The words "Think and Thank" are inscribed in many of the Cromwellian churches of
England. These words ought to be inscribed in our hearts, too: "Think and Thank". Think
of all we have to be grateful for, and thank God for all our boons and bounties.”

Dale Carnegie book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

Source: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

God, Thinking, Heart

“This was always the problem with my mother and me, I suddenly realized. There were so many things we thought we agreed on, but anythign can have two meanings. Like sides of a coin, it just matters how it falls.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Problem

“What we [writers] do might be done in solitude and with great desperation, but it tends to produce exactly the opposite. It tends to produce community and in many people hope and joy.”

Junot Díaz (1968) Dominican-American writer

People, Hope, Communication, Solitude

“There are many things in this world that a child must not ask about.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Scarlet Letter

Source: The Scarlet Letter

World

“You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don't do too many things wrong.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Life

“I'm going to take off your gag. And if you try to bite me or grab me or anything, I'll hit you with this thing as hard as I can as many times as I can. Understood?”

Holly Black book The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Source: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Time

“How rude. Many who have gazed upon me have compared the experience to gazing
at the radiance of the sun."
Jem still had his eyes closed. "If they mean it gives you a headache, they aren't wrong.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Sun

“Many persons lead lives of crushing boredom.”

Elizabeth Peters The Serpent on the Crown

Source: The Serpent on the Crown

Personality

“We are so used to releasing words, we don't know what to do with them if they stay. No matter how many times we let them go, they come back. The words that matter always stay.”

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

Time

“Many of the lost will be found, eventually, dead or alive. Disappearances, after all, have explanations.”

Diana Gabaldon book Outlander

Source: Outlander

Dead

“On a sunny Tuesday - for it seems so many awful things happen on a Tuesday - six astronauts and one schoolteacher attempted to pierce the sky. Instead they touched the stars.”

Neal Shusterman book Everwild

Source: Everwild

Star

“I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting. It has taken me so many years to be okay with being different, and with being this alive, this intense. (xxvi)”

Eve Ensler (1953) American playwright, performer, feminist, activist and artist

Source: I am an Emotional Creature

Love

“After all, how many of us had tried to forget something traumatic… only to find it printed on the back of our eyelids, tattooed on our tongues?”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

Tattoo, Forgetting

“As I grow older, much older, I will experience many things, and I will hit rock bottom again and again. Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated. I won't let my spirit be destroyed.”

Banana Yoshimoto book Kitchen

Source: Kitchen (1988)

Suffering

“The world has a soul and whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of many things.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Variant: I learned that the world has a soul, and that whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of things.
Source: The Alchemist

World, Soul, Understanding