Quotes about thing
page 71

“It's important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse." Page 316”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Variant: It’s important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse.
Source: Life of Pi

Life, Heart

“When smart people are nice, it's always terrifying, because I know they're taking in everything and thinking all kinds of smart and potentially judgmental things.”

Mindy Kaling book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Source: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

People, Thinking

“Now I no longer wish to be loved, beautiful, happy or successful. I want one thing and one thing only - to be left alone.”

Jean Rhys book Good Morning, Midnight

Source: Good Morning, Midnight

Love, Happiness, Beauty, Success

“Faith is not Desire. Faith is Will. Desires are things that need to be satisfied, whereas Will is a force. Will changes the space around us,…”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Witch Of Portobello

Faith, Change

“Laurie, you're an angel! How shall I ever thank you?"
"Fly at me again. I rather liked it," said Laurie, looking
mischievous, a thing he had not done for a fortnight.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Angels, Flying

“Our firmest convictions are apt to be the most suspect; they mark our limitations and our bounds. Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries.”

José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955) Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist

Life

“It is a good thing to be rich and strong, but it is a better thing to be loved.”

Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

Love, Strong

“I planned my death carefully, unlike my life, which meandered along from one thing to another, despite my feeble attempts to control it.”

Margaret Atwood book Lady Oracle

Source: Lady Oracle

Life, Death

“I fear I will always have to chase the things I want. I'll always have to wonder whether I'm truly wanted or whether I've just been settled for.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

Fear

“Why did people ask "What is it about?" as if a novel had to be about only one thing.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book Americanah

Source: Americanah (2013)

People

“I’m afraid of love, because it involves things that are beyond our understanding; it sheds such a brilliant light, but the shadow it casts frightens me.”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Source: Brida

Love, Understanding, Light

“There are people who have too much space between their ears, and given the time, do nothing but free fall forever inside their head. It's a spooky thing to be left alone inside an angry innerverse.”

James St. James (1966) American writer

People, Time

“Men protect things they find important," Galladon said with a shrug. "If you object, you shouldn't have made yourself so irreplaceable. Kolo?"
-Brandon Sanderson
(Elantris)”

Brandon Sanderson Elantris

Source: Elantris

Men

“Happiness does not come from consumption of things.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Creating True Peace: Ending Violence in Yourself, Your Family, Your Community, and the World

Happiness

“Traveling has less to do with seeing things than experiencing them….”

Nicholas Sparks book The Choice

Travis Parker, Chapter 8, p. 101
Source: 2000s, The Choice (2007)

Travel

“It is a well-documented fact that guys will not ask for directions. This is a biological thing. This is why it takes several million sperm cells… to locate a female egg, despite the fact that the egg is, relative to them, the size of Wisconsin.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Guy

“Darkness was a beautiful thing. The kiss of a shadow. A caress as soft as moonlight.”

Mary E. Pearson (1955) young-adult fiction writer

Source: The Beauty of Darkness

Beauty, Kiss

“Suddenly, madness was everywhere, and I was determined to learn about the impact it had on the way society evolves. I've always believed society to be a fundamentally rational thing, but what if it isn't? What if it is built on insanity?”

Jon Ronson (1967) British journalist, documentary filmmaker, radio presenter and nonfiction author

Source: The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry

Way, Learning, Madness

“There is no equality. The only thing people all have in common is that they are all going to die.”

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

People

“If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little - somebody who is obsessed by Making.”

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

“The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.”

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

New England Reformers
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Essays, First Series

“I have loved the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remembered.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

To Fanny Brawne (c. February 1820)
Letters (1817–1820)
Context: "If I should die," said I to myself, "I have left no immortal work behind me — nothing to make my friends proud of my memory — but I have loved the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remembered."

Love, Beauty, Time

“Of all the things trauma takes away from us, the worst is our willingness, or even our ability, to be vulnerable. There's a reclaiming that has to happen.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: Rising Strong

“If people try to judge you or shame you for doing safe, consensual things that make you happy, I can guarantee you they're bad people.”

Tucker Max book Assholes Finish First

Source: Assholes Finish First

Happiness, People

“Remember, despite the fact that this book is being sold as a 'fantasy' novel, you must take all of the things it says extremely seriously, as they are quite important, are in no way silly, and always make sense.

Rutabaga.”

Brandon Sanderson Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

Source: Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

Books, Way, Sense

“Someday is someday, and maybe it will be or maybe it won't. This is a human thing, to worry about things that may or may not come to be. You can't eat meat until you've killed it.”

Robin Hobb book Assassin's Quest

Source: Assassin's Quest

“When something horrible happens, it's human nature to want to blame it on someone. We want someone to be held accountable, even though sometimes things just happen.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Abandon

Nature

“At this moment, then, the Negroes must begin to do the very thing which they have been taught that they cannot do.”

Carter G. Woodson (1875–1950) African-American historian and writer

“The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in our health, or we suffer in our soul, or we get fat.”

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

Attributed in Einstein: The Life and Times by Ronald W. Clark (1971), p. 737. The only source given in the end notes is "personal information". Einstein is said to have made this comment when a box of candy was being passed around after dinner, and he said that his doctor wouldn't let him eat it. The book also says that 'A friend asked him why it was the devil and not God who had imposed the penalty. "What's the difference?" he answered. "One has a plus in front, the other a minus."'.
Attributed in posthumous publications

Life, Health, Penalty, Soul

“The sun is nice but it lights things up so much that you can't see very far… The night time is better. It stretches your soul to the stars.”

Fynn (1919–1999) British writer

Source: Mister God, This is Anna

Soul, Star, Light, Time

“The thing I fear most is fear.”

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

C'est de quoi j'ai le plus de peur que la peur.
Book I, ch, 18
Essais (1595), Book I
Source: The Complete Essays

Fear

“The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that things are not mended again.”

Alan Paton (1903–1988) South African writer and activist

Source: Cry, The Beloved Country

“One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike—and yet it is the most precious thing we have.”

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

Letter to Hans Muehsam (9 July 1951), Einstein Archives 38-408, quoted in The Ultimate Quotable Einstein (2010) by Alice Calaprice, p. 404 http://books.google.com/books?id=G_iziBAPXtEC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA404#v=onepage&q&f=false <br class="br">1950s

Life, Reality, Learning, Science

“That prison," I said with heartfelt sincerity, "Was absolutely the most awful thing that has happened to me in my entire life." I could tell by the way he looked at me that he thought my life had been filled with one awful thing after another.”

Megan Whalen Turner The Thief

Source: The Thief

Life, Way, Sincerity

“In love there are two things - bodies and words.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

Love, Romantic, Valentine's Day, For Wife

“There are thirty-two ways to write a story, and I’ve used every one, but there is only one plot – things are not as they seem.”

Jim Thompson (1906–1977) American writer

Way

“How we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes.”

John Irving book The Cider House Rules

Source: The Cider House Rules

Love, People

“Tell me he’s not talking to Brandon,” Claire said.
“Um… Ok. He’s not talking to Brandon.”
“You’re lying.”
“Yeah. He’s talking to Brandon. Look, let Shane do his thing, okay? He’s not as stupid as he looks, mostly.”

Rachel Caine book Glass Houses

Source: Glass Houses

Stupidity, Lying

“They say that nameless things change constantly—that names fix them in place like pins.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Source: Ironside

Change

“In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Source: Spinoza in der europäischen Geistesgeschichte

“He could even think about how fast he was thinking about things.”

Dave Barry book Peter and the Starcatchers

Source: Peter and the Starcatchers

Thinking

“Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can't take their eyes off you.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Love, People

“In the middle of the night, things well up from the past that are not always cause for rejoicing--the unsolved, the painful encounters, the mistakes, the reasons for shame or woe. But all, good or bad, give me food for thought, food to grow on.”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

Source: At Seventy: A Journal

Pain, Food, Past, Night

“Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Thinking, Sense, Chance

“We 're all yearning for a wedge of sky, aren 't we? I suspect God plants these yearnings in us so we'll at least try and change the course of things. We must try, that's all" - Lucretia Mott in The Invention of Wings
― Sue Monk Kidd”

Sue Monk Kidd (1948) Novelist

Source: The Invention of Wings

God, Change

“But she never looked back with regret. There were so many ways for things to get better.
-Jing-mei”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club

Way

“That's what people do. Kill the things they're afraid of.”

Michael Thomas Ford (1968) American writer

Source: Suicide Notes

People

“But things don't just fall apart. People break them.”

Robin Wasserman (1978) American writer of speculative fiction for young people

Source: The Book of Blood and Shadow

People

“This is life. Things get taken away. You will learn to start over many times -- or you will be useless.”

Mitch Albom book The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto

Source: The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto

Life, Learning, Time

“Sometimes you suffer for the things that are important to you.”

Marta Acosta American novelist

Source: Dark Companion

Suffering

“Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Wit and Humour"
Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819)

Animals

“The master says it’s a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it’s a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there’s anyone in the world who would like us to live.”

Frank McCourt book Angela's Ashes

Source: Angela's Ashes

World, Faith

“The night sky is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole---
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Collected Poems

Death, Star, Light, Night

“Why did everything always change when all you wanted, all you had ever humbly asked of whatever God there might be, was that certain things be allowed to stay the same?”

Richard Yates (1926–1992) Novelist, short story writer

God, Change

“Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave.”

Quentin Crisp book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 18

Life, Way, Funny

“One of the things I've learned in my life is that sometimes you've got to take a chance.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

Life, Learning, Chance

“Dreams can be dangerous things.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Dreams

“People move around so much in the world, things get lost.”

Emma Donoghue Room

Source: Room

People, World

“A song nobody likes is a sad thing. But a love song nobody likes is hardly a thing at all.”

Rob Sheffield (1966) American music journalist

Source: Love Is a Mix Tape

Love, Sadness

“Sometimes the facts in my head get bored and decide to take a walk in my mouth. Frequently this is a bad thing.”

Scott Westerfeld book So Yesterday

Source: So Yesterday

“A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.”

George Lucas (1944) American film producer

Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga (1983) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykmZp5cgbkU <br class="br">Context: One of the fatal mistakes that almost every science-fiction film makes is that they spend so much time on the settings — you know, creating the environment — that they spend film time on it. And you don't have to spend too much film time to create an environment. What they're doing is showing off the amount of work that they generated, and it slows the pace of the film down. And the story is not the settings. The story is the stories, plot. You're always surprised with characters, I mean in film it's even more dramatic than it is in writing, because eventually you actually take a real person and stick them into that character. And that real person brings with him, or her, an enormous package of reality. I mean, Threepio is just a hunk of plastic, and without Tony Daniels in there it just isn't anything at all. In the first film we had maybe 20 colors to paint with, and this time we've had 40 colors to paint with. Well, that doesn't mean it's going to be a better painting. Special effects are just a tool, a means of telling a story. People have a tendency to confuse them as an end to themselves. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.

“When a place gets crowded enough to require ID’s, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

Source: The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

Travel, Time

“To his way of thinking, the only thing more natural than death was sex.”

Stephen King book 'Salem's Lot

Source: 'Salem's Lot

Death, Sex, Way, Nature

“There are no guarantees. But there is also nothing to fear. We come from oblivion when we are born. We return to oblivion when we die. The astonishing thing is this period of in-between.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Fear

“It seemed to happen in springs, the revealing of things.”

Aimee Bender (1969) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Spring

“To be oneself, simply oneself, is so amazing and utterly unique an experience that it's hard to convince oneself so singular a thing happens to everybody.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

Source: Prime of Life

“Do your own thing on your own terms and get what you came here for”

Oliver James (1953) British psychologist

“There's music in the sighing of a reed;
There's music in the gushing of a rill;
There's music in all things, if men had ears;
The earth is but the music of the spheres.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Men, Music

“Being with you is the best thing that's ever happened to me, the one perfect decision I've made in a lifetime of fumbling and poor judgment. I'd go through it all again to be by your side. Never doubt that. Never doubt how I feel about you.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: The Ruby Circle

Feeling, Decision, Perfection

“All things are possible until they are proven impossible.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

“I tried to put things in perspective but sometimes you're just too close to it.”

Cormac McCarthy book No Country for Old Men

Source: No Country for Old Men

“There is no such thing as a good tax.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The correct attribution is Oklahoma Senator Thomas Gore, in his speech to the National Tax Association in 1935.. Though it is often attributed to Churchill, there is no evidence he ever said it.
Misattributed
Variant: There is no such thing as a good tax.
Source: http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/there_is_no_such_thing_as_a_good_tax/
Source: http://newspaperarchive.com/san-antonio-express/1935-10-17/page-2

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