Quotes about thing
page 16

Source: The Ego and Its Own

“Hope in the face of difficulty, hope in the face of uncertainty, the audacity of hope: In the end, that is God's greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation, a belief in things not seen, a belief that there are better days ahead.”

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

2004, Democratic National Convention speech (July 2004)
Context: In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope? I'm not talking about blind optimism here... No, I'm talking about something more substantial. It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker's son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. Hope in the face of difficulty, hope in the face of uncertainty, the audacity of hope: In the end, that is God's greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation, a belief in things not seen, a belief that there are better days ahead.

God, Hope

“I am convinced that every effort must be made in childhood to teach the young to use their own minds. For one thing is sure: If they don't make up their minds, someone will do it for them.”

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

Source: You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

Effort, Childhood

“Not everything is about you," Clary said furiously.
"Possibly," Jace said, "but you do have to admit that the majority of things are.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Variant: Not everything, Jace, is," Clary said furiously.

"Possibly," Jace said, "but you have to admit that the majority of things are.
Source: City of Glass

“In the cycle of nature there is no such thing as victory or defeat; there is only movement.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

Nature, Victory

“I want to
let her know
though
that all the nights
sleeping
beside her

even the useless
arguments
were things
ever splendid

and the hard
words
I ever feared to
say
can now be
said:

I love
you.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Love, Fear, Sleep, Night

“People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.”

Iris Murdoch book A Fairly Honourable Defeat

A Fairly Honourable Defeat (1970); 2001, p. 170.

People, Flowers, Thinking, Time

“I remember growing up, saying you’re an artist it sounds pretentious but now it’s one of the only dignified things that you can call yourself.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

“There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

People

“His movements could be called cat-like, except that he did not stop to spray urine up against things.”

Terry Pratchett book Night Watch

Source: Night Watch

Cats

“I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can’t go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

Death, People, Fools

“Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.”

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author

Source: Journal entry (14 October 1922), published in The Journal of Katherine Mansfield (1927)

Truth

“I notice you didn't laugh, Mr. Black!
No, Your Majesty. We are forbidden to laugh at the things kings say, sire, because otherwise we would be at it all day.”

Terry Pratchett book Nation

Source: Nation

“The necessary thing is after all but this; solitude, great inner solitude. Going into oneself for hours meeting no one - this one must be able to attain.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Variant: What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours—that is what you must be able to attain.
Source: Letters to a Young Poet

Solitude

“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.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Variant: 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.
Source: Eleven Minutes

World, Freedom

“It's a curious, wanting thing.”

Sarah Waters book Fingersmith

Source: Fingersmith

“Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!”

Oscar Wilde book The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Pt. I, st. 7
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)
Source: The Ballad Of Reading Gaol

Love, Kiss

“There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

World

“How can I keep my soul in me, so that it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise it high enough, past you, to other things?”

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

Soul, Past

“Thou, O God, dost sell us all good things at the price of labour.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

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

God

“I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings

Animals

“I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic. I try to give that to people. I do misrepresent things. I don't tell truths. I tell what ought to be truth.”

Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire

Source: A Streetcar Named Desire

People, Truth

“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

“Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to reamin the same but get better…”

Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986) American journalist

Love, Hate, Change, Time

“It is true that words have power, and one of the things they are able to do is get out of someone’s mouth before the speaker has the chance to stop them.”

Terry Pratchett book Wyrd Sisters

Source: Wyrd Sisters

Chance

“To believe yourself brave is to be brave; it is the one only essential thing.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Joan of Arc

“Everything changed the day she figured out there was exactly enough time for the important things in her life.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Life, Change, Time

“I do not wish any reward but to know I have done the right thing.”

Mark Twain book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“As time goes on, you'll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn't, doesn't. Time solves most things. And what time can't solve, you have to solve yourself.”

Haruki Murakami book Dance Dance Dance

Source: Dance Dance Dance

Understanding, Time

“Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss.”

Paul Celan (1920–1970) Romanian poet and translator

Loss

“There was only one thing the perfume could not do. It could not turn him into a person who could love and be loved like everyone else. So, to hell with it he thought. To hell with the world. With the perfume. With himself”

Patrick Süskind (1949) German writer and screenwriter

Source: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Love, World, Hell, Personality

“All things are ready, if our mind be so.”

William Shakespeare Henry V

Source: Henry V

“Never let the things you can't do, stop you from doing what you can.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

“You've seen things through my eyes.”

Christopher Paolini (1983) American author

“a person hoping to become a poet must have the capacity of thinking of several things at a time.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Speak, Memory

Source: Speak, Memory

Hope, Thinking, Time, Personality

“Death: "THERE ARE BETTER THINGS IN THE WORLD THAN ALCOHOL, ALBERT."
Albert: "Oh, yes, sir. But alcohol sort of compensates for not getting them.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Death, Alcohol, World

“The older I get, the more I meet people, the more convinced I am that we must only work on ourselves, to grow in grace. The only thing we can do about people is to love them.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

Source: All the Way to Heaven: The Selected Letters of Dorothy Day

Love, People

“Love people, not things; use things, not people.”

Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Love, People, Inspirational

“Summer is the season of motion, winter is the season of form. In summer everything moves save the fixed and inert. Down the hill flows the west wind, making wavelets in the shorter grass and great billows in the standing hay; the tree in full leaf sways its heavy boughs below and tosses its leaves above; the weed by the gate bends and turns when the wind blows down the road. It is the shadow of moving things that we usually see, and the shadows are themselves in motion. The shadow of a branch, speckled through with light, wavers across the lawn, the sprawling shadow of the weed moves and sways across the dust.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Source: The Northern Farm: A Glorious Year on a Small Maine Farm

Tree, Light, Grass, Winter

“There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Problem, Happy

“I want to write a novel about Silence," he said; “the things people don’t say.”

Virginia Woolf book The Voyage Out

Source: The Voyage Out

People, Silence

“And when you're alone there's a very good chance
you'll meet things that scare you right out of your pants
There are some, down the road between hither and yon,
that can scare you so much you won't want to go on.”

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

Source: Oh, The Places You'll Go!

Chance

“I've found that there is always some beauty left — in nature, sunshine, freedom, in yourself; these can all help you. Look at these things, then you find yourself again, and God, and then you regain your balance. A person who's happy will make others happy; a person who has courage and faith will never die in misery!”

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

7 May 1944
(1942 - 1944)
Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

God, Happiness, Faith, Beauty

“The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint. … I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way — things I had no words for.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

1970 - 1986, Some Memories of Drawings (1976)
Context: It is surprising to me to see how many people separate the objective from the abstract. Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or a tree. It is lines and colours put together so that they say something. For me that is the very basis of painting. The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint. … I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way — things I had no words for.<!-- Also quoted in Georgia O’Keeffe: Nature and Abstraction (2007), edited by Richard Marshall, p. 13

Color, Way, Painting

“I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Source: Dracula

Fear, Soul, Thinking, Sea

“This is perhaps one of the most important things I learned during this investigation: We see what we believe, and not just the contrary; and to change what we see, it is sometimes necessary to change what we believe.”

Jeremy Narby (1959) Canadian anthropologist

Source: The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge

Learning, Change

“They may have been ugly. They may have been evil. But when it came to poetry in motion, the Things had all the grace and coordination of a deck-chair.”

Terry Pratchett book Equal Rites

Source: Equal Rites

Evil

“The only thing that comes to a sleeping man is dreams.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Dreams, Sleep

“There was no safety. There was no pride. All there was, was money. Everything became money, and money became everything. Money treated us as if we were things, and we died.”

Terry Pratchett book Going Postal

Source: Going Postal

Money

“Travelling, one accepts everything; indignation stays at home. One looks, one listens, one is roused to enthusiasm by the most dreadful things because they are new. Good travellers are heartless.”

Elias Canetti (1905–1994) Bulgarian-born Swiss and British jewish modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer

Source: The Voices of Marrakesh: A Record of a Visit

Travel, Home

“Man's sensitivity to the little things and insensitivity to the greatest are the signs of a strange disorder.”

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

“Reality of things is hidden in the realm of the unseen”

Hamza Yusuf (1958) American Islamic scholar

Source: Purification of the Heart: Signs, Symptoms and Cures of the Spiritual Diseases of the Heart

Reality

“Now I am an outcast. I loathe my country. The best thing for me is a drunken sleep on the beach.”

Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet

Source: Une saison en enfer; Illuminations; et autres textes

Sleep, Country

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Books, Reading, Housing

“The only thing of importance, when we depart, will be the traces of love we have left behind.”

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

Love

“I'm not stupid, stupid. Leave this whole thing in my extremely capable and well-manicured hands. I'll call you later with an update. Bye!”

P. C. Cast book Burned

Source: Burned

Stupidity

“Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory.”

Philip Yancey (1949) American writer

Source: Disappointment with God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud

“So often, a visit to a bookshop has cheered me, and reminded me that there are good things in the world.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

World

“It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.”

Mark Twain book Following the Equator

Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. XX
Following the Equator (1897)

God, Freedom, Country

“Sometimes the most beautiful thing is precisely the one that comes unexpectedly and unearned.”

Anna Freud (1895–1982) Austrian-British psychoanalyst & essayist

Beauty

“Jesus insisted that the greatest ritual service is the service of human need. It is an odd thing to think that, with the possible exception of that day in the synagogue at Nazareth, we have no evidence that Jesus ever conducted a ‘church’ service in all his life on earth, but we have abundant evidence that he fed the hungry and comforted the sad and cared for the sick. Christian service is not the service of any liturgy or ritual; it is the service of human need. Christian service is not monastic retreat; it is involvement in all the tragedies and problems and demands of the human situation.”

William Barclay (1907–1978) Church of Scotland minister and academic

Source: The Gospel of Matthew: Vol. 2, Chapters 11-28

Life, Sadness, Problem, Thinking

“Wisdom is one of the few things that looks bigger the further away it is.”

Terry Pratchett book Witches Abroad

Source: Witches Abroad

Wisdom

“The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.”

Terry Pratchett book Lords and Ladies

Source: Lords and Ladies

Change

“Speak in French when you can’t think of the English for a thing--
turn your toes out when you walk---
And remember who you are!”

Lewis Carroll book Through the Looking-Glass

Source: Through the Looking Glass

Thinking

“when we are powerless to do a thing, it is a great joy that we can come and step inside the ability of Jesus”

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

Joy

“The increase in value of the world of things is directly proportional to the decrease in value of the human world.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Source: Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844/The Communist Manifesto

World

“I'm afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

“The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

II.137
Human, All Too Human (1878)

“I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things, then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love from henceforth!”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Gay Science

Source: Gay Science

Love, Beauty, Learning

“I think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we've got to do it right. We've got to give those animals a decent life and we've got to give them a painless death. We owe the animal respect.”

Temple Grandin (1947) USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist

Life, Death, Food, Thinking

“People who are rather more than six feet tall and nearly as broad across the shoulders often have uneventful journeys. People jump out at them from behind rocks then say things like, "Oh. Sorry. I thought you were someone else.”

Terry Pratchett book Guards! Guards!

Source: Guards! Guards!

People

“You could have had anything else in the world, and you asked for me."
She smiled up at him. Filthy as he was, covered in blood and dirt, he was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.
"But I don't want anything else in the world.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

World, Smile, Beauty

“People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

Source: Assata: An Autobiography

People, Thinking

“It's not gray," Clary felt compelled to point out. "It's green."
"If there was such a thing as terminal literalism, you'd have died in childhood," said Jace.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Childhood

“You'll start talking, and pretty soon we'll all start nodding, and then the next thing you know, I'm hang gliding off the Eiffel Tower at night, being chased by ninja vampires”

Kathy Reichs book Seizure

Source: Seizure

Night

“The thing about football - the important thing about football - is that it is not just about football.”

Terry Pratchett book Unseen Academicals

Source: Unseen Academicals

Football

“God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

One of the most commonly quoted forms.
The Serenity Prayer (c. 1942)
Variant: Lord, grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change,
he courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Wisdom, God, Courage, Change

“I cannot become modest; too many things burn in me; the old solutions are falling apart; nothing has been done yet with the new ones. So I begin, everywhere at once, as if I had a century ahead of me.”

Elias Canetti (1905–1994) Bulgarian-born Swiss and British jewish modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer

“The only way to do all the things you'd like to do is to read”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

Way, Reading

“I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done.”

Lucille Ball (1911–1989) American actress and businesswoman

Variant: I'd rather regret the things that I have done than the things that I have not.
Variant: Id rather regret the things that I have done than the things that I have not done.

Motivational

“The best thing to do was to brazen it out, throw your head back, walk with a swagger…”

Sarah Waters (1966) novelist

“You're a stalker with hooves."
"I am not! I followed her to the Big House and hid in a bush and watched the whole thing.”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

Housing

“O heavenly Father,
protect and bless all things
that have breath: guard them
from all evil and let them sleep in peace.”

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

Memoirs of Childhood and Youth (1924)
Context: One thing that specially saddened me was that the unfortunate animals had to suffer so much pain and misery. The sight of an old limping horse, tugged forward by one man while another kept beating it with a stick to get it to the knacker's yard at Colmar, haunted me for weeks. It was quite incomprehensible to me — this was before I began going to school — why in my evening prayers I should pray for human beings only. It was quite incomprehensible to me — this was before I began going to school — why in my evening prayers I should pray for human beings only. So when my mother had prayed with me and had kissed me good-night, I used to add silently a prayer that I had composed myself for all living creatures. It ran thus: "O, heavenly Father, protect and bless all things that have breath; guard them from all evil, and let them sleep in peace."

Peace, Sleep, Evil

“It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1960s, A Time for Choosing (1964)
Variant: The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so.