Quotes about thing
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“That’s the thing about jazz: it’s free flowing, it comes from your soul.”

Billy Crystal (1948) American actor

Soul

“The thing about leaving something behind for the last time is that you rarely realize you're doing it.”

Wendy Mass (1967) American children's writer

Source: The Candymakers

Time

“The right circumstances sometimes happen of their own accord, slyly, without fanfare, without warning. Layman's alchemy…. The magic of everyday things.”

Joanne Harris book Blackberry Wine

Source: Blackberry Wine

“I am saddened by how people treat one another and how we are so shut off from one another and how we judge one another, when the truth is, we are all one connected thing. We are all from the same exact molecules.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

People, Truth

“Darkness may cover light, but that is not the same thing as putting it out. Whereas, to overcome darkness, all light need do is to exist.”

Cameron Dokey (1956) American writer

Source: Sunlight and Shadow: A Retelling of The Magic Flute

Light

“So now, all alone or not, you gotta walk ahead. Thing to remember is if we're all alone, then we're all together in that too.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

“The taste of things recovered is the sweetest honey we will ever know.”

Paulo Coelho book The Zahir

Source: The Zahir

“Here's the funny thing about the world coming to an end. Once it gets going, it doesn't seem to stop.”

Susan Beth Pfeffer book Life As We Knew It

Source: Life As We Knew It

World

“A few weeks after the worst day, I started writing lots of letters. I don't know why, but it was one of the only things that made my boots lighter.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“Falsehood is never in words; it is in things.”

Italo Calvino book Invisible Cities

Source: Invisible Cities

“It's just that… I just think that some things are meant to be broken. Imperfect. Chaotic. It's the universe's way of providing contrast, you know? There have to be a few holes in the road. It's how life is.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Life, Way, Thinking, Universe

“I don't suppose you have to believe in ghosts to know that we are all haunted, all of us, by things we can see and feel and guess at, and many more things that we can't.”

Beth Gutcheon (1945) American writer

Source: More Than You Know

Feeling

“It is a good thing to know what it is to be poor, and a better thing if you can do it in company.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

“The thing with giving up is you never know. You never know whether you could have done the job. And I'm sick of not knowing about my life.”

Sophie Kinsella book Remember Me?

Source: Remember Me?

Life

“Anyway, there is one thing I have learned and that is not to dress uncomfortably, in styles which hurt: winklepicker shoes that cripple your feet and tight pants that squash your balls. Indian clothes are better.”

George Harrison (1943–2001) British musician, former member of the Beatles

Shoe, Learning, Hurt, Clothes

“Every man’s island, Jean Louise, every man’s watchman, is his conscience. There is no such thing as a collective conscious.”

Harper Lee book Go Set a Watchman

Source: Go Set a Watchman

“I need you for a lot of things, Hardy. A lifetime's worth of things.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Blue-Eyed Devil

“Love was a rare thing, easily confused with a million other things, and if anybody knew this to be true it was him.”

Junot Díaz book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Source: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Love

“It's a hell of a thing; killin' a man. You take away everything he ever had and ever would have.”

Clint Eastwood (1930) actor and director from the United States

Hell

“You think things have to be possible? Things have to be!”

Philip Pullman (1946) English author

Thinking

“What about a hoverboard?"
"It's waiting on the roof, of course." Dr. Cable snorted. "What is it about you miscreants and those things?”

Scott Westerfeld book Specials

Source: Specials

Waiting

“… the only way to get a thing done is to start to do it, then keep on doing it, and finally you'll finish it,….”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

Source: The Big Sea

Way

“She likes to read, she reads all the time, and she prefers to be reading several things at once, she says it gives endless perspective and dimension.”

Ali Smith book Autumn

Source: Autumn

Time, Reading

“Many of the things you can count, don't count. Many of the things you can't count, really count.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“There is no such thing as a fact. There is only how you saw the fact, in a given moment. How you reported the fact. How your brain processed that fact. There is no extrication of the storyteller from the story.”

Jodi Picoult book Small Great Things

Source: Small Great Things

“You'd be surprised how many people violate this simple principle every day of their lives and try to fit square pegs into round holes, ignoring the clear reality that Things Are As They Are.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

Source: The Tao of Pooh

People, Reality

“I thought, my love is so good, why isn't it calling the same thing back.”

Amy Hempel (1951) Short story writer

Source: The Collected Stories

Love

“Sometimes it was daunting, knowing how easily I could break things. This one simple curse seemed to dominate my entire life.”

Brandon Sanderson Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

Source: Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

Life

“I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

“Time talks behind our back. To our face it's friendly and logical, never hesitating to give more of itself. But when we're not looking, it steals our lives and says bad things about us to the parts of us it's stolen”

Jonathan Carroll book A Child Across the Sky

Source: A Child Across the Sky

Time, Parting

“Ah, that we lack the courage of our romantic convictions; and thereby miss the wine of life, forgoing the very thing that makes living worthwhile.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Life, Courage, Wine

“Bees blew like cake-crumbs through the golden air, white butterflies like sugared wafers, and when it wasn't raining a diamond dust took over which veiled and yet magnified all things”

Laurie Lee (1914–1997) British writer

Source: Cider With Rosie

Bee

“Waiting silently is the hardest thing of all. I was dying to talk to Jim and about Jim. But the things that we feel most deeply we ought to learn to be silent about, at least until we have talked them over thoroughly with God.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ's Control

God, Feeling, Learning, Waiting

“We are not wounded so deeply when betrayed by the things we hope for as when betrayed by things we try our best to despise.
In such betrayal comes the dagger in the back.”

Yukio Mishima book Thirst for Love

Source: Thirst for Love

Hope, Betrayal

“Isn't that the way of the world? We want the sweet things, but we need the unpleasant ones.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

World, Way

“I wonder when you stopped telling me everything Yuki. In ten years, that`s the only thing that has ever changed.”

Matsuri Hino Japanese manga artist

Source: Vampire Knight, Vol. 2

Change

“We're all one thing, like cells in a body. 'Cept we can't see the body. The way fish can't see the ocean. And so we envy each other. Hurt each other. Hate each other. How silly is that? A heart cell hating a lung cell.”

Charlie Kaufman (1958) American screenwriter

Source: Adaptation.: The Shooting Script

Hate, Way, Fish, Heart

“I can’t begin to tell you the things I discovered while I was looking for something else.”

Shelby Foote (1916–2005) Novelist, historian

“They criticize me for harping on the obvious; if all the folks in the United States would do the few simple things they know they ought to do, most of our big problems would take care of themselves.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

Problem

“Grandma said […] when you come on something that is good, first thing to do is share it with whoever you can find; that way, the good spreads out to where no telling it will go.”

Forrest Carter book The Education of Little Tree

Source: The Education of Little Tree

Way, Grandma

“… Everyone knows there's only one thing less welcome on a stage than a mime, and that's a clown, because everyone knows that clowns eat people.”

Laurie Notaro American writer

Source: There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell: A Novel of Sewer Pipes, Pageant Queens, and Big Trouble

People

“For a minute there it was really good. It was really, really good. Wasn't it good? Maybe really, really good things aren't meant to last for too long; maybe that's what makes them all the more sweet, the temporariness of them.”

Jenny Han book P.S. I Still Love You

Source: P.S. I Still Love You

“Beware the viper in your closet. Isn’t that another thing you’re always saying, Father? Ambition and jealousy are at the heart of all betrayals. (Ryssa)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

Jealousy, Betrayal, Heart

“In the end, the world always wins. That's just the way of things.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Original: (99) Rahim Khan
Variant: It was Homaira and me against the world.... In the end, the world always wins. That's just the way of things.
Source: The Kite Runner (2003)

World, Way

“Few things linger longer or become more indwelling than that feeling of both completion and emptiness when a great book ends. That the book accompanies the reader forever from that day forward is part of literature's profligate generosity.”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

Source: My Reading Life

Books, Feeling, Literature, Parting

“A thing named is a thing tamed.”

Joanne Harris book Runemarks

Source: Runemarks

“If life — the craving for which is the very essence of our being — were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Source: The Vanity of Existence

Life

“You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play. It’s the playing that’s irresistible. Dicing from one year to the next with the things you love, what you risk reveals what you value.”

Jeanette Winterson book The Passion

Source: The Passion

Love

“Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter.”

Homér Iliad

Source: The Iliad

Men

“There is a fullness of time for things. You have to know when to prod and when to be quiet. When to let things take their course.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Variant: You have to know when to prod and when to be quiet, when to let things take their course.
Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Time

“people are more than the worst thing they have ever done in their lives”

Helen Prejean (1939) advocate for the abolition of the death penalty

People

“There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.”

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

Demonology
1880s, Lectures and Biographical Sketches (1883)

“Perhaps not willingly, but pain can make a man do things he wouldn't willingly do.”

Anne Bishop (1955) American fiction writer

Source: Daughter of the Blood

Pain

“Anyone can be crazy. That's usually just because there's something screwed up in your wiring, you know? But suicide is a whole different thing. I mean, how much do you have to hate yourself to want to just wipe yourself out?”

Michael Thomas Ford (1968) American writer

Source: Suicide Notes

Hate, Suicide

“… why did we wait for any thing? — why not seize the pleasure at once? — How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!”

Jane Austen book Emma

Source: Emma (1815)

Happiness, Pleasure, Waiting

“Pride makes us long for a solution to things – a solution, a purpose, a final cause; but the better telescopes become, the more stars appear.”

Julian Barnes book Flaubert's Parrot

Source: Flaubert's Parrot

Star, Appearance

“Child, it's a very bad thing for a woman to face the worst that can happen to her, because after she's faced the worst she can't ever really fear anything again…. Scarlett, always save something to fear— even as you save something to love…”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

Love, Fear

“If a guy truly likes you, but for personal reasons he needs to take things slow, he will let you know that immediately. He won’t keep you guessing,
because he’ll want to make sure you don’t get frustrated and go away.”

Greg Behrendt (1963) American comedian

Source: He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys

Guy, Personality

“Maybe wrist corsages cut off circulation to the brain? I mean, is that why so many girls do stupid things on prom night? I was really going to have to investigate this further, I decided”

Ally Carter I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Source: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Stupidity, Girl, Night

“I do not need to know all things. I remind myself that it is sufficient that I know what I know and know that without believing that I will always know what I know or that what I know will always be true.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

“I never wanted to be feared. If I regret one thing, it is the fear I have caused. Fear is the tool of tyrants. Unfortunately, when the fate of the world is in question, you use whatever tools are available.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Final Empire

Fate, World, Fear, Question

“There are many things in life that cannot be explained.”

Anthony Horowitz book Nightrise

Source: Nightrise

Life

“Maybe marriage, like life, isn't only about the big moments, whether they be good or bad. Maybe it's all the small things—like being guided slowly forward, surely, day after day—that stretches out to strengthen even the most tenuous bond.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

Life, Marriage

“She curled up and pressed her cheek against his chest. Her ear was right above his heart. She was listening to his thoughts. "I need to know this," Aomame said. "That we're in the same world, seeing the same things.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

World, Heart

“Knowing something and understanding it were not the same thing.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The Time Keeper

Understanding

“A man says a lot of things in summer he doesn't mean in winter.”

Patricia Briggs (1965) American writer

Source: Dragon Blood

Winter, Summer

“That was the thing about best friends. Like sisters and mothers, they could piss you off and make you cry and break your heart, but in the end, when the chips were down, they were there, making you laugh even in your darkest hours.”

Kristin Hannah (1960) American writer

Source: Firefly Lane

Sister, Heart, Cry, Friendship

“who would dare think that, forever? Some idiot girl who wouldn’t know how things played out.”

Daniel Handler book Why We Broke Up

Source: Why We Broke Up

Girl, Thinking

“People forgot; it was in the nature of people to forget, to blur boundaries, to retell stories to come out the way they wanted them to come out, to remember things as how they ought to be instead of how they were.”

Robin McKinley book Spindle's End

Source: Spindle's End

People, Way, Nature, Forgetting

“There is a difference between WISHING for a thing and being READY to receive it. No one is ready for a thing, until he believes he can acquire it. The state of mind must be BELIEF, not mere hope or wish. Open-mindedness is essential for belief.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

Source: Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller - Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century

Hope

“Madness is always a wonderful excuse, don’t you think? For doing terrible things to other people.”

Jennifer McMahon (1968) American writer

Source: The Winter People

People, Thinking, Madness

“I always have a problem liking things I'm told I should like.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Source: An Idiot Abroad: The Travel Diaries of Karl Pilkington

Problem

“What was that thing that could make two people promise one another to spend every day of the rest of their lives together? Ah, I found it. It was a thing called love. A small simple word.”

Cecelia Ahern book Thanks for the Memories

Source: Thanks for the Memories

Love, People

“… it's not just learning that's important. It's learning what to do with what you learn and learning why you learn things that matters.”

Norton Juster (1929) American children's writer, academic, and architect

Variant: …it’s not just learning that’s important. It’s learning what to do with what you learn and learning why you learn things that matters.

Learning

“Things that Shane doesn't want on his grave:
(1.) I thought it wasn't loaded.
(2.) Hand me a match so I can check the gas tank.
(3.) Killed over Ice Cream”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Kiss of Death

“In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me.”

John Fowles (1926–2005) British writer

Way

“Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply - I was casually sorry, and then I forgot.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: Quoted, The Great Gatsby (1925), ch. 3

“There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

Though Kennedy stated that he was quoting George Bernard Shaw when he said this, he is often thought to have originated the expression, which actually paraphrases a line delivered by the Serpent in Shaw's play Back To Methuselah: “You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?’". This phrase was first used by his brother John F. Kennedy in 1963 (June 28th), during his visit to Ireland, in his address to the Irish Dail (Government): "George Bernard Shaw, speaking as an Irishman, summed up an approach to life, 'Other people, he said, see things and say why? But I dream things that never were and I say, why not?" ( Address on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ADeazX9blw.). Robert's other brother Edward famously quoted it (paraphrasing it even further), to conclude his eulogy to his late brother after his assassination (8 June 1968): Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say why not? - (Eulogy in CBS news video) http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5268061n <br class="br">Misattributed <br class="br">Source: Robert Kennedy in His Own Words: The Unpublished Recollections of the Kennedy Years

Dreams, Way

“I try to maintain a positive attitude at all times, because clients notice little things like that, and if you're frowning and crying all the time and saying "why? why?", they get worried.”

John Swartzwelder book The Time Machine Did It

Source: The Time Machine Did It

Time, Cry

“If he'd learned one thing while he'd been away, it was that loneliness is the most taboo subject in the world. Forget sex or politics or religion. Or even failure. Loneliness is what clears out a room.”

Douglas Coupland book Miss Wyoming

Source: Miss Wyoming

World, Religion, Sex, Failure

“You're imagining things. Clearly, my stunning beauty has clouded your mind. -Rose Hathaway”

Richelle Mead book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite

Beauty, Imagination

“Whenever I start a novel, I'm always looking for two things: a bit of science that makes me go 'what if?' and a piece of history that ends in a question mark.”

James Rollins (1961) American writer

History, Question, Science

“Hey, Clary. You take care of yourself," he said. "I know you can." He paused. "And take care of Jace, that poor, helpless blond."
Jace made an obscene gesture, which actually did feel familiar to Simon, so he knew that was their thing.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Welcome to Shadowhunter Academy

Feeling

“The first step to expanding your reality is to discard the tendency to exclude things from possibility.”

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

Reality

“Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Way, Universe, Appearance

“The best thing about graduating from the university was that I finally had time to sit on a log and read a good book.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Books, Universe, Time, Reading

“Remember that the most important thing is to try and love other people as much as they love you.”

David Sedaris book Holidays on Ice

Source: Holidays on Ice

Love, People

“She realized all at once the deeper thing that bothered her, the thing that made him not just irritating but intolerable: how he kept loving her blindly when she deserved it so little.”

Ann Brashares book Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood

Love

“Traditional Botswana men like ladies who are more traditionally shaped. You and I, Mma. We remind men of how things used to be in Botswana before these modern-shaped ladies started to get men all confused.”

Alexander McCall Smith book The Full Cupboard of Life

Source: The Full Cupboard of Life

Men

“You will see that the things you desire most are the very things that bring you the greatest sorrow.”

Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden

Source: Phantom

“But anyone can begin. It was the part with all the promise, the potential, the things I loved. More and more, though, I was finding myself wanting to find out what happened in the end..”

Sarah Dessen book What Happened to Goodbye

Source: What Happened to Goodbye

Love, Parting

“Don’t tell me your name. It’s likely to awaken my conscience, and that’s the last thing we want.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: Ten Things I Love About You

“Do not wait for the healing to arrive. It will never come. The holes will never leave or be filled with anything at all.

But holes are interesting things.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Source: This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.

Waiting

“Memory is so crazy! It's like we've got these drawers crammed with tons of useless stuff. Meanwhile, all the really important things we just keep forgetting, one after the other.”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark

Memory, Forgetting

“And the worst thing was, there were no mirrors out there in the wild, so the princess was left wondering whether she in fact was still beautiful… or if the fall had changed the story completely.”

Scott Westerfeld book Pretties

Source: Pretties

Beauty, Change, Princess