Quotes about thing
page 83

“What's really important here," I whispered loudly to myself,"is not the big things other people have thought up, but the small things you, yourself have”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

People

“For if there is any single thing that everyone hopes for most dearly, it must be this: that the youngest outlive the oldest.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Hope

“Time is too conceptual. Not that it stops us from filling it in. So much so, we can't even tell whether our experiences belong to time or to the world of physical things.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

World, Time

“I had nothing to fear from my father.
Except his disappointment.
Which was no small thing.”

Barbara Delinsky (1945) American writer

Source: Escape

Fear, Disappointment

“I’ve come to ask you where Seth is.”
"Funny,” said Andrea. “We were going to ask you the same thing.”
I was taken aback. “How would I know?”
They both just stared.
"I don’t!”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus Shadows

“In the great debate that has raged for centuries about what, if anything, happens to you after death, be it heaven, hell, purgatory or extinction, one thing has never been in doubt - that you would at least know the answer when you were dead.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Death, Hell, Rage, Dead

“To live is to experience things, not sit around pondering the meaning of life.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Source: Aleph (2011)

Life

“The world is full of people who all want the same thing, and you have to do a little something extra to make them remember you.”

Candace Bushnell book The Carrie Diaries

Source: The Carrie Diaries

People, World

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.”

William Blake book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Source: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Appearance

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.”

John Keats Endymion

Bk. I, l. 1
Endymion (1818)

Health, Beauty, Dreams, Sleep

“Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

“What is the most important thing one learns in school? Self-esteem, support, and friendship.”

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

Source: Pieces of White Shell

Friendship, School, Support, Learning

“The first thing that distinguishes a writer is that he is most alive when alone.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

“Sometimes I feel the need to reaffirm all of it, the whole unhappy territory and all the things loved and unlovable in it, for all of it is part of me.”

Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man

Epilogue.
Source: Invisible Man (1952)

Love, Feeling, Parting

“Annabeth’s hand slipped into mine. Under different circumstances I would’ve been embarrassed, but here in the dark I was glad to know where she was. It was about the only thing I was sure of.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

“You know, Ham," Breeze noted. "The only funny thing about your jokes is how often they lack any humor whatsoever.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Well of Ascension

“This made him a grad student, and grad students existed not to learn things but to relieve the tenured faculty members of tiresome burdens such as educating people and doing research.”

Neal Stephenson book Cryptonomicon

Source: Cryptonomicon

People, Education, Learning

“In worshipping their nationhood men worship themselves and scorn others, and that is no healthy thing.”

C.J. Sansom Dissolution

Source: Dissolution

Men

“There's me and then there's you, and you aren't ever going to be as good as me, Sweet Thing."
Ranger”

Janet Evanovich book One for the Money

Source: One for the Money

“There’s a reason we are drawn to the light. A reason why we fear darkness. It’s important to be terrified and unnerved about certain things. That way we will choose another path. The path that leads us to truth and love.”

Ted Dekker (1962) American writer

Love, Truth, Fear, Way

“But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Well, for one thing, the culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. We're teaching the wrong things. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it. Create your own. Most people can't do it.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

People, Feeling, Strong

“The most notable thing about Time is that it is so purely relative. A large amount of reminiscence is, by common consent, conceded to the drowning man; and it is not past belief that one may review an entire courtship while removing one's gloves.”

O. Henry (1862–1910) American short story writer

Time, Past

“Never forget that God is your friend. And like all friends, He longs to hear what's been happening in your life. Good or bad, whether it's been full of sorrow or anger, or even when you're questioning why terrible things have to happen.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

Life, God, Question, Anger

“When you're unhinged, things make their way out of you that should be kept inside, and other things get in that ought to be shut out. The locks lose their powers. The guards go to sleep. The passwords fail.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Way, Sleep

“Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big, worthwhile things. It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out - it's the grain of sand in your shoe.”

Robert W. Service (1874–1958) Canadian poet

Shoe, Mountain

“Evie replied with an eye-roll. “Do you think you can manage to not steal anything while I’m gone?”

“The only thing I’m trying to steal is your heart, doll.” Sam smirked.

“You’re not that talented a thief, Sam Lloyd.”

Libba Bray book The Diviners

Source: The Diviners

Thinking, Heart

“You know… you keep doing the same things and you keep getting the same result over and over again.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

“I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Beauty, Imagination, Nature

“The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish. Not shock—shock is a worn-out word—but astonish.”

Terry Southern (1924–1995) American author

“Things do happen for a reason, but do we like the reason? Rarely.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

“I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

World, Beauty, Hope, Fools

“It is a very strange thing, to be in love. It changes you.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Princess

Love, Change

“Not knowing a thing is not ignorance. Feigning knowledge you don't have can be--Sholto”

Laurell K. Hamilton A Kiss of Shadows

Source: A Kiss of Shadows

Knowledge

“It is a terrible thing to be happy! How pleased we are with it! How all-sufficient we think it! How, being in possession of the false aim of life, happiness, we forget the true aim, duty!”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Life, Happiness, Thinking, Falseness

“I miss everyone. I can remember being young and feeling a thing and identifying it as homesickness, and then thinking well now that’s odd, isn’t it, because I was home, all the time. What on earth are we to make of that?”

David Foster Wallace book The Broom of the System

Source: The Broom of the System

Feeling, Home, Thinking, Time

“I now find the most marvelous things in the everyday, the ordinary, the common, the simple and tangible.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Source: Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

“Loss is the hardest thing, I said. But it's also the teacher that's the most difficult to ignore.”

Dean Koontz book Odd Hours

Source: Odd Hours

Teachers, Loss

“What a blessed if painful thing, this business of being alive.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: NOS4A2

Pain, Business

“Should, is the worst word
in the English language. People always think things "should" be a certain way, and when they're
not, they're disappointed.”

Candace Bushnell book Summer and the City

Source: Summer and the City

People, Disappointment, Way, Thinking

“Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

Thinking, Madness

“I fear that I am losing my mind. But really, it would not be such a precious thing to lose, as it only causes me pain.”

L.A. Meyer (1942–2014) American writer

Source: The Mark of the Golden Dragon: Being an Account of the Further Adventures of Jacky Faber, Jewel of the East, Vexation of the West, and Pearl of the South China Sea

Pain, Fear

“One thing about great art: it made you love people more, forgive them their petty transgressions. It worked in the way that religion was supposed to, if you thought about it.”

Nick Hornby book Juliet, Naked

Source: Juliet, Naked

Love, People, Religion, Art

“As happens with people who love a thing too much, it destroys them.
Oscar Wilde said, 'You destroy the thing that you love.' It's the other way around. What you love destroys you.”

George Plimpton (1927–2003) journalist, writer, editor, actor

Love, People, Way

“Biological family is too small of a vision. Patriotism is far too myopic. A love for our own relatives and a love for the people of our own country are not bad things, but our love does not stop at the border.”

Shane Claiborne The Irresistible Revolution

Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical

Love, People, Family, Country

“It is a horrible, terrible thing, the worst thing, to watch somebody you love die right in front of you and not be able to do nothing about it.”

Kate DiCamillo book The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

Source: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

Love

“Dustfinger still clearly remembered the feeling of being in love for the first time. How vulnerable his heart had suddenly been! Such a trembling, quivering thing, happy and miserably unhappy at once.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkheart

Love, Happiness, Feeling, Time

“By means of all created things, without excaption, the divine assails us, penetrates us, and molds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible, when in fact we live steeped in its burning layers”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

Imagination, Distant

“buying books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Books, Time, Reading

“Special things have a way of surviving.”

Alexander McCall Smith (1948) British writer

Source: The World According to Bertie

Way

“Are you going to shoot me?' Vengeous sneered. 'I wouldn't be surprised. What would a thing like you know about honor? Only a heathen would bring a gun to a sword fight.'

And only a moron would bring a sword to a gunfight.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Playing with Fire

Fight

“But you can't kill me, Lord Tyrant. I represent that one thing you've never been able to kill, no matter how hard you try. I am hope.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Final Empire

Hope

“Would I be as strong as that once I did that thing Christophe was talking about? Blooming? Would I smell like a bakery item? Or was that just him? Did he use pie filling for cologne?”

Lilith Saintcrow book Strange Angels

Source: Strange Angels

Strong

“But emotions when based on valued things can be a faithful and consistant sum of truths.”

Terry Goodkind book Confessor

Source: Confessor

Truth, Faith

“I am lost without you. I am soulless, a drifter without a home, a solitary bird in a flight to nowhere. I am all these things, and I am nothing at all. This, my darling, is my life without you. I long for you to show me how to live again.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

Life, Home, Bird

“We need men who can dream of things that never were.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Men, Dreams, Motivational, For Men

“I remind myself that not everything is a sign, that some things simply are what they appear to be and should not be analyzed, deconstructed, or forced to bear the burden of metaphor, symbol, omen, or portent.”

Diane Schoemperlen (1954) Canadian writer

Source: Our Lady of the Lost and Found: A Novel of Mary, Faith, and Friendship

Appearance

“To give a man 5 sous because he is poor and has no bread is perfect, but to give him a blowjob because he has no girlfriend is too much of a good thing: you don't have to do that.”

Michel Houellebecq (1956) writer

Perfection

“Sometimes the most worthwhile things are right in front of our eyes. We just make them hard because we think that gives them more value.”

Karen Rose (1964) American writer

Source: Did You Miss Me?

Thinking

“Everyone just keeps on disappearing. Some things vanish, like they were cut away. Others fade slowly into the mist. And all that remains is a desert.”

Haruki Murakami book South of the Border, West of the Sun

Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun

“Be warned - Hammond does tend to be a bit optimistic about these kind of things. If the army were made up of one-legged mutes, he would praise their balance and their listening skills.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Final Empire

“The good writer seems to be writing about himself, but has his eye always on that thread of the Universe which runs through himself and all things.”

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

Universe

“I will be the gladdest thing under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

Flowers, Sun

“He was still stroking the inside of her wrist, his touch doing odd delicious things to her skin and nerves.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“Sometimes the most intelligent thing is not to do anything, certainly nothing loaded with the imbecility of emotionality.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Source: Madness in the Family: Stories

Intelligence

“I do think that families are the most beautiful things in all the world!”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

World, Family, Beauty, Thinking

“Juno MacGuff: I was out handling things way beyond my maturity level.”

Diablo Cody (1978) Screenwriter and author

Source: Juno: The Shooting Script

Way

“The only thing more dangerous than an idea is a belief. And by dangerous I don't mean thought-provoking. I mean: might get people killed.”

Sarah Vowell The Wordy Shipmates

Source: The Wordy Shipmates

People, Idea

“… that's not why we broke up. I love it, I miss it, I hate to give it back to you, this complicated thing, it's why we stayed together”

Daniel Handler book Why We Broke Up

Source: Why We Broke Up

Love, Hate

“We need time to lose interest in things.”

Don DeLillo Point Omega

Source: Point Omega

Time

“Genuinely social people never ceased to amaze him. Their brains seemed to generate an inexhaustible fund of things to say, naturally, with no effort, out of nothing at all.”

Lev Grossman The Magician King

Source: The Magician King

People, Nature, Effort

“I'm getting old, that's the thing! What's in me now won't be there anymore.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

“He didn't think much of fates and prophecies, but he did believe in one thing: Annabeth and he were supposed to be together.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Fate, Thinking

“Do it or don't. It's amazing how many things in life are that easy.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Life

“The weird thing about saying good-bye is that it never gets easier.”

Alyson Nöel book Blue Moon

Source: Blue Moon

“If you ever manage to become perfect, you have to die instantly before you ruin things for everyone else.”

Michael Thomas Ford (1968) American writer

Source: Suicide Notes

Perfection

“Things that have form will all disappear. But certain feelings stay with us forever.”

Haruki Murakami book South of the Border, West of the Sun

Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun

Feeling

“Forgiveness, reader, is, I think, something very much like hope and love - a powerful, wonderful thing.
And a ridiculous thing, too.”

Kate DiCamillo book The Tale of Despereaux

Source: The Tale of Despereaux

Love, Hope, Forgiveness, Thinking

“there is no reason why anyone should understand how it works… and of course no reason why anyone should care … unless you are curious, in which case I love you, for curiosity about the world and all its corners is a beautiful thing.”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

Source: The Fry Chronicles

Love, World, Beauty, Understanding

“Even from the beginning, that was the problem. People liked pretty things. People even liked pretty things that wanted to kill and eat them.”

Holly Black book The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Source: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

People, Problem

“A remarkable thing about me is that the time that elapses between a sad thought and a flood of tears is three or four seconds.”

Mindy Kaling book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Source: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Sadness, Tear, Time

“Things aren't different. Things are things.”

William Gibson book Neuromancer

Source: Neuromancer

“Sometimes thou seem'st not as thyself alone,
But as the meaning of all things that are.”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti The House of Life

Heart's Compass.
The House of Life (1870—1881)

“Life is about moving, it’s about change. And when things stop doing that they’re dead.”

Twyla Tharp (1941) American choreographer

Life, Change, Dead

“As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“We have advantages. We have a cushion to fall back on. This is abundance. A luxury of place and time. Something rare and wonderful. It's almost historically unprecedented. We must do extraordinary things. We have to. It would be absurd not to.”

Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Time

“Very often the things we most desire come only after much patience and struggle.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus Blues

Patience

“there are three things we cry for in life: things that are lost, things that are found, and things that are magnificent.”

Douglas Coupland book Girlfriend in a Coma

Source: Girlfriend in a Coma

Life, Cry

“Things get bad for all of us, almost continually, and what we do under the constant stress reveals who/what we are.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

“As a lamp, a cataract, a star in space
an illusion, a dewdrop, a bubble
a dream, a cloud, a flash of lightning
view all created things like this.”

Red Pine (1943) American author, poet, and translator of poetry

Source: The Diamond Sutra

Dreams, Star

“What I want is for both of us to feel safe. What you and I have together shouldn't be draining us like this. It should be the one rock-solid thing we both count on.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Reflected in You

Feeling

“Being a writer is a good, good thing.”

Shannon Hale (1974) American fantasy novelist

“It's never too late to fix things with people you love, Massie. Kendra said.

That's true. William agreed.”

Lisi Harrison (1970) Canadian writer

Source: Boys "R" Us

Love, People

“You're a slave, a bound helpless slave to one thing in this world, your imagination.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book This Side of Paradise

Source: This Side of Paradise

World, Imagination

“All things truly wicked start from an innocence.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Ch 17; Variant: All things truly wicked start from innocence.
As quoted by R Z Sheppard in review of The Garden of Eden (1986) TIME (26 May 1986)
A Moveable Feast (1964)