Quotes about thing
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“I think about how people use the devil as an alias for the things they fear. The cause and effect is backward. The devil doesn't make anyone do anything. People just do things and blame the devil after.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

People, Fear, Thinking

“Even if it's absurd to think you can change things, it's even more absurd to believe that it is foolish and unimportant to try.”

Peter C. Newman (1929) Canadian journalist

Source: Here Be Dragons: Telling Tales Of People, Passion and Power

Thinking, Change

“Rue, who when you ask her what she loves most in the world, replies, of all things, “Music.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Love, World, Music

“It was at once a miracle and the most natural thing in the world.”

Banana Yoshimoto book Kitchen

Source: Kitchen

World, Nature

“When you reach for the stars, you are reaching for the farthest thing out there. When you reach deep into yourself, it is the same thing, but in the opposite direction. If you reach in both directions, you will have spanned the universe.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

Star, Universe

“In this whole screwed up town, you're the only thing that's always been right to me," He whispered. "I love you, Claire" said Shane.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Variant: Shane talking to Claire -

"In this whole screwed up town, you're the only thing that's always been right to me," He whispered. "I love you, Claire
Source: Lord of Misrule

Love

“Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.”

William James book The Varieties of Religious Experience

Source: The Varieties of Religious Experience

Life, Knowledge

“To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. 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

Music, Knowledge, Singing

“Memory can make a thing seem to have been much more than it was.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Memory

“Fear, what a strange thing fear was…”

Agatha Christie And Then There Were None

Source: And Then There Were None

Fear

“Destroying things is much easier than making them.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“You've influenced the world not because you wanted to hug it and cuddle it and call it sweet thing, but because one day you wanted to beat the crap out of somebody but you didn't. You made a painting instead.”

Libba Bray Going Bovine

Source: Going Bovine

World, Painting

“Each book is a mind alive, a life revealed, a world awaiting exploration, but living people are all those things, as well—and more, because their stories haven’t yet been completely told.”

Dean Koontz (1945) American author

Source: Innocence

Life, People, Books, World

“I like the cover," he said. "Don't Panic. It's the first helpful or intelligible thing anybody's said to me all day.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Intelligence, Help

“Maybe it's information the whitecoats never wanted anyone to figure out.' Fang said in the hollow-y voice he used sometimes when things got unusually weird- as opposed to regular weird.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Maximum Ride The Angel Experiment

“Intelligence is based on how efficient a species became at doing the things they need to survive.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

Intelligence

“There are some awful things in the world, it's true, but there are also some great books.”

Jo Walton book Among Others

Source: Among Others

Books, World

“It is not time that changes man nor knowledge the only thing that can change someone's mind is love.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

Love, Knowledge, Change, Time

“That night as I lay in bed, I thought of several things I could have said and mourned the fact that my wit usually bloomed late, peaking when it no longer mattered, during the solitary hours close to midnight.”

Siri Hustvedt (1955) novelist, essayist, poet

Source: The Blindfold

Night

“It is a remarkable question- Do all the wonderful things happen when we are not aware of them?”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Question

“The true roll in determing to embrace or reject anything is not whether it have any evil in it but whether it have more of evil than of good. There are few things wholly evil or wholly good.”

Seth Grahame-Smith (1976) US fiction author

Source: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Evil

“This world is full of broken things: broken hearts, broken promises, broken people”

John Connolly (1968) author

Source: The Unquiet

People, World, Heart

“What is a Gallagher Girl?" Liz asked one final time. "She's a genius, a scientist, a heroine, a spy. And now we are at the end of our time at school, and the one thing I know for certain is this: a Gallagher Girl is”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: United We Spy

School, Girl, Time

“Clary’s eyes widened. She wondered if she was about to be broken up with. If so, she would have a thing or two to say to Jace about his timing, after she drowned him in the lake.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Time

“People only give value to a thing if they have, at some point, been uncertain as to whether or not they'll get it.”

Paulo Coelho book The Winner Stands Alone

Source: The Winner Stands Alone

People

“Love is the grand prize and the garbage heap. Love is a spiritual root canal and the only thing that makes life worth living. Love is a little taste of always and a big bite of nothing. And love is everything in between these extremes.”

Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer

Source: True Love

Love, Life

“May you walk a lighted path. May you fight for truth - your truth, not someone else's - and may you understand, above all things, that you are the most important concept, theory, and philosophy I have ever known.”

Marisha Pessl Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Source: Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Truth, Understanding, Light, Fight

“Sometimes you can see things happen right in front of your eyes and still jump to the wrong conclusions.”

Jodi Picoult book Keeping Faith

Source: Keeping Faith

“Oh the things you can find
If you don't stay behind!”

Dr. Seuss book On Beyond Zebra!

On Beyond Zebra! (1955)

“As you can see, there are quite a number of things taught in school that one has to unlearn or at least correct.”

Ambeth R. Ocampo book Rizal Without the Overcoat

Source: Rizal Without the Overcoat

School

“One of the most difficult things he'd ever done was turn away and leave her standing in the shadows.”

Rachel Gibson (1961) American writer

Source: I'm In No Mood For Love

“My gosh, if you’re going away, we got a million things to talk about! All the things we would’ve talked about next month, the month after! Praying mantises, zeppelins, acrobats, sword swallowers!”

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Source: Dandelion Wine

“I dont believe in learning from other peoples pictures. I think you should learn from your own interior vision of things and discover, as I say, Innocently, as though there had never been anybody.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

People, Thinking, Learning

“Yeah, well, it’s what happens when we spoil the things we love. They don’t always understand the boundaries and their ridiculous wants can get us killed if we’re not careful. (Jaden)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

Love, Understanding

“But all these were things he could not want, because they were things he could not have, and wanting what you could not have led to misery and madness.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Madness

“Grown up, and that is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another.”

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

Childhood

“Libraries allow children to ask questions about the world and find the answers. And the wonderful thing is that once a child learns to use a library, the doors to learning are always open.”

Laura Bush (1946) First Lady of the United States from 2001 to 2009

As quoted in The 21st Century Elementary Library Media Program (2009) by Carl A. Harvey, p. 3

Children, World, Question, Learning

“Tennis taught me so many lessons in life. One of the things it taught me is that every ball that comes to me, I have to make a decision. I have to accept responsibility for the consequences every time I hit a ball.”

Billie Jean King (1943) American tennis player

Life, Decision, Time

“Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.”

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

Life, Happiness, Pleasure, Cheating

“Writing is the thing that props me up.”

Horton Foote (1916–2009) American playwright and screenwriter

“Never be afraid of doing the thing you know in your heart is right, even if others don't agree.”

Elizabeth Berg (1948) American novelist

Source: Dream When You're Feeling Blue

Heart

“I mumble hocus-pocus and the next thing you know, I’m a cat. (Ravyn)
I suppose it’s a step up. The last guy I had in my house could only turn into a beer-drinking pig. (Susan)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dark Side of the Moon

Guy, Cats, Drink, Beer

“Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

People

“My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. I do not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more definite than a novel and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we called Knowledge before — a discovery that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Walking (June 1862)
Source: Civil Disobedience and Other Essays

Dreams, Intelligence, Knowledge

“A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

Source: Leaving Home‎ (1987), p. 184

Love, Christmas, Christmas

“The street finds its own uses for things.”

William Gibson Burning Chrome

Burning Chrome (1982)

“Some things in life are too complicated to explain in any language.”

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Life

“You used nunchucks on a moose?"
Wolfe got a haunted look in his eyes. "I used all sorts of things on that bastard.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Wolf

“You ask me what forces me to speak? a strange thing; my conscience.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“Maybe we’ll admit this thing we have is perfect, not worth messing around with. And stay together forever. If you’re interested, that is.”
She glanced away. “I could think about that.”
He buried his face in her neck. “Think fast”

Robyn Carr American writer

Source: Wild Man Creek

Thinking, Perfection

“You know what the worst thing I can imagine is? Simon had said. Not trusting someone I love.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Love, Imagination

“It is a costly thing, looking on the true face of Love.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Love

“… when you put your life in a good place, good things follow.”

Willie Nelson (1933) American country music singer-songwriter.

Source: The Tao of Willie: A Guide to the Happiness in Your Heart

Life

“People learned to live with the
most unimaginable things.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

People, Learning

“There is no such thing as was—only is. If was existed, there would be no grief or sorrow.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

“Love is as strong as death, as hard as Hell. Death separates the soul from the body, but love separates all things from the soul.”

Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) German theologian

Love, Death, Soul, Hell

“If our faith is strong, we’ll go to heaven, and we’ll understand the whole thing when we get there. As if life were a joke, and heaven the place where the cosmic punchline is finally explained to us.”

Stephen King book Revival

Source: Revival

Life, Faith, Understanding, Strong

“Good sense is the most equitably distributed of all things because no matter how much or little a person has, everyone feels so abundantly provided with good sense that he feels no desire for more than he already possesses.”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

Feeling, Sense, Personality

“I will write things, he was thinking. I will write something meaningful and wonderful someday. I can do that. And I'll dedicate it to you because you're the first person who ever made me think I could.”

Anne Rice The Wolf Gift

Source: The Wolf Gift

Thinking, Personality

“For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Being Peace

“My advice to you is this. Do not attempt to stand alone…. The most fatal thing a man can do is try to stand alone.”

Carson McCullers book The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Source: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

“Trust others to do the right thing. If you can't do that, trust yourself to survive what happens.”

Susan Mallery (1950) American author

“Maybe the more emotions a person experiences in their daily lives, the longer time seems to feel to them. As you get older, you experience fewer new things, and so time seems to go by faster.”

Douglas Coupland book Life After God

Source: Life After God

Feeling, Time, Personality

“I just believe that the interesting time in a career is pre-success, what shaped things, how did you get to this point?”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

Source: Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life

Time, Success

“When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about.”

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

Universe

“I want to build some thing permanent.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

“To be able under all circumstances to practice five things constitutes perfect virtue; these five things are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness and kindness.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Soul, Perfection, Sincerity

“Small children are great accepters. They don’t understand shame, or the need to hide things.”

Stephen King book The Shining

Source: The Shining

Children, Understanding

“It's the most charming thing about humans. You are all so sure that the lesser animals are bleeding with envy because they didn't have the good fortune to be born Homo sapiens.”

Orson Scott Card book Speaker for the Dead

Source: Speaker for the Dead

Animals, Envy

“Sonny, don't you tell me what's worthwhile--true love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops. Everybody knows that.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

Love, World

“Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one else is watching — even when doing the wrong thing is legal.”

Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American writer and scientist

Presumably a paraphrase of "A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct" or of "Hunting for sport is an improvement ..." above.
Unlikely to be by Leopold, who knew that ethics involves not only doing the right thing, but also determining the right thing in the face of competing desirable criteria.
Misattributed

Behavior

“If you reveal everything, bare every feeling, ask for understanding, you lose something crucial to your sense of yourself. You need to know things that others don't know. It's what no one knows about you that allows you to know yourself.”

Don DeLillo Point Omega

Source: Point Omega

Feeling, Understanding, Sense

“There is a curious thing that happens with the passage of time: a calcification of character… Change isn't always for the worst; the shell that forms around a piece of sand looks to some people like an irritation, and to others, like a pearl.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

People, Change, Time

“So I learned two things that night, and the next day, from him: the perfection of a moment, and the fleeting nature of it.”

Margaret George book The Memoirs of Cleopatra

Source: The Memoirs of Cleopatra

Nature, Learning, Perfection, Night

“Congratulations. That was the stupidest thing I've ever seen. Ever.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

“The next thing I knew I was listening to five people shouting. What was that all about, anyway?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

People

“Imagination is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come by study, but by the intellect being where and what it sees, by sharing the path, or circuits of things through forms, and so making them translucid to others.”

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

Imagination, Study

“Computers are great because when you're working with them you get immediate results that let you know if your program works. It's feedback you don't get from many other things.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

“It was madness. Sheer lunacy. A spectacularly foolish and baseless faith, against enormous odds, that a world you do not control will not take from you the one thing you cannot bear to lose. Faith that the world will not destroy you.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

World, Faith, Madness

“Things will get easier, people's minds will change, and you should be alive to see it.”

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

People, Change

“Sighs and silences and avoided conversations are just as important as the things you do talk about.”

Cecelia Ahern book If You Could See Me Now

Source: If You Could See Me Now

Silence

“The things that are most precious to us are sometimes the most secret.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Perfect Scoundrels

Secret

“Harry," she said quietly, "I know you must be angry."

I burn things to ash and smash holes in buildings when I'm angry," I said. "I'm a couple of steps past that point right now.”

Jim Butcher book Changes

Source: Changes

Past

“if we could act a little more according to common sense, and a good deal less according to fashion, we should find many things work easier;”

Anna Sewell book Black Beauty

Source: Black Beauty

Fashion, Sense

“It's a good thing most people bleed on the inside or this would be a gory, blood-smeared earth.”

Beatrice Sparks (1917–2012) American writer

Source: Go Ask Alice

People

“She stopped and leant her elbows against the parapet of the embankment. He did likewise. There is at times a magic in identity of position; it is one of the things that have suggested to us eternal comradeship.”

E.M. Forster book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View

Time

“Lord, I feel so small sometimes in this great big old world.
Yeah, I know there are more important things.
But don't forget to remember me.”

Carrie Underwood (1983) American country music singer

World, Feeling, Forgetting

“Sometimes humour is all we have to say the things that can't be said.”

Simon R. Green (1955) British writer

“Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.”

Michael Shermer (1954) American science writer

People

“People do strange things sometimes, when they feel hopeless.”

Danielle Steel (1947) American author of romance novels

People, Feeling

“Sometimes when we forget to do things for others, it's because we're too wrapped up in our own problems.”

Lauren Myracle book Let It Snow

Source: Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances

Problem, Forgetting

“Some things have to be believed to be seen. -Ralph Hodgson”

Ann Brashares The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

“Don't wait for a light to appear at the end of the tunnel, stride down there and light the bloody thing yourself.”

Sara Henderson (1936–2005) Australian writer

Light, Appearance, Waiting

“Why do you do these things to yourself? Not just what you did to the window, but the way you talked to Clary. What are you punishing yourself for? You can't help how you feel.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Way, Feeling, Help

“The word I think of is precarious. I am struck by how precarious it all is. How the things that hold us are only as strong as the faith we have in them.”

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

Faith, Thinking, Strong

“If you're for the right thing, you do it without thinking.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Thinking

“Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Quoted on the web sans source. Not in the complete Poems. A 2006 self-help book attributes it verbatim to Dave Sim (see below) sans source. A 2009 reprint of Poems: Second Series mentions it in the introduction sans source (thus probably taking it from the unsourced web quote). No earlier attributions found.
Compare to a quote sourced to Dave Sim: "Anything done for the first time unleashes a demon." (Cerebus #65, 1984)
Misattributed

Time

“Or maybe spring is the season of love and fall the season of mad lust. Spring for flirting but fall for the untamed delicious wild thing.”

Elizabeth Cohen American journalist

Source: The Hypothetical Girl

Love, Spring, Madness, Season