Quotes about use
page 51

“Children are a precious gift, but they belong to no one but themselves. They are only lent us a little while.”

Jim Butcher (1971) American author

“and a rather controversial one for birth control that had nevertheless quickly become the most often used rune in the lexicon.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

Birth

“The biggest mistake any of us can make is thinking that love is a feeling, an emotion. It's not that at all. It's an action.”

Luanne Rice (1955) American author

Source: Follow the Stars Home

Love, Feeling, Thinking

“The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

Maya Angelou book All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes

Source: All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes

Home, Question

“Leo: "So… giants who can throw mountains. Friendly wolves that will eat us if we show weakness. Evil espresso drinks. Gotcha. Maybe this isn't the best time to bring up my psycho babysitter."
Piper: "Is that another joke?”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Mountain, Drink, Evil, Time

“I don't believe Barrons is out to destroy mankind. I don't think he particularly cares much for mankind, but I don't think he has any deep-seated desire to see us all wiped out.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Bloodfever

Thinking

“Maybe," he said hesitantly, "maybe there is a beast." […] "What I mean is, maybe it's only us.”

William Golding book Lord of the Flies

Source: Lord of the Flies

“Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect.”

Margaret Mitchell (1900–1949) American author and journalist

Life, Sad, Depressing, Hope

“I used to think it was possible for an artist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory.”

Don DeLillo Mao II

Part 1, Ch. 3
Source: Mao II (1991)
Context: There's a curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists... Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness. What writers used to do before we were all incorporated.

Life, Thinking

“We all have things that come back to haunt us. Some of us just see them more clearly than others.”

Jodi Picoult Plain Truth

Source: Plain Truth

“A shadow is never created in darkness. It is born of light. We can be blind to it and blinded by it. Our shadow asks us to look at what we don’t want to see”

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

Source: When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

Light

“Darkness dwells within even the best of us. In the worst of us, darkness not only dwells but reins.”

Dean Koontz book Strange Highways

Source: Strange Highways

“People are fond of using military terms to describe what they do.
We call it bombing when we go out painting, when of course it's more
like entertaining the troops in a neutral zone, during peacetime in a
country without an army.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Source: Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall

People, Painting, Country

“We are all the fools of time and terror: Days
Steal on us and steal from us; yet we live,
Loathing our life, and dreading still to die.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Life, Fools, Time

“Great opportunities may come once in a lifetime, but small opportunities surround us every day.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

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

“But sooner or later the last good time would come around. It does for all of us.”

Stephen King book Joyland

Source: Joyland

Time

“All of us show many faces to the world. No one shows her true face all of the time. To do that would be dangerous, for what is seen can also be known.”

Cameron Dokey (1956) American writer

Source: The Wild Orchid: A Retelling of The Ballad of Mulan

World, Time

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.”

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

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Art
Variant: Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
Source: Emerson's Essays
Context: Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not. The best of beauty is a finer charm than skill in surfaces, in outlines, or rules of art can ever teach, namely, a radiation from the work of art of human character, — a wonderful expression through stone, or canvas, or musical sound, of the deepest and simplest attributes of our nature, and therefore most intelligible at last to those souls which have these attributes.

World, Beauty, Travel, Beauty

“I didn't seem to have that effect on anyone but it would have been a waste for both of us to be saints.”

Meg Rosoff book How I Live Now

Source: How I Live Now

“I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us…”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2

Time

“I respect my limitations, but I don't use them as an excuse.”

Stephen R. Donaldson (1947) Novelist

“As far as I was concerned men were something you had around the place, not particularly interesting, but quite harmless. I had never shown the slightest feeling for them, and apart from my never wearing a skirt, saw nothing else in common between us.”

Jeanette Winterson book Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Source: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Men, Feeling

“The world changes, we do not, therein lies the irony that kills us.”

Anne Rice book Interview with the Vampire

Source: Interview with the Vampire

World, Change

“We have nothing now between us, save - respect, perhaps. And I think that respect has maybe room for secrets, but not for lies.”

Diana Gabaldon book Outlander

Source: Outlander

Secret, Thinking

“You can't kill us all, human.'
He was right. I raised the machine gun a little. 'True, but who's going to be first in line?”

Laurell K. Hamilton book The Killing Dance

Source: The Killing Dance

“Love can take us to heaven or hell, but it always takes us somewhere. Therefore, be prepared to travel…”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Love, Travel, Hell

“Call me or I’ll call you, but one of us will call, yes? What I mean is it’s not a competition. You don’t lose I you phone first.”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

“Money doesn't make us anyway it just unmasks us.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Money

“Like the Bible tells us, when a man will lay down his life for a friend, well, then there ain't no greater love in this here world than that.”

Bette Greene book Summer of My German Soldier

Source: Summer of My German Soldier

Love, Life, World

“If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?”

Carl Sagan book The Demon-Haunted World

Source: The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995), Ch. 1 : The Most Precious Thing, p. 12
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Star, Universe, Science

“When angels speak of love they tell us it is only by loving that we enter an earthly paradise. They tell us paradise is our home and love our true destiny.”

Bell Hooks book All About Love: New Visions

Source: All About Love: New Visions

Love, Angels, Home

“Let us destroy, but don't let us pretend that we are commiting an act of virtue.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

“They use everything about the hog except the squeal.”

Upton Sinclair book The Jungle

Source: The Jungle

“Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service.”

Wilkie Collins book The Woman in White

Source: The Woman in White

“What is there possibly left for us to be afraid of, after we have dealt face to face with death and not embraced it? Once I accept the existence of dying as a life process, who can ever have power over me again?”

Audre Lorde book The Cancer Journals

Source: The Cancer Journals

Life, Death

“The way out is through the door. Why is it that no one will use this method?”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Way

“I fell in love once, if love be that cruelty which takes us straight to the gates of Paradise only to remind us they are closed for ever.”

Jeanette Winterson book Sexing the Cherry

Source: Sexing the Cherry

Love

“Have you ever noticed that when people use the expression 'I have to say', what follows usually needn't be said?”

Richard Russo book Bridge of Sighs

Source: Bridge of Sighs

People

“We are different because our brain is wired differently. This causes us to perceive the world in different ways and have different values and priorities. Not better or worse - different.”

Allan Pease (1952) Australian motivational speaker

World, Way

“If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.”

Stephen R. Covey (1932–2012) American educator, author, businessman and motivational speaker

“I don't suppose you have to believe in ghosts to know that we are all haunted, all of us, by things we can see and feel and guess at, and many more things that we can't.”

Beth Gutcheon (1945) American writer

Source: More Than You Know

Feeling

“He also didn't mind Piper's using him for a pillow. She had a cute way of breathing when she slept - inhaling through the nose, exhaling with a little puff through the mouth. He was also disappointed when she woke up.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Disappointment, Way

“We are all the pieces of what we remember. We hold in ourselves the hopes and fears of those who love us. As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Love, Fear, Hope, Memory

“No one ever loses anyone. We are all one soul that needs to continue growing and developing in order for the world to carry on and for us all to meet once again.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Source: Aleph

World, Soul

“Independence? That's middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Act V
1910s, Pygmalion (1912)

Soul, Dependency

“We live in a world where joy and empathy and pleasure are all around us, there for the noticing.”

Ira Glass (1959) American radio personality

Pleasure, World, Joy

“Time talks behind our back. To our face it's friendly and logical, never hesitating to give more of itself. But when we're not looking, it steals our lives and says bad things about us to the parts of us it's stolen”

Jonathan Carroll book A Child Across the Sky

Source: A Child Across the Sky

Time, Parting

“But a sort of rupture-in anguish-leaves us at the limit of tears: in such a case we lose ourselves, we forget ourselves and communicate with an elusive beyond.”

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

Communication, Tear, Forgetting

“Erotica is using a feather; pornograpy is using the whole chicken.”

Isabel Allende (1942) Chilean writer

“I do not need to get used to your silence. I already know it. I quite possibly love all of it.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Source: The Complete Short Stories

Love, Silence

“Nothing that surrounds us is object, all is subject.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

“If life — the craving for which is the very essence of our being — were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Source: The Vanity of Existence

Life

“She makes use of the soft of the bread for a napkin. She falls asleep at times with shoes on, on unmade beds. When a little money comes in, June buys delicacies, strawberries in the winter, caviar and bath salts.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

Money, Shoe, Winter, Time

“It is good to renew one's wonder, said the philosopher. Space travel has again made children of us all.”

Ray Bradbury book The Martian Chronicles

Source: The Martian Chronicles

Children, Travel

“There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away…”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Books

“We did not lack modesty—on the contrary—but something urgently drove us to defy modesty together as immodestly as possible.”

Georges Bataille book Story of the Eye

Source: Story of the Eye

“Pride makes us long for a solution to things – a solution, a purpose, a final cause; but the better telescopes become, the more stars appear.”

Julian Barnes book Flaubert's Parrot

Source: Flaubert's Parrot

Star, Appearance

“Every new event—everything I did for the rest of my life—would only separate us more and more: days she was no longer a part of, an ever-growing distance between us. Every single day for the rest of my life, she would only be further away.”

Donna Tartt book The Goldfinch

Source: The Goldfinch

Life, Parting

“Freaks are called freaks and are treated as they are treated – in the main, abominably – because they are human beings who cause to echo, deep within us, our most profound terrors and desires.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Source: The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, 1948-1985

“I never wanted to be feared. If I regret one thing, it is the fear I have caused. Fear is the tool of tyrants. Unfortunately, when the fate of the world is in question, you use whatever tools are available.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Final Empire

Fate, World, Fear, Question

“God understands that part of us which is more than what we think we are.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

God, Understanding, Thinking, Parting

“Let's run away to Venice, and hide out in an old movie theater. We can dye our hair blonde, so no one will ever find us!”

Cornelia Funke book The Thief Lord

Source: The Thief Lord

“The heart knoweth its own sorrow and there are times when, like David, it is comforting to think that our tears are put in a bottle and not one of them forgotten by the one who leads us in paths of sorrow.”

Hannah Hurnard book Hinds' Feet on High Places

Source: Hinds' Feet on High Places

Thinking, Tear, Time, Heart

“I used to think as I looked out on the Hollywood night — there must be thousands of girls sitting alone like me, dreaming of becoming a movie star. But I'm not going to worry about them. I'm dreaming the hardest.”

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

Variant: I used to think as I looked at the Hollywood night, «There must be thousands of girls sitting alone like me, dreaming of becoming a movie star. But I'm not going to worry about them. I'm dreaming the hardest.

Dreams, Girl, Star, Thinking

“I think… that when it comes to us, anything is possible.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

Thinking

“Love can touch us one time
And last for a life time
And never let go till
We're gone.”

Céline Dion (1968) Canadian singer

Love, Life, Time

“Ve haf vays of making you gif us your DNA sample.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bites

“And from the whole she deduced this useful lesson, that to go previously engaged to a ball, does not necessarily increase either the dignity or enjoyment of a young lady.”

Jane Austen book Northanger Abbey

Source: Northanger Abbey

“We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Source: Kavanagh: A Tale (1849), Chapter 1.

Feeling

“Time works so hard for us, if only we can let it.”

Tana French book The Likeness

Source: The Likeness

Time

“some of us have so much defeat in our past that we feel we lost the race before we knew it started.”

Beth Moore (1957) American evangelist

Source: Believing in God - Member Book

Feeling, Past

“Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness except greed.”

Thomas Harris The Silence of the Lambs

Source: The Silence of the Lambs

Loneliness

“To see truth as truth, we don't need a lot of study. It's not complicated. What we need is pure observation. An open mind and fresh eyes will serve us well.”

Ilchi Lee (1950) South Korean businessman

Source: Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

Truth, Study

“Madam, I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life; let us swear eternal friendship.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Source: Lady Holland's Memoir (1855), p. 257: Let us swear an eternal friendship. Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin. The Rovers

Life, Friendship, Personality

“Phoebe tapped the toe of her sneaker against the dock. “There’s only one good use for a man like Heath Champion.”

“Here we go again,” Molly muttered.

Phoebe’s lip curled. “Target practice.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: Match Me If You Can

“I hate it when men go to strip bars. It lowers the rest of us that know if a man has to pay to see a woman naked, he is a loser and probably should get weeded out.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Solipsist

Men, Hate

“The answers we seek aren't always the answers we want, are they? But knowing the truth is what helps us sleep at night.”

Karen White (1964) American writer

Source: The Beach Trees

Truth, Sleep, Help, Night

“Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Way, Universe, Appearance

“Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and years of training can using only their hands and feet make some of the worst movies in the history of the world.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

People, World, Art, History

“Art is the magic mirror you make to reflect your invisible dreams in visible pictures. You use a glass mirror to see your face: you use works of art to see your soul.”

George Bernard Shaw Back to Methuselah

The She-Ancient, in Pt. V
Source: 1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)
Context: Art is the magic mirror you make to reflect your invisible dreams in visible pictures. You use a glass mirror to see your face: you use works of art to see your soul. But we who are older use neither glass mirrors nor works of art. We have a direct sense of life. When you gain that you will put aside your mirrors and statues, your toys and your dolls.

Dreams, Art, Soul

“Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damm insane mistakes!”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Books

“… what words could you use which would give another the experience of sunshine?”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

Source: The Giver

“Now, if you two will excuse us, we'll get back to the relatively simple business of planning a war.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Variant: Now, if you two will excuse us, we'll get back to the relatively simple buisness of planning a war," he said.
-Baron Arald
Source: The Burning Bridge

War, Business

“Sometimes it is only a True Friend who knows what we mean when we try to speak.

Somebody who has spent a lot of time with us, and listens carefully to what we are trying to say, and tries to understand.”

Cressida Cowell book How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse

Source: How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse

Understanding, Time

“God doesn’t need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Life, God

“The choices we make, make us.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

“Traditional Botswana men like ladies who are more traditionally shaped. You and I, Mma. We remind men of how things used to be in Botswana before these modern-shaped ladies started to get men all confused.”

Alexander McCall Smith book The Full Cupboard of Life

Source: The Full Cupboard of Life

Men

“Nothing weighs on us so heavily as a secret.”

Jean De La Fontaine (1621–1695) French poet, fabulist and writer.

Rien ne pèse tant qu'un secret.
Book VIII (1678-1679), fable 6.
Fables (1668–1679)
Variant: Nothing weighs more than a secret.

Secret

“Let us thus think often that our only business in this life is to please GOD, that perhaps all besides is but folly and vanity”

Brother Lawrence book The Practice of the Presence of God

Variant: Let us think often that our only business in this life is to please God. Perhaps all besides is but folly and vanity.
Source: The Practice of the Presence of God

Life, God, Business, Thinking

“Blessed be shock. Blessed be the part of us that protects us from too much pain and sorrow. At the heart of life is a fusebox.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Life, Pain, Heart, Parting

“Lucian was beginning to get used to hearing her small observations at night. More than anything, he realized he liked her voice in the dark. It made him feel less lonely.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Froi of the Exiles

Feeling, Night

“If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Singing, Cry

“Memories have ways of becoming independent of the reality they evoke. They can soften us against those we were deeply hurt by or they can make us resent those we once accepted and loved unconditionally.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)
Context: As I trace the route to his apartment, the twists and turns, and pass once more the old tree opposite his house, I am struck by a sudden thought: memories have ways of becoming independent of the reality they evoke. They can soften us against those we were deeply hurt by or they can make us resent those we once accepted and loved unconditionally.

Love, Way, Reality, Memory

“Don't take life too seriously. After all none of us are getting out alive anyway.”

Jill Shalvis (1963) American writer

Source: Simply Irresistible

Life