Quotes about person
page 29

“Who are you, anyway?
-Just someone who knows, from personal experience, how attractive it can be to think you can save somebody else by loving them.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Marriage Plot

Source: The Marriage Plot

Love, Thinking, Personality

“One person sees the beautiful view and the other sees the dirty window”

Andrew Matthews (1948) British writer

Source: Being Happy!

Beauty, Personality

“acquaintance, n.: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Context: Acquaintance, n. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to. A degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous

“bad things, like good things don't happen any more often than they ought to by chance. the universe has no mind, no feelings, and no personality, so it doesn't do things in order to either hurt or please you. bad things happen because things happen.”

Richard Dawkins book The Magic of Reality

Source: The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True

Feeling, Universe, Chance, Hurt

“It reminds me of how grandmother always had the right costume for me to wear. You wear the right outfit and you feel like the person you're pretending to be.”

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

Source: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Feeling, Personality

“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

“It is clearly absurd to limit the term 'education' to a person's formal schooling.”

Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) American economist of the Austrian School, libertarian political theorist, and historian

Source: Education, Free & Compulsory

Education, School, Personality

“Traveling is all very well and good as long as you knew there is a place or person you can call home”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Mercy

Travel, Home, Personality

“It's scary when it's real. When it's not just thinking about a person, but, like, having a real live person in front of you, with, like, expectations. And wants.”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Thinking, Personality

“Scientists have discovered that the small brave act of cooperating with another person, of choosing trust over cynicism, generosity over selfishness, makes the brain light up with quiet joy.”

Natalie Angier (1958) American writer

Light, Joy, Personality, Selfishness

“People always leave traces. No person is without a shadow.”

Henning Mankell book The Troubled Man

Source: The Troubled Man

People, Personality

“A person is the product of their dreams. So make sure to dream great dreams. And then try to live your dream.”

Maya Angelou book Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

Source: Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

Dreams, Personality

“If you zoom close-if you get really close to someone, if you really get close to yourself-then you lose the other person, you lose yourself entirely. You get so close you can't see anything anymore.”

David Levithan book Every You, Every Me

Source: Every You, Every Me

“To affirm that men and women are persons and as persons should be free, and yet to do nothing tangible to make this affirmation a reality, is a farce.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Women, Men, Reality, Personality

“Stars should not be seen alone. That's why there are so many. Two people should stand together and look at them. One person alone will surely miss the good ones.”

Augusten Burroughs book Dry

Source: Dry

People, Star, Personality

“What came first – the music or the misery? Did I listen to the music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to the music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person?”

Nick Hornby book High Fidelity

Source: High Fidelity

Music, Personality

“One person's crazy is another person's sane, I guess.”

Maureen Johnson book Let It Snow

Source: Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances

“Design is really an act of communication, which means having a deep understanding of the person with whom the designer is communicating.”

Donald A. Norman book The Design of Everyday Things

Source: The Design of Everyday Things

Communication, Understanding, Personality

“But until a person can say deeply and honestly, "I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday," that person cannot say, "I choose otherwise.”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

“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

“It makes one realize that the physicality if our world is a boundary to us only if our will is weak; a true champion can accomplish things that a normal person would think impossible.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

World, Thinking, Personality

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

Barbara Kingsolver book The Lacuna

Source: The Lacuna

“The message of "The Winner Takes It All" is straightforward: It argues that the concept of relationships ending on mutual terms is an emotional fallacy. One person is inevitably okay and the other is inevitably devastated.”

Chuck Klosterman Eating the Dinosaur

Source: Eating the Dinosaur

“I want you to know, my dear friend, that without you, I would not be the person I am today." He leaned in close and whispered, "I was a broken boy, and you fixed me. Thank you.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Last Guardian

Boy, Personality

“That first love. And the first one who breaks your heart. For me, they just happen to be the same person.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

Love, Heart, Personality

“The Cicada sing an endless song in the long grass, smells run along the earth and falling stars run over the sky, like tears over a cheek. You are the privileged person to whom everything is taken. The Kings of Tarshish shall bring gifts.”

Karen Blixen book Out of Africa

Source: Out of Africa

Star, Tear, Grass, Singing

“When a person sets a thing in motion, there's a feeling of unease, almost regret, until you learn the truth.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Truth, Feeling, Learning, Personality

“The grandiose person is never really free; first because he is excessively dependent on admiration from others, and second, because his self-respect is dependent on qualities, functions, and achievements that can suddenly fail.”

Alice Miller (1923–2010) Swiss psychologist

Source: The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

Dependency, Personality

“To realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation and when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Universe, Help, Personality

“They have accepted me as an individual, as a personality, as an entity. I belong! I am important! I am somebody!”

Beatrice Sparks (1917–2012) American writer

Source: Go Ask Alice

“If you don't want to be in an argument with someone, it is probably best to try to solve the problem, rather than lying around hoping the other person will do it for you.”

E. Lockhart (1967) American writer of novels as E. Lockhart (mainly for teenage girls) and of picture books under real name Emily J…

Source: The Boy Book: A Study of Habits and Behaviors, Plus Techniques for Taming Them

Hope, Lying, Problem, Personality

“Clarionet, n. An instrument of torture operated by a person with cotton in his ears. There are two instruments that are worse than a clarionet -- two clarionets.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

“If a person continues to see giants, it means he is still looking at the world through the eyes of a child.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

World, Personality

“She realized all at once that Doon, thin, dark eyed Doon, with his troublesome temper and his terrible brown jacket, and his good heart---- was the person she knew better than anyone now. He was her best friend.
--City of Ember”

Jeanne DuPrau (1944) American writer

Heart, Personality

“There is only one person who could ever make you happy, and that person is you.”

David D. Burns (1942) American psychiatrist

Personality, Happiness

“The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Source: god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

“When we don’t forgive, we’re not hurting the other person. We’re not hurting the company that did us wrong. We’re not hurting God. We’re only hurting ourselves.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

God, Forgiveness, Hurt, Personality

“They can pump whatever they want into my arm, but it takes more than that to keep a person going once she's lost the will to live.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Katniss, p. 389
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire (2009)

“Some of the freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots. But it’s still the eyes we look at, isn’t it? That’s where we found the other person, and find them still.”

Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending

Source: The Sense of an Ending

Love, Personality

“A person who has not made peace with his losses is likely to accept gambles that would be unacceptable to him otherwise.”

Daniel Kahneman (1934) Israeli-American psychologist

Peace, Loss, Personality

“A writer once said that it is not time that changes man, nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone's mind is love. What nonsense! The person who wrote that clearly knew only one side of the coin.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Love, Knowledge, Change, Time

“They had only ever discussed books but what, in this life, is more personal than books?”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Life, Books, Personality

“If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly. If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.”

Alan Lightman book Einstein's Dreams

Source: Einstein's Dreams

World, Suffering, Personality

“Rose and Dimitri moved almost as one entity, like a matched pair of wolfes or lions, both wary and deadly as they studied their surroundings, taking no detail or person for granted.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Adrian's Lost Chapter

Study, Wolf, Personality

“This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be.”

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

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

People, Thinking, Heart, Personality

“Once you lose someone it is never exactly
the same person who comes back.”

Sharon Olds Satan Says

Source: Satan Says

“She is no longer a person in his life; instead, she is a person that other people will remind him of.”

David Levithan book Are We There Yet?

Source: Are We There Yet?

Life, People, Personality

“Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life. Show me the person they sleep with and I will tell you their valuation of themselves.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Life, Sleep, Personality

“It's a total lie to say there's only one person you're going to be with for the rest of your life. If you're lucky - and if you try really hard - there will always be more than one.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

Life, Lie, Personality

“One of the most beautiful gifts in the world is the gift of encouragement. When someone encourages you, that person helps you over a threshold you might otherwise never have crossed on your own.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong

World, Beauty, Help, Personality

“Solitude will be welcomed or endured or avoided, according as a man's personal value is large or small.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Solitude, Personality

“To be a child means to owe one's existence to another, and even in our adult life we never quite reach the point where we no longer have to give thanks for being the person we are.”

Hans Urs Von Balthasar (1905–1988) Swedish Catholic theologian

Source: Unless You Become Like This Child

Life, Personality

“I'm this superphilosophical kind of person. Stuck in a prison of abstract ideas and overpowering emotions, I have this personality that makes it really hard to survive.”

Natsuo Kirino book Real World

Source: Real World

Idea, Personality

“No two persons ever read the same book.”

Edmund Wilson (1895–1972) American writer, literary and social critic, and noted man of letters

Books, Reading, Personality

“It was a catch-22: If you didn’t put the trauma behind you, you couldn’t move on. But if you did put the trauma behind you, you willingly gave up your claim to the person you were before it happened.”

Jodi Picoult book The Tenth Circle

Source: The Tenth Circle

“The submission of one's will is really the only uniquely personal thing we have to place on God's altar. The many other things we 'give' are actually the things He has already given or loaned to us.”

Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) Mormon leader

God, Personality

“What does he say?' he asked.
'He’s very sad,’ Úrsula answered, ‘because he thinks that you’re going to die.'
'Tell him,' the colonel said, smiling, 'that a person doesn’t die when he should but when he can.”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Sadness, Smile, Thinking, Personality

“Whatever you focus upon, increases…… When you focus on the things you need, you'll find those needs increasing…… A grateful perspective brings happiness and abundance into a person's life.”

Andy Andrews (1959) author and corporate speaker

Life, Personality, Happiness

“.

In the end, we both want the right thing to happen, the right person to win, the right idea to prevail. We have no faith that it will, but still we want it. Neither of us has given up on anything.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Faith, Idea, Personality

“Having an object that symbolizes freedom might make a person happier than actually getting the freedom it represents.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Freedom, Personality

“A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lillies of the swamp.”

Carson McCullers (1917–1967) American writer

Source: The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories

Love, Beauty, Personality

“When a person should be spoken with, and you don't speak with them, you lose them. When a person shouldn't be spoken with and you speak to them, you waste your breath. The wise do not lose people, nor do they waste their breath.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

People, Personality

“So here I am walking around with another person inside of me. Though I think I put it better the day we parted when I said there is a third person we have created from the two of us. And I am stalked now by that other entity.”

Robert James Waller The Bridges of Madison County

Source: The Bridges of Madison County

Thinking, Parting, Personality

“The depressed person was in terrible and unceasing pain, and the impossibility of sharing or articulating this pain was itself a component of the pain and a contributing factor in its essential horror.”

David Foster Wallace book Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Source: Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Pain, Personality

“Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.”

Seth Godin (1960) American entrepreneur, author and public speaker

Art, Courage, Change, Personality

“I’m not a bad person. I haven’t killed anyone. I (rarely) lie. I don’t kick little puppies. So why do people look at me as if the world would be a better place without me?”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Oh My Goth

People, Lie, World, Personality

“I have another friend who gets what I’m really like, and I get her. She scares me. Did you ever see yourself times ten in another person and want to cover your eyes?”

Megan Abbott book The Fever

Source: The Fever

Time, Personality

“If a person fears God, she has no reason to fear anything else.”

Beth Moore (1957) American evangelist

God, Fear, Personality

“As long as we remember a person, they're not really gone. Their thoughts, their feelings, their memories, they become a part of us.”

Justin Cronin book The Twelve

Bradford J. Wolgast
The Passage Trilogy, The Passage (2010)
Source: The Twelve

Feeling, Memory, Parting, Personality

“A person could leave you so quickly. So much history and time and memories, but they snuck away from you, and other things took their place. How could you hold on? Wait. A bigger question. The biggest. How could you hold on and
let go?”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Story of Us

History, Question, Memory, Time

“When you're with the person you love, you're home.”

Susan Wiggs (1958) American writer

Source: The Winter Lodge

Love, Home, Personality

“Even though we are each our own person… we're connected through the same dream! We are Seigaku!”

Takeshi Konomi (1970) Japanese manga artist

Dreams, Personality

“you can love a person and still hate the decisions they've made, can't you?”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

Love, Hate, Decision, Personality

“Every relationship is an education. Each new person we welcome into our hearts is a chance to evolve into something radically different than we used to be. But what happens when those people disappear from our lives?”

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

Source: Saga #30

People, Education, Chance, Heart

“What had happened still seemed implausible. A person was present your entire life, and then one day she disappeared and never came back. It resisted belief.”

Meghan O'Rourke (1976) American writer

Life, Personality

“I began by acting like the person I wanted to be, and eventually I became that person.”

Cary Grant (1904–1986) British-American film and stage actor

“I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.”

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

Intelligence, Personality

“Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion.”

John Berger book Ways of Seeing

Source: Ways of Seeing (1972), p. 148

Envy, Personality

“When God wants to drive a person insane, he grants that person's every wish.”

Paulo Coelho book The Valkyries

Source: The Valkyries

God, Personality

“Awareness of insanity does not make one any less insane. Awareness of drowning does not make one any less of a drowning person--it only adds the burden of panic”

Guillermo del Toro book The Night Eternal

Source: The Night Eternal

“What could it be like to find out, in a matter of minutes, that the person you believed the sun rose and set on was not the person you'd thought?”

Jodi Picoult book The Pact

Source: The Pact

Sun, Personality

“I know about parabatai,” said Magnus, an angry, dark undercurrent to his voice. “I’ve known parabatai so close they were almost the same person; do you know what happens, when one of them dies, to the one that’s left —?”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

“We live out our lives as we are meant to live them-with some choice, with some chance, but mostly as a result of the persons we are.”

Terry Brooks The Druid of Shannara

Source: The Druid of Shannara

Chance, Personality

“We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than one who believes. You can almost be as stupid as a cabbage as long as you doubt.”

Dallas Willard (1935–2013) American philosopher

Source: Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God

Stupidity, Idea, Personality

“I would rather feel compassion than know the meaning of it. I would hope to act with compassion without thinking of personal gain.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Hope, Feeling, Thinking, Personality

“Sometimes I feel like the most liberal person among conservatives, and sometimes like the most conservative among liberals.”

Philip Yancey (1949) American writer

Feeling, Personality

“Sometimes when persons sayit sounds actually less true.”

Emma Donoghue Room

Source: Room

“Imagine being sentient but not alive. Seeing and even knowing, but not alive. Just looking out. Recognizing but not being alive. A person can die and still go on. Sometimes what looks out at you from a person's eyes maybe died back in childhood.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly

Imagination, Childhood, Personality

“Wasting time with the wrong person is just time wasted.”

Greg Behrendt (1963) American comedian

Source: He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys

Time, Personality

“Of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest.”

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

Death, Way, Personality

“Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world... The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

1941 - 1967
Source: 'Statements by Four artists', Edward Hopper, in 'Reality' 1., Spring 1953, p. 8

Life, World, Art, Personality

“but I find her personality annoying. It's like being molested by a sleeping bag that speaks in Comic Sans with little love-hearts over the i's.”

Charles Stross Saturn's Children

Source: Saturn's Children

Love, Sleep, Heart, Personality

“A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Friday

Source: Friday

Loss, Personality

“It's imprecise and insufficient, defining the homosexual as a person whose gender expression is at odds with his or her sex.”

Alison Bechdel (1960) American cartoonist, author

Source: Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

Sex, Personality

“Give a man or woman back his self-respect, and in most cases-not all, but most-you also give back that person's ability to think with at least some clarity.”

Stephen King book Under the Dome

Source: Under the Dome

Thinking, Personality

“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, and then throw it in the face of the person who gave you the lemons until they give you the oranges you originally asked for.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Life, Personality

“I think it's good for a person to spend time alone. It gives them an opportunity to discover who they are and to figure out why they are always alone.”

Amy Sedaris (1961) American comedian

Source: I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence

Thinking, Time, Personality

“The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Love, Personality

“A person can go along quite awhile if they get a good day every once and again.”

Stephen King book Bag of Bones

Source: Bag of Bones

“For a while" is a phrase whose length can't be measured. At least by the person who's waiting.”

Haruki Murakami book South of the Border, West of the Sun

Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun

Waiting, Personality