Quotes about person
page 18

“That's the thing with handmade items. They still have the person's mark on them, and when you hold them, you feel less alone.”

Aimee Bender (1969) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Color Master: Stories

Feeling, Personality

“A flower may be beautiful all on its own, but a person is never truly beautiful unless someone's eyes show him that he is beautiful.”

Laurell K. Hamilton A Stroke of Midnight

Ivi; p. 147
Source: Merry Gentry series, A Stroke of Midnight (2005)

Beauty, Flowers, Personality

“Most people who decide to grow personally find their first mentors in the pages of books.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Source: The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth: Live Them and Reach Your Potential

People, Books, Personality

“Personally, I believe “Young Adult” to be an arbitrary title that means the book "Can be enjoyed by anyone/Has a main character who’s not quite an adult/Isn’t really boring.”

Shannon Hale (1974) American fantasy novelist

Books, Personality

“Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?”

Cornelia Funke (1958) author

Reading, Personality

“You always know the mark of a coward. A coward hides behind freedom. A brave person stands in front of freedom and defends it for others.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Talk is Cheap Volume 1 (1998)
Source: Talk is Cheap: Volume 1

Courageous, Freedom, Personality

“Not only are selves conditional but they die. Each day, we wake slightly altered, and the person we were yesterday is dead. So why, one could say, be afraid of death, when death comes all the time?”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Source: Self-Consciousness

Death, Time, Personality, Dead

“There isn’t a person in this city more dangerous than a wolf whose mate is in danger.”

Patricia Briggs book Fair Game

Source: Fair Game

Wolf, Personality

“My insides don't match up with my outsides. -Do anyone's inside and outsides match up? -I don't know. I'm only me. -Maybe that's what a person's personality is: the difference between the inside and the outside.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Oskar during a visit to his therapist, Dr. Fein
"Happiness, Happiness" (p. 201)
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)
Context: "I feel too much. That's what's going on." "Do you think one can feel too much? Or just feel the wrong ways? "My insides don't match up with my outsides." "Do anyone's inside and outsides match up?" "I don't know. I'm only me." "Maybe that's what a person's personality is: the difference between the inside and the outside." "But it's worse for me." "I wonder if everyone thinks it's worse for him." "Probably. But it really is worse for me."

Personality

“The only person who gets away with Locke Lamora games—” “—is Locke Lamora—”

Scott Lynch The Lies of Locke Lamora

Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora

Game, Personality

“Because we managed to keep our heart open, despite the pain.
Because we realized that the person who left us did not take the sun with them or leave darkness in their place.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

Pain, Sun, Heart, Personality

“You can tell a lot from a person's nails. When a life starts to unravel, they're among the first to go.”

Ian McEwan Saturday

Source: Saturday

Life, Personality

“Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back. You're done. It doesn't necessarily mean that you want to have lunch with the person. If you keep hitting back, you stay trapped in the nightmare…”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

Forgiveness, Personality

“A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Thinking, Personality

“The most important question a person can ask is, "Is the Universe a friendly place?”

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

Question, Universe, Personality

“The most pathetic person in the world is some one who has sight but no vision.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

World, Personality

“What is more tragic than to see a person who has risen to the disciplined heights of tough-mindedness but has at the same time sunk to the passionless depths of hard-heartedness?”

Martin Luther King, Jr. book Strength to Love

Source: Strength to Love

Time, Personality

“How wonderful it is to be able to write someone a letter! To feel like conveying your thoughts to a person, to sit at your desk and pick up a pen, to put your thoughts into words like this is truly marvelous.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Feeling, Personality

“You can't just switch off your feelings because the other person did.”

Sophie Kinsella book Twenties Girl

Source: Twenties Girl

Feeling, Personality

“From this new and intimate perspective, she learned a simple, obvious thing she had always known, and everyone knew; that a person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn, not easily mended.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Learning, Personality

“A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body— the wishbone.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Life, Parting, Personality

“The ordinary man looking at a mountain is like an illiterate person confronted with a Greek manuscript.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography

Mountain, Personality

“There are a lot of things a person with two hands couldn't steal," Eddis said.
"So?"
"If it's impossible to steal them with two hands, it's no more impossible to steal them with one. Steal peace, Eugenides. Steal me some time.”

Megan Whalen Turner The Queen of Attolia

Source: The Queen of Attolia

Peace, Time, Personality

“There’s a big difference between death threats and love letters–even if the person writing the death threats still claims to actually love you. Of course, considering I once tried to kill someone I loved, maybe I had no right to judge.”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

Love, Death, Personality

“Love should bring joy, it should grant a person peace, but here and not, it was bringing only pain.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Love, Pain, Peace, Joy

“Just because a person is beautiful doesn't mean there's no soul beneath. Doesn't mean that person hasn't suffered like everyone else, doesn't mean they don't hope to still be a good human being in an awful world.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

World, Beauty, Hope, Soul

“We humans have always sought to increase our personal energy in the only manner we have known, by seeking to psychologically steal it from the others--an unconscious competition that underlies all human conflict in the world.”

James Redfield book The Celestine Prophecy

Source: The Celestine Prophecy

World, Personality

“Was life always like that? she wondered. A game of hide and seek in which you only occasionally found the person you wanted to be?”

Maud Hart Lovelace book Betsy and the Great World

Source: Betsy and the Great World

Life, Game, Personality

“Obviously this person's a hazard. Stupid people are dangerous.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Variant: Stupid people are dangerous.
Source: The Hunger Games

People, Stupidity, Personality

“This is a cardinal Ya-Ya rule: you must meet each person's eyes while clinking glasses in a toast. Otherwise, the ritual has no meaning, it's just pure show. And that is something the Ya-Yas are not.”

Rebecca Wells book Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Source: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Personality

“Because when something happens, she's the person I want to tell. The most basic indicator of love.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Love, Personality

“You want to be a better person? Go listen to someone you disagree with. don't argue with them just. It's remarkable what interesting things people will say if you take the time to not be a jerk.”

Brandon Sanderson book Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia

Source: Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia

People, Jerk, Time, Personality

“An intelligent person fights for lost causes, realizing that others are merely effects”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Intelligence, Fight, Personality

“Social scientists sometimes talk about the concept of "identity". It is the idea that you have a particular vision of the kind of person you are, and you feel awful when you do things that are out of line with that vision.”

Steven D. Levitt (1967) American economist

Source: Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Feeling, Idea, Personality

“A human being can be good or bad or right or wrong, maybe. But how can you say a person is illegal? You just can't. That's all there is to it.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Bean Trees

Source: The Bean Trees

Personality

“Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.”

Alan Lightman book Einstein's Dreams

Source: Einstein's Dreams

Time, Personality

“She supposed that all those years of loving a person who was dishonest had taught her a few things.”

Jhumpa Lahiri book Unaccustomed Earth

Source: Unaccustomed Earth

Love, Personality

“He had withdrawn solely for his own personal pleasure, only to be near to himself. No longer distracted by anything external, he basked in his own existence and found it splendid.”

Patrick Süskind (1949) German writer and screenwriter

Source: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Pleasure, Personality

“That was when we smelled the rain. It was so strong it seemed like more than just a smell. When we stretched out our hands we could practically feel it rising up from the ground. I don’t know how a person could ever describe that scent.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Bean Trees

Source: The Bean Trees

Feeling, Strong, Personality

“Everybody has a vocation to some form of life-work. However, behind that call (and deeper than any call), everybody has a vocation to be a person to be fully and deeply human in Christ Jesus.”

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

Source: The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives

Life, Christ, Personality

“And while it is hard enough to take away something that makes a person happy it's even more difficult when it seems like it's the only thing.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

Personality, Happiness

“When what you want is a relationship, and not a person, get a dog.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Secret Life of Prince Charming

Dogs, Personality

“It's often said that a traumatic experience early in life marks a person forever, pulls her out of line, saying, "Stay there. Don't move.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

Life, Personality

“In the end, the only person I truly want to comfort me is Haymitch, because he loves Peeta, too.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Love, Personality

“Every war has turning points and every person too.”

Meg Rosoff book How I Live Now

Source: How I Live Now

War, Personality

“I'm not a person who thinks they can have it all, but I certainly feel that with a bit of effort and guile I should be able to have more than my fair share.”

George Carlin When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?

Source: When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?

Feeling, Thinking, Effort, Personality

“When you're different, sometimes you don't see the millions of people who accept you for what you are. All you notice is the person who doesn't.”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

People, Personality

“Suicide, is a persons privilege. I don't believe it's a sin or a crime it's your right if you do. Though it doesn't get you anywhere.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Suicide, Personality

“You're still in love'
'No I'm not, I'm not She'll always be a part of me, and she's an important person in my life but for the two of us something wasn't working.'
'What element?'
'We never found out”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Love, Life, Parting, Personality

“Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person's face as you pass them on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Personality

“What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.”

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

Draft of a German reply to a letter sent to him in 1954 or 1955, p. 39
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)
Context: I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of "humility." This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.

Feeling, Nature, Thinking, Personality

“Arriving late was a way of saying that your own time was more valuable than the time of the person who waited for you.”

Karen Joy Fowler The Jane Austen Book Club

Source: The Jane Austen Book Club

Way, Time, Waiting, Personality

“Far too many people are looking for the right person, instead of trying to be the right person.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Relationship, People, Personality

“the greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons”

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) Jewish-American political theorist

Evil, Personality

“Haven't you heard about me?" he said, with a tight smile. "I'm really a very dangerous person." And he did look dangerous until he said, "Look, could you watch Dog for me while I'm gone? I can't take him where I'm going.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Crimson Crown

Smile, Dogs, Personality

“The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it in his own strength, he is fighting not with man, but with God.”

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

God, Fight, Personality

“Depending on the situation, sometimes you can know a person better in ten minutes than someone you have crossed paths with all your life.”

David Baldacci book The Simple Truth

Source: The Simple Truth

Life, Dependency, Personality

“If the person you are talking to doesn't appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.”

A.A. Milne book Winnie-the-Pooh

Source: Winnie-the-Pooh

Appearance, Personality

“Damn everything but the circus!… The average 'painter' 'sculptor' 'poet' 'composer' 'playwright' is a person who cannot leap through a hoop from the back of a galloping horse, make people laugh with a clown's mouth, orchestrate twenty lions.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

People, Horse, Personality

“You're a wonderful person, Jamie. You're beautiful, you're kind, you're gentle… you're everything that I'd like to be. If people don't like you, or they think you're strange, then that's their problem.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

People, Beauty, Problem, Thinking

“Teachers don't just teach; they can be vital personalities who help young people to mature, to understand the world, and to understand themselves. A good education consists of much more than useful facts and marketable skills.”

Charles Platt (1945) Author, journalist and computer programmer

People, World, Education, Understanding

“Look for the good in every person and every situation. You'll almost always
find it.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

Personality

“Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Source: The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

Love, World, Family, Suffering

“Nothing cuts deeper than when another person says exactly what you're afraid to say out loud.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Bullet

Source: Bullet

Personality

“I will go to my grave in a state of abject endless fascination that we all have the capacity to become emotionally involved with a personality that doesn't exist.”

Berkeley Breathed (1957) American cartoonist

Personality

“If you don't change, then what's the point of anything happening to you? It'll still be happening to an unchanged person.”

Douglas Coupland The Gum Thief

Source: The Gum Thief

Change, Personality

“This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Source: Selected Poems

Personality

“A person is a person through other persons; you can't be human in isolation; you are human only in relationships.”

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

Personality

“There is always something new to learn about the person you love.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Two Boys Kissing

Love, Learning, Personality

“If only I can find him… the man who will be intelligent, yet physically magnetic and personable. If I can offer that combination, why shouldn't I expect it in a man?”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Intelligence, Personality

“No one can be a replacement for another person. That is why, farewells are always difficult.”

Matsuri Hino Japanese manga artist

Source: Vampire Knight, Vol. 1

Personality

“a person is a fluid process, not a fixed and static entity; a flowing river of change, not a block of solid material; a continually changing constellation of potentialities, not a fixed quantity of traits.”

Carl R. Rogers (1902–1987) American psychologist

Source: On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy

Change, Personality

“I was a new person in the same world, which was a lot more difficult than being the same person in a new world.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Blue-Eyed Devil

World, Personality

“After all, damn it, what does being in love mean if you can't trust a person.”

Evelyn Waugh book Vile Bodies

Source: Vile Bodies

Love, Personality

“You cannot be a Big person with a Small heart”

T.D. Jakes (1957) American bishop

Heart, Personality

“Death means you are in the third person.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

Death, Personality

“I hate to complain… No one is without difficulties, whether in high or low life, and every person knows best where their own shoe pinches.”

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

Life, Hate, Shoe, Personality

“Watching you walk out of my life does not make me bitter or cynical about love. But rather makes me realize that if I wanted so much to be with the wrong person, how beautiful it will be when the right person comes along.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Love, Life, Beauty, Personality

“Its not about the goal. Its about growing to become the person that can accomplish that goal.”

Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker

Personality

“Every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and the soul of those who read it and dream about it.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

Books, Dreams, Soul, Reading

“Every person has their own colour.”

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Personality

“The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

"To You on Your First Birthday"
To My Daughters, With Love (1967)
Context: The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.

Personality

“Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

Books, Art, Way, Personality

“Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties or his possessions.”

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

Personality

“Shades of a new morning standing still are worse than the shades of night. At least a person can understand the dark of night. It’s not fickle like the day.”

Sarah E. Wright (1929–2009) American writer

Source: This Child's Gonna Live

Understanding, Personality, Night

“A person who deserves my loyalty receives it.”

Joyce Maynard (1953) American writer

Source: Looking Back: A Chronicle of Growing Up Old in the Sixties

Personality, Loyalty

“Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person's capacity to act.”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934) Hungarian American psychologist

Appearance, Personality

“When you have wisdom that another person knows that he needs, you give it freely. But when the other person doesn't yet know that he needs your wisdom you keep it to yourself. Food only looks good to a hungry man.”

Orson Scott Card book Xenocide

Source: Xenocide

Wisdom, Food, Personality

“A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failures certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.”

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

Failure, Personality

“To tell you the truth I love Sam. It's not a movie kind of love either. I just look at her sometimes and I think she is the prettiest and nicest person in the whole world.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Love, Truth, World, Thinking

“You can't believe because she tells you to," I said
"No. The question is: how to be a good person if I don't believe anymore.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

Question, Personality

“But they love each other. Isn't that what love means? That you're supposed to be there for the other person to turn to, no matter what?”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Love, Personality

“you're my first born child, and the person who first showed me the miracle of this love a mother has for her child.”

Elizabeth Noble (1968) British novelist

Source: Things I Want My Daughters to Know

Love, Personality

“Personal growth has its price, and she was paying it without complaint.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

Personality

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Doin' It Again, Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics (1990)
Context: I know that. Some people don't want you to mention certain things. Some people don't want you to say this, some people don't want you to say that. Some people think if you mention some things they might happen. Some people are really fucking stupid. Did you ever notice that, how many stupid people you run into during the day? Goddamn there's a lot of stupid bastards walking around. Carry a pad and pencil with you, you'll wind up with thirty or forty names by the end of the day. Think about this; think about how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of 'em are stupider than that.

Funny, Stupidity, Thinking, Personality