Quotes about use
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“If while alive you hurt or disappoint people you love, there's no use continuing such behavior when you're dead.”

Source: Jarhead

“You'll lie wi' me now," he said quietly. "And I shall use ye as I must. And if you'll have your revenge for it, then take it and welcome, for my soul is yours, in all the black corners of it.”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

Lie, Soul, Revenge

“Only if the third necessary thing could be given us. Number one, as I said: quality of information. Number two: leisure to digest it. And number three: the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the first two.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Learning

“There is no past or future. Using tenses to divide time is like making chalk marks on water.”

Janet Frame (1924–2004) New Zealand author

Water, Time, Past, Future

“Life is a spiritual dance and that our unseen partner has steps to teach us if we will allow ourselves to be led. The next time you are restless, remind yourself it is the universe asking 'Shall we dance?”

Julia Cameron (1948) American writer

Life, Universe, Time, Dance

“If you do not intend to help us," she said, "then leave this house. Dawn is coming."
"I am not a vampire." Magnus said. "I shall not disappear with the light"
"You will if I kill you before the sun comes up.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Midnight Heir

Light, Sun, Help, Housing

“All forms of art are consciousness expanders, and I am convinced that they will take us further, and more consciously, than drugs.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Section 4.14
The Crosswicks Journal, A Circle of Quiet (1972)

Art

“Death leaves cans of shaving cream half-used.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Death

“Sometimes we have to face the things that hurt us most. Maybe you won’t heal till you do. You haven’t yet.” They both knew that was true. “You can’t move ahead until you bury the past.”

Danielle Steel (1947) American author of romance novels

Past, Hurt

“My instructors in science and technology have taught us about how the brain works. It's full of electrical impulses. It's like a computer. If you stimulate one part of the brain with an electrode, it…
- They know nothing.”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

Source: The Giver

Science, Parting

“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.”

Boyd K. Packer (1924–2015) American Mormon leader

“We walked along the river with the words streaming behind us like ribbons in the night.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees (2002)

Night

“Don't let yesterday use up too much of today.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Misattributed

“It's like going back to being a child again. Someone to bathe you. Someone to lift you. Someone to wipe you. We all know how to be a child. It's inside all of us. For me, It's just remembering how to enjoy it.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

“None of us could be happy for long, doing nothing.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Happiness

“Pride was the belt you used to hold your pants up when you had no pants.”

Stephen King Dreamcatcher

Source: Dreamcatcher

“I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it's medically conservative to cut people open or put them on powerful cholesterol-lowering drugs for the rest of their lives … Animal products are the main culprit in what is killing us. We can absolutely live better lives without them.”

Dean Ornish (1953) American physician

Quoted in Roberto Suro, "Hearts and Minds", New York Times Magazine (29 December 1991).

People, Understanding, Animals

“The city glitters past us with its sharp edges, reminding us of how tiny, how weak, how totally unimportant we are.”

Joe Meno (1974) American writer

Source: Demons in the Spring

Past

“Sometimes the worst thing that happens to you, the thing you think you can't survive… it's the thing that makes you better than you used to be.”

Jennifer Weiner (1970) American writer

Source: Fly Away Home

Thinking

“Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”

Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot

Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 8, Supplemental image at randi.org http://www.randi.org/images/122801-BlueDot.jpg Context: Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. Context: Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Help

“I am not going to change who I am. I am human and I know how to love, and be kind, and be compassionate to those who are weaker than me. Just because I have power doesn't mean I have to use it!”

Garth Nix book Superior Saturday

Source: Superior Saturday

Love, Change

“And we must still try or we would be leaving our friends to fight without us. I think this is what you have meant by duty, all along; I do understand, at least this much of it.”

Naomi Novik book His Majesty's Dragon

Source: His Majesty's Dragon

Understanding, Thinking, Fight

“It may sound corny, but what's wrong with wanting to fight for your country. Why are people reluctant to use the word patriotism?”

Jimmy Stewart (1908–1997) American film and stage actor

People, Fight, Country

“But hurry, let's entwine ourselves as one, our mouth broken, our soul bitten by love, so time discovers us safely destroyed.”

Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director

Love, Soul, Time

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, shame on both of us.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Fools, Time

“God does watch over us and does notice us, but it usually through someone else that he meets our needs.”

Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

God

“Maybe this is not a come-down-from-the-ledge story. But I tell it with the thought that the woman on the ledge will ask herself a question, the question that occurred to that man in Bogota. He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good?”

Amy Hempel (1951) Short story writer

The Man in Bogota

Question

“No matter what a woman's appearance may be, it will be used to undermine what she is saying and taken to individualize - as her personal problem - observations she makes about the beauty myth in society.”

Naomi Wolf (1962) American writer

Beauty, Problem, Appearance, Personality

“Fate already warned us to pack it in. We just didn’t hear it in time.”

Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer

Source: This is Where I Leave You

Fate, Time

“The cafe windows wrapped all the way around the observation floor, which gave us a beautiful panoramic view of the skeleton army that had come to kill us.”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

Beauty, Way

“Mom raised us to believe that every lie puts something out there in the world that's inevitably going to come back and bite you in the petunia.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Bloodfever

Lie, World, Moms

“Let us assume you've made your point.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

“understanding the true nature of instinctive decision making requires us to be forgiving of those people trapped in circumstances where good judgment is imperiled.”

Malcolm Gladwell book Blink

Source: Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

People, Forgiveness, Understanding, Nature

“Love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, I'll be anybody you want me to be. Use me. Change me. I can be thin with big breasts and big hair. Take me apart. Make me into anything, but just love me.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Love, Change

“My alphabet starts with this letter called yuzz. It s the letter I use to spell yuzz a ma tuzz. You ll be sort of surprised what there is to be found once you go beyond Z and start poking around”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

“Being defiant can be a good thing sometimes," Aunty Ifeoma said. "Defiance is like marijuana - it is not a bad thing when it is used right.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book Purple Hibiscus

Source: Purple Hibiscus

Marijuana

“Our flaws are what makes us human. If we can accept them as part of who we are, they really don't even have to be an issue.”

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

Source: Seriously... I'm Kidding

Parting

“We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is.”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Source: Solaris

World

“Dead girl walking” the boys say in the halls.
“Tell us your secrets” the girls whisper, one toilet to another.
"I am that girl. I am the spaces between my thighs, daylight shinning through. I am the bones they want, wired on a porcelain frame.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Secret, Girl, Boy, Dead

“I don't know what you mean when you say 'the whole world' or 'generations before him.'I thought there was only us. I thought there was only now.”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

Source: The Giver

World

“Our technology forces us to live mythically”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

“Memories are links in a golden chain that bind us until we meet again.”

Jacqueline Winspear Maisie Dobbs

Source: Maisie Dobbs

Memory

“Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, sermons and soda water the day after.”

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

Women, Laughter, Water, Wine

“Come a day there won’t be room for naughty men like us to slip about at all. This job goes south, there well may not be another. So here is us, on the raggedy edge. Don’t push me, and I won’t push you. Dong le ma?”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

Men

“Curran and I mixed about as well as glycerin and nitric acid: put us together, shake a bit, and hit the deck as we exploded.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
Context: I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

Men, God, Hate, People

“He caught her as if he were used to catching fainting girls, as if he did it everyday.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Girl

“It's a very salutary thing to realize that the rather dull universe in which most of us spend most of our time is not the only universe there is. I think it's healthy that people should have this experience.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Source: Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics & the Visionary Experience

People, Thinking, Universe, Time

“Charles looked at her thoughtfully. "People talk to you," he said. "That could be useful.”

Patricia Briggs book Hunting Ground

Source: Hunting Ground

People

“The hardness of a diamond is part of its usefulness, but its true value is in the light that shines through it.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 27

Light, Parting

“My school colors were clear. We used to say, 'I'm not naked, I'm in the band.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

School, Color

“If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you. Whatever good things we build, end up building us.”

Jack Canfield (1944) American writer

The Power of Focus: How to Hit Your Business, Personal and Financial Targets with Confidence and Certainty

“After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

Universe

“The miracle of love comes to us in the presence of the uninterpreted moment.”

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (2002)

Love

“Very well," Magnus said. "Let us pause for a moment and consider—Oh, you have already run off Splendid.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Vampires, Scones, and Edmund Herondale

“If you make your heart into a weapon, you end up using it on yourself.”

Gregory David Roberts (1952) Australian writer and bank robber

Heart

“… the face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no more room for crying.”

Rohinton Mistry A Fine Balance

Variant: The human face has limited space. If you fill it with laughter there will be no room for crying.
Source: A Fine Balance

Cry

“There is a destiny which makes us brothers; none goes his way alone. All that we send into the lives of others comes back into our own.”

Edwin Markham (1852–1940) American poet

"A Creed To Mr. David Lubin", stanza 1, LINCOLN & Other Poems (1901), page 25.
Context: There is a destiny that makes us brothers:
None goes his way alone:
All that we send into the lives of others
Comes back onto our own.

I care not what his temples or his creeds,
One thing holds firm and fast
That into his fateful heap of days and deeds
The soul of man is cast.

Way

“It is predictable that God will take care of us. What's unpredictable is how he will do it.”

Donna VanLiere (1966) American writer

Source: Finding Grace: A True Story About Losing Your Way In Life...And Finding It Again

God

“I don't know anything about anything. The only difference between then and now is this: I may know more than I used to but my wisdom pales in comparison to that which I have yet to learn”

Megan McCafferty (1973) American novelist

Source: Sloppy Firsts

Wisdom, Learning