Quotes about thing
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“somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence.
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you always open petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously)her first rose or if it be your wish to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly
as the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries
rendering death and forever with each breathing”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

W [ViVa] (1931) LVII

Life, Death, World, Travel

“Money is for doing things, my love. Don't sit on it like a hen sits on an egg. It doesn't hatch. I should know. I've made enough of it.”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Source: The Last Little Blue Envelope

Love, Money

“It's often a matter of sitting in front of the computer and worrying. It's what writing comes down to--worrying that things aren't going to work out.”

Khaled Hosseini (1965) novelist

“I do not know everything; still many things I understand.”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Source: A Wrinkle in Time

Understanding

“Nothing important, or meaningful, or beautiful, or interesting, or great ever came out of imitations. The thing that is really hard and really amazing is to give up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

Beauty, Perfection

“Because I don’t do things in halves, Mom. Especially when it comes to love.”

Richelle Mead book Silver Shadows

Source: Silver Shadows

Love, Moms

“It's easy to be a naive idealist. It's easy to be a cynical realist. It's quite another thing to have no illusions and still hold the inner flame.”

Marie-Louise von Franz (1915–1998) Swiss psychologist and scholar

“We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies.

The heroism we recite
Would be a daily thing,
Did not ourselves the cubits warp
For fear to be a king.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Fear

“Fighting giants was one thing. Bacchus making into a game was something else.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Game, Fight

“There was no way possible [the queen] could have done all of the things the pamphleteers claimed. The crimes were too gross, too immoral and far too physically challenging. Magnus himself had never attempted half of them.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Runaway Queen

Way

“Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance.”

David Nicholls book One Day

Variant: Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance
Source: One Day

Love, Passion, Chance

“Saying that you love is easy, but living up to those simple words is the most difficult thing you'll ever do.”

Kay Hooper (1957) American writer

Source: What Dreams May Come

Love

“We the mortals touch the metals,
the wind, the ocean shores, the stones,
knowing they will go on, inert or burning,
and I was discovering, naming all the these things:
it was my destiny to love and say goodbye.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: Still Another Day

Love

“He returns years later, has no demands.
He wants only one, most precious thing:
To see, purely and simply, without name,
Without expectations, fears, or hopes,
At the edge where there is no I or not-I.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

Fear, Hope

“There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves. People are not, for example, terribly anxious to be equal (equal, after all, to what and to whom?) but they love the idea of being superior.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Love, People, Idea

“But I am learning that perfection isn't what matters. In fact, it's the very thing that can destroy you if you let it.”

Emily Giffin Something Borrowed

Source: Something Borrowed

Learning, Perfection

“That's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and WORTH the doing.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

“He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge book The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Source: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

God

“It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think yours is the only path.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Variant: It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path.
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Feeling, Thinking

“I think that the most important thing a woman can have - next to talent, of course - is her hairdresser.”

Joan Crawford (1904–1977) American actress

Interview, Hollywood Reporter (1942)

Thinking

“Maybe she, like me, would have loved the tiny details and inconveniences even more dearly than the wonders, because they are the things that prove you belong.”

Tana French In the Woods

Source: In the Woods

Love

“We must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed toward attaining it.”

Gretchen Rubin (1966) American writer

Source: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

Happiness, Exercises

“The really magical things are the ones that happen right in front of you. A lot of the time you keep looking for beauty, but it is already there. And if you look with a bit more intention, you see it.”

Vik Muniz (1961) Brazilian artist

Beauty, Time

“All human errors are impatience, the premature breaking off of what is methodical, an apparent fencing in of the apparent thing.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

2
Variant translation: All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue.
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

Error

“Hold on to that new, enlarge vision of victory that God has given you. Start expecting things to change in your favor. Dare to boldly declare that you are standing strong against the forces of darkness.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

God, Strong, Change, Victory

“Sometimes you can know things. Things about yourself. Things from before you can remember.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

“Coming up with ideas is the easiest thing on earth. Putting them down is the hardest.”

Rod Serling (1924–1975) American screenwriter

Idea

“I must say one thing about southern down-home brewed coffee with chicory. If you have worms, you'll never have them again.”

Clive Cussler (1931) Novelist

Source: The Sea Hunters

Home, Coffee

“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”

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

Gratitude

“A thing can be true and still be desperate folly, Hazel.”

Richard Adams book Watership Down

Source: Watership Down

“They're funny things, Accidents. You never have them till you're having them.”

A.A. Milne book The House at Pooh Corner

Source: The House at Pooh Corner

“Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud…”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi (2001), Chapter 1, p. 6
Context: The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity — it's envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.

Love, Life, Death, Beauty

“Eventually it comes to you: the thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.”

Lorraine Hansberry (1930–1965) playwright and writer

Source: To Be Young, Gifted and Black (1969), p. 137

“Thank goodness for all the things you are not!
Thank goodness you're not something someone forgot,
and left all alone in some punkerish place
like a rusty tin coat hanger hanging in space.”

Dr. Seuss book Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?

Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? (1973)

“How are you? How is your wonderful bathroom? How are the books you read and the things you think? Your dogs and their lives? The weather? Your feelings?”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Source: Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters

Books, Dogs, Feeling, Thinking

“It is an anxious, sometimes a dangerous thing to be a doll. Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen; they cannot 'do'; they can only be done by.”

Rumer Godden (1907–1998) English writer

Source: The Dolls' House

“View your life with KINDSIGHT. Stop beating yourself up about things from your past. Instead of slapping your forehead and asking, “What was I thinking,” breathe and ask yourself the kinder question, “What was I learning?”

Karen Salmansohn American writer

Source: Bounce Back Book

Life, Question, Thinking, Learning

“There is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness. These things" -he sighed- "these things I so regret in my life. Pride. Vanity. Why do we do the things we do?
Morrie Schwartz”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

Life

“To be able to laugh and to be merciful are the only things that make man better than the beast”

Ruskin Bond (1934) British Indian writer

“I heard that in relativity theory, space and time are the same thing. Einstein discovered this when he kept showing up three miles late for his meetings.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Time

“You know. Life's short. If you don't try new things, you'll never know what you're best at. And you can only make time for new things by quitting the things you know don't work for you.”

Meg Cabot book Teen Idol

Source: Teen Idol

Life, Time

“Extraordinary things are always hiding in places people never think to look.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

People, Thinking, Positive

“Even in the mud and scum of things, something always, always sings.”

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

Singing, Hope

“Practice is funny that way. For days and days, you make out only the fragments of what to do. And then one day you've got the thing whole. Conscious learning becomes unconscious knowledge, and you cannot say precisely how.”

Atul Gawande book Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science

Source: Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science

Way, Knowledge, Learning

“The problem with getting older is you still remember how things used to be.”

Paul Newman (1925–2008) American actor and film director

Problem

“As they spoke, the only thing I could think about was that scene from Julius Caesar where Brutus stabs him in the back. Et tu, Eric?”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

Thinking

“I know that happy things and fun things eventually come to an end. But things that are scary and sad come to an end too… they always do. Even if you can't always believe that, please don't give up. Live.”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Source: Fruits Basket, Vol. 21

Happiness, Sadness

“Want to know the best thing about teaching? Seeing that moment when a kid discovers his or her gift. There's no feeling on earth like it.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

Feeling

“The only thing I’m afraid of about this country is that its government will someday become so monstrous that the smallest person in it will be trampled underfoot, and then it wouldn’t be worth living in.”

Harper Lee book Go Set a Watchman

Source: Go Set a Watchman

Personality, Country

“In my experience, the most staunchly held views are based on ignorance or accepted dogma, not carefully considered accumulations of facts. The more you expose the intricacies and realtities of the situation, the less clear-cut things become.”

Mary Roach book Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife

Source: Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife

“Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life — and travel — leaves marks on you. Most of the time, those marks — on your body or on your heart — are beautiful. Often, though, they hurt.”

Anthony Bourdain book The Nasty Bits

The Nasty Bits (2006)

Life, World, Beauty, Travel

“When the news you don't want to hear is looming before you like Everest, two things can happen. Tragedy can run you through like a sword, or it can become your backbone. Either you fall apart and sob, or you say, 'Right. What's next?”

Jodi Picoult book Lone Wolf

Source: Lone Wolf

“Things happen to people by accident.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett A Little Princess

Source: A Little Princess

People

“The closest thing to being cared for is to care for someone else.”

Carson McCullers (1917–1967) American writer

Source: The Square Root of Wonderful

“… I will not allow books to prove any thing."
"But how shall we prove any thing?"
"We never shall.”

Jane Austen book Persuasion

Source: Persuasion

Books

“We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence (1967)
Context: We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood — it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late."

Life, History, Time

“We find what we are looking for in life, her father had once said to her, which was true—if you look for happiness, you will see it; if you look for distrust and envy and hatred—all those things—you will find those too.”

Alexander McCall Smith book The Full Cupboard of Life

Source: The Full Cupboard of Life

Life, Happiness, Envy

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you.” “Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit. “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.” —MARGERY WILLIAMS”

Jenny Han book P.S. I Still Love You

Source: P.S. I Still Love You

Truth, Horse, Hurt

“We are made of the same stardust of which all things are made, and when we are immersed in suffering or when we are experiencing intense joy we are being nothing other than what we can’t help but be: a part of our world.”

Carlo Rovelli book Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

Source: Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

World, Suffering, Help, Joy

“He well knew his mind's natural tendency to be endlessly on a thousand subjects at once, to flit from this to that and to the next thing to no particular purpose--indeed, he called it his "butterfly mind.”

Eric Metaxas (1963) American journalist

Source: Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery

Nature

“She reads a lot of books. Good things, books.”

Thorne Smith (1892–1934) an American writer of humorous supernatural fantasy fiction

Books, Reading

“… but it's your existence I love you for, mainly. Existence seems to me now the most remarkable thing that could ever be imagined.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Love, Imagination

“It was just one of those things," I said, "You know, that just happen. You don't think or plan. You just do it.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Thinking

“Daddy always said the only thing worth begging for was your life, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe sometimes your love is a little bit worth begging for, too.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: All These Things I've Done

Love, Life

“As far as I’m concerned, this is the worst thing that’s happened since I found out why Magnus was banned from Peru.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

“Wisdom consists in doing the next thing you have to do, doing it with your whole heart, and finding delight in doing it.”

Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) German theologian

Wisdom, Heart

“The thing about a mirror is this: The one who stares into it is condemned to consider the world from her own perspective.”

Gregory Maguire book Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

Source: Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

World

“When you are in love, things make even more sense, he thought.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Love, Sense

“There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.”

John Cage book Silence: Lectures and Writings

Source: Silence: Lectures and Writings

Silence, Time

“You’re the only thing I’ve ever done right in my entire life and if anything ever happened to you, they’d have to dig two graves ‘cause I couldn’t live a single day without my baby beside me. (Cherise)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

Life, Baby

“Power isn't everything… its the only thing.”

Mario Puzo book The Last Don

Source: The Last Don

“I believe that there is luminosity hiding in the shadow of the mundane. And things that hover at the periphery of our vision. If that’s magic, then I believe in it.”

Natasha Mostert South African writer

“If you're treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they're real for you whether they're real or not.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Way, Personality

“You didn't need a college degree to become one of the people who knew what was really going on. If you paid attention, you could pick things up on your own.”

Jeannette Walls book The Glass Castle

Source: The Glass Castle

People

“No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Book III, Ch. 1
Attributed
Source: The Complete Essays

“Who am I? I'm just a writer. I write things down. I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure, I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow glass, but that comes later.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Love, Dreams, Future

“The simplest things are often the truest.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

“I tried to think about other things. I tried to invent optimistic inventions. But the pessimistic ones were extremely loud.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Thinking

“Age appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust and old authors to read.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

No. 97
Apophthegms (1624)
Context: Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things — old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

Age, Drink, Appearance, Wine

“The thing is- and I know this is going to sound strange-that I seem to love you sort of desperately”

L.J. Smith book Daughters of Darkness

Source: Daughters of Darkness

Love

“You always knew after shitty things happened, who your friends really were.”

Jodi Picoult book The Pact

Source: The Pact

“The only thing that shatters dreams is compromise.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

Dreams

“Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort. There must be the will to produce a superior thing.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Intelligence, Effort

“What we have at the moment isn't as the old liturgies used to say, 'the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead,' but a vague and fuzzy optimism that somehow things may work out in the end.”

N.T. Wright (1948) Anglican bishop

Source: Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

Hope, Optimism, Dead

“I don't know the first thing about holding together a family, especially one that resembles an heirloom vase, shattered but glued back together for its beauty, and no one mentions that you can see the cracks as plain as day.”

Jodi Picoult book Songs of the Humpback Whale

Source: Songs of the Humpback Whale

Family, Beauty

“She always wanted to believe in things.”

Kazuo Ishiguro book Never Let Me Go

Source: Never Let Me Go

“When things get really bad, you take comfort in the placeness of a place.”

Banana Yoshimoto book The Lake

Source: The Lake

“Déjà vu is more than just that fleeting moment of surprise, instantly forgotten because we never bother with things that make no sense. It show that time doesn't pass. It's a leap into something we have already experienced and that is being repeated.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Source: Aleph

Sense, Time

“If you want to see what children can do, you must stop giving them things.”

Norman Douglas (1868–1952) British writer

Children

“I see IT in the hallway. IT goes to Merryweather. IT is walking with Aubrey cheerleader. IT is my nightmare and I can't wake up. IT sees me. IT smiles and winks. Good thing my lips are stitched together or I'd throw up.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Smile

“Five tender apricots in a blue bowl, a brief and exact promise of things to come.”

Frances Mayes (1940) American university professor and writer

Source: In Tuscany

“You’ve been inexpressibly lucky,” he said finally. “And inexpressibly mad, although in your case the two seem to be the same thing”

Naomi Novik book Uprooted

Source: Uprooted

Madness

“Things change when someone special comes into your life. Both sides have to give up things. The one thing you don't give up in a good relationship is you--whatever makes you most you. - Jim Olsten (Jane's Grandpa)”

Elizabeth Chandler (1954) writer

Source: I Do

Life, Change

“I know why we laugh. We laugh because it hurts, and it's the only thing to make it stop hurting.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Stranger in a Strange Land

Variant: I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much... because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting.
Source: Stranger in a Strange Land

Hurt