Quotes about person
page 22

“There's things that happen in a person's life that are so scorched in the memory and burned into the heart that there's no forgetting them.”

John Boyne (1971) Irish novelist, author of children's and youth fiction

Life, Memory, Heart, Personality

“It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

Life, Personality

“When crime busting is easier than your personal life, something has gone seriously wrong.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Bullet

Source: Bullet

Life, Personality

“A person can't help their birth.”

William Makepeace Thackeray Vanity Fair

Source: Vanity Fair

Birth, Help, Personality

“Riding a horse is not a gentle hobby, to be picked up and laid down like a game of solitaire. It is a grand passion. It seizes a person whole and once it has done so, he/she will have to accept that his life will be radically changed.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Life, Game, Passion, Change

“A person with autism lives in his own world, while a person with Asperger's lives in our world, in a way of his own choosing”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

World, Way, Personality

“There are no choices without personal freedom, Buckeroo. It's not us who are dead inside. These things you find so weak and contemptible in us - these are just the hazards of being free”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest (1996)

Freedom, Personality, Dead

“Saying she doesn't mind being alone… that she's alright… There isn't a person alive who'd really feel that way!”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Way, Feeling, Personality

“What’s the difference between spending your life trying to be invisible, or pretending to be the person you think everyone wants you to be? Either way, you’re faking.”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

Life, Way, Thinking, Personality

“I have lived a long time, and one thing I have come to see is that one is well served by a degree of both humility and charity when judging the inner workings of another person's heart”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

Time, Heart, Personality

“This person realizes that staying home means blowing off everyone this person has ever known. But the desire to stay in is very strong. This person wants to run a bath and then read in bed.”

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

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Home, Strong, Reading, Personality

“My mom once told me that a good relationship isn't where the other person makes you feel better, but where they make *you* better.”

Brian K. Vaughan (1976) American screenwriter, comic book creator

Source: Y: The Last Man, Vol. 10: Whys and Wherefores

Feeling, Moms, Personality

“It's like, at the end, there's this surprise quiz: Am I proud of me? I gave my life to become the person I am right now! Was it worth what I paid?”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

One (1988)

Life, Personality

“How do you go on knowing that you will never again - not ever, ever - see the person you have loved? How do you survive a single hour, a single minute, a single second of that knowledge? How do you hold yourself together?”

Howard Jacobson book The Finkler Question

Source: The Finkler Question

Love, Knowledge, Personality

“Not even your love could withhold you from fulfilling your own personal legend.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Love, Personality

“Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.”

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

Soul, Personality

“When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything.”

Harriet Tubman (1820–1913) African-American abolitionist and humanitarian

Personality

“Thwart," I said. "To prevent someone from accomplishing something by means of visiting gratuitous violence upon his smarmy person."

"I'm pretty sure that isn't the definition." Sarissa said.

"It is today.”

Jim Butcher book Cold Days

Source: Cold Days

Personality

“Personally, I think they killed the bear because they were afraid of it. That s what people do, kill the things they re afraid of.”

Michael Thomas Ford (1968) American writer

Source: Suicide Notes

People, Thinking, Personality

“I once asked a young dissertation writer whether her suddenly grayed hair was due to ill health or personal tragedy; she answered: “It was the footnotes”.”

Joanna Russ book How to Suppress Women's Writing

Source: How to Suppress Women's Writing

Health, Personality

“No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist (1988), p. 158.

World, History, Personality

“What are you supposed to do with all the love you have for somebody if that person is no longer there? What happens to all that leftover love? Do you suppress it? Do you ignore it? Are you supposed to give it to someone else?”

Maggie O'Farrell (1972) British writer

Source: After You'd Gone

Love, Personality

“As my mom has said, when one person is unhappy, it usually means two people are unhappy but that one has not come to terms with it yet.”

Mindy Kaling book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Source: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

People, Moms, Personality

“The most elementary of good manners… at a social gathering one does not bring up the subject of personalities, sad topics or unfortunate facts, religion, or politics.”

Laura Esquivel book Like Water for Chocolate

Source: Like Water for Chocolate

Sadness, Religion, Personality

“One person's data is another person's noise.”

K.C. Cole (1946) American non-fiction writer

Personality

“The individual's duty is to do what he wants to do, to think whatever he likes, to be accountable to no one but himself, to challenge every idea and every person.”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Age of Reason

Source: The Age of Reason

Idea, Thinking, Personality

“A person with taste is merely one who can recognize the greatest beauty in the simplest things.”

Barbara Taylor Bradford (1933) British author

Source: Her Own Rules

Beauty, Personality

“The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

Love, Dreams, Communication, Personality

“A dog is like a person—he needs a job and a family to be what he’s meant to be.”

Andrew Vachss (1942) American writer and lawyer

For Mother, Family, Dogs, Personality

“Sometimes you can't realize you're in a bad mood until another person enters your orbit.”

Douglas Coupland (1961) Canadian novelist, short story writer, playwright, and graphic designer

Mood, Personality

“One of the very first things I figured out about life… is that it's better to be a hopeful person than a cynical, grumpy one, because you have to live in the same world either way, and if you're hopeful, you have more fun.”

Barbara Kingsolver (1955) American author, poet and essayist

Life, World, Hope, Way

“Here was a boy who liked flaws, who saw them not as failings but as strengths. Who knew such a person could exist, or what would have happened if we'd found each other under different circumstances? Maybe in a perfect world. But not in this one.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

World, Boy, Personality, Perfection

“I see time away hasn’t made you any more charming. (Fang)
Oh, I can be charming. I just choose not to. People start to think you like them, then when you stab them in the back, they take it so personally. Really pisses me off. (Thorn)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Bad Moon Rising

People, Thinking, Time, Personality

“Love between two people can last a long time if the people love themselves some, and are ready to give love to another person.”

James Patterson book Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas

Source: Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas

Love, People, Time, Personality

“Don't dare a person who has nothing else left to lose.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Variant: You shouldn't dare a person who doesn't have anything left to lose.
Source: Kiss an Angel

Personality

“She was the kind of person who took care of things by herself. She’d never ask anybody for advice or help. It wasn’t a matter of pride, I think. She just did what seemed natural to her.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Nature, Thinking, Help, Personality

“Love [is] supposed to move mountains, to make the world go round, to be all you need, but it [falls] apart at the deatils. It [can't] save a single person.”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

Love, World, Mountain, Personality

“You're Bes, I guess?" I said.
"Yes," he said.
"Your car's a mess," Liz muttered.
"If one more person rhymes," Emma grumbled, "I'll throw up.”

Rick Riordan book The Throne of Fire

Source: The Throne of Fire

Cars, Personality

“Juliet and Romeo be damned, you can't be in love until you've flossed your teeth next to the person at least three hundred times…”

Marisha Pessl Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Source: Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Love, Time, Personality

“Could it be as simple as that? Could love be not grand gestures or empty vows, not promises meant to be broken, but instead a paper trail of forgiveness? A line of crumbs made of memories, to lead you back to the person who was waiting?”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Leaving Time

Love, Forgiveness, Memory, Waiting

“I detest the idea that love between two persons can lead to salvation. All my life I have fought against this oppressive type of relationship. Instead, I believe in searching for a kind of love that somehow involves all of humanity.”

Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945–1982) German film director, screenwriter, and actor

Love, Life, Search, Idea

“Stop thinking all the time that you're in the way, that you're bothering the person next to you. If people don't like it, they can complain. And if they don't have courage to complain, that's their problem.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

People, Way, Courage, Problem

“It was good, and nothing good is truly lost. It stays part of a person, becomes part of their character. So part of you goes everywhere with me. And part of me is yours, forever”

Rosamunde Pilcher book The Shell Seekers

Source: The Shell Seekers

Parting, Personality

“maybe there is more to a person than a body and a mind. maybe something else figures into the mix— not a soul, exactly, but a spirit that hints you might one day be greater, stronger than you are now. a promise; a potential.”

Jodi Picoult book Keeping Faith

Source: Keeping Faith

Soul, Personality

“The Maker of the universe with stars a hundred thousand light-years apart was interested, furious, and very personal about it if a small boy played baseball on Sunday afternoon.”

Sinclair Lewis book Elmer Gantry

Source: Elmer Gantry (1927)

Star, Boy, Light, Universe

“Really, when I think it over, literature has only one excuse for existing; it saves the person who makes it from the disgustingness of life.”

Joris-Karl Huysmans book Là-Bas

Source: Là-Bas

Life, Literature, Thinking, Personality

“I'm not a very nostalgic person. I don't really look at the past and summon up regrets, or self-congratulations, it just is not a mechanism that operates very strongly in me. So I neither have regrets nor occasions for self-congratulations.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Past, Personality

“A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.”

Mary Karr book The Liars' Club

Source: The Liars' Club

Family, Family, Personality

“A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.”

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

Personality

“You know, you’re a feminist.” It was not a compliment. I could tell from his tone—the same tone with which a person would say, “You’re a supporter of terrorism.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie We Should All Be Feminists

Source: We Should All Be Feminists

Support, Personality

“the Bible is only as good and decent as the person reading it.”

Dan Savage (1964) American sex advice columnist and gay rights campaigner

Source: American Savage: Insights, Slights, and Fights on Faith, Sex, Love, and Politics

Reading, Personality

“Altogether, if I'd been looking at nothing but the media all these years, I would be a much more discouraged person-especially given the notion that only conflict is news, and that objectivity means being evenhandedly negative.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Source: My Life on the Road

Personality

“When you love someone, you have to offer that person the best you have. The best thing we can offer another person is our true presence.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering

Love, Personality

“I was in the shopping mall because that's where I go lately. For the last couple of weeks, I've been going there every day, trying to figure out why people go there. It's kind of a personal project.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

People, Personality

“A hermit is simply a person to whom civilization has failed to adjust itself.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

Personality

“She wasn't a person who needed to be liked so much as she was a person who liked to be notorious.”

E. Lockhart book The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

Source: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

Personality

“A modest little person, with much to be modest about.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Personality

“Part of love is letting a person be who they want to be”

David Levithan Boy Meets Boy

Source: Boy Meets Boy

Love, Parting, Personality

“I've been waiting a long time for a quest, seaweed brain," she said. "Athena is no fan of Poseidon, but if you're going to save the world, I'm the best person to keep you from messing up.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

World, Time, Waiting, Personality

“And then there is our personal history. Memories only we share. Things not another living soul would understand.”

Emily Giffin Something Borrowed

Source: Something Borrowed

Soul, History, Understanding, Memory

“I personally subscribe to the belief that normal is just a setting on the dryer.”

Jodi Picoult book House Rules

Source: House Rules

Personality

“Absolute power corrupts absolutely; and if you surrender your personal responsibility to a government which promises to take care of you, they will only take care of themselves.”

Howard Nemerov (1920–1991) Poet

Personality

“You knew me. You knew that person, but you don't know the person I'm trying to become… You are not your past!”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: Have a Little Faith: a True Story

Past, Personality

“It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.”

James Baldwin book This Morning, This Evening, So Soon

Source: This Morning, This Evening, So Soon

People, Truth, Personality

“Whenever someone dies, a part of the universe dies too. Everything a person felt, experience and saw dies with them, like tears in the rain.”

Paulo Coelho book The Winner Stands Alone

Source: The Winner Stands Alone

Tear, Universe, Parting, Personality

“Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says, "Make me feel important." Not only will you succeed in sales, you will succeed in life.”

Mary Kay Ash (1918–2001) Entrepreneur

Motivational, Life, Feeling, Personality

“A person rises on a word and falls on a syllable.”

Don DeLillo book Cosmopolis

Source: Cosmopolis

Personality

“Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life’s expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. Keeping that going is hard work.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Life, Marriage, Personality, Happiness

“I think you're the only person who gets me. When I'm with you, the world doesn't feel like a problem I can't figure out. Please come to the dance, because you're my music.”

Jodi Picoult book House Rules

Source: House Rules

World, Music, Feeling, Problem

“The only person we'll hate more than each other is ourselves.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

Hate, Personality

“But let no person say what they would or would not do, since we are not judges for ourselves until circumstances call us to act.”

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

Personality

“Art begins… when someone interprets, when someone sees the world through his own eyes. Art happens when what is seen becomes mixed with the inside of the person who is seeing it.”

Chaim Potok book The Gift of Asher Lev

Source: The Gift of Asher Lev

World, Art, Personality

“What is one person's pleasure is another's poison….”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Pleasure, Personality

“If something happened to me, whose face will be on the front page of the paper begging for me? Is a person worth more because they have someone to grieve for them?”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

Personality

“… handsome people are always interesting to watch. But a handsome person in crisis is riveting.”

Augusten Burroughs book Dry

Source: Dry

People, Personality

“Most people our brought up to believe they are as good as the person next to them, I was told I was better.”

Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) film, stage, and television actress

People, Personality

“You meet a new person, you go with him and suddenly you get a whole new city… you go down new streets, you see houses you never saw before, pass places you didn't even know were there. Everything changes.”

Samuel R. Delany book Dhalgren

Source: Dhalgren

Change, Housing, Personality

“Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched".”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Motivation, Personality, Happiness

“You can often judge the character of a person by the way he treats his fellow men.”

Jeffrey Archer book Only Time Will Tell

Source: Only Time Will Tell

Men, Way, Personality

“There's no such thing as a person who has to go away.”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Personality

“One of the most beautiful compensations in life is that no person can help another without helping themselves”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Variant: It is one of the beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

Life, Beauty, Help, Personality

“How a person seems to show up for us is intimately connected to how we choose to show up for them.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: Return to Love

Personality

“Harry Dresden: As a whole, people suck, but a person can be extraordinary.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Changes (2010), Chapter 18

People, Personality

“I am a person who is unhappy with things as they stand. We cannot accept the world as it is. Each day we should wake up foaming at the mouth because of the injustice of things.”

Hugo Claus (1929–2008) Belgian author

World, Personality

“That's what real love amounts to- letting a person be what he really is. Most people love you for who you pretend to be. To keep their love, you keep pretending- performing. You get to love your pretence. It's true, we're locked in an image, an act”

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

Love, People, Personality

“Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest, and sacrificial.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible

Love, Dreams, Communication, Personality

“Life must not be squandered. A person got from life what he put ino it.”

LaVyrle Spencer (1943) American writer

Source: The Endearment

Life, Personality

“An average person with average talent, ambition and education can outstrip the most brilliant genius in our society, if that person has clear, focused goals.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

Education, Personality

“We're not on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves. But in doing that you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Source: The Power of Myth (book), p.183
Context: Moyers: Unlike heroes such as Prometheus or Jesus, we're not going on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves.
Campbell: But in doing that you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes, there's no doubt about it. The world without spirit is a wasteland. People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around, changing the rules, and who's on top, and so forth. No, no! Any world is a valid world if it's alive. The thing to do is to bring life to it, and the only way to do that is to find in your own case where the life is and become alive yourself.

World, Personality