Quotes about thing
page 84

“It was never too late to learn something. The past is unalterable in any event. The future is the only thing we can change. Learning the lessons of the past is the only way to shape the present and the future.”

Jim Butcher book Ghost Story

Source: Ghost Story

Way, Learning, Change, Past

“Dear Forgiveness, you know that recently
we have had our difficulties and there are many things
I want to ask you.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Source: Crush

Forgiveness

“Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're doomed.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

“I wish you were a mind-reader. I want you
to know everything but I don't want to have
to tell you. Because there are some things I
don't want to say out loud.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Smooth Talking Stranger

“I found that things weren't going well upstairs.
Carter was a crumpled heap of chicken warrior on the slope of the pyramid.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

“The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was now grumbled over more distant hills, like a man saying 'And another thing…' twenty minutes after admitting he'd lost the argument.”

Douglas Adams book So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Source: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Distant

“There's no such thing as. All evil is motivated - even mine {Lucifer}.”

Glen Duncan book I, Lucifer

Source: I, Lucifer

Motivation, Evil

“We must nurture and love, if life is to have any real meaning. But First we must find a way to survive against the things that prevent us from doing so.”

Terry Brooks (1944) American writer

Love, Life, Way

“And the air was full of Thoughts and Things to Say. But at times like these, only the Small Things are ever said. Big Things lurk unsaid inside.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

Time

“One can only see what one observes, and one observes only things which are already in the mind.”

Thomas Harris Red Dragon

Source: Red Dragon

“Arm yourself, my heart: the thing that you must do is fearful, yet inevitable.”

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

Source: Medea and Other Plays: Medea / Alcestis / The Children of Heracles / Hippolytus

Fear, Heart, Deep

“But this is okay. I smile slightly, looking toward
the sky, knowing
there's one thing I still haven't told you: I now believe,
by the way, that
miracles can happen.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

Smile, Way

“There are some things your mind has been hiding from you.”

Obert Skye book Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo

Source: Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo

“The only thing true about what you just said was the storybook damsel part - and that only because you're pretty enough to be one.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Parting

“It is funny the things that run through your mind when you're sitting in your underpants in front of a pair of strangers.”

David Sedaris When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Source: When You Are Engulfed in Flames

“People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

People, Anger

“As with a wound on one's own body, it is possible to develop an intimacy with the most disturbing of things”

Kazuo Ishiguro book A Pale View of Hills

Source: A Pale View of Hills

“Know what we did, Lucy? You and me? We spent our whole lives yearning. Isn't that the God damndest thing?”

Richard Yates book Young Hearts Crying

Source: Young Hearts Crying

God

“She thought that things could not get worse . . . but they always can, and often do.”

Stephen King book Doctor Sleep

Source: Doctor Sleep

“The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who stays away.”

Barbara Kingsolver (1955) American author, poet and essayist

Friendship, Missing You, For Friend, For Bestfriend

“I was young and not gloomy and there were always strange and comic things that happened in the worst time…”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast

Time

“Don't just act because you can; act because it's the right thing to do. If you keep that in mind, you'll be all right.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: Steelheart

“You can't ever guess at life, at pain. All pain is real, and all pain is personal. It's the most personal thing we have. It eats each of us differently.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

Source: You Shall Know Our Velocity!

Life, Pain, Personality

“Ford carried on counting quietly. This is about the most aggressive thing you can do to a computer, the equivalent of going up to a human being and saying "Blood… blood… blood… blood…”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“It was such a weird thing how a breakup stretched much wider than you expected. You didn't just lose a person, but their entire world as well.”

Sarah Dessen book The Moon and More

Source: The Moon and More

World, Personality

“Wednesdays were the best thing about Atlantis. The middle of the week was a traditional holiday there. Everyone stopped work and celebrated the fact that half the week was over.”

Walter Moers The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear

Source: The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear

Holiday

“I grew into it. It grew into me. It and I blurred at the edges, became one amorphous, seeping, crawling thing.”

Marya Hornbacher (1974) American journalist

Source: Madness: A Bipolar Life

“There is no man, and no place, without war. The only thing we can do is choose a side, and fight. That is the only choice we get - who we fight for, who we fight against. That is life.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Life, War, Fight

“What a great thing, to be loved! What a greater thing still, to love! The heart becomes heroic though passion…if no one loved, the sun would go out.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Love, Passion, Sun, Heart

“Flirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off.”

Rohinton Mistry A Fine Balance

Source: A Fine Balance

Time, Madness

“Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.”

Robert J. Sawyer book Calculating God

Source: Calculating God (2000), Chapter 14 (p. 137)

Peace, Learning, Beauty, Peaceful

“What a queer thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don't you know, if you see what I mean.”

P.G. Wodehouse book My Man Jeeves

Source: My Man Jeeves

Life

“This hour I tell things in confidence/ I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Confidence

“Good writing is remembering detail. Most people want to forget. Don't forget things that were painful or embarrassing or silly. Turn them into a story that tells the truth.”

Paula Danziger (1945–2004) American children's writer

Pain, People, Truth, Forgetting

“You got one choice at the beginning but if you didn't choose right, things got narrow real quick.”

Ron Rash book Serena

Source: Serena

“I'm not afraid of new things. I'm just afraid of feeling alone even when there's somebody else there. I'm afraid of feeling bad. Maybe that's selfish, but it's the way I feel.”

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

Source: Girl With Curious Hair

Way, Feeling, Selfishness

“Not everything has to have a point. Some things just are.”

Judy Blume Summer Sisters

Source: Summer Sisters

“I'd have to kill Dimitri for real this time and lose any chance I might have to bring back my prince. Damn. It's a good thing I work well under pressure.”

Richelle Mead Blood Promise

Source: Blood Promise

Chance, Time

“I read for growth, firmly believing that what you are today and what you will be in five years depends on two things: the people you meet and the books you read.”

Twyla Tharp (1941) American choreographer

Source: The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life

People, Books, Reading, Dependency

“Perhaps the most "spiritual" thing any of us can do is simply to look through our own eyes, see with eyes of wholeness, and act with integrity and kindness.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn (1944) American academic

Source: Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

“Anyway that other thing we almost did in Paris-that's probably off the table for a while. Unless you want that whole baby-I'm-on-fire-when-we kiss thing to become freakishly literal”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Kiss, Baby

“That was the one thing I had going for me. Taking care of your family.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Family

“He thought it might be the most intimate thing possible, to fall asleep next to someone in the afternoon.”

Jess Walter book Beautiful Ruins

Source: Beautiful Ruins

“Writing isn't just a job that stops at six thirty… It's a mad, sexy, sad, scary, ruthless, joyful, and utterly, utterly personal thing. There's not the writer and then me; there's just me. All of my life connects to the writing. All of it.”

Russell T. Davies (1963) Screenwriter, former executive producer of Doctor Who

Life, Sadness, Personality, Madness

“But as I have noticed on more than one occaision, life itself is unfair, and there is no complaint department, so we might as well accept things the way they happen, clean up the mess, and move on.”

Jeff Lindsay book Dexter in the Dark

Source: Dexter in the Dark

Life, Way

“Tiny-perhaps." Rovender kept his eyes fixed on the rings. "Insignificant-never, Eva Nine. No living thing is insignificant.”

Tony DiTerlizzi The Search for WondLa

Source: The Search for WondLa

“time is the most valuable thing that we have, because it is the most irrevocable.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Variant: Time is the most precious gift in our possession, for it is the most irrevocable.
Source: As quoted in LIFE magazine (22 April 1957), p. 152; also in Letters and Papers from Prison (1967), p. 47.
Context: Time is the most precious gift in our possession, for it is the most irrevocable. This is what makes it so disturbing to look back upon the time which we have lost. Time lost is time when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering. Time lost is time not filled, time left empty.

Time

“No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.”

Ishmael Reed book Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down

Source: Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down

Men

“I think today if we forbade our illiterate children to touch the wonderful things of our literature, perhaps they might steal them and find secret joy.”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Children, Secret, Literature, Thinking

“You have to be willing to spend time making things for no known reason.”

Lynda Barry (1956) Cartoonist

Source: Picture This: The Near-sighted Monkey Book

Time

“It is not good to want a thing too much. It sometimes drives the luck away. You must want it just enough, and you must be very tactful with Gods or the gods.”

John Steinbeck book The Pearl

Source: The Pearl

God

“God, he thought, her eyes are so bright, flashing, deep, full of promise, all those things eyes are in books but never are in life, and she was his.”

John Crowley book Little, Big

Source: Little, Big

Life, God, Books

“Awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things, they are transformed.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Sun

“At some point, your memories, your stories, your adventures, will be the only things you'll have left.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

Memory

“That's not a thing any of us are granted. To go back. Wipe away what later doesn't suit us and make it the way we wish it. You just go on”

Charles Frazier book Cold Mountain

Source: Cold Mountain

Way

“Do all things with love.”

Og Mandino (1923–1996) American author

Love

“Obviously it takes eight brains to come to one decision in this crowd. Good thing they have one another.”

Mari Mancusi (1974) American writer

Source: Girls That Growl

Decision

“It made me realize how I needed to stop punishing her for something she couldn't help […] because sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

People, Help

“The interesting thing is why we're so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness.”

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

Loneliness

“The two most important phrases in the human language are "If only" and "Maybe someday". Our past mistakes and our unrequited longings. The things we regret and the things we yearn for. That's what makes us who we are.”

Will Ferguson (1964) Canadian writer, especially humor about Canada

Source: Happiness

Past

“The land is the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for, because it's the only thing that lasts"….. Gerald O'Hara, Gone With The Wind.”

Margaret Mitchell (1900–1949) American author and journalist

World, Fight

“I think people would live a bit longer if they didn't know how old they were. Age puts restrictions on things.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

People, Age, Thinking

“Man, it was a good thing he fought like a nasty bastard or he might have been taken for a nancy.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Awakened

“The merit of all things lies in their difficulty.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers

Source: The Three Musketeers

Deep, Success

“Four things to learn in life: To think clearly without hurry or confusion; To love everybody sincerely; To act in everything with the highest motives; To trust God unhesitatingly.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Love, Life, God, Motivation

“Sometimes the best things look the strangest.”

Wendy Mass (1967) American children's writer

Source: The Candymakers

“Yes, its one of the basic truths of the universe,…. Things don't disappear. They just change, and change and change again.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

Truth, Universe, Change

“sometimes it's the fight that makes a thing worth having”

Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer

Source: Finding Noel

Fight

“Land is something one should never sell. It is the only thing left when all else is gone.”

Isabel Allende book The House of the Spirits

Source: The House of the Spirits

“We take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.”

Cynthia Ozick (1928) American writer

Gratitude, Teachers' Day, For Mother

“I am not one of those women who can stand things.”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury

Women

“You ask Why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed, if you keep at it. The poor girl's better off dead”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Girl, Dead

“I do not mean to object to a thorough knowledge of the famous works we read. I object only to the interminable comments and bewildering criticisms that teach but one thing: there are as many opinions as there are men.”

Helen Keller book The Story of My Life

Source: The Story of My Life

Men, Knowledge, Reading

“If this is love, no thanks. I don’t want any part of it. When I’m older, I’m just going to do my own thing. If I like a boy, fine, I’ll date him, but I’m not going to sit at home and cry over him. I cry over important things.”

Jenny Han book P.S. I Still Love You

Source: P.S. I Still Love You

Love, Home, Boy, Parting

“Dangerous thing, a name. Someone might catch hold of you by it, mightn't they?”

Richard Adams book The Plague Dogs

Source: The Plague Dogs (1977)

“I'm going to love you so good and so long you're gonna be convinced no earthly thing could have brought us together”

Jessica Bird book Lover Unbound

Source: Lover Unbound

Love

“Everything in life has a place, and when one thing moves, it must go somewhere else.”

Cecelia Ahern book A Place Called Here

Source: A Place Called Here

Life

“In circumstances of real tragedy you see things straight away… past, present, and future together.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) French writer

Past, Future

“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Thinking, Personality

“And I also know that loving someone—even when it’s scary, even when there are consequences—is never the wrong thing to do.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Pale Kings and Princes

Love

“Think of every single thing that we 'have to' do to get through a day as something that we 'get to' do… before our turn is over.

Everything is a gift.”

Mike Dooley (1961) American writer

Thinking

“One learns from books and example only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things.”

Frank Herbert book Children of Dune

Source: Children of Dune

Books, Learning

“Too often they don't realize what they have until it's gone.
… they're too stubborn to say, 'Sorry, I was wrong'
they hurt the ones closest to their hearts,
and we let the most foolish things tear us apart”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Tear, Heart, Hurt

“The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation.”

Ezra Pound (1885–1972) American Imagist poet and critic

Parting

“[Knowing how to suffer without complaining is the only practical thing, it's the great science, the lesson to learn, the solution to the problem of life. ]”

Irving Stone book Lust for Life

Source: Lust for Life

Life, Problem, Suffering, Learning

“There is one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to you to be free in life, all else being beyond your power: that is to recognize and profess the truth.”

Leo Tolstoy The Kingdom of God Is Within You

Source: The Kingdom of God Is Within You

Life, Truth

“I know I can walk through the world, along the shore or under the trees, with my mind filled with things of little importance, in full self-attendance. A condition I can't really call being alive.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: A Thousand Mornings

World, Tree

“Deep in my heart I'm concealing things that I'm longing to say. Scared to confess what I'm feeling - frightened you'll slip away.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Feeling, Heart

“This is a giant block of whatever is most difficult for you to carry & trust me on this, you'll carry it more times than you can count until you decide that's exactly what you want to do most & then it won't weigh a thing anymore”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Time

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Edward Carrington, Paris (27 May 1788) PTJ, 13:208-9 http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/natural-progress-things-quotation <br class="br">1780s <br class="br">Source: Letters of Thomas Jefferson

Nature

“Over this odd world, this half the world that's dark now, I have to hunt a thing that lives on tears.”

Thomas Harris The Silence of the Lambs

Source: The Silence of the Lambs

World, Tear