Quotes about thing
page 56

“Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Men

“True friends. Hardest thing to find, but you never look for them - they found you; you just grow into each other”

Keith Richards book Life

Source: Life

“Well, let it pass, he thought; April is over, April is over. There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice.

--The Sensible Thing”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Source: The Short Stories

Love, World

“I think I have this thing where everybody has to think I'm the greatest. And if they aren't completely knocked out and dazzled and slightly intimidated by me, I don't feel good about myself.”

Roald Dahl (1916–1990) British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot and screenwriter

Source: Fantastic Mr. Fox

Feeling, Thinking

“What they call you is one thing. What you answer to is something else.”

Lucille Clifton (1936–2010) American poet

Attitude

“There aren’t many sure things in life, but one thing I know for sure is
that you have to deal with the consequences of your actions. You have to follow
through on some things.”

Cecelia Ahern book Love, Rosie

Variant: There aren’t many sure things in life, but one thing I do know is that you have to deal with the consequences of your actions. You have to follow through on some things.
Source: Love, Rosie

Life

“If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other folks then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding.”

Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) American folklorist, novelist, short story writer

Feeling

“What happens if you drop all the things that make you I?”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Source: The End of the Affair

“Silver nitrate and water in a super soaker," he told her. "My own invention. Ought to be good at twenty feet, kind of like wasp spray."
Oh. "You get me the nicest things."
"Anybody can get jewelry. Posers”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Fade Out

Water

“It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

1847
1840s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s
Context: It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are. Human understanding has vulgarly occupied itself with nothing but understanding, but if it would only take the trouble to understand itself at the same time it would simply have to posit the paradox.

Understanding

“Guy? Mister? Mr. Goth Man, would you please wake up so I can leave? I really don't want to hang out in a closet with a dead man any longer than I have to, okay? C'mon, please, don't make this a Weekend at Bernie's thing! (Amanda)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Night Pleasures

Source: Night Pleasures

Guy, Dead

“The most unfortunate thing that happens to a person who fears failure is that he limits himself by becoming afraid to try anything new.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Fear, Failure, Personality

“I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking.”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

God, Thinking

“You are the only thing I have that is neither duty nor obligation, the only thing I chose for myself. The only thing I want.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Source: Ironside

“A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

Books

“Maybe that's all demons ever are. People like us, doing things without even knowing what we're doing.”

Orson Scott Card book Pathfinder

Source: Pathfinder

People

“Which is weird. But not the craziest thing I can think of Rose doing.ʺ I appreciated the support.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

Support, Thinking

“That's the thing about people who think they hate computers … What they really hate are lousy programmers.”

Larry Niven book Oath of Fealty

Oath of Fealty (1982) (co-written with Jerry Pournelle)

Hate, People, Thinking

“It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him.”

Herman Melville book Moby-Dick

Source: Moby-Dick

Secret, World

“Bravest thing about people is how they go on loving mortal beings after finding out there's such a thing as dying.”

Anne Tyler book The Tin Can Tree

Source: The Tin Can Tree

Love, People

“All efforts to make politics aesthetic culminate in one thing, war.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

War, Effort

“I don't get nearly enough credit in life for the things I manage not to say.”

Meg Rosoff book How I Live Now

Source: How I Live Now

Life

“I may not know how to fly but I know how to read, and that's almost the same thing.”

Gregory Maguire Out of Oz

Source: Out of Oz

Reading, Flying

“Lula's borderline too much of a good thing in lots of ways. It isn't exactly that Lula is fat; it's more that she's too short for her weight and her clothes are too small for the volume of flesh she carries.”

Janet Evanovich Plum Lucky

Source: Plum Lucky

Way, Clothes

“Passing time isn't a steady thing. People try to measure it, but some days seem to have years packed into them, and others pass in the blink of an eye. Some days matter, and others don't.”

Blue Balliett book The Calder Game

Source: The Calder Game

People, Time

“I want to be a scientist who studies the ocean when I grow up. I would go out to sea, and scuba dive, and find new things, and National Geographic will hire me.”
Sure, Nudge. Probably around the time I become president.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

Study, Time, Sea

“When we put God first, all other things fall into their proper place or drop out of our lives.”

Ezra Taft Benson (1899–1994) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

God

“To distract myself from tiresome thoughts, I have only to resort to books; they easily draw my mind to themselves and away from other things.”

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

Books, Drawing

“I shall think of you
Whenever I am most happy, whenever I am Most sad, whenever I see a beautiful thing.
You are a burning lamp to me, a flame
The wind cannot blow out, and I shall hold you High in my hand against whatever darkness.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

Source: Collected Poems

Happiness, Sadness, Beauty, Thinking

“I could never kill myself. What if it doesn't work. Then I'll have failed at the only thing that could save me from my failures. Where do you go from there?”

Tucker Max book Assholes Finish First

Source: Assholes Finish First

Failure

“She wanted him to tell her that when you love someone so hard and so fierce, it was all right to do things that you knew were wrong.”

Jodi Picoult Plain Truth

Source: Plain Truth

Love

“They reciprocated the great and saving lie--that our love for things is greater than our lover for our love for things--willfully playing the parts they wrote for themselves, willfully creating and believing fictions necessary for life.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

Love, Life, Lie, Lovers

“You know, do nice shite for her. Buy her things. Really think about what she likes and what makes her happy and make it happen. She'll come around. And if she doesn't, you can cut off your horns for her. Chicks dig that." (Cadeon)”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Kiss of a Demon King

Happiness, Thinking

“Sometimes things have to go wrong in order to go right.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

“I could disappear from the face of the earth, and the world would go on moving without the slightest twinge. Things were tremendously complicated, to be sure, but one thing was clear: no one needed me.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

World

“Blood is a powerful thing”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner

“You won't do our things with another girl, or say the same things, will you?”

Ernest Hemingway book A Farewell to Arms

Source: A Farewell to Arms

Girl

“You are going to survive. And good things are going to start to happen again. And one day you are going to look back and this will not even be such a bad thing”

Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American writer and lecturer

“The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more.”

Patricia A. McKillip The Bell at Sealey Head

Source: The Bell at Sealey Head

People, Books

“Bad things happen to good people all the time. It sucks. It's not fair but then much of life isn't fair. It's how you live that matters. It's how you deal with the bumps in the road.”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: Echoes at Dawn

Life, People, Time

“We depict hatred, but it is to depict that there are more important things. We depict a curse, to depict the joy of liberation.”

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

Proposal for Princess Mononoke http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/mh/story_proposal.txt

Joy

“I don't feel any way,' the girl said. 'I just know things.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Variant: I don't like to leave anything,' the man said. 'I don't like to leave things behind.
Source: The Complete Short Stories

Way, Feeling, Girl

“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Motivational, Graduation

“A thought experiment courtesy of the Stoics. If you are tired of everything you possess, imagine that you have lost all these things.”

Jenny Offill book Dept. of Speculation

Source: Dept. of Speculation

Imagination

“Occasionally in life we come upon things we can't understand, because we have never seen anything similar.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Life, Understanding

“Life was mostly made up of things you couldn’t control, full of surprises, and they weren’t always good. Life wasn’t what you made it. You were what life made you.”

Sara Zarr (1970) American children's writer

Source: Sweethearts

Life

“The future for me is already a thing of the past.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Love and Theft (2001), Bye and Bye
Source: Bob Dylan - Love and Theft: Piano/Vocal/Guitar

Past, Future, Valentine's Day, For Him

“Perhaps I should not have been a fisherman, he thought. But that was the thing that I was born for.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Old Man and the Sea

Source: The Old Man and the Sea

“I'm not absolutely certain of the facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare who says that it's always just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with the bit of lead piping.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest

Source: Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest

Fate, Feeling

“My sister, who never understood most of the things I wanted her to, might have been able to understand what had happened to me in this summer of weddings and beginnings. And she was right. The first boy was always the hardest. page 40000”

Sarah Dessen book That Summer

Source: That Summer (1996)

Boy, Understanding, Sister, Wedding

“Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things.”

Kakuzo Okakura book The Book of Tea

Source: The Book of Tea

Beauty, Dreams

“Things take the time they take.
Don't worry.
How many roads did St. Augustine follow before he became St. Augustine?”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Time

“Vin, Vin. can't you see? This isn't about good or evil. Morality doesn't even enter into it. Good men will kill as quickly for what they want as evil men—only the things they want are different.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Hero of Ages

Men, Evil

“I lived for the night, because I could go over to your house. It was the only thing that kept me going. You were the only thing, actually. It was… you.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover at Last

Housing, Night

“Then I turned the page and at the top it said THINGS I MISS ABOUT M and there was a list of 15 things, and the first was THE WAY HE HOLDS THINGS. I did not understand how you can miss the way somebody holds things.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Way, Understanding

“Always ask for what you want, because the worst thing that can happen is embarrassment but the best thing that can happen is nudity.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Vampires, Scones, and Edmund Herondale

“Sometimes when I'm alone, I take the pearl from where it lives in my pocket and try to remember the boy with the bread, the strong arms that warded off nightmares on the train, the kisses in the arena. To make myself put a name to the thing I've lost. But what's the use? It's gone. He's gone. Whatever existed between us is gone. All that's left is my promise to kill Snow. I tell myself this ten times a day.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Katniss (p. 195)
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay (2010)

Boy, Kiss, Strong, Time

“I am never, ever, going to make things easy for you, Seaweed Brain. Get used to it.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

“I require three things in a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Stupidity

“One possible reason why things aren't going according to plan is that there never was a plan.”

Ashleigh Brilliant (1933) American author and cartoonist

“The essential thing is to WANT to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

Singing

“I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner (2003)

Pain, Forgiveness, Night

“If there's one thing I believe more than I believe anything else, it's that you can't fake the core. The truth that lives there will eventually win out. It's a god we must obey, a force that brings us all inevitably to our knees.”

Cheryl Strayed (1968) author, memoirist, blogger

God, Truth

“Don't worry about it. The right thing will come at the right time.”

Danielle Steel (1947) American author of romance novels

Source: Until the End of Time

Time

“It was one of those pictures that children are supposed to like but don't. Full of endearing little animals doing endearing things, you know?”

Douglas Adams book So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Source: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Children, Animals

“Only if the third necessary thing could be given us. Number one, as I said: quality of information. Number two: leisure to digest it. And number three: the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the first two.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Learning

“the writing of some
men
is like a vast bridge
that carries you
over
the many things
that claw and tear.

The Wine of Forever”

Charles Bukowski book Love Is a Dog from Hell

Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell

Men, Tear, Wine

“Terrible thing to live in fear. Brooks Hatlen knew it. Knew it all too well. All I want is to be back where things make sense. Where I won't have to be afraid all the time.”

Stephen King book Different Seasons

Source: Different Seasons

Fear, Sense, Time

“The sum of things to be known is inexhaustible, and however long we read, we shall never come to the end of our story-book."

(, 3 October 1892)”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

Source: Selected Prose

Books, Reading

“Most important thing in life is learning how to fall.”

Jeannette Walls book Half Broke Horses

Source: Half Broke Horses

Life, Learning, For Him

“Sometimes we have to face the things that hurt us most. Maybe you won’t heal till you do. You haven’t yet.” They both knew that was true. “You can’t move ahead until you bury the past.”

Danielle Steel (1947) American author of romance novels

Past, Hurt

“The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.”

Thomas Merton book The Seven Storey Mountain

Source: The Seven Storey Mountain (1948)
Context: Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers the most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture.

Fear, Suffering, Hurt