Quotes about use
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“When we turn, is there something shoved inside of us or is it more that something inside of us has been released?”

Holly Black book The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Source: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

“Every one of us gets through the tough times because somebody is there, standing in the gap to close it for us.”

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

Time

“You’re barely one step up from the Australopithecines, aren’t you? (Acheron)
Hey, be respectful when you say that, snot nose. Haven’t you seen the commercials? Us cavemen are very sensitive people. (Savitar)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

People

“Jordan slammed the coatrack down on the ground and sighed. "if you were a vampire, this would have been a lot more useful."

"yes," said jace. "or, you know, just someone with a lot of coats.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

“I believe that the imagination is the passport we create to take us into the real world. I believe the imagination is another phrase for what is most uniquely us.”

John Guare Six Degrees of Separation

Source: Six Degrees of Separation

World, Imagination

“I think that hurting gives us a way to measure being happy. How can you know one without knowing the other.”

Lurlene McDaniel (1944) American writer

Source: Time to Let Go

Happiness, Way, Thinking, Hurt

“Let us tenderly and kindly cherish therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1760s, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)
Source: The Works Of John Adams, Second President Of The United States

Knowledge, Thinking, Reading

“O great creator of being
grant us one more hour to
perform our art
and perfect our lives”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

An American Prayer (1978)
Context: O great creator of being
grant us one more hour to
perform our art
and perfect our lives The moths & atheists are doubly divine
& dying
We live, we die
and death not ends it

Art, Perfection

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

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

Source: Eat, pray, love: one woman's search for everything

Life, Way, Change

“They tell us that Suicide is the greatest piece of Cowardice… That Suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in this world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Life, World, Suicide, Personality

“Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but she was able to use other people's in such a constructive way that she never felt the lack.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Source: A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

People, Way

“We're none of us quite so sure of our place in the world that we can't be rocked off our feet by bad times. It's the getting back up again that counts. Not that you fall, but getting back up again counts for more in the long run.”

Mercedes Lackey (1950) American novelist and short story writer

Source: Intrigues

World, Time

“When a man carries an instrument of violence, he'll always find the justification to use it. If we really want to escape this war, we have to stop bringing it with us.”

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

Source: Saga, Vol. 1

War

“We never see the true state of our condition till it is illustrated to us by its contraries, nor know how to value what we enjoy, but by the want of it.”

Daniel Defoe La vie et les aventures de Robinson Crusoe

Source: Robinson Crusoe (1719), Ch. 10, Tames Goats.

“Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Joy

“A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike.
An all plans, safeguards, policies and coercion are fruitless.
We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Personality

“So are we going to continue glaring angrily at each other while we pose in our tough stances? Or use our time to work out a plan that hopefully doesn’t end with our mutual deaths? (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: One Silent Night

Death, Time

“When a person is going through a hard time, his mind wants to give up. Satan knows that if he can defeat us in our mind, he can defeat us in our experience. That’s why it is so important that we not lose heart, grow weary and faint.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Source: Battlefield of the Mind: Winning the Battle in Your Mind

Time, Heart, Personality

“What did he say?" Hazel asked.
"With the cussing removed? He said he can get us to the top," Percy replied.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

“Now, scholars can be very useful and necessary, in their own dull and unamusing way. They provide a lot of information. It's just that there is Something more, and that Something More is what life is really all about.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

Spelling Tuesday.
Source: The Tao of Pooh (1982)

Life, Way

“Life is a miracle, and being aware of simply this can already make us very happy.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life

Life, Happiness

“Even as she'd been writing it, she wondered if she was using too many exclamation marks, but she was glad she left them in. Nothing says "all is good in the world" like exclamation marks, after all.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Kingdom of the Wicked

World

“Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to get attention we do, except walk?”

Alice Walker book The Color Purple

Source: The Color Purple (1982)

Love, Flowers, Tree, Singing

“God has given to every one of us more than fourteen billion cells and connections in our brain. Now why would God give us such a complex organ system unless He expects us to use it?”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big (1996), p. 154

God

“The power of the dead is that we think they see us all the time. The dead have a presence. Is there a level of energy composed solely of the dead? They are also in the ground, of course, asleep and crumbling. Perhaps we are what they dream.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise (1984)

Dreams, Thinking, Time, Dead

“May I make a suggestion," said Will. "About twenty paces behind us, in the Council room, is Benedict. If you'd like to go back in there and try kicking him, I recommend aiming upward and a little to the left-”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Variant: If I might make a suggestion,” said Will. “About twenty paces behind us, in the Council room, is Benedict. If you’d like to go back in there and try kicking him, I recommend aiming upward and a bit to the left—
Source: Clockwork Prince

“Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
Source: A Mencken Chrestomathy

“When you hate someone you used to love, and you think he's done something awful - he probably has.”

E. Lockhart (1967) American writer of novels as E. Lockhart (mainly for teenage girls) and of picture books under real name Emily J…

Source: The Boyfriend List: 15 Guys, 11 Shrink Appointments, 4 Ceramic Frogs and Me, Ruby Oliver

Love, Hate, Thinking

“The only way I'm keeping my hands off her is if I'm dead. Find another way to fix us.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Reflected in You

Way, Dead

“The things we worry about the most are never the things that bite us. The sharpest teeth always take their nip of us when we are looking the other way.”

Dean Koontz book Forever Odd

Source: Forever Odd

Way

“Ah," said the magus, understanding at once. "I see that he means to be prepared if he meets him again."
"Surely that's unlikely," said Sounis.
"I don't think unlikely means to him what it does to the rest of us," said the magus.”

Megan Whalen Turner book A Conspiracy of Kings

Source: A Conspiracy of Kings

Understanding, Thinking

“Psychoanalysis has taught that the dead – a dead parent, for example – can be more alive for us, more powerful, more scary, than the living. It is the question of ghosts.”

Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) French philosopher (1930-2004)

Question, Parent, Dead

“Don’t utilize utilize. Use use.”

Larry King (1933) American television and radio host

How to Talk to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere: The Secrets of Good Communication

“Remember that "Help us grow this grass" is a far more effective sign than "Keep off the grass".”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

Grass, Help

“I would have given anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them.
Brian Fitzgerald, talking about his children.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Variant: Goldfish get big enough only for the bowl you put them in. Bonsai trees twist in miniature. I would have given anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them.
Source: My Sister's Keeper

Children, For Parents

“You know I used to be the back porch poet with my book of lines, always hoping knowing all the time, I'm probably never gonna find the perfect rhyme… For heavier things”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

Books, Hope, Time, Perfection

“When I used to picture forever, it was always with the same boy. In my dreams, my future was set. A sure thing. This isn’t the way I’d pictured it. … The future is unclear. But it’s still mine.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

Dreams, Way, Boy, Future

“It should not be denied… that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road has always led West.”

Wallace Stegner (1909–1993) American historian, writer, and environmentalist

Law, History, Freedom

“If you care about something enough, it’s going to make you cry. But you have to use it. Use your tears. Use your pain. Use your fear. Get mad. Arnold, get mad.”

Sherman Alexie book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Source: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Pain, Fear, Tear, Cry

“The bustle in a house
The morning after death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon earth,--
The sweeping up the heart,
And putting love away
We shall not want to use again
Until eternity”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Love, Death, Heart, Housing

“a person can get used to anything if given enough time”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Time, Personality

“Nothing else wounds so deeply and irreparably. Nothing else robs us of hope so much as being unloved by one we love”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

Love, Hope, Heartbreaking, Hurtful

“If your friend is sick and dying, the most important thing he wants is not an explanation; he wants you to sit with him. He's terrified of being alone more than anything else. So, God has not left us alone.”

Lee Strobel (1952) American writer

God

“Is this what sadness is all about? Is it what comes over us when beautiful memories shatter in hindsight because the remembered happiness fed not just on actual circumstances but on a promise that was not kept?”

Bernhard Schlink book The Reader

Source: The Reader

Happiness, Sadness, Beauty, Memory

“I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone.”

Bjarne Stroustrup (1950) Danish computer scientist, creator of C++

On his homepage http://www.stroustrup.com/bs_faq.html#really-say-that, Bjarne Stroustrup states that he did say the above sentence, but also adds "I very much doubt that the sentiment is original." Bjarne Stroustrup's FAQ: Did you really say that?, 2007-11-15 http://www.stroustrup.com/bs_faq.html#really-say-that,

“Those swords are mine! Touch them and I’ll use ‘em to slice off your nut sack! For a coin purse!”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dreams of a Dark Warrior

“Life has a way of breaking even the strongest among us.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Styxx

Life, Way

“The only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.”

Haruki Murakami book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Way

“Listening doesn't mean trying to understand. Anything, however trifling, may be of use one day. What matters is to know something that others don't know you know.”

Umberto Eco book The Prague Cemetery

Source: The Prague Cemetery

Understanding

“Ammu said that human beings were creatures of habit, and it was amazing the kind of things one could get used to.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“There are no lessons so useful as those learned in the school of affliction.”

J.C. Ryle (1816–1900) Anglican bishop

School, Affliction, Learning

“God nowhere tells us to give up things for the sake of giving them up. He tells us to give them up for the sake of the only thing worth having--viz., life with Himself. It is a question of loosening the bonds that hinder the life…”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

Source: My Utmost for His Highest: Selections for the Year

Life, God, Question

“We have the choice of two identities: the external mask which seems to be real… and the hidden, inner person who seems to us to be nothing, but who can give himself eternally to the truth in whom he subsists. (295)”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Source: New Seeds of Contemplation

Truth, Personality

“It's not that I've suddenly become stronger or that something has changed. I'm still shaking. But… We don't have to let those fears stop us. What's most important is that we try to rise above our weakness.”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Fear, Change

“Let us proceed under the assumption that the fairy folk do exist, and that I am not a gibbering moron.”

Eoin Colfer Artemis Fowl

Source: Artemis Fowl

“The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes

Life, Intelligence, Universe, Funny

“If not us, who? If not now, when?”

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

“We're going to die," Keith said, the moment he was gone. "This man is a serial killer. We're going to die, and he's going to bury us in his garden and build a shed on us.”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Source: The Last Little Blue Envelope

“He'd always had that fearless optimism that made cynics like me squirm. I wondered if it was enough for both of us. I would never know from here, though. And time was passing. Crucial minutes and seconds, each one capable of changing everything.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

Optimism, Change, Time

“There is no better way to know us
Than as two wolves, come separately to a wood.”

Ted Hughes (1930–1998) English poet and children's writer

Way

“There is no plan. All is hazard. And the only thing that will preserve us is ourselves.”

John Fowles book The Magus

Source: The Magus

“Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Attributed to Milton at http://quotationsbook.com/quote/31964/#sthash.zAJjMqmY.dpbs, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverence_(emotion)#Quotations, great-quotes.com, and brainyquote.com. <br class="br">Spirituality author Sarah Ban Breathnach writes, in her 1996 Simple Abundance Journal of Gratitude: "Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life (is it abundant or is it lacking?) and the world (is it friendly or is it hostile?)." A Milton quotation occurs on the same page. <br class="br">Misattributed

Life, World, Change, Gratitude

“He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good.”

Amy Hempel (1951) Short story writer

Source: Reasons to Live

“The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The black goddess within each of us - the poet - whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

Source: Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984), p. 38

Dreams, Feeling, Thinking

“Words cannot always do the work we need them to. Music is there for when words fail us.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Music

“That's what love is. It's some power greater than you and me, that draws us to one special person”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Between the Lines

Love, Drawing, Personality

“Chance and chance alone has a message for us… Only chance can speak to us.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Two: Soul and Body, pg 48

Chance

“Is there some kind of rule for when Sam should be a boy and when he's a Wolf?"
"A Wolf lifts his leg and yellows up the snow. A boy has to use the toilet."
"And that will work?"
"Only if he needs to pee.”

Anne Bishop book Written in Red

Source: Written in Red

Boy, Wolf

“Happiness is a myth. It was invented to make us buy new things.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Happiness

“Sire, you are looking at a plain man, and I am looking at a great man. Each of us may benefit.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“After a long silence, Dodge cleared his throat. "I think I speak for all of us when I say, 'Huh?'"
-Dodge(obviously)”

Frank Beddor Seeing Redd

Source: Seeing Redd

Thinking, Silence

“… and Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.”

Herman Melville book Moby-Dick

Source: Moby Dick

“But in the end it wasn't up to me. The bigs things never are. Birth, I mean, and death. And love. And what love bequeaths to us before we're born.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

Love, Death, Birth

“it was possible to grow up in an instant, that you could look down and see the line in the sand dividing your life now from what it used to be.”

Jodi Picoult book The Tenth Circle

Source: The Tenth Circle

Life

“The deepest wounds aren't the ones we get from other people hurting us. They are the wounds we give ourselves when we hurt other people.”

Isobelle Carmody book Alyzon Whitestarr

Source: Alyzon Whitestarr

People, Hurt

“Inutile piangere sul latte versato. (No use crying over spilled milk.)”

Francesca Marciano (1955) Italian actor, film director, screenwriter and writer

Source: Casa Rossa

Cry

“All of us have theories about the world and about ourselves. We will go to great lengths to prove ourselves right because it keeps the world in our head coherent and understandable.”

Marya Hornbacher (1974) American journalist

World, Understanding

“When everything else falls down around us, just knowing that there's another person who will miss us when we're gone is enough to see us through our darkest moments.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Personality

“These men were like leeches; they sucked away at the goodness of a woman's heart until it was dry and all her love had been used up. That took a long time, he knew, because women seemed to have vast reservoirs of goodness in them”

Alexander McCall Smith The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

Source: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

Love, Women, Men, Time

“When patriarchy dismisses us, it encourages our murderers.”

Audre Lorde book Sister Outsider

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

“I know, better than anyone else, that there are no heroes coming to save us. There are no good Epics. None of them protect us. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: Steelheart

“Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos (1980), p. 282
Context: Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insights and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all of our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. Public libraries depend on voluntary contributions. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.

Wisdom, Books, Time

“Most of us, even if only for two minutes in our lives, have experienced at some time or another an inexplicable and random sense of complete bliss, unrelated to anything that was happening in the outside world.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

World, Sense, Time

“Do you want to know something about tyrants? When faced with death, they weep and they beg just like the rest of us.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Quintana of Charyn

Death

“The most I would do was use the shadow tool in Photoshop to bring out the muscular rips in my stomach, which were honestly there. Beneath the fat.”

Augusten Burroughs Possible Side Effects

Source: Possible Side Effects

“Tyson dropped the two warriors he was about to tie into a knot and jogged after us. He jumped on the centaur's back.
'Dude!' the centaur groaned, almost buckling under Tyson's weight. 'Do the words "low-carb diet" mean anything to you?”

Rick Riordan book The Sea of Monsters

Source: The Sea of Monsters

“Talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Understanding

“If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving.”

James Baldwin book The Fire Next Time

Source: "Letter from a Region of My Mind" in The New Yorker (17 November 1962); republished as "Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind" in The Fire Next Time (1963)
Context: If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.

Love, God