Quotes about matter
page 18

“Remember, no matter how dark the night, there is always a happy ending. But first, you have to make it through the night.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Night, Happiness

“I've learned that it doesn't matter how your husband squeezes the toothpaste, the important thing is how he squeezes you.”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940) American writer

Learning

“Am I a man? To want you so badly that nothing else matters? To see you, and know I would sacrifice honor or family or life itself to lie wi' you, even though ye'd left me?”

Diana Gabaldon book Voyager

Source: Voyager

Life, Lie, Family

“Just as there are Laws of Conservation of Matter and Energy, so there are in fact Laws of Conservation of Pain and Joy. Neither can ever be created or destroyed.
But one can be converted into the other.”

Spider Robinson book Callahan's Crosstime Saloon

Source: Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (1977) "Laws of Conservation of Pain and Joy"

Pain, Law, Joy

“It's a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong, something the best people have always done.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) Abolitionist, author

Attributed

People, Strong

“Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Funny, Universe

“No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself. It’s like your shadow. It follows you everywhere. -Komura”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: After the Quake

Travel

“You don't always talk with your mouth. Sometimes what you say with your mouth hardly matters at all. You have to signify”

Stephen King book From a Buick 8

Source: From a Buick 8

“Doesn't matter who it is
I'll friggin break 'em
-Grimmjow jaggerjaques”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

Source: Bleach, Volume 24

“It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.”

James Boswell book The Life of Samuel Johnson

October 26, 1769, p. 174
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II
Source: The Life of Samuel Johnson

Time

“No matter our talent, we all know in the midnight of our souls that 90 percent of what we do is less than our best.”

Robert McKee (1941) American academic specialised in seminars for screenwriters

Source: Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

Soul

“Stop and take your time to notice things and make those things you notice matter.”

Cecelia Ahern book Thanks for the Memories

Source: Thanks for the Memories

Time

“And in some of the houses, people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happening all the time, unnoticed, and it was the thing that really mattered. What really mattered in life, what gave it weight, was death.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

Life, Death, People, Time

“The past doesn't matter. People cling to it because it allows them to ignore the present.”

James Frey book The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Source: The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

People, Past

“Be kind to others before you take care of yourself; make whoever you're with feel like they matter.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

Feeling

“In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence..”

David Hume book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Source: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Imagination

“He'd gone from sixteen to seventy-five in a matter of seconds, but the old-man smell happened instantly, like boom. Congratulations! You stink!”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

“It is a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man's oration,—nay, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in its place is a work extremely troublesome.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

Of Hearing, 6
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Source: Parallel Lives

“I'd made it back to the land of the living. No matter how boring or mediocre a world it might be, this was it.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase

World

“Because others have let us down, it is now our duty to face the hard truths and do the right thing--no matter the personal cost.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

Truth, Personality

“None of us can avoid being contaminated by the world's evils; it's all a matter of what attitude you take towards them.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran

World, Evil

“Every life, no matter how isolated, touches hundred of others. It's up to us to decide if those micro connections are positive or negative. But whichever we decide, it does impact the ones we deal with.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infamous

Life

“Maybe, in the end it's the voice that tells the stories more than the stories themselves that matters.”

Stephen King book It

Source: It

“This is what being alive feels like, you know? The place doesn't matter. You just live.”

Chuck Klosterman (1972) Author, Columnist

Feeling

“And what constitutes evil, real evil, is the taking of a single human life. Whether a man would die tomorrow or the day after or eventually… it doesn't matter. Because if God does not exist, then life… every second of it… Is all we have.”

Anne Rice book Interview with the Vampire

Source: Interview with the Vampire

Life, God, Evil

“A demon, if you prefer the term; although to be honest, the difference between god and a demon is really only a matter of perspective.”

Joanne Harris book The Gospel of Loki

Source: The Gospel of Loki

God

“Live all you can — it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?”

Henry James book The Ambassadors

Source: The Ambassadors (1903), book V, ch. II.
Context: Live all you can — it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?.. What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that... The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.. Live!

Life

“No matter what has happened, you're not a pig-boy; you're an Assistant Pig Keeper!”

Lloyd Alexander book The Black Cauldron

Source: The Black Cauldron

Boy

“It doesn't matter if you're born in a duck yard, so long as you are hatched from a swan's egg!”

Hans Christian Andersen The Ugly Duckling

Source: The Ugly Duckling

“No fear. No distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

Fear

“You're gonna miss each and every shot you can't be bothered to take. That's not living life--that's just being a tourist. Take every shot, Kate. If it's worth caring about, no matter how impossible you think it is--you take the shot.”

Matt Fraction (1975) American comic book writer

Source: Hawkeye, Volume 1: My Life as a Weapon

Life, Thinking

“It doesn't matter unless you let it matter.”

Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Bad Blood

“But money or no money we're all searching for the same things aren't we It doesn't matter who you are or how much money you have. Love and happiness that's what it's all about”

Jill Mansell (1957) British author

Source: Millie's Fling

Love, Money, Search, Happiness

“I'm a coward when it comes to matters of the heart. That is my fatal flaw.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

Heart

“Life is always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

Life, Waiting

“There was nothing in this world that was not a con, suddenly I understood this. Nothing really mattered, and nothing could be lost.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

World

“Everyone else we knew growing up is the same: image of their parents, no matter how loud they told themselves they'd be different”

Tana French In the Woods

Source: In the Woods

Parent

“Simon sighed. "People aren't born good or bad. Maybe they're born with tendencies either way, but It's the way you live your life that matters.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Variant: People aren't born good or bad. Maybe they're born with tendencies either way, but its the way you live your life that matters.
Source: City of Glass

Life, People, Way

“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

“Men and swords. My father said that if you put any able-bodied man, no matter how peaceful, into a room with a sword and a practice dummy and leave him alone, eventually the man would pick up the sword and try to stab the dummy. It is human nature.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bites

Men, Peace, Nature

“It hurts when they're gone. And it doesn't matter if it's slow or fast, whether it's a long drawn-out disease or an unexpected accident. When they're gone the world turns upside down and you're left holding on, trying not to fall off.”

Walter Mosley (1952) American writer

Source: Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore

World, Disease, Hurt

“As we encounter new experiences with a mindful and wise attention, we discover that one of three things will happen to our new experience: it will go away, it will stay the same, or it will get more intense. whatever happens does not really matter.”

Jack Kornfield (1945) American writer

Source: A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life

“I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

Hate

“Sometimes it’s heartbreaking to see your siblings as the people they’ve become. Maybe that’s why we all stay away from each other as a matter of course.”

Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer

Heartbreaking, People, Siblings

“In the end what matters is not how good we are but how good God is. Not how much we love Him but how much He loves us. And God loves us whoever we are, whatever we’ve done or failed to do, whatever we believe or can’t.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

Love, God

“No matter how dim the light filtering through the trees is, you can still try your best to grasp it. -Kaien Cross”

Matsuri Hino Japanese manga artist

Source: Vampire Knight, Vol. 16

Tree, Light

“There is something in the human spirit that will survive and prevail, there is a tiny and brilliant light burning in the heart of man that will not go out no matter how dark the world becomes.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

World, Light, Heart

“No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

"Masculum et Feminam Creavit Eos," http://books.google.com/books?id=4cl5c4T9LWkC&q=%22No+matter+how+happily+a+woman+may+be+married+it+always+pleases+her+to+discover+that+there+is+a+nice+man+who+wishes+that+she+were+not%22&pg=PA337#v=onepage Ch. 30: Sententiæ http://books.google.com/books?id=VK0vR4fsaigC&q=%22No+matter+how+happily+a+woman+may+be+married+it+always+pleases+her+to+discover+that+there+is+a+nice+man+who+wishes+that+she+were+not%22&pg=PT1176#v=onepage <br class="br">1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“One thing in my defense, not that it matters: I know something Carter never knew, or Helene, or maybe you. I know what "nothing" means, and keep on playing.”

Joan Didion book Play It as It Lays

Source: Play It as It Lays

“Any given moment—no matter how casual, how ordinary—is poised, full of gaping life.”

Anne Michaels book Fugitive Pieces

Source: Fugitive Pieces

Life

“We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness—the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

World, Happiness

“As if it didnt matter what was on, but instead how hard i was listening.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

“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

“Everything matters. Everything you do touches someone in some way, even though you might not understand that.”

Jennifer Ashley (1974) American author

Source: The Duke's Perfect Wife

Way, Understanding

“Your feminist premise should be: I matter. I matter equally. Not “if only.” Not “as long as.” I matter equally. Full stop.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

Source: Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

“I love you so much that nothing can matter to me - not even you… Only my love- not your answer. Not even your indifference”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Love, Indifference

“A woman, no matter the age, is always learning, always becoming. But a man… stops learning at fourteen or so.”

Edward P. Jones The Known World

Source: The Known World

Age, Learning

“Goor or evil, right or wrong, he mattered to me.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Bloodfever

Evil

“He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder.”

Tad Williams Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn

Author’s Warning
Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988)

Heart

“Distance might not solve anything, no matter how far you run.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

“What do ties matter, Jeeves, at a time like this?'
There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Time

“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

“Love is holy because it is like grace--the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Love

“I was told love should be unconditional. That's the rule, everyone says so. But if love has no boundaries, no limits, no conditions, why should anyone try to do the right thing ever? If I know I am loved no matter what, where is the challenge?”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

Love

“We can't always do what we think we have to do. So when there's nothing else you can do, you wait… No matter what… pressure… you might feel.”

Jeff Lindsay book Dearly Devoted Dexter

Source: Dearly Devoted Dexter

Feeling, Thinking, Waiting

“Abbe Faria: Here is your final lesson - do not commit the crime for which you now serve the sentence. God said, Vengeance is mine.
Edmond Dantes: I don't believe in God.
Abbe Faria: It doesn't matter. He believes in you.”

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) French writer and dramatist, father of the homonym writer and dramatist

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo, V1

God

“Funny, that no matter where you are in the world, there's always someone eager to help you destroy yourself.”

James St. James (1966) American writer

Source: Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland

World, Help

“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

“It doesn't really matter what chords I play, what words I say or time of day it is, as it's only a Northern Song.”

George Harrison (1943–2001) British musician, former member of the Beatles

Time

“But no matter how much planning you do, one tiny miscalculation, one moment of distraction, can end it all in an instant.”

Jeannette Walls book Half Broke Horses

Source: Half Broke Horses

“That is certainly one way to look at the matter. There are others.”

Patricia C. Wrede (1953) author

Source: Thirteenth Child

Way

“But see that you get on. That's your job in this hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what. Pull your act together and just go on.”

Stephen King book The Shining

Source: The Shining (1977)
Context: Danny? You listen to me. I’m going to talk to you about it this once and never again this same way. There’s some things no six-year-old boy in the world should have to be told, but the way things should be and the way things are hardly ever get together. The world’s a hard place, Danny. It don’t care. It don’t hate you and me, but it don’t love us, either. Terrible things happen in the world, and they’re things no one can explain. Good people die in bad, painful ways and leave the folks that love them all alone. Sometimes it seems like it’s only the bad people who stay healthy and prosper. The world don’t love you, but your momma does and so do I. You’re a good boy. You grieve for your daddy, and when you feel you have to cry over what happened to him, you go into a closet or under your covers and cry until it’s all out of you again. That’s what a good son has to do. But see that you get on. That’s your job in this hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what. Pull your act together and just go on.

Love, World

“One should always be drunk. That's all that matters… But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you chose. But get drunk.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Wine

“Your parents could always hurt you, no matter how old you were.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Parent, Hurt

“… When I look back on my life's greatest traumas… I see that each one has something in common. No matter how life-shattering they felt at the time, there was an end to them.”

Anna Maxted (1969) British writer

Source: Getting Over It

Life, Time

“God is more powerful than anybody's past, no matter how wretched. He can make us forget - not by erasing the memory but by taking the sting and paralyzing effect out of it”

Jim Cymbala (1959) author, pastor

God, Memory, Past, Forgetting

“What matters is how I use what I know, every minute of every day; how I use it to remember, in the midst of the game.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: Running from Safety: An Adventure of the Spirit

Game

“Disappear Here.
The syringe fills with blood.
You're a beautiful boy and that's all that matters.
Wonder if he's for sale.
People are afraid to merge. To merge.”

Bret Easton Ellis book Less Than Zero

Source: Less Than Zero

People, Beauty, Boy

“If things go badly for me tonight, I want you to stay with Mr. Wynter; he will pay you a decent wage.”

“Will he make me bathe?”

“No, he will debate the matter with you until you decide to wash.”

“Ah. One of those.”

Eoin Colfer book Airman

Source: Airman

“We wish to find the truth, no matter where it lies. But to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact.”

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

Truth, Imagination

“My dear young cousin, if there's one thing I've learned over the eons, it's that you can't give up on your family, no matter how tempting they make it.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Family, Family, Learning

“Here's the thing about broken hearts. You can always survive them. Always. No matter how deep the hurt, the capacity to heal and move on is even stronger.”

Susan Wiggs (1958) American writer

Source: Summer at Willow Lake

Heart, Hurt

“Virtual sex, no matter how realistic, was really nothing but glorified, computer-assisted masturbation.”

Ernest Cline book Ready Player One

Source: Ready Player One

Sex

“Mind who you love. For that matter, mind how you are loved.”

Julia Glass book Three Junes

Source: Three Junes

Love

“Life is simple," I said. "Ale, women, sword, and reputation. Nothing else matters.”

Bernard Cornwell book The Pale Horseman

Source: The Pale Horseman

Life, Women

“But this road doesn't go anywhere,” I told him.
“That doesn't matter.”
“What does?” I asked, after a little while.
“Just that we're on it, dude,” he said.”

Bret Easton Ellis book Less Than Zero

Source: Less Than Zero

“The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22 (1961)

“The mistakes don't matter. It's what you do when you mess up that does.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Early to Death, Early to Rise

“If you are always frightened for yourself you can't act, and then life loses its purpose. You just have to tell yourself that, when you get right down to it, you don't matter all that much.”

Terry Brooks book The Elf Queen of Shannara

The Elf Queen Of Shannara
Source: The Elf Queen of Shannara

Life

“Love is not an equation, it is not a contract, and it is not a happy ending. Love is the slate under the chalk, the ground that buildings rise, and the oxygen in the air. It is the place you come back to, no matter where your headed”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Love, Happiness

“What i want is for what i want to actually matter.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Six Earlier Days

“It is the peculiar nature of the world to go on spinning no matter what sort of heartbreak is happening.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees (2002)

World, Nature

“My timing is off. But I had to get it out. Some things you have to tell, no matter how stupid they may sound. Some things you can't save for later. There might not be a later.”

Mary E. Pearson book The Adoration of Jenna Fox

Source: The Adoration of Jenna Fox

Stupidity, Time

“Very few people mate for life with the people they fall for at twelve. Doesn't mean is isn't real, doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, doesn't mean it doesn't matter, but basically, we're talking a practice swing in the big game of love.”

Jennifer Crusie (1949) American writer

Source: Faking It

Love, Life, People, Game

“Live your life so that you’ll have no regrets. No matter how hard, no matter how sad, if something is precious to you, protect it with both arms.”

Masashi Kishimoto (1974) Japanese manga artist

Life, Sadness

“I'd been in hairier situations than this one. Actually, it's sort of depressing, thinking how many times I'd been in them. But if experience had taught me anything, it was this: No matter how screwed up things are, they can get a whole lot worse.”

Jim Butcher book Blood Rites

Source: Blood Rites

Thinking, Time

“Cultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete. And, worse than that, the more deeply it goes the less complete it is. It is a strange science whose most telling assertions are its most tremulously based, in which to get somewhere with the matter at hand is to intensify the suspicion, both your own and that of others, that you are not quite getting it right. But that, along with plaguing subtle people with obtuse questions, is what being an ethnographer is like.”

Clifford Geertz book The Interpretation of Cultures

Source: The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), p. 29

People, Question, Science

“And I just want to tell you, at some point it doesn’t matter who was right and who was wrong. At some point, being
angry is just another bad habit, like smoking, and you keep poisoning
yourself without thinking about it.”

Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer

Source: This is Where I Leave You

Thinking

“When you get… to the end, you see that love and family are all there is. Nothing else matters.”

Kristin Hannah (1960) American writer

Source: Firefly Lane

Love, Family

“In matters of style, swim with the current: in matters of principle, stand like a rock.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

As quoted in Careertracking: 26 success Shortcuts to the Top (1988) by James Calano and Jeff Salzman; though used in an address by Bill Clinton (31 March 1997), and sometimes cited to Notes on the State of Virginia (1787) no earlier occurence of this has yet been located.
Disputed

Motivational, Leadership, Back To Work

Quotes about matter page 18

Quotes about matter
page 18