Quotes about realization
page 6

“I realized that despite how entertaining certain stories were, at the bottom of every item of gossip there was someone getting hurt.”

Sherwood Smith book Crown Duel

Source: Crown Duel (Crown & Court #1 - 2, 1997)

Hurt

“There are moments in your life that, when you look back at them, you realize were perfect.”

Jim Butcher book Skin Game

Source: Skin Game

Life, Perfection

“It was then that she realized that the yellow butterflies preceded the appearances of Mauricio Babilonia.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Appearance

“I am a flawed human being - a far more flawed human being than you
realize.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

“You have to give up! you have to give up!
You have to realize that someday you will die,
Until you know that, you are useless!”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

“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

“Otis barreled towards them empty-handed, before apparently realizing that a) he was empty-handed and b) charging towards a large body of water to fight a son of Poseidon was maybe not a good idea.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Idea, Water, Fight

“why won't they
leave me
alone?
don't they
realize I
have a
tinder heart
and a
paper body
and that
any spark
will turn me
straight to ash?”

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

Heart

“You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Source: Conversations with Maya Angelou

“Suddenly she realized that what she was regretting was not the lost past but the lost future, not what had not been but what would never be.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Past, Future

“You look back on some little decision you made and realize all the things that happened because of it, and you think to yourself "if only I'd known," but, of course, you couldn't have known.”

Mary Downing Hahn (1937) American children's writer

Source: The Dead Man in Indian Creek

Thinking, Decision

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

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

Intelligence, Fight, Personality

“Regain your senses, call yourself back, and once again wake up. Now that you realize that only dreams were troubling you, view this 'reality' as you view your dreams.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Dreams, Reality, Sense

“A man is at his youngest when he thinks he is a man, not yet realizing that his actions must show it.”

Mary Renault book The King Must Die

Source: The King Must Die (1958)

Thinking

“… and then she realized: they WERE all alike!”

Anne Taintor (1953) American artist

“Maybe that’s enlightenment enough: to know that there is no final resting place of the mind; no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom… is realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go. -Anthony Bourdain”

Anthony Bourdain (1956–2018) Chef and food writer

No Reservations - Machu Picchu
Context: It seems that the more places I see and experience, the bigger I realize the world to be. The more I become aware of, the more I realize how relatively little I know of it, how many places I have still to go, how much more there is to learn. Maybe that's enlightenment enough - to know that there is no final resting place of the mind, no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom, at least for me, means realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go.

Wisdom

“If there wasn't a word for it, would we realize our masochism as much?”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

“I realize, for the first time, how very lonely I've been in the arena. How comforting the presence of another human being can be.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Time

“My earliest memories of my father are of seeing him work at his desk and realizing that he was happy. I did not know it then, but that was one of the most precious gifts a father can give his child.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: Outliers: The Story of Success

Happiness, Memory

“Some of my most neurotically fierce bitterness is the result of realizing how untrue people have become.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Source: Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters

People

“The longer I live, the more I realize that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time!”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Pain, Time

“Then I realized that we all think we might be terrible people. But we only reveal this before we ask someone to love us. It is a kind of undressing.”

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

Source: The First Bad Man

Love, People, Thinking

“I spend the rest of the afternoon trying to explain to Zoe one of the very saddest notions in love and life: sometimes the timing is wrong--and sometimes you realize the heart of the matter way to late in the game.”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Source: Baby Proof

Love, Life, Way, Game

“Our whole spiritual transformation brings us to the point where we realize that in our own being, we are enough.”

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

“Zerbrowski said, "Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try."
It took me a second to realize that he had just quoted Star Wars to me. It made me smile, and in that moment I loved him, just for that.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Kiss the Dead

Source: Kiss the Dead

Love, War, Smile, Quotes

“Often when we realize how precious those seconds are, it's too late for them to be captured because the moment has passed. We realize too late.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

“I wished she'd been smart enough, or loving enough, to realize everybody has burdens that crush them, only they don't give up their children.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Love, Children

“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

“It was only after her death that I realized who she was: the apparently magical force at the center of our family who'd kept us all invisibly spinning in the powerful orbit around her.”

Cheryl Strayed book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Source: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Death, Family

“There is an hour when you realize: here is what you have been given. More than this, you won't receive. And what this is, what your life has come to, will be taken from you. In time.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

Source: Wild Nights!: Stories About the Last Days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James, and Hemingway

Life, Time

“We were given the Scriptures to humble us into realizing that God is right, and the rest of us are just guessing.”

Rich Mullins (1955–1997) American christian musician

Lufkin, Texas http://www.kidbrothers.net/words/concert-transcripts/lufkin-texas-jul1997-full.html (July 19, 1997) <br class="br">In Concert <br class="br">Context: It starts off so beautifully and then at the end of that Psalm, the last verse of that Psalm is “How very blessed is the man who dashes the little one’s heads against the rocks.” This is not the sort of scripture you read at a pro-life meeting. But it’s in there none the less. Which is the thing about the Bible that’s why it always cracks me up when people say ‘Well in Dududududududududududududu it says’ you kinda go ‘Wow it says a lot of things in there.’ Proof texting is a very dangerous thing. I think if we were given the scriptures it was not so that we could prove that we were right about everything. If we were given the scriptures it was to humble us into realizing that God is right and the rest of us are just guessing. Which is what makes them so much fun to read, especially if you are not a fundamentalist.

God

“I used to think the worst feeling in the world is losing someone you love. But I was wrong the worst feeling in the world is the moment that you realize you've lost yourself.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Love, World, Feeling, Thinking

“Not quite what one expected, but once it happened one realized it couldn't be any other way.”

Donna Tartt book The Secret History

Source: The Secret History

Way

“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.

Stupidity, Thinking, Personality, Funny

“I initially thought you were ugly, but then you walked closer to me and I realized you were pretty.”

Mindy Kaling book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Source: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“I realized how truly hard it was, really, to see someone you love change right before your eyes. Not only is it scary, it throws your balance off as well.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Love, Change

“I felt a splinter of guilt wedge into my heart. Charlotte had hurt me; in return, I'd hurt Rob. Maybe that's what we do to the people we love: take shots in the dark and realize too late we've wounded the people we're trying to protect.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Love, People, Heart, Hurt

“I read once that you need two things to be happy: any two of health, money, and love. You can cover the absense of one with the other two… But now I realized this was unmitigated bullshit, because health and money did not compare with love at all.”

Max Barry book Machine Man

Source: Machine Man

Love, Money, Happiness, Health

“It's like picking up an unfamiliar piece of sheet music & starting to stumble through it, only to realize it is a melody you'd once learned by heart, one you can play without even trying.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Music, Learning, Heart

“You don't just decide to have sex because you feel like having sex. You decide to have sex once you realize you're in love with someone and want to express that love physically.”

Sarah Mlynowski (1977) Novelist

Source: Ten Things We Did

Love, Sex, Feeling

“Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.”

David Sedaris (1956) American author

People

“He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.”

Douglas Adams Life, the Universe and Everything

Source: Life, the Universe and Everything

Hope

“I felt a queasy mixture of relief and horror: when you finally stop an itch and realize it’s because you’ve ripped a hole in your skin.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

“… we all must admit that everything is fine and there's no need in the world to worry, and in fact we should realize what it would mean to us to UNDERSTAND that we're not REALLY worried about ANYTHING.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

World, Understanding

“Until this moment, I had not realized that someone could break your heart twice, along the very same fault lines.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Heart, Heartbreaking

“There is so much hurt in this game of searching for a mate, of testing, trying. And you realize suddenly that you forgot it was a game, and turn away in tears.”

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

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Search, Game, Tear, Hurt

“That's the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they've been all along.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Way

“The secret story is the one we'll never know, although we're living it from day to day, thinking we're alive, thinking we've got it all under control and the stuff we overlook doesn't matter. But every single damn thing matters! Only we don't realize. We just tell ourselves that art runs on one track and life, our lives, on another, and we don't realize that's a lie.”

Roberto Bolaño book Last Evenings on Earth

Dentist
Last Evenings on Earth (2006)

Life, Lie, Secret, Art

“…when you're struggling with something, look at all the people around you and realize that every single person you see is struggling with something, and to them, it's just as hard as what you're going through.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Savannah Lynn Curtis, Chapter 4, p. 71
Variant: ... when you're struggling with something, look at all the people around you and realize that every single person you see is struggling with something, and to them, it's just as hard as what you're going through.
Source: 2000s, Dear John (2006)

People, Personality

“I didn't realize then that so much of being adult is reconciling ourselves with the awkwardness and strangeness of our own feelings. Youth is the time of life lived for some imaginary audience”

Douglas Coupland book Girlfriend in a Coma

Source: Girlfriend in a Coma

Life, Youth, Feeling, Time

“Marriage, each of them realized intuitively, was about compromise and forgiveness. It was about balance, where one person complemented the other.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Choice

Travis Parker, Chapter 16, p. 203
Variant: Relationship is about forgiveness and compromise. It is about balance where one person complements each other.
Source: 2000s, The Choice (2007)

Marriage, Forgiveness, Personality

“I have come to realize that destiny can hurt a person as much as it can bless them, and I find myself wondering why--out of all the people in all the world I could ever have loved--I had to fall in love with someone who was taken away from me.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

Love, People, World, Hurt

“I realized then that I didn't understand anything. I read all the books I could.”

Marjane Satrapi (1969) Artist

Source: Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood

Books, Understanding, Reading

“Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realizes himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

Life

“He realized that he had thought only about the first step, never imagined the last.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Imagination

“You realize that people take drugs because it's the only real personal adventure left to them in their time-constrained, law-and-order, property-lined world. It's only in drugs or death we'll see anything new, and death is just too controlling.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Survivor

Source: Survivor

Death, People, World, Law

“I wonder if whoever invented World of Warcraft realizes it’s practice for sociopaths.”

Lisa Scottoline (1955) American writer

Source: Every Fifteen Minutes

World

“It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Source: An Autobiography

Love, People, Cute, Romantic

“but she realized that she wanted him to know her. She wanted him to understand her, if only because she had strange sense that he was the kind of man she could fall in love with, even if she didn't want to.”

Nicholas Sparks book Safe Haven

Source: Safe Haven

Love, Understanding, Sense

“Self-discovery is above all the realization that we are alone.”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

“I didn’t realize it, but the days came along one after another, and then two years were gone, and everything was gone, and I was gone.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Source: Babylon Revisited and Other Stories

“If you knew where your happiness came from, it gave you patience. You realized that a lot of the time, you were just waiting out a situation, and that took the pressure off; you no longer looked to every interaction to actually do something for you.”

Curtis Sittenfeld book Prep

Source: Prep

Happiness, Time, Waiting, Patience

“I find myself looking into people's eyes more than I ever did before. And I realize, that's where we stop being a certain gender or color. Just look right into the center of the eye.”

David Levithan book Another Day

Source: Another Day

People, Color

“When I was growing up I always wanted to be someone. Now I realize I should have been more specific.”

Lily Tomlin (1939) American actress, comedian, writer, and producer

Variant: I always wanted to be something, but now I see I should have been more specific.

Funny

“I realize then that we never have children, we receive them. And sometimes it’s not for quite as long as we would have expected or hoped. But it is still far better than never having had those children at all.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Children, Hope

“And I guess I realized at that moment that I really did love her. Because there was nothing to gain, and that didn't matter.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Love

“It is essential that we realize once and for all that man is much more of a sex creature than a moral creature. The former is inherent, the other is grafted on.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

Sex

“Lacy was just as happy alone as with company. When she was alone, she was potential; with others she was realized.”

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

Source: An Object of Beauty

Happiness

“What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)
Context: Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political and economic change. … Now a lot of us are preachers, and all of us have our moral convictions and concerns, and so often have problems with power. There is nothing wrong with power if power is used correctly. You see, what happened is that some of our philosophers got off base. And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites — polar opposites — so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love.
It was this misinterpretation that caused Nietzsche, who was a philosopher of the will to power, to reject the Christian concept of love. It was this same misinterpretation which induced Christian theologians to reject the Nietzschean philosophy of the will to power in the name of the Christian idea of love. Now, we've got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. And this is what we must see as we move on. What has happened is that we have had it wrong and confused in our own country, and this has led Negro Americans in the past to seek their goals through power devoid of love and conscience.
This is leading a few extremists today to advocate for Negroes the same destructive and conscienceless power that they have justly abhorred in whites. It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our times.

Love, Justice, Peaceful