Quotes about thing
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“It’s when you hide things that you choke on them.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“The cup of tea on arrival at a country house is a thing which, as a rule, I particularly enjoy. I like the crackling logs, the shaded lights, the scent of buttered toast, the general atmosphere of leisured cosiness.”

P.G. Wodehouse book The Code of the Woosters

Source: The Code of the Woosters

Light, Tea, Housing, Country

“Leaf! you are so big!
How can you change your
color, then just fall!

As if there were no
such thing as integrity!”

Frank O'Hara book Lunch Poems

Source: Lunch Poems

Color, Change

“we use TV as we use tranquilizers- to even things out, to blot out unpleasantness, to dilute confusion, distress, unhappiness, loneliness.”

Bill McKibben (1960) American environmentalist and writer

Source: The Age of Missing Information

Loneliness

“Hope is the only thing stronger than fear.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Fear, Hope, Hope, Positive

“If you don't like the scene you're in, if you're unhappy, if you're lonely, if you don't feel that things are happening, change your scene. Paint a new backdrop.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Feeling, Change, Painting

“I get it. The things you hope for the most are the things that destroy you in the end.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Hope

“Words, he decided, were inadequate at best, impossible at worst. They meant too many things. Or they meant nothing at all.”

Patricia A. McKillip In the Forests of Serre

Source: In the Forests of Serre

“Of course, having information to use is one thing. Knowing what it means and how to use it is a different
story.”

Jeff Lindsay book Dearly Devoted Dexter

Source: Dearly Devoted Dexter

“It's amazing how quickly nature consumes human places after we turn our backs on them. Life is a hungry thing.”

Scott Westerfeld book Peeps

Variant: It’s amazing how quickly nature consumes human places after we turn our backs on them. Life is a hungry thing.
Source: Peeps

Life, Nature

“Writers are there to write, not experience things. If you want to experience things, become a pirate or a Bookhunter. If you want to write, write. If you can't find the makings of a story inside yourself, you won't find them anywhere.”

Walter Moers book The City of Dreaming Books

Source: The City of Dreaming Books

“Enlightenment is scary. Sometimes things look better in the dark.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: How They Met, and Other Stories

“You pay God a compliment by asking great things of Him.”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

God

“Smile. it's the second best thing you can do with your lips.”

Jill Shalvis (1963) American writer

Source: Head Over Heels

Smile, Cute, For Her

“Time only moves in one direction. Remember that. Things always change.”

Mohsin Hamid book The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Source: The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Change, Time

“It makes one realize that the physicality if our world is a boundary to us only if our will is weak; a true champion can accomplish things that a normal person would think impossible.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

World, Thinking, Personality

“Some of the best things I have ever thought of I have thought of during bad sermons.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Source: Jayber Crow

“Gossip is one thing, hurtful gossip is completely another, and even in high school we weren't THAT mean.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

School, Hurt

“Hatred is a most pernicious thing, finding root in any kind of soil. It feeds on itself.”

Steven Erikson book House of Chains

House of Chains (2002)
Context: "There's little value in seeking to find reasons for why people do what they do, or feel the way they feel. Hatred is a most pernicious thing, finding root in any kind of soil. It feeds on itself."
"With words."

“This was, I would later realise, a planet of things wrapped inside things. Food inside wrappers. Bodies inside clothes. Contempt inside smiles. Everything was hidden away.”

Matt Haig (1975) British writer

Source: The Humans

Food, Smile, Clothes

“With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Life, Joy, Deep

“I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Love, Making love

“The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don't know.”

Barbara Kingsolver book The Lacuna

Source: The Lacuna

Personality

“Sometimes it's a good thing we don't remember things half as well as books do.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkheart

Books

“There's no such thing as autobiography, there's only art and lies”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Art and Lies

Art

“I just won't sleep," I decided. There were so many other interesting things to do.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

Sleep

“In the end anti-black, anti-female, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing: anti-humanism.”

Shirley Chisholm (1924–2005) American politician

“Remember that the most beautiful things in life are often the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.”

John Ruskin book The Stones of Venice

Volume I, chapter II, section 17.
The Stones of Venice (1853)
Variant: Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless.
Context: You were made for enjoyment, and the world was filled with things which you will enjoy, unless you are too proud to be pleased with them, or too grasping to care for what you cannot turn to other account than mere delight. Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless: peacocks and lilies, for instance.

Life, Beauty

“One should never marry a man who doesn’t own a decent set of scissors. That would be my advice. It leads to bad things.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

“They're always looking forward to going places they're just coming back from, or regretting doing things they haven't yet done. They say hello when they mean goodbye.”

Martin Amis book Time's Arrow

Source: Time's Arrow

“Love is such a magic thing. It can make you feel like your floating in the clouds without a trouble in the world.”

Lois Gladys Leppard (1924–2008) American writer

Source: Mandie and the Courtroom Battle

Love, World, Feeling

“I wonder if there isn't a catch about having plenty of money? Does it eventually take the pleasure out of things?”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

Money, Pleasure

“Thirstily he set it to his lips, and as its cool refreshment began to soothe his throat, he thanked Heaven that in a world of much evil there was still so good a thing as ale.”

Rafael Sabatini (1875–1950) Italian writer

Source: Fortune's Fool

World, Evil

“A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes--will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.”

John Stuart Mill book On Liberty

Source: On Liberty

Men

“And if there was one thing I'd finally figured out, it was that your mind is something you always CAN change.”

Jordan Sonnenblick (1969) American writer

Source: Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie

Change

“When a person sets a thing in motion, there's a feeling of unease, almost regret, until you learn the truth.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Truth, Feeling, Learning, Personality

“A fight is like a fire. You think you have it under control, you think you can stop it whenever you want, but before you know it, it’s living, breathing thing and there’s no controlling it and you were a fool to think you could.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: We'll Always Have Summer

Fools, Thinking, Fight

“That’s the thing about life, he knew. There was always a but.”

Nicholas Sparks book At First Sight

Source: At First Sight

Life

“Sometimes I felt like I was waiting for my life to begin and more than anything, in that moment, I wanted to force some kind of beginning. I wanted things to be different than usual. I wanted to bend reality.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Source: My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories

Life, Reality, Waiting

“I love trying things and discovering how I hate them.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Love, Hate

“You can't just plan a moment when things get back on track, just as you can't plan the moment you lose your way in the first place.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Someone Like You (1998)

Way

“Emotions by their very nature are not reasonable things.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

Nature

“If there's a God out there, then i would hope he has more important things to attend to than my drinking scotch or eating pork.”

Khaled Hosseini (1965) novelist

Source: The Kite Runner: A Portrait of the Marc Forster Film

God, Hope, Drink

“It's surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.”

Barbara Kingsolver (1955) American author, poet and essayist

Memory, Time

“All stories told have been told before. We tell them to ourselves, as did all men who ever were. And all men who ever will be. The only things new are the names.”

Brandon Sanderson book Words of Radiance

Source: Words of Radiance

Men

“I ask one thing: I ask the right to hope and suffer as I do now."
Vronsky”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Ana Karenina

Hope, Suffering

“I can tell we’re going to get along like Batman and the Joker. (Fang)
Just remember one thing, world. I’m the best friend you’ll ever have or the last enemy you’ll ever make. (Thorn)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Bad Moon Rising

World

“Because for all the changes, some things were immutable truths: friendship transcends all barriers, understanding trumps fear, and great power can always be surmounted by determination.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: The Witch With No Name

Friendship, Truth, Fear, Understanding

“Sometimes I feel as if I'm racing with my own shadow, Korogi says. But that's one thing I'll never be able to outrun. Nobody can shake off their own shadow.”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark

Feeling

“The only good thing ever to come out of religion was the music.”

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

Religion, Music

“Imagination? It is the one thing beside honesty that a good writer must have. The more he learns from experience the more he can imagine.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Imagination, Learning

“I like all the things that make you monstrous.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Source: Valiant

“Sometimes waiting is the hardest thing of all.”

Luanne Rice (1955) American author

Waiting

“There is a time for hello and a time for good-bye. It's why the act of burying thing seems natural, but the act of digging them up does not.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The First Phone Call from Heaven

Nature, Time

“If there was such a thing as terminal literalism, you'd have died in childhood”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Jace to Clary, pg. 232
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

Childhood

“A writer once said that it is not time that changes man, nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone's mind is love. What nonsense! The person who wrote that clearly knew only one side of the coin.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Love, Knowledge, Change, Time

“One thing I've learned in all these years is not to make love when you really don't feel it; there's probably nothing worse you can do to yourself than that.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Love, Making love, Feeling, Learning

“It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.”

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

Source: My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 9 (Education At Bangalore).

Books, Study, Memory, Reading

“The thing about grown ups is that they're always wanting you to be this Great Hero and Leader. What's wrong with being NORMAL, for Thor's sake? What's wrong with just being SO-SO at stuff? They're just totally unrealistic…”

Cressida Cowell book How to Steal a Dragon's Sword

Source: How to Steal a Dragon's Sword

“… a genuine work of art, can never be false, nor can it be discredited through the lapse of time, for it does not present an opinion but the thing itself.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Art, Time, Falseness

“New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

The Life of Pope
Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)

“God, grant me strength to accept those things I cannot change.”

Dan Brown book Angels & Demons

Source: Angels & Demons

God, Change

“We approach the house and I wave at Jimmy.
"And if he thinks he's eating with us, he's got another thing coming," my dad says.
Jimmy approaches us and takes the shopping bags from me, looking inside them.
"Lamb roast. Am I invited?”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Saving Francesca

Thinking, Housing

“Paper is to write things down that we need to remember. Our brains are used to think.”

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

Thinking

“That's the thing about human life--there is no control group, no way to ever know how any of us would have turned out if any variables had been changed.”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Source: Flowers for Algernon

Life, Way, Change

“I've decided. I'm going to become a Shinigami. Become a Shinigami and change things. So that they'll end… without Rangiku having to cry.”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

Change, Cry

“It is perhaps the misfortune of my life that I am interested in far too much but not decisively in any one thing; all my interests are not subordinated in one but stand on an equal footing.”

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

Life, Decision

“In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Up, Simba
Essays
Variant: There is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.
Source: Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
Context: If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible psychological reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don't bullshit yourself that you're not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.

Home, Reality

“That was the thing about being on the inside: the world was just going on, even when it seemed like time for you had stopped for good.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

World, Time

“A moment might be a thousand different things.”

Kim Edwards book The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Source: The Memory Keeper's Daughter