Quotes about something
page 5

“Never think about something wrong you did in the past. Always look forward with your head up high. Have no regrets.”

Jared Leto (1971) American actor and musician

“We shall always be a small minority in the world, but, when a small nation accomplishes something with its limited means, what it achieves has an immense and exceptional value, like the widow's mite. It is a deliberate and discerning love of a nation that appeals to me, not the indiscriminate love that assumes everything to be right because it bears a national label. Love of one's own nation should not entail non-love of other nations. Institutions by themselves are not enough.”

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850–1937) First Czechoslovak president

Love, World, Making love

“I need to have something to source my energy to and something to remove me from my own weird brain.”

Andrew Biersack (1990) American singer-songwriter

“Some people say that the climate crisis is something that we all have created. But that is just another convenient lie. Because if everyone is guilty then no one is to blame. And someone is to blame. Some people – some companies and some decision-makers in particular – have known exactly what priceless values they are sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money.”

Greta Thunberg book No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference

Teen activist tells Davos elite they're to blame for climate crisis, CNN https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/25/europe/greta-thunberg-davos-world-economic-forum-intl/index.html (25 January 2019) <br class="br">Cited in No One is Too Small to Make a Difference, Penguin Books, 2019, pages 17-18 (ISBN 9780141991740). <br class="br">2019, World Economic Forum (January 2019)

Money, People, Lie, Making love

“The object of a ceremony is not to be beautiful, though that is a valuable element. The object of a ceremony is to be ceremonious. Ritual is a need of the human soul — nay, it is rather a need of the human body, like exercise. A man does not take off his hat to a lady because he looks nicer without it; the instance of bald men would be alone sufficient to upset such an explanation. He does it because you must positively do something when you meet a lady, or your whole civilisation goes to pieces; and taking off your hat is easier than taking off your necktie or lying face downwards on the pavement.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton : The Illustrated London News, 1905-1907 (1986), p. 191

Men, Beauty, Exercises, Soul

“You’re not immortal, you’re not eternal and to believe otherwise is to diminish everything that you really have. Life is precious because it is short and there is nothing after it. There is no purpose and there is no destiny beyond anything you give it yourself. If you want your life to mean something try making someone else’s life meaningful.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

“Give the Devil His Due”, 1st November 2014, https://youtube.com/XbiADYVORGE

Life, Making love

“I concluded that women are flawed. There is something mentally wrong with the way their brains are wired, as if they haven’t evolved from animal-like thinking. They are incapable of reason or thinking rationally. They are like animals, completely controlled by their primal, depraved emotions and impulses. That is why they are attracted to barbaric, wild, beast-like men. They are beasts themselves. Beasts should not be able to have any rights in a civilized society. If their wickedness is not contained, the whole of humanity will be held back from advancement to a more civilized state. Women should not have the right to choose who to mate with. That choice should be made for them by civilized men of intelligence. If women had the freedom to choose which men to mate with, like they do today, they would breed with stupid, degenerate men, which would only produce stupid, degenerate offspring. This in turn would hinder the advancement of humanity. Not only hinder it, but devolve humanity completely. Women are like a plague that must be quarantined. When I came to this brilliant, pefect revelation, I felt like everything was now clear to me, in a bitter, twisted way. I am one of the few people on this world who has the intelligence to see this. I am like a god, and my purpose is to exact ultimate Retribution on all of the impurities I see in the world.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Building to Violence

Women, Men, God, People

“There is the world for you. Beauty, true beauty, is intangible. It is in the eye of the beholder. Something that we can lose at any moment, and the more you examine it, the more illusive it becomes. True happiness is virtue, and virtue is predicated on knowledge and righteous conduct.”

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111) Persian Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and mystic

in The Alchemist of Happiness

Happiness, World, Beauty, Knowledge

“He is very strong at defending, both on the ground and in the air. He is a complete player and has no faults. He is a modern defender because he is as strong defensively as many others, but has something more than the rest. When he has the ball, he knows what to do.”

Thiago Silva (1984) Brazilian footballer

Carlo Ancelotti (PSG), 2013 http://www.sambafoot.com/en/news/45256_psg_coach_carlo_ancelotti__thiago_silva_is_best_defender_in_the_world.html <br class="br">From coaches and club directors

Strong

“Was there no sword, nothing with which to batter down these walls, this protection, this begetting of children and living behind curtains, and becoming daily more involved and committed, with books and pictures? Better burn one’s life out like Louis, desiring perfection; or like Rhoda leave us, flying past us to the desert; or choose one out of millions and one only like Neville; better be like Susan and love and hate the heat of the sun or the frost-bitten grass; or be like Jinny, honest, an animal. All had their rapture; their common feeling with death; something that stood them in stead. Thus I visited each of my friends in turn, trying, with fumbling fingers, to prise open their locked caskets. I went from one to the other holding my sorrow — no, not my sorrow but the incomprehensible nature of this our life — for their inspection. Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends, I to my own heart, I to seek among phrases and fragments something unbroken — I to whom there is not beauty enough in moon or tree; to whom the touch of one person with another is all, yet who cannot grasp even that, who am so imperfect, so weak, so unspeakably lonely. There I sat.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Bernard, section IX
The Waves (1931)

Love, Life, Death, Hate

“I think, whether we’re talking about gender inequality or racism or queer rights or indigenous rights or animal rights, we’re talking about the fight against injustice. We’re talking about the fight against the belief that one nation, one people, one race, one gender, one species, has the right to dominate, use and control another with impunity. I think we’ve become very disconnected from the natural world. Many of us are guilty of an egocentric world view, and we believe that we’re the centre of the universe. We go into the natural world and we plunder it for its resources. We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakeable. Then we take her milk that’s intended for her calf and we put it in our coffee and our cereal. We fear the idea of personal change, because we think we need to sacrifice something; to give something up. But human beings at our best are so creative and inventive, and we can create, develop and implement systems of change that are beneficial to all sentient beings and the environment.”

Joaquin Phoenix (1974) American actor, music video director, producer, musician, and social activist

"Joaquin Phoenix's Oscars speech in full: 'We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and steal her baby'" https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/feb/10/joaquin-phoenixs-oscars-speech-in-full, The Guardian (February 10, 2020).

People, World, Fear, Feeling

“The greatest danger to our future is apathy. We cannot expect those living in poverty and ignorance to worry about saving the world. For those of us able to read this magazine, it is different. We can do something to preserve our planet.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

"The Power of One", TIME Magazine (26 August 2002) http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1003125,00.html

World, Reading, Future

“I told my wife, I said, "You get there at 5:30 you can fly with me but let me tell you something Sugar Tits, at 5:31 I am wheels up and I am fucking gone!" ...I said that. Not very loud, but I said it. 5:31 gets there. Is she there? No! Do I leave? ...No! 6:01 gets there. Is she there? No. Do I leave? No. Why? Because this dick won't suck itself, that's why.”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

10:29
A Little Unprofessional

Flying

“I always think that when something is currently very trendy, it's already very old.”

Ennio Morricone (1928–2020) Italian composer, orchestrator and conductor

Thinking

“Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary. The wider course would be to say that there are certain lines along which humanity must move, the grand strategy is mapped out, but detailed prophecy is not our business. Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Source: "Can Socialists Be Happy?" https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/can-socialists-be-happy/, Tribune (20 December 1943). Published under the name ‘John Freeman’.

Happiness, Imagination, Business, Thinking

“I know this sounds crazy, but once I find something I want to do, nobody's stopping me. If I don't know how to sew, and I really had that passion to sew, that's it, I'm going to sew. That's also with acting. So here I am.”

Millie Bobby Brown (2004) British actress

Source: "How ‘Stranger Things’ Star Millie Bobby Brown Made Eleven ‘Iconic’ and Catapulted Into Pop Culture" https://variety.com/2017/tv/features/millie-bobby-brown-stranger-things-season-2-eleven-1202602487/. Variety. (October 31, 2017).

Passion

“When you play a character, you learn the inner workings of someone's heart. I've learned something about myself through every character I've played!”

Debby Ryan (1993) American singer and actress

Debby Ryan's Winter Fashion And Beauty Tips https://www.seventeen.com/celebrity/a19701/debby-ryan-fashion-interview/ (November 8, 2012)

Learning, Heart

“Mistake is something that happens to everyone in life.”

Rahul verma (Rv) (2004)

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58354436-one-fourth-journey-of-rvalllplay?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=CHbCZWH9VO&rank=1

Life

“I score so many goals, this means a lot. I know I will always be a little bit behind and I have to maybe work harder than those players for my country if we want to achieve something. It’s not an easy job for me, but I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid. It’s a big chance.”

Robert Lewandowski (1988) Polish association football player

Chance, Country

“The biggest battle than all the world wars put together is when the mind wants something while the body craves for something else as well.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

War, World

“All of us are having conversations with God all the time. We’re simply calling them something else. We’re calling them moments of “inspiration.” Or “women’s intuition.” Or a “psychic hit.” Or a “bright idea.” Or a “deep insight.” Or an “epiphany.” We call the results of such encounters “serendipity” or “coincidence” or “chance.””

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Women, God, Idea, Chance

“It's great to be black in Hollywood. When a black actor does something, it seems new and different just by virtue of the fact that he's black.”

Will Smith (1968) American actor, film producer and rapper

"Will Smith" article in Halliwell's Who's Who in the Movies (2001 edition), p. 406

“I have mood poisoning. Must be something I hate.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Hate, Mood

“All I need is a sheet of paper
and something to write with, and then
I can turn the world upside down.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

World

“I've said it before, and I'll say it again. When you find something at which you have talent, you do that thing (what ever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes pop out of your head.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

"Mindful"
Why I Wake Early (2004)

Light

“… I want those perfect eyes and lips, and for everyone to look at me and gasp. And for everyone who sees me to think Who's that? and want to get to know me, and listen to what I say."
"I'd rather have something to say.”

Scott Westerfeld book Uglies

Source: Uglies

Thinking, Perfection

“It is the universal nature of human Bildung to constitute itself as a universal intellectual being. Whoever abandons himself to his particularity is ungebildet ("unformed")—e. g., if someone gives way to blind anger without measure or sense of proportion. Hegel shows that basically such a man is lacking in the power of abstraction. He cannot turn his gaze from himself towards something universal, from which his own particular being is determined in measure and proportion.”

Hans-Georg Gadamer book Truth and Method

Source: Truth and Method

Way, Nature, Sense, Universe

“We don't really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped… We suffer, therefore we think.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: How Proust Can Change Your Life

Pain, Hope, Problem, Thinking

“Everybody is talented because everybody who is human has something to express.”

Brenda Ueland (1891–1985) Journalist and writer

“He saw something that makes a man doubtful of the constancy of the realities outside himself. It was the shocking discovery that makes a man wonder if I've missed this, what else have I failed to see?”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent

Reality

“Do something instead of killing time. Because time is killing you.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Source: Aleph

Time

“Each time you learn something new you must readjust the whole framework of your knowledge”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Knowledge, Learning, Time

“You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

Du kannst Dich zurückhalten von den Leiden der Welt, das ist Dir freigestellt und entspricht Deiner Natur, aber vielleicht ist gerade dieses Zurückhalten das einzige Leid, das Du vermeiden könntest.
104
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

World, Nature, Suffering

“Giving up at something that no longer serves a purpose, or protects you, or helps you, isn't giving up at all, it's growing up.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Incubus Dreams

Psychic mentor Marianne, to Anita; p. 61
Source: Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, Incubus Dreams (2004)

Help

“you have to love something before you can hate it.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

Love, Hate

“Life may contain the "essence" (what else could?); recollection, the repetition in imagination, may decipher the essence and deliver to you the "elixir"; and eventually you may even be privileged to "make" something out of it, "to compound the story." But life itself is neither essence nor elixir, and if you treat as such it will only play its tricks on you.”

Hannah Arendt book Men in Dark Times

Source: Men in Dark Times

Life, Imagination

“You've got to have something to eat, and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body's sermon on how to behave.”

Billie Holiday (1915–1959) American jazz singer and songwriter

Love, Life

“When we become advocates of a creed, something dies; we do not believe God, we only believe our belief about Him.”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

God

“But instinct is something which transcends knowledge. We have, undoubtedly, certain finer fibers that enable us to perceive truths when logical deduction, or any other willful effort of the brain, is futile.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Source: My Inventions (1919)
Context: He declared that it could not be done and did me the honor of delivering a lecture on the subject, at the conclusion he remarked, "Mr. Tesla may accomplish great things, but he certainly will never do this. It would be equivalent to converting a steadily pulling force, like that of gravity into a rotary effort. It is a perpetual motion scheme, an impossible idea." But instinct is something which transcends knowledge. We have, undoubtedly, certain finer fibers that enable us to perceive truths when logical deduction, or any other willful effort of the brain, is futile.

Truth, Knowledge, Effort

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”

Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) American novelist, writer, journalist, political activist

Source: I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked (1935), ; repr. University of California Press, 1994, p. 109.
Context: I used to say to our audiences: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

Understanding, Dependency, For Men

“One of the Silent Brothers is here to see you. Hodge sent me to wake you up. Actually he offered to wake you himself, but since it's 5 a. m., I figured you'd be less cranky if you had something nice to look at."
"Meaning you?"
"What else?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Gwendolen, Act II
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Travel, Reading, Training, Funny

“A boy admiring a pretty girl. A rare thing to be certain. But love—true love—is something else.”

Alex Flinn (1966) American children's writer

Source: A Kiss in Time

Love, Girl, Boy

“Someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the mere opposite of the male, but something in itself, something that makes one think not of any complement and limit, but only life and reality: the female human being.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Seven (14 May 1904)
Source: Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

Life, Women, Girl, Thinking

“Worry is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

Graduation

“Human rights are something you were born with. Human rights are your God-given rights. Human rights are the rights that are recognized by all nations of this earth. And any time any one violates your human rights, you can take them to the world court.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

The Ballot or the Bullet (1964), Speech in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964)
Context: When you expand the civil-rights struggle to the level of human rights, you can then take the case of the black man in this country before the nations in the UN. You can take it before the General Assembly. You can take Uncle Sam before a world court. But the only level you can do it on is the level of human rights. Civil rights keeps you under his restrictions, under his jurisdiction. Civil rights keeps you in his pocket. Civil rights means you’re asking Uncle Sam to treat you right. Human rights are something you were born with. Human rights are your God-given rights. Human rights are the rights that are recognized by all nations of this earth. And any time any one violates your human rights, you can take them to the world court.

God, World, Time

“I'm not straight, and I'm not gay. I'm not bisexual. I want out of the labels. I don't want my whole life crammed into a single word. A story. I want to find something else, unknowable, some place to be that's not on the map. A real adventure.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Variant: I want out of the labels. I don't want my whole life crammed into a single word. A story. I want to find something else, unknowable, some place to be that's not on the map. A real adventure.'
A spinx. A mystery. A blank. Unknown. Undefined.
Source: Invisible Monsters

Life

“Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings — much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.”

George Eliot book Adam Bede

Source: Adam Bede (1859)
Context: These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people — amongst whom your life is passed — that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire — for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience. And I would not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who could create a world so much better than this, in which we get up in the morning to do our daily work, that you would be likely to turn a harder, colder eye on the dusty streets and the common green fields — on the real breathing men and women, who can be chilled by your indifference or injured by your prejudice; who can be cheered and helped onward by your fellow-feeling, your forbearance, your outspoken, brave justice.
So I am content to tell my simple story, without trying to make things seem better than they were; dreading nothing, indeed, but falsity, which, in spite of one's best efforts, there is reason to dread. Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. The pencil is conscious of a delightful facility in drawing a griffin — the longer the claws, and the larger the wings, the better; but that marvellous facility which we mistook for genius is apt to forsake us when we want to draw a real unexaggerated lion. Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings — much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.

Truth, Feeling, Motivation, Falseness

“Luck? I don’t know anything about luck. I’ve never banked on it and I’m afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: hard work - and realizing what opportunity is and what isn’t.”

Lucille Ball (1911–1989) American actress and businesswoman

People

“She believed, of course… because without something to believe in, life would be intolerable.”

Rosamunde Pilcher book The Shell Seekers

Source: The Shell Seekers

Life

“That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Heart, Dead

“Can I help you with something?"
Clary turned instant traitor against her gender. "Those girls on the other side of the car are staring at you."
Jace assumed an air of mellow gratification. "Of course they are," he said, "I am stunningly attractive.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Cars, Girl, Help

“If you realize that you're the problem, then you can change yourself, learn something and grow wiser. Don't blame other people for your problems.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki book Rich Dad Poor Dad

Source: Rich Dad, Poor Dad

People, Problem, Learning, Change

“… Dreams come to tell us something about our lives that we are missing.”

James Redfield book The Celestine Prophecy

Source: The Celestine Prophecy

Dreams

“A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions — as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Sec. 41
The Gay Science (1882)

Failure, Question, Success

“How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you?”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Wise

“When you are a child you are yourself and you know and see everything prophetically. And then suddenly something happens and you stop being yourself; you become what others force you to be. You lose your wisdom and your soul.”

Jean Rhys (1890–1979) novelist from Dominica

Source: After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie

Wisdom, Soul

“There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something, we'd all love one another.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

Zen Masters : The Wisdom of Frank Zappa (2003)

Love

“If you're not having fun, you're doing something wrong.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

“To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.”

Walker Percy book The Moviegoer

Source: The Moviegoer

Search, Despair

“I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive expression of humanity. It's something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we're from, everyone loves music.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Love, Music, Thinking

“A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

As translated by Katharine Lyttelton, in Joubert : A Selection from His Thoughts (1899)
Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 121; this likely derives from the observation of Joseph Joubert: The goal is not always meant to be reached, but to serve as a mark for our aim.

Motivational, Success, Life, Positive

“You were trying to tell me something and I was trying to tell you something else. We didn't trust each other and that was reason enough to make each of us right.”

Elliot Perlman (1964) Australian writer

Source: The Reasons I Won't Be Coming

“Sandry: "There has to be something we can do."
Lark: "We're mages. We do what we can, but some problems are too big to fix."
Sandry: "Then I wish I weren't a mage. What good is magic, if you can't use it to help people.”

Tamora Pierce book Daja's Book

Source: Daja's Book

People, Problem, Help

“I don't know the rules of grammar. If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language.”

David Ogilvy (1911–1999) Advertising executive

People

“If you can't look after something in your care, you have no right to keep it.”

Enid Blyton (1897–1968) author

“You're hurt because everything is changed. Jimmy is hurt because everything is the same. And neither of you can face it. Something's gone wrong somewhere, hasn't it?”

John Osborne Look Back in Anger

Source: Look Back in Anger

Change, Hurt

“Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. … Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Knox College Commencement Address (4 June 2005)
2005

Life

“Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.”

Christopher Morley (1890–1957) American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet

Thinking, Reading, Parting

“No! Please! I'll tell you whatever you want to know!" the man yelled.
"Really?" said Vimes. "What's the orbital velocity of the moon?"
"What?"
"Oh, you'd like something simpler?”

Terry Pratchett book Night Watch

Source: Night Watch

“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I felt in him what women feel in men, something so tender, swollen, tyrannical, absurd; I would never take the consequences of interfering with it.”

Alice Munro book Lives of Girls and Women

Source: Lives of Girls and Women

Women, Men, Feeling

“I'd rather be a failure at something I enjoy than a success at something I hate.”

George Burns (1896–1996) American comedian, actor, and writer

Hate, Failure, Success

“From experience. That something is irrational is no argument against its existence, but rather a condition for it.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 515
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation

“We all leave one another. We die, we change - it's mostly change - we outgrow our best friends; but even if I do leave you, I will have passed on to you something of myself; you will be a different person because of knowing me; it's inescapable…”

Edna O'Brien (1930) Novelist, memoirist, biographer, playwright, poet and short story writer

Source: Girl with Green Eyes

Change, Personality

“You did something because it had always been done, and the explanation was, ‘But we’ve always done it this way.’ A million dead people can’t have been wrong, can they?”

Terry Pratchett book The Fifth Elephant

Source: The Fifth Elephant

People, Way, Dead

“You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge. But it can only emerge if something fundamental changes in your state of consciousness.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Change

“It's him," I said. "Typhon."
I was seriously hoping Chiron would say something good, like 'No, that's our huge friend Leroy! He's going to help us!”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Hope, Help

“Never trust a species that grins all the time. It’s up to something.”

Terry Pratchett book Pyramids

Source: Pyramids

Time

“If I can't make it through one door, I'll go through another door- or i'll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

“You can only offend me if you mean something to me.”

Chris Rock (1965) American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director

“Even when you’re at the top, there’s always something higher”

Keigo Higashino The Devotion of Suspect X

Source: The Devotion of Suspect X

“You can't think on purpose about somebody or something. Either you think about them naturally or you don't think at all.”

Alberto Moravia (1907–1990) Italian writer and journalist

Source: Boredom

Nature, Thinking

“Devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie (1997)
Context: So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.

Love, Communication