Quotes about thing
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“In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

“We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness. The deer strives with his supple legs, the cowman with trap and poison, the statesman with pen, the most of us with machines, votes, and dollars, but it all comes to the same thing: peace in our time. A measure of success in this is all well enough, and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking, but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run. Perhaps this is behind Thoreau’s dictum: In wildness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain”, p. 133. This is a paraphrase of Thoreau: see explanation by the Walden Woods project http://www.walden.org/Library/Quotations/The_Henry_D._Thoreau_Mis-Quotation_Page). Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Arizona and New Mexico: On Top," & "Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain"

Life, Men, World, Peace

“Little things affect little minds.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

“Some things are fairly obvious when it's a seven-foot skeleton with a scythe telling you them”

Terry Pratchett book Hogfather

Source: Hogfather

“I want to think and at the same time that's the last thing in the world I want to do.”

Erich Maria Remarque book The Black Obelisk

Source: The Black Obelisk

World, Thinking, Time

“The time has come," the walrus said, "to talk of many things: Of shoes and ships - and sealing wax - of cabbages and kings”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

Shoe, Time

“I missed you even when I was with you. That’s been my problem. I miss what I already have, and I surround myself with things that are missing.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Problem

“Things just happen, one after another. They don't care who knows. But… ah, history is different. History has to be observed. Otherwise it's not history. It's just… well, things happening one after another.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

History

“Art is not a thing; it is a way.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Art, Way

“The things men did or felt they had to do.”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

Source: All Quiet on the Western Front

Men

“I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

“Romance takes place in the middle distance. Romance is looking in at yourself through a window clouded with dew. Romance means leaving things out: where life grunts and shuffles, romance only sighs.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Life

“Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.”

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

Happiness, Pleasure

“The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.”

Horace Walpole (1717–1797) English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician

As quoted in The Christian Leader, Vol. 37, Issue 7 (17 February 1934)

Life, Secret

“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner (1992)
Source: Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC's of Faith

World, Beauty

“I think it's so foolish for people to want to be happy. Happy is so momentary--you're happy for an instant and then you start thinking again. Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

Life, Happiness, People, Thinking

“Yet one thing secures us what ever betide, the scriptures assures us that the Lord will provide.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

“I will not be "famous," "great." I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, refusing to be stamped and stereotyped. The thing is to free one's self: to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Source: A Writer's Diary

Change

“Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.”

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love

Time Enough for Love (1973)
Variant: Progress doesn't come from early risers — progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.

Men, Way

“The More we value things, the less we value ourselves”

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

“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it as not as dreadful as it appears, discovering that we have the strength to stare it down.”

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

Appearance, Time, Courageous, Powerful

“The mistakes I've made are dead to me. But I can't take back the things I never did.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 309

Dead

“I wanted to do things to Richard that would make the sun grow cold with horror.”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

Source: My Work is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror

Sun

“Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.”

Terry Pratchett book I Shall Wear Midnight

Variant: And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things.
Source: I Shall Wear Midnight

People, Evil

“Our apparitions, the things you know us by, are simply childish. Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by.”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

Source: To the Lighthouse

“Bring together things that have not yet been brought together and did not seem predisposed to be so.”

Robert Bresson book Notes on the Cinematographer

Source: Notes on the Cinematographer

“One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

Hate, Family, Family, Cute

“But in his experience it was only a matter of time before the normal balance of the universe restored itself and started doing the usual terrible things to him.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Color of Magic

Universe, Time

“When words cease to cling close to things, kingdoms fall, empires wane and diminish.”

Ezra Pound (1885–1972) American Imagist poet and critic

“It's a big deal when you finally get the chance to do the one thing you want to do -need to do- more than anything. It can kind of scare the crap out of you.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

Chance

“That is the principal thing-not to remain with the dream, with the intention, with the being-in-the-mood, but always forcibly to convert it all into things.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

Dreams, Mood

“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Law, Way, Soul

“Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Books, Way, Feeling, Understanding

“And the cost of a thing it will be remembered as the amount of life it requires to be exchanged for it.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

After December 6, 1845
Journals (1838-1859)
Source: Walden

Life

“I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily.”

Cormac McCarthy book All the Pretty Horses

Variant: Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it is always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals come easily.
Source: All the Pretty Horses

Courage, Betrayal

“Anyone can hide. Facing up to things, working through them, that's what makes you strong.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Strong, For women, Courageous

“Keep things at arm's length… If you let anything come too near you want to hold on to it. And there is nothing a man can hold on to.”

Erich Maria Remarque book Three Comrades

Source: Three Comrades

“The acquisition of any knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

Love, Hate, Knowledge

“That's one form of magic, of course."
"What, just knowing things?"
"Knowing things that other people don't know.”

Terry Pratchett book Equal Rites

Source: Equal Rites

People

“True wisdom consists in two things: Knowledge of God and Knowledge of Self.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Book 1 Chapter 1, p. 44
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)
Context: Without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God.
Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other.

Wisdom, God, Knowledge

“The important thing about having lots of things to remember is that you’ve got to go somewhere afterwards where you can remember them, you see? You’ve got to stop. You haven’t really been anywhere until you’ve got back home.”

Terry Pratchett book The Light Fantastic

Source: The Light Fantastic

Home

“Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women.”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own

Women

“Blessings be on this house," Granny said, perfunctorily. It was always a good opening remark for a witch. It concentrated people's minds on what other things might be on this house.”

Terry Pratchett book Witches Abroad

Source: Witches Abroad

People, Housing

“Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later--no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover or how much we learn or forget--we will return.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind) (2001)

Books, World, Way, Thinking

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

These are paraphrases of Muir's quote from My First Summer in the Sierra (1911) - the actual quote is listed above: "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." See Sierra Club explanation http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/misquotes.aspx. Misattributed Variant: Tug on anything at all and you'll find it connected to everything else in the universe. Variant: When we tug at a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world.

World, Nature, Peaceful

“Words are cheap. The biggest thing you can say is 'elephant'.”

Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker

“Who dares think one thing, and another tell,
My heart detests him as the gates of hell.”

Homér Iliad

IX. 312–313 (tr. Alexander Pope).
A. H. Chase and W. G. Perry, Jr.'s translation:
: Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is the man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)
Source: The Iliad

Hell, Thinking, Heart

“There is a reason why all things are as they are.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Source: Dracula

Hope, Hurtful, Positive, Teachers' Day

“I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. If you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good, either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be.”

Roald Dahl book My Uncle Oswald

Source: My Uncle Oswald (1979)

Love, Life, Passion, Speed

“Today I feel that I shall win through. I have come to the gateway of the simple; I am now content to see things as they are. I have gained freedom myself; I shall allow freedom to others. In my work will be my salvation.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Source: The Home and the World

Feeling, Freedom

“For it all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are in themselves. The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.”

C.G. Jung book Modern Man in Search of a Soul

Source: Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933), p. 67

Life, Dependency

“I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

Beauty

“Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Speech in the House of Representatives (20 June 1848)
1840s

Way, Motivational

“You see persons and things not as they are but as you are.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Personality, Relationship, Goodbye, Good Morning

“Change can be weird or even queer. But change has to happen for things to grow--for us to grow. And change isn't so bad when you're not in it alone.”

P. C. Cast book Burned

Source: Burned

Change

“Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments flit away and a sunny spirit takes their place.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

"What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us?" (1897)

“Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Happiness, Way, Dependency, Happy

“To look wise is quite as good as understanding a thing, and very much easier.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Understanding

“The worst thing about loneliness is that it brings one face to face with oneself.”

Mary Balogh (1944) Welsh-Canadian novelist

Source: No Man's Mistress

Loneliness

“Form is emptiness, emptiness is form" states the Heart Sutra, one of the best known ancient Buddhist texts. The essence of all things is emptiness.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

Heart

“That the truest experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Variant: That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it.
Source: Eleven Minutes (2003), p. 97.
Context: In love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each of us responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame someone else for what we feel. It hurt when I lost each of the various men I fell in love with. Now, though, I am convinced that no one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone. That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it.

World, Freedom

“Things always become obvious after the fact”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

“To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow.”

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

Variant: To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 17
Context: Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you are no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow. <!-- p. 205

Life, Mountain, Future

“All great and precious things are lonely.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“I am in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing.”

Louise L. Hay (1926–2017) American writer

Variant: I am in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing.

Time

“The road and the tale have both been long, would you not say so? The trip has been long and the cost has been high… but no great thing was ever attained easily. A long tale, like a tall Tower, must be built a stone at a time.”

Stephen King The Dark Tower

Source: The Dark Tower

Time

“… you must always be yourself, and do things at your own pace. Someday, you'll catch up.”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

“I am more sensitive than other people. Things that other people would not notice awaken a distinct echo in me, and in such moments of lucidity, when I look at myself, I see that I am alone, all alone, all alone.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Source: THE INFERNO ** UNDER FIRE ** LIGHT

People

“I want to write, but more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried deep in my heart.”

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

Lie, Heart

“This was not a fairy-tale castle and there was no such thing as a fairy-tale ending, but sometimes you could threaten to kick the handsome prince in the ham-and-eggs.”

Terry Pratchett book Monstrous Regiment

Source: Monstrous Regiment

“What do you think dignity's all about?'

The directness of the inquiry did, I admit, take me rather by surprise. 'It's rather a hard thing to explain in a few words, sir,' I said. 'But I suspect it comes down to not removing one's clothing in public.”

Kazuo Ishiguro The Remains of the Day

Source: The Remains of the Day

Thinking, Clothes

“Seeing things a human shouldn't have to see makes us human.”

Terry Pratchett book Thief of Time

Source: Thief of Time

“The most important thing to do in your life is to not interfere with somebody else's life.”

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

In response to Joe Walsh on The Howard Stern Show (1987).

Life

“If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Variant: If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.
Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 8

Hell, Time, Flying