Quotes about something
page 7

“It's hard to explain," said Brutha. "But I think it's got something to do with how people should behave… you should do things because they're right. Not because gods say so. They might say something different another time.”

Terry Pratchett book Small Gods

Source: Small Gods

God, People, Thinking, Time

“Sometimes
when you are trying
not to think about something
it keeps popping back in your head
you can't help it
you think about it
and
think about it
and
think about it
until your brain
feels like
a squashed pea.”

Sharon Creech Love That Dog

Source: Love That Dog

Feeling, Thinking, Help

“Only if you are afraid of looking foolish, and I would have looked far more foolish if I persisted with an erroneous belief.' Eragon said.
Why, little one, you just said something wise!'Saphira teased.”

Christopher Paolini book Eldest

Source: Eldest

“There's something rotten in the state of Denmark, and Hamlet says… it's payback time!”

Jasper Fforde book Something Rotten

Source: Something Rotten

Time

“But believe me, just because the human mind can't imagine something happening… doesn't mean it won't.”

Dan Brown book Inferno

Source: Inferno

Imagination

“We're all lonely for something we don't know we're lonely for. How else to explain the curious feeling that goes around feeling like missing somebody we've never even met?”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Feeling

“In your life there are a few places, or maybe only the one place, where something happened, and then there are all the other places.”

Alice Munro book Too Much Happiness

Source: "Too Much Happiness", in Too Much Happiness (2009)

Life

“I don't know. They could put up a warning sign or something. Hello. Welcome to Hindstrap. We will murder you in the night and eat your bloody face if you stay past sunset. Try the pies. Martna Maily makes them fresh daily.”

Robert Jordan The Wheel of Time

Source: The Gathering Storm

Past, Night

“Doctors always think anybody doing something they aren't is a quack; also they think all patients are idiots.”

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

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

Thinking

“The words went round and round and round in my mind and my body, until I knew they were no longer my words but something that had been carved into my heart.
And now my soul was crying.”

Tracey Emin (1963) English artist, one of the group known as Britartists or Young British Artists

Source: Strangeland

Soul, Heart, Cry

“But when two people feel something, they ought to respect that enough to figure it out”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: The Witness

People, Feeling

“intuition is always right in at least two important ways;
It is always in response to something.
it always has your best interest at heart”

Gavin de Becker (1954) American engineer

Source: The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence

Way, Heart

“Whether we realise it or not, most of us define ourselves by opposing rather than by favouring something or someone. To put it another way, it is easier to react than to act.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

Way

“Always walk through life as if you have something new to learn, and you will.”

Vernon Howard (1918–1992) American writer

Life, Learning

“Have you ever felt despair? Absolute hopelessness? Have you ever stood in the darkness and known, deep in your heart, in your spirit, that it was never, ever going to get better? That something had been lost, forever, and that it wasn't coming back?”

Jim Butcher book Storm Front

Source: Storm Front

Heart, Despair

“The only geniuses produced by the chaos of society are those who do something about it. Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.”

B.F. Skinner Walden Two

Source: Walden Two

“I like today and perhaps a little future still, but the past is really something I'm not interested in. So, as far as I'm concerned, I like only the past of things and people I don't know. When I know, I don't care because I knew how it was.”

Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer

People, Past, Future

“They suffered from the terrible delusion that something could be done. They seemed prepared to make the world the way they wanted it or die in the attempt, and the trouble with dying in the attempt was that you died in the attempt.”

Terry Pratchett book Sourcery

Source: Sourcery

World, Way, Suffering

“It is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Solitude

“Sin ought to be something exquisite, my dear boy.”

Emile Zola (1840–1902) French writer (1840-1902)

Boy

“How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author

Source: The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh

For women, Missing You, Goodbye, Graduation

“Don't be a fool. Don't give up something important to hold onto someone who can't even say they love you.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Someone Like You

Love, Fools

“Were all instructors to realize that the quality of mental process, not the production of correct answers, is the measure of educative growth something hardly less than a revolution in teaching would be worked.”

John Dewey book Democracy and Education

Source: Democracy and Education

Education

“When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself.”

Karen Blixen (1885–1962) Danish writer

Time

“… and I discovered something: the meaning of my life was whatever I wanted it to be.”

Paulo Coelho book The Fifth Mountain

Source: The Fifth Mountain

Life

“No, truth is something desperate, an' she's got it. Believe me, it's something desperate, an' she's got it.”

Tennessee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Source: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Truth

“The demands of Jesus are difficult because they require us to do something extraordinary. At the same time He asks us to regard these [acts of goodness] as something usual, ordinary.”

Albert Schweitzer book The Quest of the Historical Jesus

Source: The Quest of the Historical Jesus

Time

“Without change something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Variant: Without new experiences, something inside of us sleeps. The sleeper must awaken.
Source: Dune

Sleep, Change

“Anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you're both engaged in the same business - you know they're doing something that you aren't.”

Malcolm X book The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Source: The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Business, Success

“You can't always get what you want, but if you really need something, you usually find it.”

Keith Richards (1943) British rock musician, member of The Rolling Stones

“I reckon responsible behavior is something to get when you grow older. Like varicose veins.”

Terry Pratchett book Wyrd Sisters

Source: Wyrd Sisters

Behavior

“A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”

Walter Benjamin book Theses on the Philosophy of History

Source: Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), IX

Angels, History, Past, Future

“Happiness isn't something that depends on our surroundings… It's something we make inside ourselves.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

Happiness, Dependency

“There's all the difference in the world between having something to say, and having to say something.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

World

“If something you want is slow to come to you, it can be for only one reason: You are spending more time focused upon its absence than you are about its presence. If”

Esther Hicks (1948) American writer

Source: The Law of Attraction: The Basics of the Teachings of Abraham

Time

“You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.”

George Bernard Shaw Major Barbara

Act III
Source: 1900s, Major Barbara (1905)

Feeling

“Happiness is something that comes into our lives through doors we don't even remember leaving open.”

Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) American journalist

Happiness, Happy

“I never could bear the idea of anyone's expecting something from me. It
always made me want to do just the opposite.”

Jean Paul Sartre No Exit

Source: No Exit

Idea

“The universe is always speaking to us…. Sending us little messages, causing coincidences and serendipities, reminding us to stop, to look around, to believe in something else, something more.”

Nancy Thayer (1943) American novelist

Universe

“When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, "Why God? Why me?" and the thundering voice of God answered, "There's just something about you that pisses me off".”

Stephen King Storm of the Century

Storm of the Century (1999)
Source: Storm of the Century: An Original Screenplay

Life, God, Family

“You're something between a dream and a miracle.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Dreams, Wedding

“Didn't help to ponder things that were forever gone. It only made a body restless and fill up with bees, all wanting to sting something.”

Laurie Halse Anderson book Chains

Source: Chains

Bee, Help

“Nothing good ever comes of love. What comes of love is always something better”

Roberto Bolaño book Amulet

Source: Amulet

Love

“Anything that thinks logically can be fooled by something else that thinks at least as logically as it does.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

Source: The Hitchhiker's Trilogy

Fools, Thinking

“Something wicked this way comes”

William Shakespeare Macbeth

Variant: By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
Source: Macbeth

Way

“If we do not do something to help these creatures, we make a mockery of the whole concept of justice.”

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

Justice, Help

“In his early twenties, a man started collecting paintings, many of which later became famous: Picasso, Van Gogh, and others. Over the decades he amassed a wonderful collection. Eventually, the man’s beloved son was drafted into the military and sent to Vietnam, where he died while trying to save his friend. About a month after the war ended, a young man knocked on the devastated father’s door. “Sir,” he said, “I know that you like great art, and I have brought you something not very great.” Inside the package, the father found a portrait of his son. With tears running down his cheeks, the father said, “I want to pay you for this.ℍ “No,” the young man replied, “he saved my life. You don’t owe me anything.ℍ The father cherished the painting and put it in the center of his collection. Whenever people came to visit, he made them look at it. When the man died, his art collection went up for sale. A large crowd of enthusiastic collectors gathered. First up for sale was the amateur portrait. A wave of displeasure rippled through the crowd. “Let’s forget about that painting!” one said. “We want to bid on the valuable ones,” said another. Despite many loud complaints, the auctioneer insisted on starting with the portrait. Finally, the deceased man’s gardener said, “I’ll bid ten dollars.ℍ Hearing no further bids, the auctioneer called out, “Sold for ten dollars!” Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. But then the auctioneer said, “And that concludes the auction.” Furious gasps shook the room. The auctioneer explained, “Let me read the stipulation in the will: “Sell the portrait of my son first, and whoever buys it gets the entire art collection. Whoever takes my son gets everything.ℍ It’s the same way with God Almighty. Whoever takes his Son gets everything.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Source: Through the Year with Jimmy Carter: 366 Daily Meditations from the 39th President

Life, God, War, People

“What are you?" I whispered.
He shrugged again.
"Something," he said. "Something like you, something like a beast, something like a bird, something like an angel." He laughed. "Something like that.”

David Almond book Skellig

Source: Skellig

Angels, Bird

“Never give up on something you really want. However impossible things seem, there's always a way.”

Sophie Kinsella book Mini Shopaholic

Source: Mini Shopaholic

Way

“I am a born antinomian. I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws. But while I see that there is nothing wrong in what one does, I see that there is something wrong in what one becomes.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: De Profundis and Other Writings

Law

“Intuition does not denote something contrary to reason, but something outside of the province of reason.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

“Why pretend to be something you're not? If you have to be someone, be someone no one else is.”

Terry Brooks (1944) American writer

“If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it was, and always will be yours. If it never returns, it was never yours to begin with.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Unleash the Night

Love

“It takes a lot of spine and stomach to make yourself into something when no one gives you a foundation.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

“Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1920s, Marriage and Morals (1929)

Love, Women, Men, Affliction

“Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp, which isn’t very much.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

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

Reality

“He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them something to aim at.”

Terry Pratchett book Small Gods

Source: Small Gods

God

“Can you look without the voice in your head commenting, drawing conclusions, comparing, or trying to figure something out?”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

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

Drawing

“Nothing is going to change, unless someone does something soon”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Change

“I think all happiness depends on the energy to assume the mask of some other life, on a re-birth as something not one's self.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Life, Happiness, Birth, Thinking

“Mister Teatime had a truly brilliant mind, but it was brilliant like a fractured mirror, all marvellous facets and rainbows but, ultimately, also something that was broken.”

Terry Pratchett book Hogfather

Source: Hogfather

“Something unappeased, unappeasable, is within me.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.”

Raymond Chandler book The High Window

Source: The High Window

“Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Beyond Good and Evil

Variant: In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
Source: Beyond Good and Evil

People, Age, Madness

“Unless you're completely exploded, there's always something to be grateful for.”

Saul Bellow book Herzog

Source: Herzog

“People only tell lies when there is something they are terribly frightened of losing.”

Orhan Pamuk book The Museum of Innocence

Source: The Museum of Innocence

People

“When the fight begins within himself,
A man's worth something.”

Robert Browning Men and Women

"Bishop Blougram's Apology".
Men and Women (1855)

Fight

“Sometimes you have to do something unforgivable just to be able to go on living.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

“If you liked being a teenager, there's something really wrong with you.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“The days began to fly now, and yet each one of them was stretched by renewed expectations and swollen with silent, private experiences. Yes, time is a puzzling thing, there is something about it that is hard to explain.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain

Time, Flying

“Something must be wrong with me to stop a good girl-on-girl fight”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

Girl, Fight

“Suddenly for no earthly reason I felt immensely sorry for him and longed to say something real, something with wings and a heart, but the birds I wanted settled on my shoulders and head only later when I was alone and not in need of words.”

Vladimir Nabokov book The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

Source: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

Bird, Heart

“I mean, it's not surprising, really. Once you love something, you always love it in some way. You have to. It's, like, part of you for good.”

Sarah Dessen book What Happened to Goodbye

What Happened To Goodbye (2011)
Source: What Happened to Goodbye

Love, Way, Parting

“In olden days a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking
But now, Heaven knows,
Anything goes.”

Cole Porter (1891–1964) American composer and songwriter

"Anything Goes"; there are also variants on this line which read "But now, God knows,
Anything goes", but the most common renditions are done with "Heaven knows"
Anything Goes (1934)

“Cause when a guy does something stupid once, well that’s because he’s a guy. But if he does the same stupid thing twice, that’s usually to impress some girl.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Stupidity, Guy, Girl

“If that isn't typical male stupidity! If something doesn't work, kick it or swear at it!”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Stupidity

“Do something wonderful, people may imitate it.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

People, Life

“Oh, yes; the game was to just find something about everything to be glad about—no matter what 'twas”

Eleanor H. Porter book Pollyanna

Source: Pollyanna

Game

“The Auditors fluttered anxiously. And, as always happens in their species when something goes radically wrong and needs fixing instantly, they settled down to try to work how who was to blame.”

Terry Pratchett book Hogfather

Source: Hogfather

“Wherever you turn, you can find someone who needs you. Even if it is a little thing, do something for which there is no pay but the privilege of doing it. Remember, you don't live in a world all of your own.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

World

“Amazing what we can self-rationalize when we really want something”

Harlan Coben book Six Years

Source: Six Years

“I cannot disobey something which I do not know and the reality of which I have the right to deny.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Pale Fire

Source: Pale Fire

Reality

“Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.”

Eckhart Tolle book The Power of Now

The Power of Now (1997)

Pleasure, Joy

“Everything terrible is something that needs our love.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Love

“Never do anything complicated when something simple will serve as well. It's one of the most important secrets of living.”

Erich Maria Remarque book The Black Obelisk

Source: The Black Obelisk

Secret

“What was the opposite of linkage blindness? What described being certain of something without any kind of evidence?

… The term was.”

Barry Lyga (1971) American writer

Source: I Hunt Killers

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet

“Unseen University had never admitted women, muttering something about problems with the plumbing, but the real reason was an unspoken dread that if women were allowed to mess around with magic they would probably be embarrassingly good at it…”

Terry Pratchett book The Light Fantastic

Source: The Light Fantastic

Women, Problem, Universe

“People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds; it is something one creates.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Source: The Second Sin (1973), p. 49.

People, Personality

“On that night after Phoebe had given her Pandora report, I thought about the Hope in Pandora's box. Maybe when everything seemed sad and miserable, Phoebe and I could both hope that something might start to go right.”

Sharon Creech Walk Two Moons

Source: Walk Two Moons

Sadness, Hope, Night, Box

“In difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

Beauty, Time, Heart

“You never know ahead of time what something's really going to be like.”

Katherine Paterson book Bridge to Terabithia

Source: Bridge to Terabithia

Time

“Granny sighed. "You have learned something," she said, and thought it safe to insert a touch of sternness into her voice. "They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.”

Terry Pratchett book Equal Rites

Source: Equal Rites

Knowledge, Learning

“The idea is not to live forever, it is to create something that will.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Idea

“Now that I've won a slam, I know something very few people on earth are permitted to know. A win doesn't feel as good as a loss feels bad, and the good feeling doesn't last long as the bad. Not even close.”

Andre Agassi book Open. An Autobiography

Source: Open

People, Feeling, Loss

“Your life is just about craving, and making something else tremendously more important than you.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Mystic's Musings

Life

“I think it's odd that grown-ups quarrel so easily and so often and about such petty matters. Up to now I always thought bickering was just something children did and that they outgrew it.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

Children, Thinking

“But forgetting's not something you do, it happens to you. Only it didn't happen to me”

John Fowles book The Collector

Variant: Forgetting’s not something you do, it happens to you. Only it didn’t happen to me.
Source: The Collector

Forgetting

“only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

Personality

“Love is a one-way street. Love, like respect isn't something you get; it's something you give”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Love, Way

Quotes about something page 7

Quotes about something
page 7