Quotes about thing page 74
“Everybody dies … The thing is, to have a life before we die.”
John Irving book The World According to Garp
Source: The World According to Garp
“People say: idle curiosity. The one thing that curiosity cannot be is idle.”
Leo Rosten (1908–1997) American writer
“Here's the thing about luck… you don't know if it's good or bad until you have some perspective.”
Alice Hoffman (1952) Novelist, young-adult writer, children's writer
Source: Local Girls
Paul Arden (1940–2008) writer
Source: Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite
“and a fact is the most stubborn thing in the world.”
Mikhail Bulgakov book The Master and Margarita
Source: The Master and Margarita
“But things worked out. Everything works out. Though sometimes they work out sideways.”
Knut Hamsun (1859–1952) Norwegian novelist and Nobel Prize recipient
Source: Ringen sluttet
“Neglecting to broaden their view has kept some people doing one thing all their lives.”
Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author
Source: Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller - Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century
“Sometimes a thing that's hard is hard because you're doing it wrong. (Point Omega)”
Don DeLillo (1936) American novelist, playwright and essayist
“Things are so hard to figure out when you live from day to day in this feverish and silly world.”
Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer
Source: On the Road: The Original Scroll
“Common sense is seeing things as they are; and doing things as they ought to be.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) Abolitionist, author
“The worst thing a girl can do is trail after a boy when a love affair is dead.”
Sophie Kinsella book Twenties Girl
Source: Twenties Girl
“There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened.”
Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman
Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 26
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian
Cf. Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah (1921), Pt. I : In the Beginning: I hear you say "Why?" Always "Why?" You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?"
Books, Brain Droppings (1997)
Variant: Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that shit.
John Steinbeck book The Pearl
Source: The Pearl (1947), Ch. V
Context: He had said, "I am a man," and that meant certain things to Juana. It meant that he was half insane and half god. It meant that Kino would drive his strength against a mountain and plunge his strength against the sea. Juana, in her woman's soul, knew that the mountain would stand while the man broke himself; that the sea would surge while the man drowned in it. And yet it was this thing that made him a man, half insane and half god, and Juana had need of a man; she could not live without a man. Although she might be puzzled by these differences between man and woman, she knew them and accepted them and needed them. Of course she would follow him, there was no question of that. Sometimes the quality of woman, the reason, the caution, the sense of preservation, could cut through Kino's manness and save them all.
Cheryl Strayed book Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Source: Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Tanith Lee Red as Blood, or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer
Source: Red as Blood, or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer
Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)
Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress
The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 31
Context: And thus our good Lord answered to all the questions and doubts that I might make, saying full comfortably: I may make all thing well, I can make all thing well, I will make all thing well, and I shall make all thing well; and thou shalt see thyself that all manner of thing shall be well.
“I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art.”
Chaim Potok book My Name Is Asher Lev
Source: My Name Is Asher Lev
“There are things known
and there are things unknown
and in between are the doors.”
Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors
Aldous Huxley, using the term "the doors of perception" which originated with William Blake in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. It is sometimes credited to Morrison because he cited it in interviews as the inspiration for the name The Doors and without always crediting Huxley as the source.
Misattributed
Variant: There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.
Source: Letters from Joe
Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist
Source: Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son
Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature
Seth Godin (1960) American entrepreneur, author and public speaker
Source: Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
“We human beings have a remarkable way of growing accustomed to things.”
Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha
Source: Memoirs of a Geisha
Rabih Alameddine (1959) Lebanese-American painter and writer.
Source: I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters
“And as it turns out, if one person is praying for you, buckle up. Things can happen.”
Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist
Source: Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers
Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon
Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence
Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon
Source: Flowers for Algernon (1966)
Paul Bowles (1910–1999) American composer, writer, translator
Source: The Spider's House
Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer
“True love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops.”
William Goldman book The Princess Bride
Source: The Princess Bride
“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”
Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) Russo-British Jewish social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas
“We're here to get each other through this thing, whatever it is.”
Mark Vonnegut (1947) American physician and writer
“That’s the nice thing about dreams, the way you wake up before you fall.”
Marya Hornbacher book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
Source: Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
Lloyd Alexander (1924–2007) American children's writer
Source: The Arkadians
Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles
Guy De Maupassant (1850–1893) French writer
Source: The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, Part One
“The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.”
Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author
“Knowing too much of your future is never a good thing.”
Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief
Source: The Lightning Thief
Peter McWilliams (1949–2000) American author and civil liberties advocate
Immanuel Kant book Critique of Practical Reason
Variant: Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
Source: Critique of Practical Reason (1788)
Context: Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within. I have not to search for them and conjecture them as though they were veiled in darkness or were in the transcendent region beyond my horizon; I see them before me and connect them directly with the consciousness of my existence. The former begins from the place I occupy in the external world of sense, and enlarges my connection therein to an unbounded extent with worlds upon worlds and systems of systems, and moreover into limitless times of their periodic motion, its beginning and continuance. The second begins from my invisible self, my personality, and exhibits me in a world which has true infinity, but which is traceable only by the understanding, and with which I discern that I am not in a merely contingent but in a universal and necessary connection, as I am also thereby with all those visible worlds. The former view of a countless multitude of worlds annihilates as it were my importance as an animal creature, which after it has been for a short time provided with vital power, one knows not how, must again give back the matter of which it was formed to the planet it inhabits (a mere speck in the universe). The second, on the contrary, infinitely elevates my worth as an intelligence by my personality, in which the moral law reveals to me a life independent of animality and even of the whole sensible world, at least so far as may be inferred from the destination assigned to my existence by this law, a destination not restricted to conditions and limits of this life, but reaching into the infinite.
Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott