Quotes about most
page 6

“Most people are on the world, not in it — have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them — undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

July 1890, page 320
John of the Mountains, 1938
Source: John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir

People, World

“Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that happen to a man.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

Trotzky's Diary in Exile — 1935 (1958)

Age

“The most ordinary word, when put into place, suddenly acquires brilliance. That is the brilliance with which your images must shine.”

Robert Bresson (1901–1999) French film director

“We are homesick most for the places we have never known.”

Carson McCullers (1917–1967) American writer

Missing You

“But she makes hungry
Where she most satisfies…”

William Shakespeare Antony and Cleopatra

Source: Antony and Cleopatra

“Most directors make films with their eyes; I make films with my testicles.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer

“The most important thing for everyone in Gringolandia is to have ambition and become 'somebody,' and frankly, I don't have the least ambition to become anybody.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

“Most Young Kings Get Their Heads Cut Off”

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988) American artist

“He was sunshine most always-I mean he made it seem like good weather.”

Mark Twain book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Weather

“Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs.”

Christopher Morley (1890–1957) American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet

Sense

“Amy's basically exploiting the sociopath's most reliable maxim. The bigger the lie, the more they believe it.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

Lie

“God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him”

John Piper (1946) American writer

Variant: He is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.
Source: Don't Waste Your Life

God

“There is no doubt that the princess did become a queen---not only on the screen. One of the most loved, one of the most skillful, one of the most intelligent, one of the most sensitive, charming actresses---and friends, in my life---but also in the later stages of her life, the UNICEF ambassador to the children of the world. The generosity, sensitivity, the nobility of her service to the children of the world and the mothers of the world will never be forgotten.”

Gregory Peck (1916–2003) American actor

Love, Life, Children, World

“The number one reason most people don't get what they want is that they don't know what they want.”

T. Harv Eker (1954) American writer

Source: Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth

People

“One thing we do know: Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Variant: Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.
Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Life, Help

“The kind of beauty I want most is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within - strength, courage, dignity.”

Ruby Dee (1922–2014) American actress

For women, Hope, Positive, Beauty

“I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Pleasure, Learning, Reading

“Most horses don't walk backwards voluntarily, because what they can't see doesn't exist.”

Terry Pratchett book Soul Music

Source: Soul Music

Horse

“What is the thing you want most from me? What can I do to make you love me?'

Be yourself,' said Ipek.”

Orhan Pamuk book Snow

Source: Snow

Love

“Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.”

William Shakespeare As You Like It

Source: As You Like It

Love, Friendship, Wise

“Well, what we know
Is not what they tell us
We're not ignorant, I mean it,
And they just cannot touch us
Through the powers of the Most-High
We keep on surfacin'
Thru the powers of the Most-High
We keep on survivin'.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

“Is he all scarred now?”

“Magic gets rid of most physical scars, but I like to think I scarred him emotionally.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Playing with Fire

Thinking

“The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“To tell a woman who is forty, "You look like sixteen," is boloney. The blarney way of saying it is "Tell me how old you are, I should like to know at what age women are the most beautiful.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Women, Age, Beauty, Way

“You can pretend for a long time, but one day it all falls away and you are alone. We are alone in the most beautiful place in the world…”

Jean Rhys book Wide Sargasso Sea

Source: Wide Sargasso Sea

World, Beauty, Time

“She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Women, Secret, Beauty

“so that the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts seemed consolingly to repeat over and over again…”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

Source: To the Lighthouse

Tattoo, Parting

“Life, woman, life is God's most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it.”

Arthur Miller The Crucible

John Hale
Source: The Crucible (1953)
Context: It is mistaken law that leads you to sacrifice. Life, woman, life is God's most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it. I beg you, woman, prevail upon your husband to confess. Let him give his lie. Quail not before God's judgment in this, for it may well be God damns a liar less than he that throws his life away for pride.

Life, God

“Do the thing you fear the most and the death of fear is certain.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Courageous, Death, Fear

“And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity.”

Stephen King book Pet Sematary

Source: Pet Sematary (1983)
Context: It's probably wrong to believe there can be any limit to the horror which the human mind can experience. On the contrary, it seems that some exponential effect begins to obtain as deeper and deeper darkness falls - as little as one may like to support the idea that when the nightmare grows black enough, horror spawns horror, one coincidental evil begets other, often more deliberate evils, until finally blackness seems to cover everything. And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity. That such events have their own Rube Goldberg absurdity goes almost without saying. At some point, it all starts to become rather funny. That may be the point at which sanity begins either to save itself or to buckle and break down; that point at which one's sense of humor begins to reassert itself.

Question

“The most loving parents and relatives commit murder with smiles on their faces. They force us to destroy the person we really are: a subtle kind of murder.”

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

For Parents, Love, Smile, Parent

“The most efficient way of rendering the poor harmless is to teach them to want to imitate the rich.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Way

“Watch out for each other. Love everyone and forgive everyone, including yourself. Forgive your anger. Forgive your guilt. Your shame. Your sadness. Embrace and open up your love, your joy, your truth, and most especially your heart.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

Love, Truth, Sadness, Forgiveness

“Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Nature

“Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.”

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic

Cited in: Paul Bowden, Telling It Like It Is https://books.google.nl/books?id=w8_p1eGVj8gC&pg=PA182&lpg=PA182&dq=%22Art+attracts+us+only+by+what+it+reveals+of+our+most+secret+self%22+%22jean+luc+godard%22&source=bl&ots=2zIpIhvB_1&sig=uImQSWu8ATehPk0hAhfck-ZowJc&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjwydLuqp_LAhVhDJoKHdrjACcQ6AEIUjAG#v=onepage&q=%22Art%20attracts%20us%20only%20by%20what%20it%20reveals%20of%20our%20most%20secret%20self%22%20%22jean%20luc%20godard%22&f=false, 2011, p. 182 Source: "What Is Cinema?" Les Amis du Cinéma (Paris, October 1, 1952).

Secret, Art

“Through their kisses and caresses they experienced a joy and wonder the equal of which has never been known or heard of. But I shall be silent…; for the rarest and most delectable pleasures are those which are hinted at, but never told.”

Chrétien de Troyes French poet and trouvère

Pleasure, Kiss, Joy

“Like most uneducated Englishwomen, I like reading--I like reading books in the bulk.”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own

Books, Reading

“Most of the dandelions had changed from suns into moons.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

Change, Sun

“To be mature you have to realize what you value most… Not to arrive at a clear understanding of one's own values is a tragic waste. You have missed the whole point of what life is for.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Source: You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

Life, Understanding

“… of all the kinds of decay in this world, decadent purity is the most malignant.”

Yukio Mishima book Confessions of a Mask

Source: Confessions of a Mask

World

“What I really wanted was every kind of life, and the writer’s life seemed the most inclusive.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Life

“Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light. Tragedy is the most ridiculous thing.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

Laughter, Light

“Of all the wonders that I have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
(Act II, Scene 2)”

William Shakespeare Julius Caesar

Source: Julius Caesar

Death, Men, Fear

“Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.”

V.S. Naipaul (1932–2018) Trinidadian-British writer of Indo-Nepalese ancestry

People, World

“Laughter rises out of tragedy when you need it the most, and rewards you for your courage.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

Courage, Laughter

“Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Address Delivered in Candidacy for the State Legislature (9 March 1832)
1830s
Context: Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in. That every man may receive at least a moderate education, and thereby be enabled to read the histories of his own and other countries, by which he may duly appreciate the value of our free institutions, appears to be an object of vital importance, even on this account alone, to say nothing of the advantages and satisfaction to be derived from all being able to read the Scriptures, and other works both of a religious and moral nature, for themselves.

People, Education

“Those whom we love are often the most alien to us.”

Christopher Paolini book Eldest

Oromis
Source: Eldest (2005)

Love

“A child needs your love most when he deserves it least”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

Love

“The most important thing is not to think very much about oneself. To investigate candidly the charge; but not fussily, not very anxiously. On no account to retaliate by going to the other extreme -- thinking too much.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Source: A Writer's Diary

Thinking

“During our recent Human Rights Defenders Forum at The Carter Center, it was reported that between two hundred and three hundred children are sold in Atlanta alone each month! Our city is considered to be one of the preeminent human trafficking centers in the United States, perhaps because we have the busiest airport in the world and because, until recently, the penalty for someone convicted of selling another human being was only a $50 fine. A much heavier penalty of up to twenty years’ imprisonment can be imposed by the federal government, but only if there is proof that the trafficking took place across state lines. An analysis by Atlanta social workers found that 42 percent of the sexual exchanges they investigated were in brothels and hotel rooms in the most affluent areas of the city, while only 9 percent were in the poorer neighborhoods in the vicinity of the airport. Like Kara, they too conclude that the primary culprits are the men who buy sexual favors and the male pimps and brothel owners who control the women and garner most of the financial gains.”

Jimmy Carter book A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power

Source: A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power

Women, Men, Children, World

“My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. My pleasures are the most intense known to man: writing and butterfly hunting.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Strong Opinions

"Foreword", p. 3.
Source: Strong Opinions (1973)

Pleasure, Stupidity, Music

“But it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, which, by often rumination, wraps me in the most humorous sadness.”

William Shakespeare As You Like It

Source: As You Like It

Sadness, Travel

“Democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Democracy

“Conversations consist for the most part of things one does not say.”

Cees Nooteboom (1933) Dutch writer

Parting

“The world’s most sensible person and the biggest idiot both stay within you. The worst part is you can’t even tell who is who.”

Chetan Bhagat book 2 States: The Story of My Marriage

Variant: The world's most sensible person and the biggest idiot both stay within us. The worst part is, you can't even tell who is who.
Source: 2 States: The Story of My Marriage

World, Parting, Personality

“Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Men

“The highest, most decisive experience is to be alone with one's own self. You must be alone to find out what supports you, when you find that you can not support yourself. Only this experience can give you an indestructible foundation.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Support, Decision

“We all love best not those who offend us least, nor those who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Love, Forgiveness

“The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell together, as quickly as possible.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Hell

“…she was struck by the simple truth that sometimes the most ordinary things could be made extraordinary, simply by doing them with the right people.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Lucky One

Elizabeth Green, Chapter 15, Beth, p. 274
Variant: Sometimes the most ordinary things could be made extraordinary, simply by doin them with the right people.(Elizabeth Green)
Source: 2000s, The Lucky One (2008)

People, Truth

“But let me tell you this: sometimes at night, when I look up at the stars, an see the whole sky jus laid out there, don't you think I ain't rememberin it all. I still got dreams like anybody else, an ever so often, I am thinkin about how things might of been. An then, all of a sudden, I'm forty, fifty, sixty years ole, you know?
Well, so what? I may be a idiot, but most of the time, anyway, I tried to do the right thing-- an dreams is jus dreams, ain't they? So whatever else has happened, I am figgerin this: I can always look back an say, at least I ain't led no hum-drum life.
You know what I mean?”

Winston Groom Forrest Gump

Source: Forrest Gump

Life, Dreams, Star, Thinking

“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

People

“And to me also, who appreciate life, the butterflies, and soap-bubbles, and whatever is like them amongst us, seem most to enjoy happiness.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Life, Happiness

“The moral nihilism of celebrity culture is played out on reality television shows, most of which encourage a dark voyeurism into other people's humiliation, pain, weakness, and betrayal.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

Source: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle

Pain, People, Reality, Betrayal

“You are your own teacher. Looking for teachers can’t solve your own doubts. Investigate yourself to find the truth - inside, not outside. Knowing yourself is most important.”

Ajahn Chah (1918–1992) thai Buddhist monk

Truth, Teachers

“To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.”

Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) French writer and philosopher

A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books
Fragments of a Poetics of Fire (1988)

Beauty, Feeling, Reading

“Alone. Yes, that's the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym.”

Stephen King book 'Salem's Lot

Variant: Alone. Yes, that’s the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn’t hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym…
Source: 'Salem's Lot

Hell

“Love, the simplest, strongest, and most unforgiving of all emotions.”

Stephen King book Needful Things

Source: Needful Things

Love

“Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

“Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Soul, Fashion, Water

“She was at that modulating point between indifference and love, at the stage called having a fancy for. It occurs once in the history of the most gigantic passions, and it is a period when they are in the hands of the weakest will.”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

Source: The Return of the Native

Love, History, Passion, Indifference

“Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

Love, Money

“There are no classes in life for beginners: right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Life

“Find out what a person fears most and that is where he will develop next.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Fear, Personality

“The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Way

“Most of the people are homesick anyway, and a little lonely, and they hide themselves in their hair and are turned into flowers.”

Tove Jansson (1914–2001) Finnish children's writer and illustrator

Source: Sculptor's Daughter

People, Flowers

“The people on the edge of Hell were most afraid of the devil; for those already in hell the devil was only another and no one in particular.”

Joanne Greenberg book I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

Source: I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

People, Hell

“~ I've made the most important discovery of my life. It's only in the mysterious equation of love that any logical reasons can be found. I'm only here tonight because of you. You're the only reason I am… you're all my reasons.~”

John Nash (1928–2015) American mathematician and Nobel Prize laureate

Love, Life

“the IQ of a mob is the IQ of its most stupid member divided by the number of mobsters”

Terry Pratchett book Maskerade

Source: Maskerade

Stupidity

“Most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally evil, but by people being fundamentally people.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

People, History, Evil

“I've had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Variant: I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.

Life

“Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are economical in its use.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Said to portrait painter Samuel Johnson Woolf, cited in Here am I (1941), Samuel Johnson Woolf; this has often been abbreviated: Most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.
Context: A critic never made or killed a book or a play. The people themselves are the final judges. It is their opinion that counts. After all, the final test is truth. But the trouble is that most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession and therefore are most economical in its use.

Truth

“The most dangerous kind of person… is one who is afraid of his own shadow.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly

Personality

“A good liar knows that the most efficient lie is always a truth that has had a key piece removed from it.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Prisoner of Heaven

Source: The Prisoner of Heaven

Truth, Lie

“We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness. The deer strives with his supple legs, the cowman with trap and poison, the statesman with pen, the most of us with machines, votes, and dollars, but it all comes to the same thing: peace in our time. A measure of success in this is all well enough, and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking, but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run. Perhaps this is behind Thoreau’s dictum: In wildness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain”, p. 133. This is a paraphrase of Thoreau: see explanation by the Walden Woods project http://www.walden.org/Library/Quotations/The_Henry_D._Thoreau_Mis-Quotation_Page). Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Arizona and New Mexico: On Top," & "Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain"

Life, Men, World, Peace