Quotes about most
page 27

“It makes me wonder, Do we spend most of our days trying to remember or forget things? Do we spend most of our time running towards or away from our lives? I don't know.”

Markus Zusak book Fighting Ruben Wolfe

Variant: Do we spend most of our days trying to remember or to forget? Do we spend most of our time running towards or away from our lives?
Source: Fighting Ruben Wolfe

Time, Forgetting

“Loyalty is weird, it kicks in when you dont expect it and the people who deserve loyalty least seem to get it the most.”

Russell Banks (1940) American author

People, Loyalty

“As a confirmed melancholic, I can testify that the best and maybe only antidote for melancholia is action. However, like most melancholics, I suffer also from sloth.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990), Ch. 4 : Life and Death and All That p.43

Suffering, Depressing

“Every one of us is a minor tragedy. Most of us learn to cope.”

Elizabeth Bear (1971) American novelist

Source: Whiskey and Water

Learning

“And specialness - everyone wants it. But Jesus, is it the most essential thing there is? Most people aren't talented. So what are they supposed to do - kill themselves?”

Meg Wolitzer book The Interestings

Source: The Interestings

People

“Maybe it’s the other way around,” Jason suggested. “Maybe people with special gifts show up when bad things are happening because that’s when
they’re needed most.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

People, Way

“Knowledge is a fine thing, and mother Eve thought so; but she smarted so severly for hers, that most of her daughters have been afraid of it since.”

Abigail Adams (1744–1818) 2nd First Lady of the United States (1797–1801)

Letter to Elizabeth Shaw (20 March 1791)

Knowledge, Daughters

“In all ages the people have honored those who dishonored them. They have worshiped their destroyers; they have canonized the most gigantic liars, and buried the great thieves in marble and gold. Under the loftiest monuments sleeps the dust of murder.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Source: Humboldt From 'The Gods and Other Lectures'

People, Age, Sleep

“A lake is a landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

Beauty, Nature

“We're taught at such an early age to be against the communists, yet most of us don't have the faintest idea what communism is. Only a fool let's somebody tell them who the enemy is.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

Source: Assata: In Her Own Words, p. 152
Source: Assata: An Autobiography

Age, Fools, Communication, Idea

“I just think it's bad when a boy looks at a girl and thinks that the way he sees her is better than she actually is. And I think it's bad when the most honest way a boy can look at a girl is through a camera.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Way, Girl, Boy, Thinking

“Blameless people are always the most exasperating.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Source: Middlemarch

People

“Persistence is the key to solving most mysteries.”

Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden

Source: Black Blood

“and now, all these years later, it seem to him that the most horrible fact of human existence was that broken hearts mended”

Stephen King book Wizard and Glass

Source: Wizard and Glass

Heart

“I am, by calling, a dealer in words; and words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Speech, quoted in The Times (February 15, 1923).
Other works
Variant: Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

“I call it Andskoti, the Adversary. It is woven with the most powerful paradoxes in the Nine Worlds—Wi-Fi with no lag, a politician’s sincerity, a printer that prints, healthy deep-fried food, and an interesting grammar lecture!”

Rick Riordan book The Sword of Summer

Source: The Sword of Summer

World, Food, Sincerity

“There is such a thing as too much beauty in a woman and it is often a burden as crippling as homeliness and far more dangerous. It takes much luck and integrity to survive the gift of perfect beauty, and its impermanence is its most cunning betrayal.”

Pat Conroy book The Prince of Tides

Source: The Prince of Tides

Beauty, Betrayal, Perfection

“A slave cannot be freed, save he do it himself. Nor can you enslave a free man; the very most you can do is kill him!”

Robert A. Heinlein book Double Star

Source: Double Star

“The main thing to remember is that making love is at onces the silliest and the most sacred act humans can perform.”

Patricia Briggs (1965) American writer

Source: Dragon Blood

Love, Making love

“… even the most horribl e of nightmares is laced with the promise of dawn.”

Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer

“I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others--young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Life, Loneliness, Night

“But I think the most important thing those books gave me was a kind of faith. My books promised me that life wasn’t just made up of workaday tasks and prosaic things. The world is bigger and more colorful and more important than that.”

Laura Amy Schlitz (1955) children's author

Source: The Hired Girl

Life, Books, World, Faith

“The great secret of true success, of true happiness, is this: the man or woman who asks for no return, the perfectly unselfish person, is the most successful.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Happiness, Secret, Success, Personality

“Sex is glorious, it's how we all got here, and it's most people's favourite activity.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/alan-moore-the-reluctant-hero-64407.html

People, Sex

“… most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Source: Brave New World

Love, Women, Men, Dreams

“Hercules used noise! Brass bells! He scared them away with the most horrible sound he could-" said Percy
"Percy… Chiron's collection!”

Rick Riordan book The Sea of Monsters

Source: The Sea of Monsters

“The image that concerns most people is the reflection they see in other people's minds.”

Edward de Bono (1933) Maltese physician

People

“The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived.”

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

Life, Beauty, Reading

“Don't worry, Otto. I'm an acquired taste. Most of my best friends had to know me for years before they could even stand my presence. I'm like mold, I usually grow on you very slowly. (Tabitha)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Variant: she said with a smile. "I'm an acquired taste. Most of my best friends had to
know me for years before they could even stand my presence. I'm like mold, I usually grow on you very
slowly.
Source: Seize the Night

“… most people in the world don't really use their brains to think. And people who don't think are the ones who don't listen to others.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

People, World, Thinking

“I wanted to talk to someone. But who? It’s moments like this, when you need someone the most, that your world seems smallest.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

World

“Reminding ourselves of the gospel is the most important daily habit we can establish.”

C.J. Mahaney (1953) American clergyman

Source: The Cross Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel The Main Thing

“I used to care about how other people thought I led my life. But lately I've realized that most people are too preoccupied with their own lives to give anybody else even the scantiest of thoughts.”

Douglas Coupland Microserfs

Source: Microserfs

Life, People

“The whole family is a bunch of dangerous freaks… Most are ex-cons or junkies or deranged from inbreeding. Five have died violently, three are back in prison, two have gone insane from untreated venereal disease, and one writes book reviews.”

Tim Dorsey book Triggerfish Twist

Source: Triggerfish Twist

Books, Disease, Family

“Only a short time ago, I learned that people laughed at me. Now I can see that unknowingly I joined them in laughing at myself. That hurts the most.”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Source: Flowers for Algernon

People, Learning, Time, Hurt

“In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

History, Learning, Animals, For Team

“As a performer, I wanted to be the loudest, most persistent alarm clock I could be, because there didn’t seem like any other way to snap society out of its Christianity- and media-induced coma.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Source: The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

Way

“I'm a slave to my emotions, to my likes, to my hatred of boredom, to most of my desires.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book This Side of Paradise

Source: This Side of Paradise

“Most people do not see the world as it is. They see it as they are”

Margaret Landon (1903–1993) writer, missionary

People, World

“Everything has boundaries. The same holds true with thought. You shouldn't fear boundaries, but you should not be afraid of destroying them. That's what is most important if you want to be free: respect for and exasperation with boundaries.”

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Fear

“As soon as one promises not to do something, it becomes the one thing above all others that one most wishes to do.”

Georgette Heyer book Venetia

Source: Venetia

“You're the last Olympian,' I said. 'And the most important.'
And why is that, Percy Jackson?'
Because Hope survives best at the hearth,' I said.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Hope

“The imprint of Miss Hepburn is absolutely, totally present. Like it or not, she will be the most important look of the twentieth century.”

Manolo Blahnik (1942) Spanish fashion designer

“One of the most effective ways to learn about oneself is by taking seriously the cultures of others. It forces you to pay attention to those details of life which differentiate them from you.”

Edward T. Hall book The Silent Language

Source: The Silent Language

Life, Way, Learning

“You know when most girls say they want a big rock, they dont mean, you know, literally a."
-Clary to Jace, pg.313-”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Girl

“The two most beautiful words in the English language are 'cheque enclosed.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Beauty

“Most of the Peacekeepers turn a blind eye to the few of us who hunt because they're as hungry as we are for fresh meat as anyone. In fact, they're among our best customers.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“No. Haven’t you been listening?”

Marcus would always remember that moment. It was to be the first time he would ever be faced with that most vexing of female quirks: the question that had nothing but wrong answers.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: Just Like Heaven

Question, Time

“It was the most convulted, ridiculous piece of logic I'd heard in awhile… It was something I would have come up with.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

“yet love can move people to act in unexpected ways and move them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with startling heroism”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Love, People, Way

“Most people fail to realize that in life, it’s not how much money you make, it’s how much money you keep.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki book Rich Dad Poor Dad

Source: Rich Dad, Poor Dad

Life, Money, People

“Look into the eyes of a chicken and you will see real stupidity. It is a kind of bottomless stupidity, a fiendish stupidity. They are the most horrifying, cannibalistic and nightmarish creatures in the world.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Stupidity, World

“The greatest and most powerful revolutions often start very quietly, hidden in the shadows. Remember that.”

Richelle Mead Vampire Academy

Source: Vampire Academy

“Life is gamble, It's harsh and painful most of the time, and it's not for the timid. Spoils go to the victor, not to the one who doesn't even show up for the battle."

-Acheron”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Night Play

Life, Pain, Time

“A life spent writing has taught me to be wary of words. Those that seem clearest are often the most treacherous.”

Amin Maalouf book In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong

Source: In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong

Life

“Gertrude Stein did us the most harm when she said, 'You're all a lost generation.' That got around to certain people and we all said, 'Whee! We're lost.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

People

“… the care of the earth is our most ancient and most worthy and, after all, our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it, and to foster its renewal, is our only legitimate hope.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Variant: The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.
Source: The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

Hope

“People want pretty much the same things: They wanted to be happy. Most young people seemed to think that those things lay somewhere in the future, while most older people believed they lay in the past.”

Nicholas Sparks book Nights in Rodanthe

Source: Nights in Rodanthe

Happiness, People, Thinking, Past

“The important task of literature is to free man, not to censor him, and that is why Puritanism was the most destructive and evil force which ever oppressed people and their literature: it created hypocrisy, perversion, fears, sterility.”

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

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947

People, Fear, Literature, Evil

“All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Source: A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

People, Support, Thinking

“The most content people are those who expect nothing, who have ceased to dream.”

Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden

Source: The Red Dice

People, Dreams

“Most marriages don't add two people together. They subtract one from the other.”

Ian Fleming book Diamonds Are Forever

Source: Diamonds Are Forever

Marriage, People

“The most unpresentable persons are generally the most interesting.”

Teresa de la Parra (1889–1936) Venezuelan novelist

Source: Las memorias de Mamá Blanca

Personality

“In life's most significant moments we are always alone.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

Life

“Most people underestimate eyes. They're infinite. You look someone straight in the eye and your whole soul can be sucked out in a nanosecond. Other people's eyes are limitless and that's what scares me.”

Sophie Kinsella book Finding Audrey

Source: Finding Audrey

People, Soul

“Butterflies are but flowers that blew away one sunny day when Nature was feeling at her most inventive and fertile.”

George Sand (1804–1876) French novelist and memoirist; pseudonym of Lucile Aurore Dupin

Feeling, Flowers, Nature

“How disturbing it is that our illusions are often our most important beliefs.”

Hanif Kureishi (1954) English playwright, screenwriter, novelist

Source: Intimacy: das Buch zum Film von Patrice Chéreau

“Most of us don't live our lives with one, integrated self that meets the world, we're a whole bunch of selves.”

Christopher Moore book A Dirty Job

Source: A Dirty Job

World

“Good food is very often, even most often, simple food.”

Anthony Bourdain book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Source: Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Food

“People often belittle the place where they were born but heaven can be found in the most unlikely places.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003)
Context: "Ah." The Blue Man nodded. "Well people often belittle the place where they were born. But heaven can be found in the most unlikely corners. And heaven itself has many steps. This, for me, is the second. And for you the first."

People

“We create our fate every day… most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Fate, Behavior, Suffering

“Why can't I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply.”

Patti Smith Just Kids

Source: Just Kids

Dead

“That was other thing I hated about kids; they always said the exact things that deep down you already knew, would never admit, and most certainly never wanted to hear.”

Cecelia Ahern book A Place Called Here

Source: A Place Called Here

Hate

“One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Life, Happiness, Joy

“The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

11 April 1942.
Disputed, Hitler's Table Talks (1941-1944) (published 1953)

History

“I've forgotten most of what I've read and, frankly, it never seemed very important to me or to the world.”

Leonard Cohen book Beautiful Losers

Source: Beautiful Losers

World, Reading

“The finest souls are those that have the most variety and suppleness.”

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

Source: The Complete Essays

Soul

“Yes, I can talk and think at the same time. Most people can, though I suppose you wouldn't know that from personal experience.
Elena (Bitten)”

Kelley Armstrong (1968) Canadian writer

People, Thinking, Time, Personality

“The most truly generous persons are those who give silently without hope of praise or reward.”

Carol Ryrie Brink book Magical Melons

Source: Caddie Woodlawn's Family

Hope, Personality

“At the end of our lives it is our loves we remember most, because they are what shaped us. We have grown to be who we are around them, as around a stake.”

Anna Funder book All That I Am

Source: All That I Am

Love

“She had found him and was bringing back his thanks. Nor did she forget to mention that he had assured her that she was indeed the most beautiful fairy he had ever set eyes on.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkdeath

Beauty, Forgetting

“I have, of course, been called many other things. Most of them uncouth, although very few were unearned”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 7, “Of Beginnings and the Names of Things” (p. 58)
Context: I have been called Kvothe the Bloodless, Kvothe the Arcane, and Kvothe Kingkiller. I have earned those names. Bought and paid for them.
But I was brought up as Kvothe. My father once told me it meant “to know.”
I have, of course, been called many other things. Most of them uncouth, although very few were unearned.
I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep.
You may have heard of me.

“Every decent con man knows that the simplest truth is more powerful than even the most elaborate lie.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Uncommon Criminals

Truth, Lie

“Stories make sense when so much around us is senseless, and perhaps what makes them most comforting is that while life goes on and pain goes on, stories do us the favor of ending.”

John Hodgman (1971) American humorist

Life, Pain, Sense

“Did you just kiss me?" Will inquired.
Magnus made a slip-second decision. "No."
"I thought-"
"On occasion the aftereffects of the painkilling spells can result in hallucinations of the most bizarre sort."
"Oh," Will said. "How peculiar.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Kiss, Decision

“I dislike my fellow-mortals. Justice compels me to add that they appear for the most part to dislike me.”

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish physician and author

Source: The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Stories

Justice, Appearance, Parting

“What have you gotten me into?" I hissed at him.
"Me? What have you gotten yourself into? Couldn't I have just picked you up at the police station for underage drinking, like most fathers?”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

Drink

“Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Men

“Words are like Leaves; and where they most abound,
Much Fruit of Sense beneath is rarely found.”

Alexander Pope An Essay on Criticism

Source: An Essay on Criticism

Sense

“Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Variant: summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screeneed porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape.
Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Color, Sleep, Summer, Season