Quotes about try
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“Would you not like to try all sorts of lives — one is so very small — but that is the satisfaction of writing — one can impersonate so many people.”

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author

Letter to Sylvia Payne (24 April 1906), from The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield (1984-1996), vol. I

People

“*Oh, I know I could say were through
And tell myself I'm over you
But even if I made a vow
I promise not to miss you now
And try to hide the truth inside
I fell cause I, I just can't live a lie”

Carrie Underwood (1983) American country music singer

Truth, Lie

“Just remember who you are… The world will try to change you into someone else. Don't let them. That's the best advice anyone can give you.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Variant: The world will try to change you into someone else. Don't let them. That's the best advice anyone can give you.
Source: The Warrior Heir

World, Change

“I suspect the most we can hope for, and it's no small hope, is that we never give up, that we never stop giving ourselves permission to try to love and receive love.”

Elizabeth Strout book Abide with Me

Source: Abide with Me

Love, Hope

“He was trying to tell me something."
Derek snorted. "Aren’t they all? Must be a rule in the ghost handbook—if in danger of evaporating, make sure you’re in the middle of a dire pronouncement.”

Kelley Armstrong The Reckoning

Source: The Reckoning

“You are trying to kidnap what I have rightfully stolen, and I think it quite ungentlemanly.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

Thinking

“A fair and just society offers equality of opportunity to all. But it cannot promise, and should not try to enforce, sameness.”

Christina Hoff Sommers (1950) American author and philosopher

“There is so much hurt in this game of searching for a mate, of testing, trying. And you realize suddenly that you forgot it was a game, and turn away in tears.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Search, Game, Tear, Hurt

“This is the tragedy of modernity: as with neurotically overprotective parents, those trying to help are often hurting us the most.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

Parent, Help, Hurt

“… it's very much like your trying to reach infinity. You know that it's there, you just don't know where-but just because you can never reach it doesn't mean that it's not worth looking for.”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

“Really, I'm trying to care, Artemis, really. But I thought it was all supposed to be over when the fat lady sings. Well, she's singing, but it doesn't appear to be over”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Appearance, Singing

“Baby?"
She perched beside him in the chair. "You're kidding me right?"
"I was trying it out, no?"
"no," she said firmly
Simon & Clary”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Baby

“A man who has spent most of his adult life trying out a series of patent medicines is always an optimist.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Source: The Most of P.G. Wodehouse

Life

“He said you couldn't pretend the terrible things in life didn't happen. You can't clean it up. You keep all the refuse and the scars. It's how you learn. And try to make improvements.”

Marisha Pessl Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Source: Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Life, Learning

“If the other fellow can't tell you his story, you can never be sure he isn't trying to kill you.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

“The clouds appeared and went away, and in a while they did not try anymore.”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath

Appearance

“To draw something is to try to capture it FOREVER, if you really love something, you never try to keep it the way it is forever. You have to let it be free to change”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Variant: If you really love something, you never try to keep it the way it is forever. You have to let it be free to change.
Source: City of Ashes

Love, Way, Change, Drawing

“Few places in this world are more dangerous than home. Fear not, therefore, to try the mountain passes. They will kill care, save you from deadly apathy, set you free, and call forth every faculty into vigorous, enthusiastic action.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Source: 1890s, The Mountains of California (1894), chapter 5: The Passes 
Context: Accidents in the mountains are less common than in the lowlands, and these mountain mansions are decent, delightful, even divine, places to die in, compared with the doleful chambers of civilization. Few places in this world are more dangerous than home. Fear not, therefore, to try the mountain-passes. They will kill care, save you from deadly apathy, set you free, and call forth every faculty into vigorous, enthusiastic action. Even the sick should try these so-called dangerous passes, because for every unfortunate they kill, they cure a thousand.

World, Fear, Home, Mountain

“The only way to cope with something deadly serious is to try to treat it a little lightly.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: A Wrinkle in Time: With Related Readings

Way

“Was there ever a more horrible blasphemy than the statement that all the knowledge of God is confined to this or that book? How dare men call God infinite, and yet try to compress Him within the covers of a little book!”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Source: Raja-Yoga

Men, God, Books, Knowledge

“I sounded like Horton the Elephant. "A person is a person no matter how small." What the hell was I doing standing in the middle of a cave, in the dark, surrounded by wererats, quoting Dr. Seuss, and trying to kill a one-thousand-year-old vampire?”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

Quotes, Hell, Personality

“To my wonderful readers. Sorry about that apology for that last cliffhanger. I’ll try to avoid cliffhangers in this book. Well, except for maybe a few small ones… because I love you guys.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Love, Books, Guy

“You know. Life's short. If you don't try new things, you'll never know what you're best at. And you can only make time for new things by quitting the things you know don't work for you.”

Meg Cabot book Teen Idol

Source: Teen Idol

Life, Time

“You try getting through the Hollows traffic with a stoned redhead hanging out the window shouting, 'I'm king of the world!' ~Lee”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Black Magic Sanction

World

“They always said on TV you could do anything you wanted, but here I was trying to do something and it wasn't working. I would never be able to do it.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

“I try to have reasonably happy endings because I would hate any child to be cast down in gloom and despair; I want to show them you can find a way out of it.”

Jacqueline Wilson (1945) novelist

Hate, Happiness, Way, Despair

“It was inevitable for people to try to create a sense of normalcy in a place where nothing was normal. It helped one get through the day, to add predictability to a life that was inherently unpredictable.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Choice

Source: The Choice

Life, People, Sense, Help

“But beauty is about finding the right fit, the most natural fit, To be perfect, you have to feel perfect about yourself --- avoid trying to be something you're not. For a goddess, that's especially hard. We can change so easily.
-Aphrodite”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Beauty, Feeling, Nature, Change

“Perfection is the satin-lined casket of creativity and originality. If you are a perfectionist, at least stop telling everybody you're one and try to get over it yourself, alone in your home with the lights off”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Source: This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.

Home, Light, Perfection

“In this dream, I wasn’t a coyote shapeshifter trying to hold a werewolf, I was Coyote’s almost daughter, and I had all the strength of the world in my arms.”

Patricia Briggs book Frost Burned

Source: Frost Burned

World, Dreams, Daughters

“The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

School, Home

“Georgie, stop trying to resurrect the shoes. They were never alive in the first place.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: On the Edge

Shoe

“Death? Why all this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition to life, not an evil.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

Life, Death, World, Imagination

“There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.”

John Cage book Silence: Lectures and Writings

Source: Silence: Lectures and Writings

Silence, Time

“Try, reach, want, and you may fall. But even if you do, you might be okay anyway.
If you don't try, you save nothing, because you might as well be dead.”

Ann Brashares book Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood

Dead

“That's what it feels like when I write, like I have this beautiful world in my head, but when I try to remember it in order to write it down, I change it, and I can't ever get it back.”

Ruth Ozeki book A Tale for the Time Being

Source: A Tale for the Time Being

World, Beauty, Feeling, Change

“She hated her job the same way I hated my jobs because she knew she was worth more, but she also hated herself so there wasn't much point in trying to do better.”

Tawni O'Dell book Back Roads

Source: Back Roads

Hate, Way

“I can try to disable it," I said, "but if I mess up, this whole apartment is going to fill with gas. We'll die."

Thalia swallowed. " I trust you. Just… don't mess it up.”

Rick Riordan book The Demigod Diaries

Source: The Demigod Diaries

“There's a chance that the old Peeta, the one who loves you, is still inside. Trying to get back to you. Don't give up on him.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Love, Chance

“Anthony sneezed and pushed them aside. "Mother, I am trying to have a conversation with the duke."

Violet looked at Simon. "Do you want to have this conversation with my son?"

"Not particularly."

"Fine, then. Anthony, be quiet.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: The Duke and I

“I have filled 3 Mead notebooks trying to figure out whether it was Them or Just Me.”

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

Source: A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments

“I’ve built a wall around me, never letting anybody inside and trying not to venture outside myself”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

“The fact is that when you make the other suffer, he will try to find relief by making you suffer more. The result is an escalation of suffering on both sides.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames

Suffering

“I want you to invent it. I want you to have that skill. To create your own reality. Your own set of laws. I want to try and teach you that.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

Law, Reality

“Don't worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don't even try.”

Jack Canfield (1944) American writer

Source: Chicken Soup for the Soul

Failure, Chance, For Team

“And try as I might, I am having difficulty giving a f**k.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

“And everywhere, infinite options, infinite possibilities. An infinity, and at the same time, zero. We try to scoop it all up in our hands, and what we get is a handful of zero. That's the city”

Haruki Murakami book The Elephant Vanishes

Source: The Elephant Vanishes

Time

“I know how devastated you must be to miss me, but leave a message, and I'll try to ease your agony”

Richelle Mead Blood Promise

Source: Blood Promise

“So that's it? Your just going to give up?! After everything that has happened, your not going to even try?! You still don't know….. what truly matters….”

Masashi Kishimoto (1974) Japanese manga artist

“Yeah, about that,” says Peeta, entwining his fingers in mine. “Don’t try something like that again.” “Or what?” I ask. “Or… or…” He can’t think of anything good. “Just give me a minute.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Thinking

“Things just happen in the right way, at the right time. At least when you let them, when you work with circumstances instead of saying, 'This isn't supposed to be happening this way,' and trying harder to make it happen some other way.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

Source: The Tao of Pooh

Way, Time

“The successful man will profit from his mistakes and
try again in a different way.”

Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American writer and lecturer

Way, Success, Motivational, Success

“I am your dwarf.
I am the enemy within.
I am the boss of your dreams.
See. Your hand shakes.
It is not palsy or booze.
It is your Doppelganger
trying to get out.
Beware… Beware…”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Dreams

“We love and we feel and we try and we hope.”

David Levithan book Love Is the Higher Law

Source: Love Is the Higher Law

Love, Hope, Feeling

“Well they're pissed off and they're hungry. I was kind of busy trying not to get my brains eaten. They seemed pretty adamant about the brain-eating thing. Then they're going to IKEA, I guess”

Christopher Moore (1957) American writer of comic fantasy

Source: The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror

Business

“One of the things that we were trying to do with this show was the complexities of relationships and love. There is both passion and longing and a bittersweet quality to it that is a part of life.”

Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker

Source: Tim Burton's Corpse Bride: An Invitation to the Wedding

Love, Life, Passion, Parting

“We try to pay a man what he is worth and we are not inclined to keep a man who is not worth more than the minimum wage.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

“I should not have to flirt with someone while I'm trying to threaten someone else with a gun; it was too hard to do both.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Flirt

Source: Flirt

“Every day when I wake I tell myself that it will be my last. If you are not trying to hold on to time, you are not so afraid of losing it… And then, if you make it to bedtime, you feel the joy of cheating death out of one more day.”

Suzanne Collins book Gregor the Overlander

Variant: You see, I tired of constant fear, so I made a decision. Every day when I wake I tell myself that it will be my last. If you are not trying to hold on to time, you are not so afraid of losing it.
Source: Gregor the Overlander

Death, Feeling, Time, Joy

“I act like someone in a bomb shelter trying to raise everyone’s spirits.”

Carrie Fisher book The Princess Diarist

Source: The Princess Diarist

“If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

“One person can make a difference, and every person should try.”

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

Political scientist Thomas E. Cronin, "Leadership and Democracy", in 'Liberal Education', 1987
Misattributed

Personality

“I am a woman in process. I'm just trying like everybody else. I try to take every conflict, every experience, and learn from it. Life is never dull.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Life, Learning

“Woe, alas, to those who have loved only bodies, forms, appearances! Death will rob them of everything. Try to love souls, you will find them again.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Love, Death, Soul, Appearance

“I need you to be clever, Bean. I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven't seen yet. I want you to try things that no one has ever tried because they're absolutely stupid.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Stupidity, Problem, Thinking

“I don't see that we have much choice," I said, "since we don't have anyone who can grow wings."
"I will push you off this mountain," Sam warned.
"All right," Blitzen decided, "let's try it. I mean the rune, not pushing Magnus off the mountain.”

Rick Riordan book The Sword of Summer

Source: The Sword of Summer

Mountain

“If you haven't failed, you're not trying hard enough.”

Jennifer Crusie (1949) American writer

Source: Trust Me on This

“The fact is, that what de Sade was trying to bring to the surface of the conscious mind was precisely the thing that revolted that mind… From the very first he set before the consciousness things which it could not tolerate.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

“Pretend to be a delinquent?" I asked clarifying.
"You can do it," Dave advised me. "Just don't smile, and try to look like you're considering stealing something.”

Sarah Dessen book What Happened to Goodbye

Source: What Happened to Goodbye

Smile

“There's no shame in trying to make stuff work, is how I see it. It's better than just accepting the broken.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Saint Anything

“Above all, in my anger, I was sad. Isn't that always the way, that at the heart of the fire is a frozen kernel of sorrow that the fire is trying -- valiantly, fruitlessly -- to eradicate.”

Claire Messud (1966) American writer

Source: The Woman Upstairs

Sadness, Way, Heart, Anger

“Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Love of the Last Tycoon

Source: The Love of the Last Tycoon

People, Personality

“not writing is not good but trying to write when you can't is worse.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Last Night of the Earth Poems

“I am trying to say it all in one sentence, between one cap and one period.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

“Leaning forward in your chair when someone is trying to squeeze behind you isn't enough. You also have to move the chair.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Source: Seriously... I'm Kidding

“It gave me a strange feeling, and the rest of that night I didn’t say much, but merely sat there and drank, trying to decide if I was getting older and wiser, or just plain old.”

Hunter S. Thompson The Rum Diary

Source: The Rum Diary

Feeling, Night

“I learned not to worry so much about the outcome, but to concentrate on the step I was on and to try to do it as perfectly as I could when I was doing it.”

Steve Wozniak (1950) American inventor, computer engineer and programmer

Learning

“It seems to me that trying to live without friends is like milking a bear to get cream for your morning coffee. It is a whole lot of trouble, and then not worth much after you get it.”

Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) American folklorist, novelist, short story writer

Coffee

“You'd be surprised how many people violate this simple principle every day of their lives and try to fit square pegs into round holes, ignoring the clear reality that Things Are As They Are.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

Source: The Tao of Pooh

People, Reality

“Sure, this will probably end up being another in a long line of emotionally crippling misadventures… but let's try to have some fun along the way.”

Brian K. Vaughan (1976) American screenwriter, comic book creator

Way

“We're all trying to decide whether your scores up there are a miracle or a mistake."

"A habit.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

“Everyone should try to scratch their name on the bomb of life.”

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

Life

“We are not wounded so deeply when betrayed by the things we hope for as when betrayed by things we try our best to despise.
In such betrayal comes the dagger in the back.”

Yukio Mishima book Thirst for Love

Source: Thirst for Love

Hope, Betrayal

“I hate the way, once you start to know someone, care about them, their behavior can distress you, even when it's unreasonable and not your fault, even if you were really trying to be careful, tactful.”

Tanith Lee (1947–2015) British writer

Source: Wolf Star

Hate, Way, Behavior

“It's not funny, Jace," Alec interrupted, starting to his feet. "Are you just going to let her stand there and call me names?"

"Yes," Jace said kindly. "It'll do you good-- try to think of it as endurance training.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Thinking, Training

“I have learned that trying again is important and decisivness is good.

I have learned that silence hurts.

I have learned about starting over
and releasing pride.”

Sabrina Ward Harrison (1975) Canadian writer

Source: Spilling Open: The Art of Becoming Yourself

Silence, Learning, Hurt

“I try to maintain a positive attitude at all times, because clients notice little things like that, and if you're frowning and crying all the time and saying "why? why?", they get worried.”

John Swartzwelder book The Time Machine Did It

Source: The Time Machine Did It

Time, Cry

“I was worn out, broken: He had taken almost everything. But he'd been all I'd had, all this time. And when the police led him away, I pulled out of the hands of all these loved one, sobbing, screaming, everything hurting, to try and make him stay.”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Source: Dreamland (2000)

Love, Time, Hurt

“Desire makes life happen. Makes it matter. Makes everything worth it. Desire is life. Hunger to see the next sunrise or sunset, to touch the one you love, to try again.

'Hell would be waking up and wanting nothing,' he agrees.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

Love, Life, Hunger, Hell

“I try to find meaning anywhere I can. It's the only way I know how to validate my existence.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: God-Shaped Hole

Way

“Why are those who are notoriously undisciplined and unmoral also most contemptuous of religion and morality? They are trying to solace their own unhappy lives by pulling the happy down to their own abysmal depths.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Source: Seven Words of Jesus and Mary: Lessons from Cana and Calvary

Happiness, Religion

“I didn’t mind the quiet stretches. It was like we were trying out the idea of being side by side.”

Aimee Bender (1969) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Idea

“And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations.
They're quite aware of what they're going through.”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

Changes
Song lyrics, Hunky Dory (1971)
Context: I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence.
So the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same.
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations.
They're quite aware of what they're going through.

Children, World, Change