Quotes about use
page 45

“I have found my voice again and the art of using it…”

Source: The Vagabond

“Shri Ramakrishna use to say, "As Long as I Live, so long do I learn". That man or that society which has nothing to learn is already in the jaws of death.”

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

Death, Learning

“Why are you still wearing…?" Aya began. "Oh, that's not smart plastic? You're really an ugly?"
David rolled his eyes and Shay said quietly, "David's never had any surge at all. But I wouldn't use the word ugly… Tally might eat you.”

Scott Westerfeld book Extras

Source: Extras

“Just because people throw it out and don't have any use for it, doesn't mean it's garbage.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

People

“What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.”

Albert Pike (1809–1891) Confederate States Army general and Freemason

"1860. In Lodge of Sorrow at Washington: March 30.", p. 11 
In sentiment this is similar to the expression made much earlier by Giordano Bruno in On the Infinite Universe and Worlds (1584) : "What you receive from others is a testimony to their virtue; but all that you do for others is the sign and clear indication of your own."
Ex Corde Locutiones: Words from the Heart Spoken of His Dead Brethren
Variant: What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.

World

“God has to remind us this isn't heaven by a long shot, so he increases the radios and lethal flies.”

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

God

“At the word witch, we imagine the horrible old crones from Macbeth. But the cruel trials witches suffered teach us the opposite. Many perished precisely because they were young and beautiful.”

André Breton book Anthology of Black Humor

Source: Anthology of Black Humor

Beauty, Imagination, Suffering

“Maybe the past is like an anchor holdong us back. Maybe you have to let go of who you were to become who you will be.”

Candace Bushnell (1958) American author

Past

“Each of you is perfect the way you are… and you can use a little improvement.”

Shunryu Suzuki (1904–1971) Japanese Buddhist missionary

Way, Perfection

“Become major, Paul. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise what is life for?”

J.M. Coetzee (1940) South African writer

Life

“It's crazy, how similar we are. Here's both of us, working through our stuff, trying to make something positive out of something really bad.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: Fire with Fire

“… available people are the ones who are dangerous, because they confront us with the possibility of real intimacy.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

People

“If you see your brother in need, it doesn't matter if you already gave somewhere else. You should be open to the idea of God using you to meet your brother's unexpected need.”

Andy Stanley (1958) American Christian minister

Source: Fields Of Gold

God, Idea

“We always see the worst in our selves. Our most volnerable selves. We need someone to get close enough to tell us that we're wrong. Someone we trust.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“I went over and over everything that had ever happened between us. I couldn’t keep doing it, going back and fourth, holding her close and then pushing her away. It wasn’t right”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

“Saint Petersburg in revolt gave us Vladimir Nabokov, Isaiah Berlin, and Ayn Rand. The first was a novelist, the second a philosopher. The third was neither but thought she was both.”

Corey Robin (1967) American academic

Source: The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin

“Why is this happening to me? Why am I having such a difficult time? One answer is that life is supposed to be difficult! It’s what enables us to grow. Remember, earth is not heaven!”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

Life, Time

“Tori joined us for dinner --in body, at least. She spent the meal practicing for a role in the next zombie movie, expressionless, methodically moving fork to mouth, sometimes even with food on it.”

Kelley Armstrong book The Summoning

Source: The Summoning

Food

“Love and friendship. They are what make us who we are, and what can change us, if we let them.”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Source: Something Blue

Love, Friendship, Change

“I never knew words could be so confusing," Milo said to Tock as he bent down to scratch the dog's ear.
"Only when you use a lot to say a little," answered Tock.
Milo thought this was quite the wisest thing he'd heard all day.”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

Dogs

“Sapere Aude! Have the courage to use your own intelligence!”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

What is Enlightenment? (1784)
Variant: Have the courage to use your own reason- That is the motto of enlightenment.
Source: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
Context: Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if it is not caused by lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one's intelligence without being guided by another. Sapere Aude! Have the courage to use your own intelligence! is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.

Intelligence, Courage

“Hope is all that keeps us going sometimes, biscuit”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Hope

“That's very funny," says Peeta. Suddenly he lashes out at the glass in Haymitch's hand. It shatters on the floor, sending the bloodred liquid running toward the back of the train. "Only not to us.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Training

“Once upon a time wasn't as long ago as it used to be.”

Laurell K. Hamilton Mistral's Kiss

Source: Mistral's Kiss

Time

“A hero is someone who simply got too frightened to use his good sense and run away, then somehow lived through it all.”

Raymond E. Feist book Silverthorn

Source: Silverthorn

Sense

“Its amazing waht you can get used to if your daily allowance of bizarre is high enough.'…… Harry Dresden”

Jim Butcher book Small Favor

Source: Small Favor

“I'm a good neurosugeon. That's not a boast but a way of acknowledging the innate ability God has given to me. Beginning with determination and using my gifted hands, I went on for training and sharpening for my skills.”

Ben Carson book Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story

Source: Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story

God, Way, Training

“Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.”

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

Wisdom

“Fransisco, you're some kind of very high nobility, aren't you?" He answered, "Not yet. The reason my family has lasted for such a long time is that none of us has ever been permitted to think he is born a d'Anconia. We are expected to become one.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Family, Thinking, Time

“We can all begin freely—a slight preference is natural enough; but there are very few of us who have heart enough to be really in love without encouragement.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Love, Nature, Heart

“That’s the thing when people leave us too suddenly, isn’t it? We always have so many questions.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The First Phone Call from Heaven

People, Question

“It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us… There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you… We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

God, People, Feeling, Light

“.

Last night, I got up the courage to ask you if you regretted us.
"There are things I miss," you said. "But if I didn't have you, I'd miss more.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Courage, Night

“The truth always carries the ambiguity of the words used to express it.”

Frank Herbert book God Emperor of Dune

Source: God Emperor of Dune

Truth

“Any powerful idea is absolutely fascinating and absolutely useless until we choose to use it.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: One

Idea

“Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding…”

Brian Greene (1963) American physicist

Understanding, Science

“The raft is used to cross the river. It isn't to be carried around on your shoulders. The finger which points at the moon isn't the moon itself.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation

“A faith that moves mountains is a faith that expands horizons, it does not bring us into a smaller world full of easy answers, but into a larger one where there is room for wonder.”

Rich Mullins (1955–1997) American christian musician

World, Faith, Mountain

“For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

Fear, Silence, Waiting

“But the bottom line is that, as humans, we are by nature selfish creatures. The only way we care about anything, really, is by making it about us.”

Sarah Dessen book The Moon and More

Source: The Moon and More

Way, Nature, Selfishness

“You will be wondering about that sugar bowl, I imagine, is it still in use? You are wondering, has it been cleaned? You may very well ask, was it thoroughly washed?”

Shirley Jackson book We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Source: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Imagination

“It is our own evil thoughts which madden us.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Evil

“Bad things are not the worst things that an happen to us. NOTHING is the worst thing that can happen to us.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: One

“It is a frightful satire and an epigram on the modern age that the only use it knows for solitude is to make it a punishment, a jail sentence.”

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

Age, Solitude

“It wasn't until I started reading and found books they wouldn't let us read in school that I discovered you could be insane and happy and have a good life without being like everybody else.”

John Waters (1946) American filmmaker, actor, comedian and writer

Life, Happiness, Books, School

“Chance encounters are what keep us going.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002)

Chance

“Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be left waiting for us in our graves-or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Dreams, Waiting

“I do not use profanity in my novels. My characters all go to church.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

“Occasionally we all do wrong things from right motives. Only time can prove us right or wrong. The past is the past. Nothing can change it now, and who is to say that it was all wrong, anyway?”

Mary Balogh (1944) Welsh-Canadian novelist

Source: The Devil's Web

Motivation, Change, Time, Past

“Fact: upon locking yourself our of your apartment you will immediately need to use the bathroom. Fact: and then you will stand in place and watch your door. You will just stare. As though rebuffed by it. As though it has done this to you.”

Augusten Burroughs Possible Side Effects

Source: Possible Side Effects

“Even if neither of us got what we wanted, we found freedom in the third choices.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Freedom

“If people did not love one another, I really don't see what use there would be in having any spring.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Love, People, Spring

“You don't make me feel like you used to.
That's why I'm leaving
That's why people leave each other
They come to their senses and get selfish again.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: See A Grown Man Cry/Now Watch Him Die

People, Feeling, Sense, Selfishness

“The perfect woman, you see [is] a working-woman; not an idler; not a fine lady; but one who [uses] her hands and her head and her heart for the good of others.”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

Heart, Perfection

“Any weapon is a good weapon as long as ye can use it with honor and skill.”

Brian Jacques book High Rhulain

Source: High Rhulain

“There were eleven of us.
Each more different than the next.
All with the same mindset.
Things weren't the way they were meant to be.
It was our job to make things right.
We were the soldiers of Halla.
It was time for us to take it back.”

D.J. MacHale (1955) American television director and producer

Way, Time

“What I used to say to people, when I was much more engagé myself, is that you can't be apolitical. It will come and get you. It's not that you shouldn't be neutral. It's that you won't be able to stay neutral.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

People

“The goodbyes we speak and the goodbyes we hear are the good byes that tell us we're still alive.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: Wolves of the Calla

“People seem to get used to anything, and it is a short step from adaptation to attachment.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

People

“Somebody said to me, 'But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.' That's a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, 'Now, let's write a swimming pool.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

“At Sunday worship, as in every dimension of our existence, many of us pretend to believe we are sinners. Consequently, all we can do is pretend we have been forgiven. As a result, our whole spiritual life is pseudo-repentance and pseudo-bliss.”

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

Life

“I suppose that people, using themselves and each other so much by words, are at least consistent in attributing wisdom to a still tongue…”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury

Wisdom, People

“Use memories. Do not let memories use you.”

Deepak Chopra (1946) Indian-American physician, public speaker and writer

Memory

“In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”

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

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Context: A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

Back To Work

“For now, I only wish to make a simple acknowledgement of the woman who held the power just before me.
Of all of us who touched it, I feel she was the most worthy.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Hero of Ages

Feeling

“Perhaps, but you would not exist without a woman, would you? However little use you may find us, we are cleverer and more determined and more patient than men. Men may be stronger, but it is women who endure.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Women, Men

“Truly it it not the tragedies that destroy us, but the memories of them.”

Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden

Source: Evil Thirst

Memory

“It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required.”

P.G. Wodehouse book The Girl in Blue

Source: The Girl in Blue (1970)

Books

“My mother used to tell me that when push comes to shove, you always know who to turn to. That being a family isn't a social construct but an instinct.”

Jodi Picoult book Keeping Faith

Source: Keeping Faith

Family, Family

“we’re allowed to make a lot of mistakes in our lives, except the mistake that destroy us”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

“I'm an animal with you," he murmured. "I want to mark you. I want to possess you so completely there's no separation between us.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

Animals

“No matter where we begin, if we pursue knowledge diligently and honestly, our quest will inevitably lead us from the things of the earth to the things of heaven.”

Hugh Nibley (1910–2005) Religious scholar

Knowledge

“Here we are at the bottom, almost empty. It's like confetti, these dried remnants you find in the street for a party no one invited you to. But they used to be, I can admit, part of something beautiful.”

Daniel Handler book Why We Broke Up

Source: Why We Broke Up

Beauty, Parting

“You can use your idealism to further your aims, if you realize that nothing is Nirvana, nothing is perfect.”

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

Perfection

“Solitude is not the absence of company, but the moment when our soul is free to speak to us and help us decide what to do with our life.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), Solitude

Life, Soul, Solitude, Help

“I have an idea. It’s risky, and Max will kill us when she finds out.”
Iggy raised his head. “Sounds like my kind of idea.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

Idea

“Child, child, do you not see? For each of us comes a time when we must be more than what we are.”

Lloyd Alexander book The Black Cauldron

Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book III: The Castle of Llyr (1966), Chapter 1
Source: The Black Cauldron

Time

“You can never have too much coffee”, I said
He turned and smiled at me. “You think so, but the rest of us get a little OD’ed on your level of caffeine.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Blood Noir

Source: Blood Noir

Smile, Coffee, Thinking

“You always think that a bolt of lightning is going to strike and your parents will magically change into the people you wish they were, or back into the people they used to be.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Source: I Remember Nothing: and Other Reflections

People, Thinking, Parent, Change

“Our ideas can enslave or liberate us.”

Ken Robinson (1950) UK writer

Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative

Idea

“To accept one's past - one's history - is not the same things as drowning in it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.”

James Baldwin book The Fire Next Time

Variant: To accept one’s past – one’s history – is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.
Source: The Fire Next Time

Life, History, Past, Season

“Don't let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use.”

Earl Nightingale (1921–1989) American motivational speaker

Fear, Way, Time