Quotes about most
page 34

“No, my friend, I am not drunk. I have just been to the dentist, and need not return for another six months! Is it not the most beautiful thought?
--Poirot”

Agatha Christie book One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

Source: One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

Beauty

“But most days,
I wander around feeling invisible.
Like I'm a speck of dust
floating in the air
that can only be seen
when a shaft of light hits it.”

Sonya Sones book One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies

Source: One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies

Feeling, Light

“This is Graceland. Home of the most famous musician in the world.”
“Michael Jackson lived here?”
“No, dummy,” Carter said. “Elvis Presley.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

World, Home

“Most people learn to save themselves by artificially limiting the content of consciousness.”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

Source: The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror

People, Learning

“And love is always complicated. But still humans most try to love each other, darling. We must get out hearts broken sometimes. This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Love, Heart

“I don't care if you say we can't be together. I don't care if you think I'm the most evil, unnatural creature walking on earth. You can think whatever you want, go whatever you want. I'm going to just go on loving you, even if it's hopeless.”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

Love, Thinking, Evil

“Laugh loudly, laugh often, and most important, laugh at yourself.”

Chelsea Handler Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me

Source: Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me

“Perhaps the most tragic thing about mankind is that we are all dreaming about some magical garden over the horizon, instead of enjoying the roses that are right outside today.”

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) American businessman and philanthropist

Dreams

“I mean, like most guys, you carry around this girl in your head, who is exactly who you want her to be. The person you think you will love the most. And every girl you are with gets measured against this girl in your head.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Love, Guy, Girl, Thinking

“I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter to Mr. Clarke, librarian to the Prince Regent (1815-12-11) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters
Context: I am quite honoured by your thinking me capable of drawing such a clergyman as you gave the sketch of in your note of Nov. 16th. But I assure you I am not. The comic part of the character I might be equal to, but not the good, the enthusiastic, the literary. Such a man's conversation must at times be on subjects of science and philosophy, of which I know nothing; or at least be occasionally abundant in quotations and allusions which a woman who, like me, knows only her own mother-tongue, and has read little in that, would be totally without the power of giving. A classical education, or at any rate a very extensive acquaintance with English literature, ancient and modern, appears to me quite indispensable for the person who would do any justice to your clergyman; and I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress.

Thinking

“I'm too wacky for most weirdos. Who am I to judge?”

Tori Amos (1963) American singer

“Most of us all walk around as if we're sleepwalking. We really don't experience the world fully, because we're half-asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

World, Thinking

“There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: How Proust Can Change Your Life

People, Learning

“I’ve learned that waiting is the most difficult bit, and I want to get used to the feeling, knowing that you’re with me, even when you’re not by my side.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

Feeling, Learning, Waiting

“I suppose that each of us may have a great moment in our life, a month, a week a year, when we are most fully what we are meant to be”

Sebastian Faulks (1953) British journalist and novelist

Life

“The fiercest anger of all, the most incurable,
Is that which rages in the place of dearest love.”

Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

Source: Medea and Other Plays: Medea / Alcestis / The Children of Heracles / Hippolytus

Love, Rage, Anger

“The ones that hurt the most always say the least.”

Fannie Flagg book Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Source: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Hurt

“Books are the most tolerant of friends.”

Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer

Books

“There are a lot of black-hearted, mean-spirited bastards in the world. It's important that we hold them to acount. But always remember thatmight be the most black-hearted and mean-spirited in the lot, so hold yourself the most accountable of all.”

Darren Shan (1972) Irish writer of English-language fiction under pen name, real name Darren O'Shaughnessy

Source: Zom-B Underground

World, Heart

“You will learn most things by looking, but reading gives understanding. Reading will make you free.”

Paul Rand (1914–1996) American graphic designer

Understanding, Learning, Reading

“To paint comic books as childish and illiterate is lazy. A lot of comic books are very literate — unlike most films.”

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 <br class="br">Context: If I write a crappy comic book, it doesn't cost the budget of an emergent Third World nation. When you've got these kinds of sums involved in creating another two hours of entertainment for Western teenagers, I feel it crosses the line from being merely distasteful to being wrong. To paint comic books as childish and illiterate is lazy. A lot of comic books are very literate — unlike most films.

Books, Painting

“Sleep is still most perfect, in spite of hygienists, when it is shared with a beloved.”

D.H. Lawrence book Sons and Lovers

Source: Sons and Lovers

Sleep, Perfection

“I'm afraid to hope but I can't help it, and the idea of hoping in this most hopeless of all places makes me want to cry.”

Beatrice Sparks (1917–2012) American writer

Source: Go Ask Alice

Hope, Idea, Help, Cry

“Insecurity is the worst sense that lovers feel: sometimes the most humdrum desireless marriage seems better. Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Variant: Insecurity is the worst sense that lovers feel; sometimes the most humdrum desireless marriage seems better. Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust.
Source: The End of the Affair

Marriage, Feeling, Lovers, Sense

“The leaves had fallen from the trees and lay crisp and crackling beneath his feet. Picking one up he marveled, not for the first time, at the perfection of nature where leaves were most beautiful at the very end of their lives.”

Louise Penny book The Brutal Telling

Source: The Brutal Telling

Beauty, Nature, Tree, Time

“Ah, Beloved. Of all the things I must bid farewell to, you are the most difficult to lose. Forgive me that I have avoided you. Better, perhaps, that we make a space between us and become accustomed to it before fate forces that upon us.”

Robin Hobb book Fool's Fate

Source: Fool's Fate

Fate, Forgiveness

“Some of the most wonderful people are the ones who don`t fit into boxes.”

Tori Amos (1963) American singer

People, Box

“real strength is not hitting when what you most want to do is kill.”

Ally Carter book Only the Good Spy Young

Source: Only the Good Spy Young

“Such short little lives our pets have to spend with us, and they spend most of it waiting for us to come home each day.”

John Grogan (1958) American journalist

Source: Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog

Home, Waiting

“Our firmest convictions are apt to be the most suspect; they mark our limitations and our bounds. Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries.”

José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955) Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist

Life

“Take it from me, Fate doesn't care most of the time.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Castle in the Air

Source: Castle in the Air

Fate, Time

“Jealousy is the most dreadfully involuntary of all sins.”

Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) British writer and philosopher

Jealousy

“Letting ourselves be forgiven is one of the most difficult healings we will undertake. And one of the most fruitful. (79)”

Stephen Levine (1937–2016) American poet and author

Source: A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

“Most people are so busy knocking themselves out trying to do everything they think they should do, the never get around to doing what they want to do.”

Kathleen Winsor (1919–2003) American author

People, Business, Thinking

“Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Source: Man for Himself (1947), Ch. 4 "Problems of Humanistic Ethics"

Life, Birth, Effort, Personality

“An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.”

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

Men

“The thing I fear most is fear.”

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

C'est de quoi j'ai le plus de peur que la peur.
Book I, ch, 18
Essais (1595), Book I
Source: The Complete Essays

Fear

“Why do you have to be the same as the others?… Most of them are stupid.”

Ken Follett book Winter of the World

Source: Winter of the World

Stupidity

“One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike—and yet it is the most precious thing we have.”

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

Letter to Hans Muehsam (9 July 1951), Einstein Archives 38-408, quoted in The Ultimate Quotable Einstein (2010) by Alice Calaprice, p. 404 http://books.google.com/books?id=G_iziBAPXtEC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA404#v=onepage&q&f=false <br class="br">1950s

Life, Reality, Learning, Science

“That prison," I said with heartfelt sincerity, "Was absolutely the most awful thing that has happened to me in my entire life." I could tell by the way he looked at me that he thought my life had been filled with one awful thing after another.”

Megan Whalen Turner The Thief

Source: The Thief

Life, Way, Sincerity

“You always said people don't do what they believe in; they just do what's most convenient, then they repent.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Knocked Out Loaded (1986), Brownsville Girl (with Sam Shepard)

People

“When we give ourselves in love we become our most vulnerable. We are never safe. We become open to disappointment and hurt.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Source: Loving Each Other

Love, Disappointment, Hurt

“I am not a snob; it is simply that I am not interested with what most people have to say, or what they want to do — mostly with my time.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

People, Time

“Actually, orcas aren't quite as complex as scientists imagine. Most killer whales are just four tons of doofus dressed up like a police car.”

Christopher Moore (1957) American writer of comic fantasy

Source: Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

Cars, Imagination

“The human eye is a wonderful device. With a little effort, it can fail to see even the most glaring injustice.”

Richard K. Morgan book Altered Carbon

Source: Altered Carbon (2002), Chapter 23 (p. 300)
Context: “The human eye is a wonderful device,” I quoted from Poems and Other Prevarications absently. “With a little effort, it can fail to see even the most glaring injustice.”

Effort

“It will hurt." said Petra. "But let's make the most of what we have, and not let future pain ruin present happiness.”

Orson Scott Card book Shadow Puppets

Source: Shadow Puppets

Pain, Happiness, Future, Hurt

“… history has shown that the most terrible crimes against love have been committed in the name of fanatically defended doctrines.”

Paul Tillich (1886–1965) German-American theologian and philosopher

Source: Dynamics of Faith

Love, History

“The ideal place for me is the one in which it is most natural to live as a foreigner.”

Italo Calvino The Uses of Literature

Source: The Uses of Literature

Nature

“There are all sorts of dream interpretations, Freud's being the most notorious, but I have always believed they served a simple eliminatory function, and not much more - that dreams are the psyche's way of taking a good dump every now and then.”

Stephen King book The Stand

Source: The Stand

Dreams, Way

“The only way that I could figure they could improve upon Coca-Cola, one of life's most delightful elixirs, which studies prove will heal the sick and occasionally raise the dead, is to put bourbon in it.”

Lewis Grizzard (1946–1994) American journalist

Life, Way, Study, Dead

“I have one brother and I live with four hundred guys. Girls under the age of fourteen are the most frightening creatures I have ever come across.”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

Age, Guy, Girl

“Now, I figured that the built-up gas in most boys' locker rooms was enough to cause an explosion, so I wasn't surprised when the flaming dodgeball ignited a huge WHOOOOOOOM!”

Rick Riordan book The Sea of Monsters

Source: The Sea of Monsters

Boy

“Love was the most savage monster of all.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Love

“I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.”

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

Thinking, Christ

“Aren't most romance heros, or heros in fiction of any kind, generally superior to real men? Same goes for heroines and real women.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Women, Men

“The truest art I would strive for in any work would be to give the page the same qualities as earth: weather would land on it harshly; light would elucidate the most difficult truths; wind would sweep away obtuse padding.”

Gretel Ehrlich (1946) American writer

Source: The Solace of Open Spaces

Truth, Art, Light, Weather

“Endings are not always bad. Most times they're just beginnings in disguise.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Something Deadly This Way Comes

Time

“Democracy is the most vile form of government.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Democracy

“Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.”

Andy Rooney (1919–2011) writer, humorist, television personality

“Every person is a possibility. The hopeless romantics feel it most acutely, but even for others, the only way to keep going is to see every person as a possibility.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Way, Feeling, Personality

“But I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is… to tell the truth.”

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian

Source: Marx in Soho: A Play on History

Truth

“The novels that attract me most… are those that create an illusion of transperancy around a knot of human relationships as obscure, cruel and perverse as possible.”

Italo Calvino (1923–1985) Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels

Source: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“Most hatred is based on fear, one way or another. Yeah. I wrapped myself in anger, with a dash of hate, and at the bottom of it all was an icy center of pure terror.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Guilty Pleasures

Source: Guilty Pleasures

Hate, Fear, Way, Anger

“… most Substance-addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning they have a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with their own thinking.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

People, Thinking

“He took pains to avoid self-depreciation, self-mockery, ambiguity, irony, subtlety, vulnerability, a civilized world-weariness and a tragic sense of history--the very things, he says, that are most natural to him.”

Don DeLillo (1936) American novelist, playwright and essayist

Pain, World, History, Nature

“I love your bracelet!’ I said to the brunette next to me, because, while most girls are onto the whole stranger-with-candy thing, the strangers-with-compliments strategy is still remarkably effective.”

Ally Carter Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy

Source: Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy

Love, Girl

“The power of thought is far greater than most people ever realize.”

Karen Marie Moning book Darkfever

Source: Darkfever

People

“The best secrets are the most twisted”

Sara Shepard (1973) Author

Source: Twisted

Secret

“Kissing - and I mean like, yummy, smacking kissing - is the most delicious, most beautiful and passionate thing that two people can do, bar none. Better than sex, hands down.”

Drew Barrymore (1975) American actress, director and producer

People, Beauty, Sex, Kiss

“Do you know, I think that of all your idiosyncrasies that choke you give, when you are determined not to laugh, is the one that most enchants me.”

Georgette Heyer book The Nonesuch

Source: The Nonesuch

Thinking

“The most amazing combinations can result if you shuffle the pack enough.”

Mikhail Bulgakov book The Master and Margarita

Source: The Master and Margarita

“You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Section 222
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

Fear

“The most important single thing that any Latter-day Saint ever does in this world is to marry the right person, in the right place, by the right authority.”

Bruce R. McConkie (1915–1985) American Mormon leader

World, Personality

“Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.”

Herman Wouk (1915–2019) Pulitzer Prize-winning American author whose novels include The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War and War and …

Imagination

“Other people are going to find healing in your wounds. Your greatest life messages and your most effective ministry will come out of your deepest hurts.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

Life, People, Hurt

“That is the most common excuse, and the most foolish of all. Love has never prevented a man from following his dreams. If she truly loves you, she will want the best for you.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Warrior of the Light

Love, Dreams

“It's [the word “sorry”] the most infuriating word in the English language. Just a cheap way to behave badly then shelve responsibility by putting the onus on the other person to be forgiving.”

Minette Walters book The Chameleon's Shadow

Source: The Chameleon's Shadow

Way, Forgiveness, Personality

“The problem I have with all this religion stuff is that I can't relate to it. I think most people got into 'cos it gave them something to do on a Sunday, but since all the shops are now open it isn't required as much.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Source: An Idiot Abroad: The Travel Diaries of Karl Pilkington

People, Religion, Problem, Thinking

“A generous heart is always open, always ready to receive our going and coming. In the midst of such love we need never fear abandonment. This is the most precious gift true love offers - the experience of knowing we always belong.”

Bell Hooks book All About Love: New Visions

Source: All About Love: New Visions

Love, Fear, Heart

“The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.”

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

Nature

“The greatest thing a man can do in this world, is to make the most possible out of the stuff that has been given him. This is success, and there is no other.”

Orison Swett Marden (1850–1924) American writer

Source: Learn to Expect a Great Deal of Life

World, Success

“She would grab whatever she could -a look, a whisper, a moan - to salvage from perishing, to perserve. But time is most unforgivving of fires, and she couldn't, in the end, save it all.”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Time

“And the wicked thing is, that when we're really upset, we always take it out on the people who are closest and whom we love the most.”

Rosamunde Pilcher (1924–2019) British novelist

Source: Winter Solstice

Love, People

“The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Variant: The most important thing in communication is to hear what is not being said.

Communication

“I longed to return to that bloody riverbank, to throw myself in the path of the final arrow, to die ignorant, and so, in love. Better to be killed by an arrow than by the words of the one I most trusted.”

Robin Wasserman (1978) American writer of speculative fiction for young people

Source: The Book of Blood and Shadow

Love

“There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.”

Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature

Age, Time, Parting

“But, Scarlett, did it ever occur to you that even the most deathless love could wear out?”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

Love

“I suppose in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go, but what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Life, Hurt, Hurtful

“She was the most painful, most glorious dance of his life”

Anne Bishop (1955) American fiction writer

Source: Heir to the Shadows

Life, Pain, Dance

“He whines, he complains, he ducks out of the most obvious responsibility. He is vain, petty and maddening, but he doesn't ever quit.”

Megan Whalen Turner The King of Attolia

Source: The King of Attolia

“Most men are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Men, Happiness

“I narrowed my eyes at it. Ming-de’s little gift, I assumed. “You look better in color,” I snapped.
He sent me a sultry look over his shoulder. “Really? Most women think I look better in nothing at all.”

Karen Chance American writer

Source: Embrace the Night

Women, Color, Thinking

“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

Time

“My whole life is about forgetting. It's my most valuable job skill.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Survivor

Source: Survivor

Life, Forgetting

“Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off. But it's better if you do.”

Patrick Marber Closer

Source: Closer

Girl, Lying, Clothes

“Do you remember the things you were worrying about a year ago? How did they work out? Didn't you waste a lot of fruitless energy on account of most of them? Didn't most of them turn out all right after all?”

Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American writer and lecturer

“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.”

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

Preface (dated June 1987) for 1988 reprint of Desert Solitaire
Desert Solitaire (1968)
Context: May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets' towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you — beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.

Mountain