Quotes about use
page 55

“Inconceivable!"
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

Thinking

“The seeds of death get lost in the mess that God made us.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides

Source: The Virgin Suicides

Death, God

“We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.”

Thomas Browne (1605–1682) English polymath

Source: Prose: "Religio Medici" , "Hydriotaphia" , "Garden of Cyrus" , "Letter to a Friend" , "Christian Morals" and Selections from Other Works

“Persons appear to us according to the light we throw upon them from our own minds. -Laura Ingalls Wilder, author (1867-1957)”

Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867–1957) American children's writer, diarist, and journalist

Light, Appearance, Personality

“The silence between us was so profound I thought part of it must be my fault.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Silence, Parting

“You use your brain much as you would use a radio crystal; you tune in different frequencies.”

Chris Prentiss

Be Who You Want, Have What You Want: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life

“I used to ask for an easy life, now I ask to be strong.”

William Kent Krueger (1950) author, novelist

Source: Iron Lake

Life, Strong

“The innocent should never have to suffer from the battles of others. (Valerius)
I know, but it seems to always be the case. (Acheron)
A furore infra, libera nos - spare us from the fury within. (Valerius)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Bad Moon Rising

Suffering

“When we read, it is not ours to absorb all that is written. Our thoughts are jealous and they constantly blank out the thoughts of others, for there is not room enough in us for two scents at one time.”

Milorad Pavić (1929–2009) Serbian writer

Source: Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel in 100,000 Words

Time, Reading

“All good people agree,
And all good people say,
All nice people, like Us, are We
And every one else is They:
But if you cross over the sea,
Instead of over the way,
You may end by (think of it!) looking on We
As only a sort of They!”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Source: Debits And Credits

People, Way, Thinking, Sea

“And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right.”

Ray Bradbury book Zen in the Art of Writing

Source: Zen in the Art of Writing

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. The Talmud tells us that by saving a single human being, man can save the world.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

Hope, Despair, and Memory (1986)

World, Time

“There is room in history for all of us.”

Alexander McCall Smith (1948) British writer

History

“Let us be those creative dissenters who will call our beloved nation to a higher destiny. To a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humanness.”

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

“Every day, God gives us the sun — and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Variant: Everyday God gives us a moment in which it is possible to change everything that makes us unhappy.
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

God, Change, Sun

“To be free is to learn, to test yourself constantly, to gamble. It is not safe. I had learnt to use my fears as stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks, and”

Robyn Davidson (1950) Australian writer

Source: Tracks

Fear, Learning

“Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.”

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

Life, Time, Sun

“How had this happened? Everyone in the world knew more than us, about everything, and this I hated then found hugely comforting.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

Source: You Shall Know Our Velocity!

Hate, World

“For we all of us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on the strength of them.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Source: Middlemarch

Light

“It's human to make mistakes and some of us are more human than others.”

Ashleigh Brilliant (1933) American author and cartoonist

“If we were to one day encounter a form of life more powerful and intelligent than our own, and it regarded us as we regard fish, what would be our argument against being eaten?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Eating Animals

Source: Eating Animals

Life, Intelligence, Fish

“If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Life

“Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially of the lower class of people, are so extremely wise and useful, that, to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.”

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

1770s, Thoughts on Government (1776)

People, Youth, Education, Law

“Only he who has no use for the empire is fit to be entrusted with it.”

Zhuangzi (-369–-286 BC) classic Chinese philosopher

Source: The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu

“How memories lie to us. How time coats the ordinary with gold. How it breaks the heart to go back and attempt to re-live them. How crushed we are when we discover that the gold was merely gold-plating thinly coated over lead, chalk and peeling paint.”

Henry Rollins book Black Coffee Blues

Source: Black Coffee Blues

Lie, Memory, Time, Heart

“People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us… It's people who claim that they're good, or any way better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of.”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

People, Way, Evil

“School made us 'literate' but did not teach us to read for pleasure.”

Ambeth R. Ocampo (1961) Filipino historian

Pleasure, School, Reading

“The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us.
And to save us.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
Context: Love is always new. Regardless of whether we love once, twice, or a dozen times in our life, we always face a brand-new situation. Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere. We simply have to accept it, because it is what nourishes our existence. If we reject it, we die of hunger, because we lack the courage to reach out a hand and pluck the fruit from the branches of the tree of life. We have to take love where we find it, even if it means hours, days, weeks of disappointment and sadness.
The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us.
And to save us.

Love

“For every action, there’s an infinity of outcomes. Countless trillions are possible, many milliards are likely, millions might be considered probable, several occur as possibilities to us as observers—and one comes true.”

China Miéville book The Scar

Part 6 “Morning Walker”, chapter 34 (p. 394)
Source: The Scar (2002)

“I thought about all the people I knew who spent many of their waking hours feeling sorry for themselves. How useful it would be to put a daily limit on self-pity. Just a few tearful minutes, then on with the day.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

People, Feeling, Tear

“Let us never underestimate the power of a well-written letter.”

Jane Austen book Persuasion

Source: Persuasion

“I will not fall in love with you," she said. "I can't let myself. I won't."

"That's all right. I'll love you enough for the both of us.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Eternal

Source: Lover Eternal

Love

“First we build the tools, then they build us.”

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

“We could all be lucky. We could all be what we want to be, instead of who someone else told us to be.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Between the Lines

“You can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him. But as Thomas More used to say, it's like sporting with a tamed lion. You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you're thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws.”

Hilary Mantel Bring Up the Bodies

Source: Bring Up the Bodies

Thinking, Sport, Time

“When one reads hurriedly and nervously, having in mind written tests and examinations, one's brain becomes encumbered with a lot of bric-a-brac for which there seems to be little use.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Reading

“We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest,
And deal full many a thoughtless blow
To those who love us best.”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) American author and poet

Variant: We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest;
And deal full many a thoughtless blow,
To those who love us best.

Love, Deep, Friendship, Relationship

“Each of us guard a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside.”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

Change

“He used to tell me, 'Do what you like to do. It'll probably turn out to be what you do best.”

Wallace Stegner book Crossing to Safety

Source: Crossing to Safety

“Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are.”

Gretel Ehrlich (1946) American writer

Nature, Beauty, Peaceful

“If God had wanted us to be concerned for the plight of the toads, he would have made them cute and furry.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

God, Cute

“… sometimes we enter art to hide within it. It is where we can go to save ourselves, where a third-person voice protects us.”

Michael Ondaatje book Divisadero

Source: Divisadero

Art, Personality

“We reap a reward merely in the act of helping others. We never know how, or if, that reward will come back to us. Helping is the reward; none other is needed nor better.”

Terry Goodkind (1948) American novelist

Help

“To use an electronics analogy, closing a book on a bookmark is like pressing the Stop button, whereas when you leave the book facedown, you've only pressed Pause.”

Anne Fadiman (1953) American essayist, journalist and magazine editor

Source: Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

Books

“Metaphor is one of a group of problem-solving medicines known as figures of speech which are normally used to treat literal thinking and other diseases.”

Grant Morrison book The Filth

Source: The Filth

Disease, Problem, Thinking

“Love might have expanded her. But we are not all of us going to get loved. We are not all of us going to get expanded.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Love

“Once you teach me something, it's mine to use.”

Terry Goodkind book Wizard's First Rule

Source: Wizard's First Rule

“people who matter in our lives stay with us, haunting our most ordinary moments. They’re with us in the grocery store, as we turn a corner, chat with a friend. They rise up through the pavement; we absorb them through our soles.”

Christina Baker Kline (1964) American writer

Source: Orphan Train

People

“God wants us to know we are saved, for saved people are dangerous people, willing to face off with the world, unafraid of the consequences since they know that, whatever happens, they will have eternal life.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Source: Max on Life: Answers and Insights to Your Most Important Questions

Life, God, People, World

“Inside each of us resides the truth, I began, the absolute truth. But sometimes the truth is hidden in a hall of mirrors. Sometimes we believe we are viewing the real thing, when in fact we are viewing a facsimile, a distortion.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Truth

“The light of a new day always chases the shadows of the night away, and shows us that the shape of our fears is only the ghost of our own minds.”

Terry Goodkind book Wizard's First Rule

Source: Wizard's First Rule

Fear, Light, Night

“She asked me what type of contraceptive I use.
Underwear. Keeping it on prevents pregnancy.”

Melina Marchetta book Looking for Alibrandi

Source: Looking for Alibrandi

“One should use common words to say uncommon things”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

“I gotta go to the bathroom," Emby mumbles.
"You should have thought of that before you left," says Hayden, putting on his best mother voice. "How many times do we have to tell you? Always use the potty before climbing into a shipping crate.”

Neal Shusterman book Unwind

Source: Unwind

Time

“We'd never get anything fixed to suit us if we waited for things to suit us before we started.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder book By the Shores of Silver Lake

Source: By the Shores of Silver Lake

Waiting

“It's just that none of us had the wit or talent to make them into songs. We made them into life, which much messier, and more time consuming, and leaves nothing for anybody to whistle.”

Nick Hornby book High Fidelity

Source: High Fidelity

Life, Time

“A lot of people never use their initiative because nobody told them to.”

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

Source: Wall and Piece (2007)

People

“We all make mistakes, some bigger than others, but none of us is perfect.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: One Hundred Names

Perfection

“The meeting was like a war council with donuts. Then again, back at Camp Half-Blood they used to have their most serious discussions around the Ping-Pong table in the rec room with crackers and Cheez Whiz, so Percy felt right at home.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

War, Home

“Everything that's innocent to us is crazy to them.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Garden of Eden

Source: The Garden of Eden

“I don't trust them but I'm learning to use them.”

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American poet, essayist and feminist

Source: Diving Into the Wreck

Learning

“We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Water

“You can curse the dead or pray for them, but don't expect them to do a thing for you. They're far too interested in watching us, to see what in heaven's name we will do next.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Dead

“Closer of lovely eyes to lovely dreams,
Lover of loneliness, and wandering,
Of upcast eye, and tender pondering!
Thee must I praise above all other glories
That smile us on to tell delightful stories.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Source: Bright Star: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne

Love, Smile, Dreams, Lovers

“The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them.”

Elizabeth Gilbert Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Source: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Universe

“… love is the sum of our choices, the strength of our commitments, the ties that bind us together.”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Source: Love the One You're With

Love

“[W]e only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

Miscellaneous

“You're a great brother. You give us a heart attack worrying about your heart attack, which you didn't even have the decency to have!”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

Heart

“We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls.”

Bill Bryson book Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe

Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe (1991)

“Drinking would shut down my seeing and my hearing and my feeling,' she used to say. 'Why would I want to be in the world if I couldn't touch the world with all of my senses intact?”

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

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

World, Feeling, Drink, Sense

“Five years of destruction and mayhem, lives lost everywhere, shortages of food and fuel and clothing - and the insane mind behind it just urges us all on and on to more destruction. And we all keep playing.”

Elizabeth Wein book Rose Under Fire

Source: Rose Under Fire

Food, Clothes

“Because reason… is the only thing that makes us men, and distinguishes us from the beasts, I would prefer to believe that it exists, in its entirety, in each of us…”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

Men

“As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.”

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

"The Will to Believe" p. 10 http://books.google.com/books?id=Moqh7ktHaJEC&pg=PA10 <br class="br">1890s, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)