Quotes about thing
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“… great things may come from moments of nothingness.”

Alexander McCall Smith book The Miracle at Speedy Motors

Source: The Miracle at Speedy Motors

“… things are the way they are in our universe because if they weren't, we wouldn't be here to notice.”

Brian Greene (1963) American physicist

Source: The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory

Way, Universe

“One thing only do I know for certain and that is that man's judgments of value follow directly his wishes for happiness-that, accordingly, they are an attempt to support his illusions with arguments. [p.111]”

Sigmund Freud book Civilization and Its Discontents

Source: Civilization and Its Discontents

Happiness, Support

“I'm me and nobody else; and whatever people think I am or say I am, that's what I'm not, because they don't know a bloody thing about me.”

Alan Sillitoe book Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Source: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

People, Thinking

“Lust is temporary, romance can be nice, but love is the most important thing of all. Because without Love, lust and romance will always be short-lived.”

Danielle Steel (1947) American author of romance novels

Love

“And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again…”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Cry

“She started off, walking fast, as if the speed of her steps could give form to the things she felt.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Speed

“Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them.

[Witness for the Prosecution, also published in The Hound of Death and Other Stories. ]”

Agatha Christie book The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories

Source: The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories

Death, People

“And when things start to happen, don't worry, don't stew.
Just go right along, you'll start happening too!”

Dr. Seuss Oh, the Places You'll Go!

Oh, the Places You'll Go! (1990)
Context: Out there things can happen, and frequently do,
To people as brainy and footsy as you.
And when things start to happen, don't worry, don't stew.
Just go right along, you'll start happening too!

“As the gambler said of his dice, to love and win is the best thing, to love and lose is the next best.”

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) novelist

Source: The History of Pendennis (1848-1850), Ch. 40.

Love

“I am not breaking my rules,' I snapped, hating that I'd ended up on the advice-recieving end of things, jumping from Dear Remy to Confused in Cincinnati all in one summer.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

Hate, Summer

“Let us not overlook vital things, because of the bulk of trifles confronting us.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

“Opportunities and choices. When a person makes a heart wish, that wish resonates through the currents and things will happen to give the person an opportunity to make the wish come true. Like a hand offered and accepted.”

Anne Bishop book Sebastian

Source: Sebastian

Heart, Personality

“Everything measurable passes, everything that can be counted has an end. Only three things are infinite: the sky in its stars, the sea in its drops of water, and the heart in its tears.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

Source: The Letters of Gustave Flaubert, 1830-1857

Star, Tear, Water, Heart

“Nevertheless, the book gave Jack a feeling he had never had before, that the past was like a story, in which one thing led to another, and the world was not a boundless mystery, but a finite thing that could be comprehended.”

Ken Follett book The Pillars of the Earth

Source: The Pillars of the Earth

Books, World, Feeling, Past

“Our dreams prove that to imagine - to dream about things that have not happened - is among mankind's deepest needs.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Dreams, Imagination

“Maybe it was wrong, or maybe impossible, but I wanted the truth to be one thing. One solid thing.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Secret Life of Prince Charming

Truth

“Ed?" Ritchie says later. We're still standing in the water. "There's only one thing I want."
"What's that, Ritchie?"
His answer is simple.
"To want.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: I Am the Messenger

Water

“Sometimes I think evil is a tangible thing - with wave lengths, just as sound and light have.”

Richard Connell book The Most Dangerous Game

Source: The Most Dangerous Game

Thinking, Light, Evil

“I suppose it’s comfort, perhaps a sense of self-control, doing worse things to yourself than the world will ever dare inflict.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Tell-All

Source: Tell-All

World, Sense

“There are some things to die for but none to kill for.”

Shane Claiborne The Irresistible Revolution

The Irresistible Revolution (2006)
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical

“I often carry things to read
so that I will not have to look at
the people.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Last Night of the Earth Poems

People, Reading

“There is no reason why because it is dark you should look at things differently from when it is light.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Source: The Sun Also Rises

Light

“Salomon saith, There is no new thing upon the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance; so Salomon giveth his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Source: The Essays

Imagination, Knowledge

“In the beginning was the thing. And one thing led to another.”

Tom Robbins Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Source: Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

“The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the single most valuable investment a writer can make with his time.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

Time

“All my friends seem to be smart arses. Don't ask me why. Like many things, it is what it is.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: I Am the Messenger

“Mine was the unbearable jealousy a cultured pearl must feel toward a genuine one. Or can there be such a thing in this world as a man who is jealous of the woman who loves him, precisely because of her love?”

Yukio Mishima book Confessions of a Mask

Source: Confessions of a Mask (1949), p. 208.
Context: I received an impassioned letter from Sonoko. There was no doubt that she was truly in love. I felt jealous. Mine was the unbearable jealousy a cultured pearl must feel toward a genuine one. Or can there be such a thing in this world as a man who is jealous of the woman who loves him, precisely because of her love?

Love, World, Jealousy, Feeling

“One must not speak of such things. One is still scarred from that experience.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: P.S. I Love You

“There are lots of things we never understand, no matter how many years we put on, no matter how much experience we accumulate.”

Haruki Murakami book The Elephant Vanishes

Source: The Elephant Vanishes

Understanding

“What if I’ve forgotten the most important thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud?… the thought fills me with an almost unbearable sorrow.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Memory

“Smoking had become my favorite thing in the world to do. It was like having instant comfort, no matter where or when.”

Augusten Burroughs book Running with Scissors

Source: Running with Scissors

World

“An ability to look into the confusing mess of life and see things for what they are.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Variant: Look into the confusing mess of life and see things for what they really are.
Source: Mockingjay

Life

“There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do if he chooses, and that is his duty; not by manoeuvring and finessing, but by vigour and resolution. - Mr. Knightley”

Jane Austen book Emma

Source: Emma

“Our eyelashes brushed like they would weave together by themselves, turning us into one wild thing. I say, “I think I missed you before I met you even.”

Francesca Lia Block (1962) American children's writer

Thinking

“The things that break your heart when you think there`s nothing left to break”

Meg Rosoff book How I Live Now

Source: How I Live Now

Thinking, Heart

“All your life people will tell you things. And most of the time, probably ninety-five percent of the time, what they'll tell you will be wrong.”

Michael Crichton book The Lost World

Source: The Lost World

Life, People, Time

“A wise man once said that we can't make anyone feel or do anything. We can throw things into the wind, but it's up to each person to decide how they want to react, where they want to stand when things fall.”

Jonathan Maberry book Dust & Decay

Source: Dust & Decay

Feeling, Personality

“Love, after all, was universal. Qhuinn closed his fist up tight, and knew he would never, ever take that ring off. “Always,” Blay murmured. “Because family is an always kind of thing.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover at Last

Love, Family, Universe

“Birds sing even when the world is filled with sadness. I don't know why people can't do the same thing.”

Michael Gilbert (1912–2006) Author

Source: Perfected Sinfulness

People, World, Sadness, Bird

“I said earlier that dead things don't always stay dead.”

Richelle Mead book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite

Dead

“It kind of makes me wish that the worst thing that will ever happen to me would just hurry up and happen already. That way I could live the rest of my life in bliss, if only because I know how much worse things could be.”

Megan McCafferty (1973) American novelist

Source: Sloppy Firsts

Life, Way

“The only really interesting thing is
what happens between two people in a room.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

People

“I need the thing that happens when your brain shuts off and your heart turns on.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

Heart

“Maybe language is kind, giving us these double meanings. Maybe it's trying to teach us a lesson, that we can always be two things at once.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

“He [Iggy] started reaching for things around the table, and his hand landed on Total. “You’re black.”
“I prefer canine-American,” said Total.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Final Warning

“Different people were good at different things, Lena mused. Lena was good at writing thank-you notes, for instance, and Effie was good at being happy.”

Ann Brashares The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Happiness, People

“That’s the one nice thing about being a dork about men: you can sometimes play it off as restrained and classy.”

Mindy Kaling (1979) actress, writer, comedian

Men

“The whole world is a series of miracles, but we're so used to them we call them ordinary things.”

Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet

World

“Even chance meetings are the result of karma… Things in life are fated by our previous lives. That even in the smallest events there’s no such thing as coincidence.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Life, Fate, Chance

“Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both.”

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

“It was bewildering and humbling to keep discovering how many brave things people can fail to talk themselves out of doing.”

Rob Sheffield (1966) American music journalist

Source: Love Is a Mix Tape

People

“To be a woman is a great adventure;
To drive men mad is a heroic thing.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago

Men, Madness

“Mortal, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years, it’s this: lies are curses you place on yourself.”

Kresley Cole book Dead of Winter

Source: Dead of Winter

Learning

“… a miracles is a reasonable thing to ask for.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

“Maybe being home schooled, Carter didn’t realize that “test” is normally a bad thing.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

School, Home

“Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes, by dozens and hundreds. Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers, and sisters, aunts and cousins, but only one mother in the whole world.”

Kate Douglas Wiggin (1856–1923) American writer

Life, World, Beauty, Star

“Things that really, really hurt are the right things to do.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Hurt

“I understood finally that the thing I
should have feared most was not loss, but
never loving. The price for safety was the regret
I felt at this moment. And yet I would
have to live with it for the rest of my life”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Smooth Talking Stranger

Love, Life, Fear, Loss

“Then, I turned around and walked to my room and closed my door and put my head under my pillow and let the quiet put things where they are supposed to be.”

Stephen Chbosky (1970) American writer

“I can't say for sure, because I have no experience, but -- well, is this what family is like? The feeling that everyone's connected, that with one piece missing the whole thing's broken?”

Trenton Lee Stewart The Mysterious Benedict Society

Source: The Mysterious Benedict Society

Family, Feeling

“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are gone, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.”

Carson McCullers (1917–1967) American writer

Reading

“This has to be the most self-centered thing I've ever said, but no, I think you just wanted to vex me.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: The Viscount Who Loved Me

Thinking

“And that leaves me with the belief that miracles, no matter how inexplicable or unbelievable, are real and can occur without regard to the natural order of things.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Nature

“A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Personality

“Look in the mirror and one thing is sure: what we see is not who we are.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

“Impatience can cause wise people to do foolish things.”

Janette Oke (1935) Canadian writer

People

“It's such a silly little thing, the heart.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

Heart

“I believe that being happy is the only important thing. Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or torturous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.”

Joanne Harris (1964) British author

Happiness, Heart

“Don't be too ambitious. Do the most important thing you can think of doing every year and then your career will take care of itself.”

Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) United States Secretary of State

Thinking

“There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, Foreword, p. vii (opening words).

“The things you think are the disasters in your life are not the disasters really. Almost anything can be turned around: out of every ditch, a path, if you can only see it.”

Hilary Mantel Bring Up the Bodies

Source: Bring Up the Bodies

Life, Thinking

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Life, Tree, Summer

“There are so many things we've been brought up to believe that it takes you an awfully long time to realize that they aren't you.”

Edward Gorey (1925–2000) American writer, artist, and illustrator

Time

“Things have a habit of working out, you know. Eventually.”

Angie Sage book Magyk

Source: Magyk

“I can feel a thing I cannot touch and touch a thing I cannot feel. The first is sad and sorry, the second is your heart.”

James Thurber book The 13 Clocks

Source: The 13 Clocks

Sadness, Feeling, Heart

“The mark of a great man is one who knows when to set aside the important things in order to accomplish the vital ones.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Alloy of Law

Leadership, For Men

“Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

“Sometimes when things are particularly bad, my brain will give me a happy dream. […] When I fully awaken, I'm momentarily comforted. I try to hold on to the peaceful feeling of the dream, but it quickly slips away, leaving me sadder than ever.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Happiness, Peace, Dreams, Feeling

“We will destroy you,” the Flyboys droned. “You have no escape.” That was the most imaginative, threatening thing the whitecoats had programmed these ’droids to say? “Talk about lame,” Fang muttered.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

Imagination

“Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them”

David Hume (1711–1776) Scottish philosopher, economist, and historian

Beauty, Beauty

“She'd absolutely adored the library_an entire building where anyone could take things they didn't own and feel no remorse about it.”

Ally Carter book Heist Society

Source: Heist Society

Feeling

“Emotions are the end result, the sum, of things learned”

Terry Goodkind book Confessor

Source: Confessor

Learning

“The Mathemagician nodded knowingly and stroked his chin several times. “You’ll find,” he remarked gently, “that the only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that’s hardly worth the effort.”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

Effort, Time

“the important thing is not what we (look) like, but the role we play in our best friend's life.”

Cecelia Ahern book If You Could See Me Now

Source: If You Could See Me Now

Life

“In the end you should always do the right thing even if it's hard.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

“When I was a child, I thought as a child. But now I have put away childish things. … I must be scientific.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

Source: The Man in the High Castle (1962)
Context: When I was a child, I thought as a child. But now I have put away childish things.... I must be scientific.