Quotes about other
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“I am strong against everything, except against the death of those I love. He who dies gains; he who sees others die loses.”

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

Source: The Man in the Iron Mask

Love, Death, Strong

“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”

Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008) American political scientist

Source: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), Ch. 2 : Civilizations in History and Today, § 10 : Relations Among Civilizations, p. 51

World, Religion, Idea, Forgetting

“A stray fact: insects are not drawn to candle flames, they are drawn to the light on the far side of the flame, they go into the flame and sizzle to nothingness because they're so eager to get to the light on the other side.”

Michael Cunningham book By Nightfall

Source: By Nightfall

Light

“When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Starship Troopers

Source: Starship Troopers

Exercises

“Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use.”

Emily Post (1872–1960) American etiquette expert

Feeling

“Plus her mom was so awesome. She was strict about some things—don’t leave your socks lying around—but so not strict about other things, like calling the cops about my bullet wound.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

Lying, Moms

“A prophet is not someone with special visions, just someone blind to most of what others see”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“Individual human beings are all tools, that the others use to help us all survive.” “That’s a lie.” “No. It’s just a half truth. You can worry about the other half after we win this war.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

War, Truth, Lie, Help

“But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Pt. VIII, ch. 13
Source: Anna Karenina (1875–1877; 1878)
Context: Reason has discovered the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes. But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.

Love, Law

“You ask why I make my home in the mountain forest,
and I smile, and am silent,
and even my soul remains quiet:
it lives in the other world
which no one owns.
The peach trees blossom,
The water flows.”

Li Bai (701–762) Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty poetry period

World, Smile, Home, Soul

“There is no such thing as a weird human being. It's just that some people require more understanding than others.”

Tom Robbins book Another Roadside Attraction

Another Roadside Attraction (1971)

People, Understanding

“Courage, like so many other things, was not something one did or didn't have; it was a decision, a choice.”

Linda Lael Miller (1949) American writer

Source: The Creed Legacy

Courage, Decision

“How we love others is affected by how we love ourselves, and for the first time in a long time, I was whole.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus Revealed

Love, Time

“In his eyes I saw all the other possibilities. The dream-world possibilities. The fairytale possibilities. The seemingly impossible possibilities.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

World, Dreams, Fairytale

“Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Tales of a Wayside Inn

Pt. III, The Theologian's Tale: Elizabeth, sec. IV.
Source: Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863-1874)

Life, Silence, Distant, Night

“But there was one other thing that the grown-ups also knew, and it was this: that however small the chance might be of striking lucky, the chance is there. The chance had to be there.”

Roald Dahl book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Source: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Chance

“I was very strict on that point. No devouring classmates." Jeremy rolled his eyes. "Other parents warn their kids not to talk to strangers. I had to warn mine not to eat them.”

Kelley Armstrong book Stolen

Source: Stolen

Parent

“Die, very good, but do not make others die. Suicides like the one which is about to take place here are sublime, but suicide is restricted, and does not allow of extension; and so soon as it affects your neighbors, suicide becomes murder.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Suicide

“Cora didn't know what optimistic meant. She asked the other girls that night if they were familiar with the word. None of them had heard it before. She decided that it meant trying.”

Colson Whitehead book The Underground Railroad

Source: The Underground Railroad

Girl, Night

“Better to stay alive," I said. "At least while there's a chance to get free." I thought of the sleeping pills in my bag and wondered just how great a hypocrite I was. It was so easy to advise other people to live with their pain.”

Octavia E. Butler book Kindred

Source: Kindred

Pain, People, Sleep, Chance

“So that makes us robbers of robbers," said Bug, "who pretend to be robbers working for a robber of other robbers.”

Scott Lynch The Lies of Locke Lamora

Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora

“The behavior of a human being in sexual matters is often a prototype for the whole of his other modes of reaction in life.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Source: Sexuality and the Psychology of Love

Life, Behavior

“Thus I rediscovered what writers have always known (and have told us again and again): books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

Source: Postscript to the Name of the Rose

Books

“When you are able to maintain your own highest standards of integrity - regardless of what others may do - you are destined for greatness.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

Source: Napoleon Hill's Positive Action Plan: 365 Meditations For Making Each Day a Success

“I want to be in fifth grade again. Now, that is a deep dark secret, almost as big as the other one. Fifth grade was easy -- old enough to play outside without Mom, too young to go off the block. The perfect leash length.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Secret, Moms, Perfection

“The top two movies at the box office this weekend were 'High School Musical 3' and 'Saw V.'

One movie features gruesome onscreen torture that is difficult to watch and the other is about a guy with a saw.”

Conan O'Brien (1963) American television show host and comedian

School, Music, Guy, Box

“I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

This I Believe (1951)
Context: I believe in human beings, but my faith is without sentimentality. I know that in environments of uncertainty, fear, and hunger, the human being is dwarfed and shaped without his being aware of it, just as the plant struggling under a stone does not know its own condition. Only when the stone is removed can it spring up freely into the light. But the power to spring up is inherent, and only death puts an end to it. I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings.

Faith, Feeling, Faith

“Wars are often waged not because of what we believe, but because of the things we want others to believe.”

Neal Shusterman book Everfound

Source: Everfound

War

“He was swimming in a sea of other people’s expectations. Men had drowned in seas like that.”

Robert Jordan The Wheel of Time

Source: New Spring

Men, People, Sea

“I recommend limiting one's involvement in other people's lives to a pleasantly scant minimum.”

Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) writer, Actor

People

“But he stays by the window, remembering that life. They had laughed. They had leaned on each other and laughed until the tears had come, while everything else—the cold and where he'd go in it—was outside, for a while anyway.”

Raymond Carver (1938–1988) American short story author and poet

Source: Distance and other stories

Life, Tear

“We always live at the time we live and not at some other time, and only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same thing in the future.”

John Dewey book Experience and Education

Source: Experience and Education

Time, Future

“Strength grows from building other strength, not from trampling on weakness.”

Eric Flint (1947) American author

“His books were the closest thing he had to furniture and he lived in them the way other men live in easy chairs.”

Laura Hillenbrand book Seabiscuit: An American Legend

Source: Seabiscuit: An American Legend

Men, Books, Way

“in crowded rooms they would form words with their lips for each other's eyes”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

“Oh would some power the giftie gie us, To see ourselves as others see us.”

Robert Burns To a Louse

To a Louse, st. 8 (1786) http://www.poetry-online.org/burns_to_a_louse.htm Variant: O, wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us Source: The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Burns Context: O, wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us, An' foolish notion. What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us An' ev'n Devotion

“Even an obvious fabrication is some comfort when you have few others.”

Margaret Atwood book The Penelopiad

Source: The Penelopiad

“Shakespeare brings us to know ourselves. Dante, with his dissection of all others, bids us to know one another.”

Matthew Pearl book The Dante Club

Source: The Dante Club

“Other people have shrubbery in their gardens. You have a bottomless pit.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

People

“It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.”

Judith Martin (1938) American etiquette expert

Help

“I suppose like others
I have come through fire and sword,
love gone wrong,
head-on crashes, drunk at sea,
and I have listened to the simple sound of water running
in tubs
and wished to drown”

Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Love, Water, Sea

“We were like gods at the dawning of the world, & our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

God, World, Joy

“Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons.”

Jim Bishop (1907–1987) American journalist and author

Autumn, Season, Beauty

“Remember this: Nothing is written in the stars. Not these stars, nor any others. No one controls your destiny.”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Star

“*Only if you reject all the other paths can you discover your own path.”

U.G. Krishnamurti (1918–2007) Indian philosopher

Source: Mind Is a Myth

“Desire consumes you, it takes you over. You forget yourself completely. All you can think about is the other, the one you desire, your self is just a fire.”

Marilyn French (1929–2009) Novelist, critic

Source: Her Mother's Daughter

Thinking, Forgetting

“When they give you lined paper, write the other way.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Misattributed
Variant: If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.
Source: Epigraph, in Fahrenheit 451 a translation of a statement by Juan Ramón Jiménez

Way, Motivational, Back To Work

“Beneath all of her thoughts and worries, beneath the complication of conflicting identities and needs, maybe it's as simple as loving the way some other person looks when they're sleeping.”

Joe Meno The Great Perhaps

Source: The Great Perhaps

Love, Way, Sleep, Personality

“For each Joan of Arc there is a Hitler perched at the other end of the teeter-totter. The old story of good and evil.”

Charles Bukowski book Factotum

Source: Factotum (1975), Ch. 56
Context: The bus ran along a very narrow strip of cement that stood up out of the water with no guard-rail, no nothing; that's all there was to it. The bus driver leaned back and we roared along over this narrow cement strip surrounded by water and all the people in the bus, the twenty-five or forty or fifty-two people trusted him, but I never did. Sometimes it was a new driver, and I thought, how do they select these sons of bitches? There's deep water on both sides of us and with one error of judgement he'll kill us all. It was ridiculous. Suppose he had an argument with his wife that morning? Or cancer? Or visions of God? Bad teeth? Anything. He could do it. Dump us all. I knew that if I was driving that I would consider the possibility or desirability of drowning everybody. And sometimes, after just such considerations, possibility turns into reality. For each Joan of Arc there is a Hitler perched at the other end of the teeter-totter. The old story of good and evil. But none of the bus drivers ever dumped us. They were thinking instead of car payments, baseball scores, haircuts, vacations, enemas, family visits. There wasn't a real man in the whole shitload.

Evil

“A small but noteworthy note. I've seen so many young men over the years who think they're running at other young men. They are not. They are running at me.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Men, Thinking

“Let me see. What are my other shortcomings?”

Arthur Conan Doyle book A Study in Scarlet

Source: A Study in Scarlet

“Great minds have purpose, others have wishes. Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise above them.”

Washington Irving book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

"Philip of Pokanoket : An Indian Memoir".
A more extensive statement not found as such in this work is attributed to Irving in Elbert Hubbard's Scrap Book (1923) edited by Roycroft Shop:
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820)
Variant: Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above it.

“When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.
:This quote, often attributed to Jomo Kenyatta, was first written in a fiction play published by holocaust doubter Rolf Hochhuth, in his controversial The Deputy, a Christian tragedy (1964), Grove Press, p. 144. No reference to any historical or original source was given. Other citations are found in books written by critics of religion, such as Christos Tzanetakos's "The Life and Work of an Atheist Pioneer", iUniverse; and Jack Huberman's "Quotable Atheist: Ammunition for Nonbelievers, Political Junkies, Gadflies, and Those Generally Hell-Bound" (2008), 175. No references are given.
: In Desmond Tutu: A Biography (2004) by Steven Gish, p. 101; is clarified Tutu used it as a joke which was not of him.”

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

Misattributed

Life, Books, Religion, Quotes

“As I rolled over, stretching out, my only thought was to go back to the dream I'd been having, which I couldn't remember, other than that it had been good, in that distant, hopeful way unreal things can be.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Dreams, Hope, Way, Distant

“Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: How Proust Can Change Your Life

Dead

“The map had been the first form of misdirection, for what is a map but a way of emphasizing some things and making other things invisible?”

Jeff VanderMeer book Annihilation

Source: Annihilation

Way

“HARRY DRESDEN—WIZARD Lost Items Found. Paranormal Investigations. Consulting. Advice. Reasonable Rates. No Love Potions, Endless Purses, Parties, or Other Entertainment”

Jim Butcher book Storm Front

Source: Storm Front

Love

“Living creatively is really important to maintain throughout your life. And living creatively doesn't mean only artistic creativity, although that's part of it. It means being yourself, not just complying with the wishes of other people.”

Matt Groening (1954) American cartoonist

Life, People, Parting

“Oh, why did people have to be seperated before they understood how much they meant to each other?”

Linda Crew book Children of the River

Source: Children of the River

People

“Love was a feeling completely bound up with color, like thousands of rainbows superimposed one on top of the other.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Love, Color, Feeling

“Who does ever get what they want? It doesn’t seem to happen to many of us if any at all. It’s always two people bumping against each other blindly, acting out old ideas and dreams and mistaken understandings.”

Kent Haruf (1943–2014) Novelist

Source: Our Souls at Night

People, Dreams, Idea, Understanding

“God creates, I do not create. I assemble and I steal everywhere to do it – from what I see, from what the dancers can do, from what others do…”

George Balanchine (1904–1983) Georgian choreographer, dancer and ballet master (1904-1983)

God

“There will always be those who want to tell you who you are based on your name or the blood in your veins. Do not let other people decide who you are. Decide for yourself.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Tessa Gray, to Clary Fray, pg. 716
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)
Context: I feel a kinship with you, too, you who have lost both brother and father. I know you have been judged and spoken of as the daughter of Valentine Morgenstern, and now the sister of Jonathan. There will always be those who want to tell you who you are based on your name or the blood in your veins. Do not let people decide who you are. Decide for yourself. That freedom is not a gift; it is a birthright. I hope that you and Jace will use it.

People