Quotes about realization
page 10

“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

“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

“It's much easier, she realized, to be on the verge of something than to actually be it.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

“One of the saddest realities is that we never know when our lives are at their peak. Only after it is over and we have some kind of perspective do we realize how good we had it a day, a month, five years ago.”

Jonathan Carroll (1949) novelist, short story writer

Reality

“The older you get, the more you realize you need a handful of good, close, tight friends.”

Nicole Richie (1981) American television personality, musician, actress, and author

“The deeper the Self-realization of a man, the more he influences the whole universe by his subtle spiritual vibrations, and the less he himself is affected by the phenomenal flux.”

Paramahansa Yogananda book Autobiography of a Yogi

Source: Autobiography of a Yogi

Universe

“As soon as I was out in the street, I realized I didn't want to be alone after all, I realized I didn't want to be anything at all.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

“Life, he realized, was much like a song.
In the beginning there is mystery, in the end there is confirmation, but it's in the middle where all the emotion resides to make the whole thing worthwhile.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Steve Miller, Chapter 36, Steve, p. 376
Source: 2000s, The Last Song (2009)

Life

“You know how everything seems so normal when you’re growing up,” she asked plaintively, “and then comes this moment when you realize your whole family is nuts?”

Karen Joy Fowler book We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Source: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Family

“Zara: It's just a registry…
Kit: Am I the only one who's read X-Men and realizes why this is a bad idea?”

Cassandra Clare book Lord of Shadows

Source: Lord of Shadows

Men, Idea, Reading

“For me, I think the greatest achievements of science is to allow humanity to realize that our world is comprehensible. Through science, rational thinking, we can understand how the universe works.”

Jim Al-Khalili (1962) British theoretical physicist, author and broadcaster

World, Understanding, Thinking, Universe

“If men are really humble, they will realize that they discover, but do not create, truth.”

Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Men, Truth

“Only then does he realize what he has done to Mirabelle, how wanting a square inch of her and not all of her has damaged them both, and how he cannot justify his actions except that, well, it was life.”

Steve Martin book Shopgirl

Source: Shopgirl

Life

“Most times we're so focused on what we think we want that we can't appreciate how happy we already are. It's only when we forget about our problems and help others forget theirs that we realize how good we really have it.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

2008-11-11
Threshold Editions
141659485X
52
2000s
Source: The Christmas Sweater

Happiness, Problem, Thinking, Time

“Once you realize that trickle-down economics does not work, you will see the excessive tax cuts for the rich as what they are -- a simple upward redistribution of income, rather than a way to make all of us richer, as we were told.”

Ha-Joon Chang book 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

Source: 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

Way

“She didn't know how much she'd been hoping that he still loved her, until she felt how much it hurt to realize he didn't.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Source: Ironside

Love, Hope, Hurt

“Sadie," he said forlornly, "when you become a parent, you may understand this. One of my hardest jobs as a father, one of my greatest duties, was to realize that my own dreams, my own goals and wishes, are secondary to my children's.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Children, Dreams, Understanding, Parent

“I have to come to realize that God does not want to punish us, but rather, to fulfill our lives. God created us, loves us and wants to help us to realize our potential so that we can be useful to others.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

Love, God, Help

“and as streams of light fan out behind the darkened sun like the wings of a butterfly, i realize that i never saw true beauty until now.”

Wendy Mass (1967) American children's writer

Beauty, Light, Sun

“I realize im black, but id like to be viewed as a person, and that is everybodys wish.”

Michael Jordan (1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman

Personality

“All that happens when your dreams come true is a slow, melting realization that it wasn't what you thought.”

Mitch Albom For One More Day

Source: For One More Day

Dreams

“Everyone realizes that one can believe little of what people say about each other. But it is not so widely realized that even less can one trust what people say about themselves.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

As quoted in The Sunday Telegraph, London (1975), and Rebecca West : A Life (1987) by Victoria Glendinning, p. xi

People

“…I realized that once people are broken in certain ways they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one.”

Douglas Coupland book Life After God

Source: Life After God (1994)

Life, People, Way

“If you have any care for Sin at all,
don't leave him in darkness. It's not fair to show someone the sun and then to banish him from it. Even the
devil may cry when he looks around hell and realizes that he's there alone - Acheron (Devil May Cry)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Hell, Sun, Cry

“Maybe that was why she couldn't cry, she realized, staring dry-eyed at the ceiling. Because what was the point in crying when there was no one there to comfort you? And what was worse, when you couldn't even comfort yourself?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Cry

“What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Source: The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

People, Faith, Religion, Thinking

“until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Variant: That's the strange thing about being a mother: until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one
Source: Vanishing Acts

Baby

“The happiness consists in realizing that it is all a great strange dream.”

Jack Kerouac book Lonesome Traveler

Lonesome Traveler (1960)

Happiness, Dreams

“It made me realize how I needed to stop punishing her for something she couldn't help […] because sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

People, Help

“Doughboy, we need to talk.”
Doughboy opened his wax eyes. “Finally! You realize how stuffy it is in there? At last you’ve remembered that you need my brilliant guidance.”
“Actually we need to become a coat.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

“Too often they don't realize what they have until it's gone.
… they're too stubborn to say, 'Sorry, I was wrong'
they hurt the ones closest to their hearts,
and we let the most foolish things tear us apart”

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

Tear, Heart, Hurt

“I realized that it was not that I didn’t want to go on without him. I did. It was just that I didn’t know why I wanted to go on”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

Source: Nothing Was the Same

“Every person you encounter, whom you interact with, is there to teach you something. Sometimes it may be years before you realize what each had to show you.”

Raymond E. Feist book Rise of a Merchant Prince

Source: Rise of a Merchant Prince

Personality

“We don't know what kind of people we truly are until the moment before our deaths. As death comes to embrace you, you will realize what you are. That's what death is, don't you think?”

Masashi Kishimoto (1974) Japanese manga artist

Death, People, Thinking

“Poseidon held out his arms and gave me a hug. I realized, a little embarrassed, that I'd never actually hugged my dad before. He was warm—like a regular human—and he smelled of a salty beach and fresh sea air.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

Sea

“And there comes a time in your life when you realize that if you don't take the opportunity to be happy, you may never get another chance again.”

Richard Russo Empire Falls

Source: Empire Falls

Life, Happiness, Chance, Time

“In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich.”

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

Life, Gratitude

“A compassion swirled form nowhere in the high I was lost in. She needed me. She needed me to accept her for what she was. And when I realized that I had it within myself to give her at least this small part of me, the last of my fear melted away.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Fear, Parting

“Still I pictured having you for fifty, sixty more years. I thought I might be ready then to let you go. But it's you, and I realize now that I won't be anymore ready to lose you then than I am right now. Which is not at all.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

“I'm smiled out, talked out, quipped out, socialized so far from any being, I need the weight of mortal silences to get realized back into myself.”

John Ciardi (1916–1986) American poet, professor, translator

Source: This Strangest Everything

Smile, Silence

“Once I thought I found love, but then I realized I was just out
of cigarettes.”

Jeffrey McDaniel (1967) American writer

Love

“Well, first you have to be very, very funny. I have realized that it is essential for a boy to be funny. Otherwise, what is the point in a boy?”

Jaclyn Moriarty (1968) Australian writer

Source: The Year of Secret Assignments

Boy

“She was a do-gooder, which means that all the ill she did, she did without realizing it.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

“He turned, registering a face with blond hair, and for a split second he thought it was Will Solace. When Nico realized it was Jason, he was disappointed. Then he felt angry with himself for feeling that way.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Disappointment, Way, Feeling

“I came to realize that if people could make me angry they could could control me. Why should I give someone else such power over my life?”

Ben Carson book Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story

Source: Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story

Life, People

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”

Robert McCloskey (1914–2003) children's book author and illustrator from the United States

Understanding, Thinking

“They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad to realize that I'm going to miss mine by just a few days.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

Source: Good Poems for Hard Times

People, Sadness

“Ignorance is hardly unusual, Miss Davar. The longer I live, the more I come to realize that it is the natural state of the human mind. There are many who will strive to defend its sanctity and then expect you to be impressed with their efforts.”

Brandon Sanderson book The Way of Kings

Source: The Way of Kings

Nature, Effort

“It’s only when you’ve lost someone that you realize the nonsense of that
phrase “It’s a small world”. It isn’t. It’s a vast, devouring world, especially if you’re alone.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

Source: Books of Blood: Volume Two

World

“A man must sometimes laugh at himself or go mad,’ said he. ‘Few realize it. That is why there are so many madmen in the world.”

Rafael Sabatini book Captain Blood

Source: Captain Blood

World, Madness

“What is common in all these dreams is obvious. They completely satisfy wishes excited during the day which remain unrealized. They are simply and undisguisedly realizations of wishes.”

Sigmund Freud book The Interpretation of Dreams

Source: The Interpretation of Dreams

Dreams

“In the lives of children, pumpkins turn into coaches, mice and rats turn into men. When we grow up, we realize it is far more common for men to turn into rats.”

Gregory Maguire book Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

Source: Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

Men, Children

“Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity which at bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, but simply to realize where you already are.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn (1944) American academic

Source: Wherever You Go, There You Are

“I hadn't fully realized just how powerful words could be before this. Whoever came up with the saying 'sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me' was talking out of his or her armpit.”

Malorie Blackman Noughts & Crosses

Source: Noughts & Crosses

Hurt

“I kept staring into the blackness of the woods, drawn into the darkness as I always had been. I suddenly realized how alone I was. (But this is how you travel, the wind whispered back, this is how you've always lived.)”

Bret Easton Ellis book Lunar Park

Source: Lunar Park

Travel

“Whenever someone refers to me as someone "who happens to be black," I wonder if they realize that both my parents are black. If I had turned out to be Scandinavian or Chinese, people would have wondered what was going on.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

People, Parent

“They belonged to each other totally, and always would, and that was that.
But maybe everyone felt that way? Until the moment they realized they were just like everyone else, and everything they'd thought was real shattered apart.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Way

“Nico realized he was still leaning against Will. He pushed him away and stood on his own two feet.
‘I’ll do what I need to.’
Will rolled his eyes. ‘Fine, Death Boy. If you want to get yourself killed –’
‘Do not call me Death Boy!”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Death, Boy

“I realized that even if we went on talking till Judgment Day, I would still find the time all too short.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

Time

“I guess by now I should know enough about loss to realize that you never really stop missing someone-you just learn to live around the huge gaping hole of their absence.”

Alyson Nöel book Evermore

Source: Evermore

Learning, Loss

“There is no satisfaction in vengeance unless the offender has time to realize who it is that strikes him, and why retribution has come upon him.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book A Study in Scarlet

Source: A Study in Scarlet

Time

“People take love's continuity for granted, just as they take their body's continuity for granted. They don't realize that the best thing about love is its regular presence.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Love, People

“I have to smile. He's such a dork. But I'm starting to realize the one good thing that's happened: he's my dork.”

Ally Carter book All Fall Down

Source: All Fall Down

Smile

“This is what it always comes down to, I realized. There are the ones who believe, and the ones who don't, and caught in the space between them are guns.”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

“I saw the movie, 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' and was surprised because I didn't see any tigers or dragons. And then I realized why: they're crouching and hidden.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

“Surely every one realizes, at some point along the way, that he is capable of living a far better life than the one he has chosen.”

Henry Miller book Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

Source: Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

Life, Way

“So perhaps the greatest worry of all was that one day you would realize that all the worries of your life amounted to one thing: the desire to just stop worrying.”

Justin Cronin The Passage

Source: The Passage

Life

“And I realize how useless wails are and how gratuitous melancholy is.”

Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer and philosopher

Source: Le Roman de l'adolescent myope

“Physicists have come to realize that mathematics, when used with sufficient care, is a proven pathway to truth.”

Brian Greene (1963) American physicist

Source: The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality

Truth, Mathematics

“This thing about looking for someone less different… It only really worked, he realized, if you were convinced that being you wasn't so bad in the first place.”

Nick Hornby About a Boy

Source: About a Boy

“Happy is what you realize you are a fraction of a second before it's too late.”

Ali Smith (1962) Scottish writer

Happiness

“People surprise you, Frank, with just how fuckin stupid they are. I mean, do you actually realize how much adult conversation is spent on this fuckin business? Facts treated like they were opinions just for the simple purpose of talking about it longer? Some people might think that's interesting, bub, but I'll tell you. It's romanticizing a goddamn rock by calling it a mountain range to me. People waste a helluva lot of time they could be putting to useful purposes. This is a game. See it and forget about it.”

Richard Ford The Sportswriter

Source: The Sportswriter (1986), p. 104

People, Stupidity, Mountain, Game

“And I thought about the color and I realized what blue it was. It was the soft and changeable, essential blue of a well-worn pair of pants.

Pants = Love”

Ann Brashares book Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood

Love, Color

“Later, when you're grown up, you realize you never really get to hang out with your family. You pretty much have only eighteen years to spend with them full time, and that's it.”

Mindy Kaling book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Source: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Family, Time

“I hadn't realized how much I'd been needing to meet someone I might be able to say everything to.”

Elizabeth Berg (1948) American novelist

Source: Talk Before Sleep

“A good conversation is the only human equivalent: the realizing that decent points are being made and understood, that irony is in play, and elaboration, and that a dull and obvious remark would be almost physically hurtful.”

Christopher Hitchens Mortality

Source: Mortality

Hurt

“You need somebody to stand up for you. You're the little guy, you just don't realize it yet. The Commonwealth has all the aces, and you don't even know you're playing cards.”

Lisa Scottoline (1955) American writer

Source: Every Fifteen Minutes

Guy

“The dance goes from realizing that you're separate (which is the awakening) to then trying to find your way back into the totality of which you are not only a part, but which you are.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Way, Dance, Parting

“We're so arrogant, aren't we? So afraid of age, we do everything we can to prevent it. We don't realize what a privilege it is to grow old with someone. Someone who doesn't drive you to commit murder or doesn't humiliate you beyond repair.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Age

“The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.”

Albert Ellis (1913–2007) American psychologist

Life, Problem, Deep, Success

“The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him — that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

God

“The strangeness of Time. Not in its passing, which can seem infinite, like a tunnel whose end you can't see, whose beginning you've forgotten, but in the sudden realization that something finite, has passed, and is irretrievable.”

Joyce Carol Oates book Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

Source: Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

Time

“Men don’t realize that if we’re sleeping with them on the first date, we’re probably not interested in seeing them again either.”

Chelsea Handler (1975) American comedian, actress, author and talk show host

Men, Sleep

“She had seemed to need something from him that he hadn’t been able to give… at last he realized that what she had needed from him was need itself. That he should need her as she needed him.”

Nicholas Evans book The Horse Whisperer

Source: The Horse Whisperer

“I would do anything for you. Anything."

With that, he pushed his way out… and as the door eased shut, she realized that I love you could indeed be said without actually uttering the phrase.

Actions did mean more than words.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Unleashed

Love, Way

“The more man learned, the more he realized he did not know.”

Dan Brown book The Lost Symbol

Source: The Lost Symbol

Learning

“We came out here to find the American Dream, and now that we're right in the vortex you want to quit… You must realize that we've found the main nerve."

I know," he said. "That's what gives me the Fear.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Fear, Dreams

“[The information available within a system constitutes what Boulding (1978) calls the noosphere. It is constituted by the collection of plans, of representations, of procedures, of ideas for the construction of objects or of instructions to realize certain interaction patterns, including] the totality of the cognitive content, including values, of all human nervous systems, plus the prostatic devices by which the system is extended and integrated in the form of libraries, computers, telephones, post offices, and so on.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1970s, Ecodynamics: A New Theory Of Societal Evolution, 1978, p. 122, cited in: Jorge Reina Schement, Brent D. Ruben (1993) Information and Behavior - Volume 4. p. 517<br>Robert A. Solo (1994) " Kenneth Ewart Boulding: 1910-1993. An Appreciation http://www.jstor.org/stable/4226892" commented: "The image appears as crucial in Boulding's treatment of societal evolution. Here the record is in human artifacts, not only in material structures such as buildings and machines, telephones and radios, but also in organizations including the extended family, the tribe, the nation, and the corporation. All such artifacts originate in and are sustained by images in the human mind. Civilization and civilized man, in the language that he knows, the skills he acquires, the whole heritage of tradition and manners he has learned, are human artifacts."

Idea

“If we had met five years ago, you wouldn't have found a more staunch defender of the newspaper industry than me … I was winning awards, getting raises, lecturing college classes, appearing on TV shows, and judging journalism contests. So how could I possibly agree with people like Noam Chomsky and Ben Bagdikian, who were claiming the system didn't work, that it was steered by powerful special interests and corporations, and existed to protect the power elite? And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. The reason I'd enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn't been, as I'd assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job … The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress.”

Gary Webb (1955–2004) American investigative journalist

Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press.

People, Truth, Appearance