Quotes about sort
page 5

“I have neither curiosity, interest, pain nor pleasure, in anything, good or evil, they can say of me. I feel only a slight disgust, and a sort of wonder that they presume to write my name.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Pain, Pleasure, Feeling, Evil

“People hide their truest nature. I understood that; I even applauded it. What sort of world would it be if people bled all over the sidewalks, if they wept under trees, smacked whomever they despised, kissed strangers, revealed themselves?”

Alice Hoffman book The Ice Queen

Source: The Ice Queen

People, World, Kiss, Nature

“Blood hell, what happened to you?" - Dante
The dark wisard and I had a mild disagreement." -Viper
What sort of disagreement?" -Dante
I thought he should be dead and he disagreed." -Viper”

Alexandra Ivy (1961) American novelist

Source: When Darkness Comes

Hell, Dead

“These are the sort of things people ought to look at. Things without pretensions, satisfied to be merely themselves.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Source: The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell

People

“… I begin with songs. They provide a sort of skeleton grammar for me to flesh out. Songs of longing for future tense, songs of regret for past tense, and songs of love for present tense.”

Mary Doria Russell The Sparrow

Source: The Sparrow

Love, Past, Future

“It's not much of a tail, but I'm sort of attached to it.”

A.A. Milne book Winnie-the-Pooh

Source: Winnie-the-Pooh

“I’ve stopped talking because there’s really nothing left to say and there’s this piercing sort of pain where my heart is. Maybe I’m even having a heart attack, but it doesn’t seem worth mentioning.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Pain, Heart

“New York City vagrant:
"What sort of 'nese are you people? Are you Chinese, or Japanese, or Javanese?"

Kakuzo Okakura responds:
"We are Japanese gentleman. But what sort of 'key are you? Are you a Yankee, or a donkey, or a monkey?”

Kakuzo Okakura (1862–1913) Japanese scholar, author of The Book of Tea

People

“All good people agree,
And all good people say,
All nice people, like Us, are We
And every one else is They:
But if you cross over the sea,
Instead of over the way,
You may end by (think of it!) looking on We
As only a sort of They!”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Source: Debits And Credits

People, Way, Thinking, Sea

“… so young, so lonely and naive, that she imagined herself as some sort of vessel to be filled up with love. But it wasn't like that. The love was within her all the time and its only renewal came from giving it away.”

Kim Edwards book The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Source: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Love, Imagination, Time

“I do not think much of ages. People are people. What does it matter how old or young they are? It is a category, and I do not like categories. It is a sort of pigeonhole or a label.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Lonesome Gods

People, Age, Thinking

“I've always sort of wondered: If everyone else's opinion is what matters, then do you ever really have one of your own?”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

“I'm really a peaceful sort of coward.”

L.A. Meyer (1942–2014) American writer

Peace

“A few said they'd be horses. Most said they'd be some sort of cat. My friend said she'd like to come back as a porcupine. I don't like crowds, she said.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Cats, Horse

“Shigure Sohma: Tohru's very cute in a sweet sort of way.

Hatori Sohma: For some reason when you say that it reeks of something illegal.”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Way

“Not that she objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven, quantities of books. All sorts of books.”

Jean Rhys (1890–1979) novelist from Dominica

Source: Quartet

Books, Solitude

“… and when he put his mind to it, he could make his words coil themselves around and around the listener until they held her in some sort of a mild hypnotic spell.”

Roald Dahl book Switch Bitch

Source: Switch Bitch

“Yeah, and Mr. Cuddles is a jealous sort. He doesn’t share us well. (Geary)
Does this mean I’ll have to fight him? (Arik)
You’d never win. Mr. Cuddles cheats. You think he’s just a pushover teddy bear, but he’s vicious, I tell you. Vicious. (Geary)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: The Dream Hunter

Thinking, Fight, Cheating

“For years now, I've wanted to fall asleep. The sort of slipping off, the giving up, the falling part of sleep. Now sleeping is the last thing I want to do.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Sleep, Parting

“When people see you're happy doing what you're doing, it sort of takes the power away from them to tease you about it.”

Wendy Mass book Every Soul a Star

Source: Every Soul a Star

Happiness, People

“Calvin is hammering nails into coffee table.
Mom: CALVIN WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO THE COFFEE TABLE?!?
Calvin: Is this some sort of trick question, or what?”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Coffee, Moms, Question

“One of the liberating effects of science fiction when I was a teenager was precisely its ability to tune me into all sorts of strange data and make me realize that I wasn’t as totally isolated in perceiving the world as being monstrous and crazy”

William Gibson (1948) American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist and founder of the cyberpunk subgenre

World, Science

“… he said, with sort of a little derisive smile, "How can you walk down the street with all this stuff going on inside you?" I said, "I don't know how you can walk down the street with nothing going on inside you.”

Nelson Algren (1909–1981) American novelist, short story writer

Smile

“Mom told us we would have to go shoplifting.
Isn't that a sin?" I asked Mom.
Not exactly," Mom said. "God doesn't mind you bending the rules a little if you have a good reason. It's sort of like justifiable homicide. This is justifiable pilfering.”

Jeannette Walls book The Glass Castle

Source: The Glass Castle

God, Moms

“It was a spring day, the sort that gives people hope: all soft winds and delicate smells of warm earth. Suicide weather.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted (1994)

People, Hope, Spring, Suicide

“There was an electric anger in his gaze, and a sort of challenge that made Simon long to hit him with something heavy. Like a pickup truck.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Anger

“….. it would be interesting to find out what goes on in that moment when someone looks at you and draws all sorts of conclusions.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Drawing

“She looked into the staring glass eyes and complacent face, and suddenly a sort of heartbroken rage seized her. She lifted her little savage hand and knocked Emily off the chair, bursting into a passion of sobbing- Sara who never cried.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett A Little Princess

Source: A Little Princess

Rage, Passion

“All I wanted to do was lie in the dry grass with my feet in a ditch forever. I could be a convenient sort of milemarker, I thought. Get to the thief and you know you're halfway to Methana.”

Megan Whalen Turner The Thief

Source: The Thief

Lie, Grass

“They had created themselves together, and they always saw themselves, their youth, their love, their lost youth and lost love, their failures and memories, as a sort of living fiction.”

Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007) Novelist, short story writer, literary critic

Source: Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature

Love, Youth, Failure, Memory

“This is very domestic of you," he said. "It's kinda hot, really. Giving me all sorts of fantasies about you in an apron vacuuming my house.”

Richelle Mead Blood Promise

Source: Blood Promise

Housing

“He's the sort of guy that gets a laugh out of people.”

Ken Kesey book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

People, Guy

“This day is going to be awful. It's the sort of day you wouldn't mind losing completely, even if it meant your life would be twenty-four hours shorter.”

Alice Hoffman book Here on Earth

Source: Here on Earth

Life

“There is no conclusive evidence of life after death. But there is no evidence of any sort against it. Soon enough you will know.”

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love

So why fret about it?
Source: Time Enough for Love (1973)

Life, Death

“Simon: 'You know men. We have delicate egos.'
Clary: 'I wouldn't describe Jace's ego as delicate.'
Simon: 'No, Jace's is sort of the antiaircraft artillery tank of male egos.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Men

“We do not wait for inspiration. We work because we've jolly well got to. But when all is said and done, we toil at this particular job because it's turned out to be our particular job, and in a weird sort of way I suppose we may be said to like it.”

Ngaio Marsh (1895–1982) New Zealand writer

Source: Ngaio Marsh: A Life

Way, Waiting

“A man who has nothing in particular to recommend him discusses all sorts of subjects at random as though he knew everything.”

Sei Shonagon book The Pillow Book

Source: The Pillow Book
Source: The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon (1002), p. 44

“There was a yell, but Magnus had already risen and closed the door before he could see Alec fall down the steps, as that was the sort of thing a man had to do in private.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Course of True Love [and First Dates]

“I like living, breathing better than working… my art is that of living. Each second, each breath is a work which is inscribed nowhere, which is neither visual nor cerebral, it's a sort of constant euphoria.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Art

“I would certainly end up forever crying the blues into a
coffee cup in a park for old men playing
chess or silly games of some sort.”

Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Men, Game, Coffee, Cry

“Ah, life is a gate, a way, a path to Paradise anyway, why not live for fun and joy and love or some sort of girl by a fireside, why not go to your desire and LAUGH…”

Jack Kerouac book Big Sur

Big Sur (1962)

Love, Life, Way, Girl

“We'de have to get in and get out the hard way; and if we made a mistake, there was no telling what sort of curse we'de unleash: monster guardians, plagues, fires, exploding donkeys(don't laugh; they're bad news).”

Rick Riordan book The Throne of Fire

Source: The Throne of Fire

Way

“I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

World, Heart

“There was an awful suspicion in my mind that I'd finally gone over the hump, and the worst thing about it was that I didn't feel tragic at all, but only weary, and sort of comfortably detached.”

Hunter S. Thompson The Rum Diary

Source: The Rum Diary

Feeling

“Secrets had an immense attraction to him, because he never could keep one, and he enjoyed the sort of unhallowed thrill he experienced when he went and told another animal, after having faithfully promised not to.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Source: The Wind in the Willows

Secret, Animals

“If only it were that easy. You forget: I have an addictive personality. I'm addicted to you. Somehow I think you could do all sorts of bad things to me, and I'd still come back to you.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Thinking, Personality, Forgetting

“A sort of good-bye without saying good-bye," he said. "It is a reference to a passage in the Bible. 'And Mizpah, for he said, the Lord watch between me and thee when we are absent one from another.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“I stopped watching for ridicule, the scorpion's tail hidden in his words. He said what he meant; he was puzzled if you did not. Some people might have mistaken this for simplicity. But is it not a sort of genius to cut always to the heart?”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

People, Heart

“I'm not sure that insecurity is a good enough excuse for that sort of behavior. We're all insecure, and I really think he's old enough to have discovered the reasons behind his insecurity, and do something about them."

… Lucy”

Jane Green (1968) British writer

Behavior, Thinking

“It's one of the advantages of being a woman. I get to do all sorts of unfair things, and you have to accept them because you're too polite not to.
--Polgara”

David Eddings (1931–2009) American novelist

Source: The Seeress of Kell

“They kissed for the sort of endless moment that only exists between lovers whose lips are still new territory to one another.”

Scott Lynch book Red Seas Under Red Skies

Source: Red Seas Under Red Skies

Lovers, Kiss

“Good, bad, and indifferent - It takes all sorts to make a world.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Variant: It takes all sorts to make a world.
Source: The Wind in the Willows (1908), Ch. 4
Context: The Wild Wood is pretty well populated by now; with all the usual lot, good, bad, and indifferent — I name no names. It takes all sorts to make a world.

World, Indifference

“A man's library is a sort of harem.”

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

“That's what it's like in my head all the time, constant snow, constant weather patterns of all sorts - blizzards, cyclones.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

Time, Weather

“But then, he thought, most politicians are small and shabby, the sort of people who have been bullied at school.

That's why they become politicians.”

Anthony Horowitz book Skeleton Key

Source: Skeleton Key

People, School

“I was my own woman.
The next step was to find the proper sort of man.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

“Are some people destined for a great fate, or to do great things? Or is it only that they're born somehow with that great passion -- and if they find themselves in the right circumstances, then things happen? It's the sort of thing you wonder…”

Diana Gabaldon book Voyager

Source: Voyager

Fate, People, Passion

“Carstairs is alright, I suppose. If you like that sort.”

“Oh?”

“The taken. The uninterested.”

“As opposed to… you, Gabriel?”

“Well, yes.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

“I think many people love their problems. Gives them all sorts of excuses for not growing up and getting on with life.”

Louise Penny book Still Life

Source: Still Life

Love, Life, People, Problem

“Wine gave a sort of gallantry to their own failure.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

Failure, Wine

“I always thought when I got older that God would sort of come into my life in some way. He didn't. I don't blame him. If I was him I'd have the same opinion about me that he does.”

Cormac McCarthy book No Country for Old Men

Source: No Country for Old Men

Life, God, Way

“You used nunchucks on a moose?"
Wolfe got a haunted look in his eyes. "I used all sorts of things on that bastard.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Wolf

“I’m not totally mad at you. I’m just sad. You’re all locked up in that little world of yours, and when I try knocking on the door, you just sort of look up for a second and go right back inside.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

World, Sadness, Madness

“She took a sort of abject pride in her mecilessness toward herself.”

David Foster Wallace book Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Source: Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

“Imagination is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come by study, but by the intellect being where and what it sees, by sharing the path, or circuits of things through forms, and so making them translucid to others.”

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

Imagination, Study

“There are in life a few moments so beautiful, that even words are a sort of profanity.”

Diana Palmer (1946) American romance novelist

Life, Beauty

“But Iget afraid. It's just that fear makes me sort of… angry and resentful, and I bite back at it. It's hard to describe."

It isn't hard to describe, you idiot," Aud said. "It's called courage.”

Jonathan Stroud book Heroes of the Valley

Source: Heroes of the Valley

Fear, Courage

“No one would have ever guessed that seven of the world's most talented teenagers were coming to the Henley that day for an entirely different sort of lesson.”

Ally Carter book Heist Society

Source: Heist Society

World

“It’s the first time I’ve ever kissed a boy, which should make some sort of impression I guess, but all I can register is how unnaturally hot his lips are from the fever.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Boy, Kiss, Time

“I am an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.”

E.M. Forster book Maurice

Source: Maurice

“I wasn't actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Love

“Just sort of relax your mind and say yes, it does hurt, I know. Don't try and shut it out.”

Philip Pullman book The Subtle Knife

Source: The Subtle Knife

Hurt

“As far as I can tell, they never get up before noon unless there's some sort of national emergency, like my leg hair.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

“Where I'm from, we believe in all sorts of things that aren't true… we call it history.”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

History

“If we could manage any sort of trust again… Well. That would make me happier than you can imagine”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Shadow Heir

Imagination

“This much is certain, that we have no theological right to set any sort of limits to the loving-kindness of God which has appeared in Jesus Christ. Our theological duty is to see and understand it as being still greater than we had seen before.”

Karl Barth (1886–1968) Swiss Protestant theologian

Source: The Humanity of God

Love, God, Understanding, Appearance

“Anxiety, the next gumption trap, is sort of the opposite of ego. You're so sure you'll do everything wrong you're afraid to do anything at all. Often this, rather than "laziness," is the real reason you find it hard to get started. This gumption trap of anxiety, which results from over-motivation, can lead to all kinds of errors of excessive fussiness. You fix things that don't need fixing, and chase after imaginary ailments. You jump to wild conclusions and build all kinds of errors into the machine because of your own nervousness. These errors, when made, tend to confirm your original underestimation of yourself. This leads to more errors, which lead to more underestimation, in a self-stoking cycle. The best way to break this cycle, I think, is to work out your anxieties on paper. Read every book and magazine you can on the subject. Your anxiety makes this easy and the more you read the more you calm down.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 26
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Books, Way, Error, Motivation

“One realized all sorts of things. The value of an illusion, for instance, and that the shadow can be more important than the substance. All sorts of things.”

Jean Rhys (1890–1979) novelist from Dominica

Source: Quartet

“Bruno: Why do you wear pajamas all day?
Shmuel: The soldiers. They took all our clothes away.
Bruno: My dad's a soldier, but not the sort that takes people's clothes away.”

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

Source: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

People, Clothes

“Memories are small prayers to God, if we believed in that sort of thing.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

God, Memory

“She had loved him. He knew this; he had never doubted it. But she had also asked him to kill her. If you love someone that much, you did not lay that sort of burden on him for the rest of his life.”

Jodi Picoult book The Pact

Source: The Pact

Love, Life

“I know it may come as a shock, but it's sort of considered polite to wait for the consent of the woman. In fact, I'm pretty sure that if you don't wait, you may have to deal with pesky criminal charges like kidnapping and rape.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds

Waiting

“It was a sort of love few other people could understand. It was total and it was overwhelming and it could be cruel.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

Love, People, Understanding

“Your lifeline…oh, the burning stick. Right.” Leo resisted the urge to set his hand ablaze and yell: Bwah ha ha! The idea was sort of funny, but he wasn’t that cruel.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Idea

“Oh, I'm sorry. Did I interrupt some sort of dominance foreplay?”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: A Perfect Blood

“Magnus, you were trying to flirt with your own plate."

"I'm a very open-minded sort of fellow!”

Cassandra Clare The Bane Chronicles

Source: The Bane Chronicles

“… I do have to wonder what sort of childhood the Grimm brothers endured. They are not a merry bunch of storytellers, what with their children roasted by witches, maidens poisoned by old crones, and whatnot.”

Libba Bray book Rebel Angels

Source: Rebel Angels

Children, Childhood

“Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind reception it meets with in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”

Jonathan Swift The Battle of the Books and Other Short Pieces

Source: The Battle of the Books and Other Short Pieces

World

“A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: "There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Business

“The girl at her music sits in another sort of light, the fitful, overcast light of lie, by which we see ourselves and others only imprefectly, and seldom..-Girl, Interrupted”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted (1994)
Context: I've gone back to the Frick since then to look at her and at the two other Vermeers. Vermeers, after all, are hard to come by, and the one in Boston has been stolen. The other two are self-contained paintings. The people in them are looking at each other -- the lady and her maid, the soldier and his sweetheart. Seeing them is peeking at them through a hole in a wall. And the wall is made of light -- that entirely credible yet unreal Vermeer light. Light like this does not exist, but we wish it did. We wish the sun could make us young and beauitful, we wish our clothes could glisten and ripple against our skins, most of all, we wish that everyone we knew could be brightened simply by our looking at them, as are the maid with the letter and the soldier with the hat. The girl at her music sits in another sort of light, the fitful, overcast light of life, by which we see ourselves and others only imperfectly, and seldom.

Lie, Music, Girl, Light

“Humanity can be roughly divided into three sorts of people - those who find comfort in literature, those who find comfort in personal adornment, and those who find comfort in food;”

Elizabeth Goudge (1900–1984) English fiction writer

Source: Little White Horse

People, Food, Literature, Personality