Quotes about most
page 37

“Another werewolf thing. Like most animals, we spent a large part of our lives engaged in the three Fs of basic survival. Feeding, fighting and… reproduction.”

Kelley Armstrong book Stolen

Source: Stolen

Animals, Fight, Parting

“The most worthless of mankind are not afraid to condemn in others the same disorders which they allow in themselves; and can readily discover some nice difference in age, character, or station, to justify the partial distinction.”

Edward Gibbon The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Source: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Age

“I'm old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

Source: Nonrequired Reading

Books, Fashion, Thinking, Reading

“Yep," said Arthur. Somehowseemed the most positive thing he could say. Stronger thanand more heroic than. He hoped he could live up to it.”

Garth Nix book Drowned Wednesday

Source: Drowned Wednesday

Hope

“Most men lead lives of quiet aspiration.”

Robert Sheckley book Can You Feel Anything When I Do This?

Can You Feel Anything When I Do This?

Men

“The most stable elements, Clarice, appear in the middle of the periodic table, roughly between iron and silver.

Between iron and silver. I think that is appropriate for you.”

Thomas Harris book Hannibal

Source: Hannibal

Thinking, Appearance

“She thought of something her mother had told her when she'd finally broken up with one of her most dysfunctional boyfriends.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Source: Valiant

“People are the most difficult thing in the world to change”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Oh My Goth

People, World, Change

“It requires uncommon steadiness of reason to resist the attraction of being called the most charming girl in the world.”

Jane Austen book Northanger Abbey

Source: Northanger Abbey

World, Girl

“I suppose the things that you always take for granted, that you don't even notice, are what you miss the most.”

Sarra Manning (1950) British writer

Source: You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“Oh continue to love me -
never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.

ever thine
ever mine
ever ours”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

Love, Faith, Heart

“My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.”

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

Attributed

Life

“Then, as his planet killed him, it occurred to Kynes that his father and all the other scientists were wrong, that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

Error, Universe

“We'd forgive most things if we knew the facts.”

Graham Greene book The Heart of the Matter

Source: The Heart of the Matter

Forgiveness

“I know how people are, with their habits of mind. Most will sail through from cradle to grave with a conscience clean as snow… I know people. Most have no earthly notion of the price of a snow-white conscience.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

People

“What did that stupid deserting crap-bag ex-boyfriend, ex-best friend with the most perfect stupid hair do? He DIDN'T delete his crap off the desktop before he fled my life and left me all alone. That's what he did.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Fang

Life, Stupidity, Perfection

“While I respect suicidal tendencies on most days, you’d do well to remember who you’re addressing and, more to the point, what I can do to you. No one says you have to go back to Tartarus in one piece. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dream Chaser

Suicide

“Friends see most of each other’s flaws. Spouses see every awful last bit.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

“Summer afternoon — summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

Quoted by Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance (1934), ch. 10.

Beauty, Summer, Wise

“Right time, right place, right people equals success.
Wrong time, wrong place, wrong people equals most of the real human history.”

Idries Shah book Reflections

Source: Reflections

People, History, Time, Success

“I can't even hear what I'm thinking most of the time. My brain's noisy.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Tiger Lily

Thinking, Time

“The first time I called myself a 'Witch' was the most magical moment of my life.”

Margot Adler (1946–2014) author, Neopagan, and National Public Radio reporter

Source: Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America

Life, Time

“It is a cliché that most clichés are true, but then like most clichés, that cliché is untrue.”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)
Variant: It is a cliché that most clichés are true, but then like most clichés, that cliché is untrue.

“Parents always make their worst mistakes with their oldest children. That's when parents know the least and care the most, so they're more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they're right.”

Orson Scott Card book Xenocide

Source: Xenocide

Children, Parent

“The world's most funniest and easiest thing is to give an advice…”

Chetan Bhagat (1974) Indian author, born 1974

World

“That's why I want you there, he said. You're unpredictable, and that can be the difference between success and failure. Most people make decisions in anger, fear, love, or obligation. You make decisions to irritate people.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: For a Few Demons More

Love, People, Fear, Failure

“Remember that it is not the lawyer who knows the most law, but the one who best prepares his case, who wins.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

Source: Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller - Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century

Law

“Change is painful. Few people have the courage to seek out change. Most people won’t change until the pain of where they are exceeds the pain of change.”

Dave Ramsey (1960) American financial advisor

Source: The Total Money Makeover: Classic Edition: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness

Pain, People, Courage, Change

“Most fathers don't threaten to disembowel their daughter's boyfriends."

"That's not true. And anyway, that's not what I actually said. It was much worse.”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

Daughters

“In everyone there sleeps
A sense of life lived according to love.
To some it means the difference they could make
By loving others, but across most it sweeps,
As all they might have done had they been loved.
That nothing cures.”

Philip Larkin (1922–1985) English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian

Love, Life, Sense, Sleep

“You will lose what you value most, so treasure it while you can.”

Richelle Mead Shadow Kiss

Source: Shadow Kiss

“How are you?"
"Perfectly fine," he said.
"Are your ribs broken?"
"Probably not. Cracked at most. We fought very carefully."
"Did this settle anything?"
"It made me feel better," he said, sitting up. "Did you see me kick him in the kidneys?"
"I saw.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: On the Edge

Feeling

“They're afraid of change, and we must change. They're afraid of the young, and we are the young. They're afraid of music, and music is our life. They're afraid of books, and knowledge, and ideas. They're most afraid of our magic.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Witch & Wizard

Life, Books, Music, Idea

“The most delicious sensation of all is the re-birth of healthy human love. Spring coming back to Earth!”

Aleister Crowley book Diary of a Drug Fiend

Source: Diary of a Drug Fiend

Love, Spring, Birth

“Most people confuse their life situation with their actual life, which is an underlying flow beneath the everyday events.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Source: Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

Life, People

“Nakata's empty inside… Do you know what it means to be completely empty? Being empty is like a vacant house. An unlocked, vacant house. Anybody can come in, anytime they want. That's what scares me the most”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Housing

“Doctors most commonly get mixed up between absence of evidence and evidence of abense”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

“The underlying point held; experience as well as common sense indicated that the most reliable method of avoiding self-extinction was not to equip oneself with the means to accomplish it in the first place.”

Iain Banks book Consider Phlebas

Source: Culture series, Consider Phlebas (1987), Chapter 4 “Temple of Light” (p. 96).

Sense

“That is — your friend?"
"Philtatos," Achilles replied, sharply. Most beloved.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

“I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one, that is, who really wants to listen. When it does at last dawn on a man that you really want to hear about his business, the look that comes over his face is something to see.”

Walker Percy book The Moviegoer

Source: The Moviegoer (1961)

People, Business

“and I try
to draw the line
but it ends up running down the middle of me
most of the time.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Source: Ani DiFranco: Verses

Time, Drawing

“The human mind is often, and I think it is for the most part, in a state neither of pain nor pleasure, which I call a state of indifference.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Source: A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

Pain, Pleasure, Thinking, Parting

“There are beautiful sounds in rock. Very lazy, dreamlike noises. You can forget about the lyrics in most songs. Just dig the noise, and you've got your sound… We're musical primitives.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Beauty, Music, Forgetting

“You can’t buy time, Nick. Ever. It’s the only thing in life you can’t get most of, and it’s the one thing that will mercilessly tear you up when it’s gone. It takes no pity on no soul and no heart.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Invincible

Life, Soul, Tear, Time

“The most amazing fact about Jesus, unlike almost any other religious founder, is that he found God in disorder and imperfection—and told us that we must do the same or we would never be content on this earth.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Source: The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See

God

“Christ is sufficient. We do not need "support groups" for each and every separate tribulation. The most widely divergent sorrows may all be taken to the foot of the same old rugged cross and find there cleansing, peace, and joy.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: These Strange Ashes

Peace, Support, Joy, Christ

“I think of myself as an intelligent, sensitive human being with the soul of a clown which always forces me to blow it at the most important moments.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Soul, Intelligence, Thinking

“Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a “standing in,” not a “falling for.” In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving.”

Erich Fromm book The Art of Loving

Source: The Art of Loving

Love, Way

“Even on the most solemn occasions I got away without wearing socks and hid that lack of civilisation in high boots.”

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

Albert Einstein in a letter to his cousin and second wife Elsa, during a visit to the University of Oxford, in collection donated to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel by Einstein's stepdaughter Margot, as quoted in "Einstein in no-sock shock" http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn9555&feedId=online-news_rss20, New Scientist (15 July 2006) <br class="br">Attributed in posthumous publications

“I never said most of the things I said.”

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

“It is the oldest ironies that are still the most satisfying: man, when preparing for bloody war, will orate loudly and most eloquently in the name of peace.”

Alan Moore book Watchmen

Source: Watchmen

War, Peace

“One must commit acts of the highest treason only when dressed in the most resplendent finery.”

Grant Morrison Sebastian O

Source: Sebastian O

“You know, when most girls say they want a big rock, they don't mean, you know, literally a big rock."
"Very amusing, my sarcastic friend. It's not a rock, precisely. All Shadowhunters have a witchlight rune-stone.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Girl

“The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Source: The World as Will and Representation, Vol 1

Life

“It must be, I thought, one of the race's most persistent and comforting hallucinations to trust that "it can't happen here" -- that one's own time and place is beyond cataclysm.”

John Wyndham book The Day of the Triffids

Source: The Day of the Triffids

Time

“I took the other road, all right, but only because it was the easy road for me, the way I wanted to go. If I've encountered some unnecessary resistance that's because most of the traffic is going the other way.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Source: Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

Way

“Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.”

Amy Tan book The Bonesetter's Daughter

Source: The Bonesetter's Daughter

Thinking

“Most of Set’s forces were running towards our boat, screaming and throwing rocks (which tended to fall down and hit them, but no one says demons are bright).”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

“The woman is the most perfect doll that i have dressed with delight and admiration.”

Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer

Perfection

“It is what you don't expect… that most needs looking for.”

Neal Stephenson book Anathem

Source: Anathem

“Among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

“Women? Women are like… thunderstorms. They're beautiful to look at, and sometimes they're nice to listen to-but most of the time they're just plain inconvenient.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Final Empire

Women, Beauty, Time

“My most important problem was destroying the lines of demarcation that separate what seems real from what seems fantastic.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Problem

“To forgive is the highest, most beautiful form of love. In return, you will receive untold peace and happiness”

Robert Muller (1923–2010) Civil servant with the United Nations

Love, Happiness, Peace, Beauty

“The oldest, shortest words— "yes" and "no"— are those which require the most thought.”

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

As quoted in Numerology for Relationships: A Guide to Birth Numbers (2006) by Vera Kaikobad, p. 78

Powerful

“… I love 'yes.' It's practically the most interesting word of all, don't you think?" Like a hinge opening a door outward. Yes, yes, yes.”

Hanif Kureishi (1954) English playwright, screenwriter, novelist

Source: The Black Album

Love, Thinking

“I had weird dreams full of barnyard animals. Most of them wanted to kill me. The rest wanted food.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

Food, Dreams, Animals

“There is so much pain in the world, and most of these people keep theirs secret, rolling through agonizing lives in invisible wheelchairs, dressed in invisible bodycasts.”

Andrew Solomon book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Source: The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Pain, People, Secret, World

“Most guys will fight to know you. Some guys will deny you're a real person, and some will just ignore you."
The zealot. The atheist. The agnostic.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Guy, Fight, Personality

“Whatever power I have is nothing if I can't use it to keep safe those who mean the most to me.”

Frank Beddor Seeing Redd

Source: Seeing Redd

“The two things I enjoy the most about writing are the first page of a book and the last. What's in between is very hard work.”

Rachel Gibson (1961) American writer

Books

“Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Also misattributed to John Steinbeck.
Source: The Works of John Ruskin: The stones of Venice, v. 1-3

World, Beauty

“Death cures all ills. Well, most of them.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Narcissus in Chains

Source: Narcissus in Chains

Death

“The metaphor is probably the most fertile power possessed by man”

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

“He nodded. "And if I don't make you feel like the most beautiful woman in the world every day of your life, then I don't deserve to be near you.”

Shannon Hale book Austenland

Source: Austenland

Life, World, Beauty, Feeling

“You know most people live ninety per cent in the past, seven per cent in the present, and that only leaves them three per cent for the future.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent

People, Past, Future

“Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Source: A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

Women, Men, Thinking

“Most women complain that there are no single, straight men left. I’d just like to meet one who’s human.”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

Women, Men

“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

“Critical and radical thought will only bear fruit when it is blended with the most precious quality man is endowed with - the love of life”

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

Source: The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness

Love, Life

“And mortal terror in a female was Z's favorite turn-on. He got off on it like most males favored crap from Victoria's Secret.”

Jessica Bird book Dark Lover

Source: Dark Lover

Secret

“Most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower.”

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

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

Life, Decision

“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

World, Way

“I get it. The things you hope for the most are the things that destroy you in the end.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Hope

“The most basic way to get someone's attention is this: Break a pattern.”

Chip Heath (1963) American writer

Source: Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

Way

“A person’s life story is equal to what they have plus what they want most in the world, minus what they’re actually willing to sacrifice for it.”

Craig Clevenger The Contortionist's Handbook

Source: The Contortionist's Handbook

Life, World, Personality

“Hatred is a most pernicious thing, finding root in any kind of soil. It feeds on itself.”

Steven Erikson book House of Chains

House of Chains (2002)
Context: "There's little value in seeking to find reasons for why people do what they do, or feel the way they feel. Hatred is a most pernicious thing, finding root in any kind of soil. It feeds on itself."
"With words."

“Vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Courage, Courageous

“The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don't know.”

Barbara Kingsolver book The Lacuna

Source: The Lacuna

Personality

“Remember that the most beautiful things in life are often the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.”

John Ruskin book The Stones of Venice

Volume I, chapter II, section 17.
The Stones of Venice (1853)
Variant: Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless.
Context: You were made for enjoyment, and the world was filled with things which you will enjoy, unless you are too proud to be pleased with them, or too grasping to care for what you cannot turn to other account than mere delight. Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless: peacocks and lilies, for instance.

Life, Beauty