Quotes about use
page 63

“We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Thinking

“Imagine who she would be if we unleashed her onto the world. I think she would rip the breath from all of us.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Froi of the Exiles

World, Imagination, Thinking

“O Shepherd. You said you would make my feet like hinds' feet and set me upon High Places".

"Well", he answered "the only way to develop hinds' feet is to go by the paths which the hinds use.”

Hannah Hurnard book Hinds' Feet on High Places

Source: Hinds' Feet on High Places

Way

“Lists of books we re-read and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves”

Russell Banks (1940) American author

Books, Reading

“A little too abstract, a little too wise,
It is time for us to kiss the earth again,
It is time to let the leaves rain from the skies,
Let the rich life run to the roots again.”

Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet

Source: The Selected Poetry

Life, Kiss, Time

“An easy life doesn't teach us anything. In the end it's the learning that matters: what we've learned and how we've grown”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: One

Life, Learning

“Good sex isn’t just fun, it keeps us sane and happy. Having sex with someone makes us feel wanted, alive and potent”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Happiness, Sex, Feeling

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

Karen Joy Fowler (1950) American novelist, short story writer, editor

“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

Life, Happiness

“Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.”

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

1770s
Source: Letter to Abigail Adams (27 April 1777), published as Letter CXI in Letters of John Adams, Addressed to His Wife (1841) edited by Charles Francis Adams, p. 218

Pain, Hope, Freedom

“The Empress will follow where you go," she said.
"So she will," Mat said. "As I'll follow where she goes, I suppose. I hope that doesn't lead us in too many circles.”

Robert Jordan The Wheel of Time

Source: A Memory of Light

Hope

“Hold thy peace, dear little Pearl!" whispered her mother. "We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Scarlet Letter

Source: The Scarlet Letter

Peace

“Let us save what remains: not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to a Mr. Hazard (18 February 1791) published in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1853), Vol. 2, edited by Henry Augustine Washington, p. 211
1790s
Context: I learn with great satisfaction that you are about committing to the press the valuable historical and State papers you have been so long collecting. Time and accident are committing daily havoc on the originals deposited in our public offices. The late war has done the work of centuries in this business. The last cannot be recovered, but let us save what remains; not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.

Time

“Here is a list of fearful things:
The jaws of sharks, a vulture's wings,
The rabid bite of the dog's of war,
The voice of one who went before.
But most of all the mirror's gaze,
which counts us out our numbered days.”

Clive Barker Days of Magic, Nights of War

Abarat, Book One
Source: Days of Magic, Nights of War

War, Fear, Dogs

“Somehow the silence seemed to connect us in a way like words never could.”

Wendelin Van Draanen Flipped

Source: Flipped

Way, Silence

“It's a good thing to have all the props pulled out from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet, and what is sand.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Sense

“You could give us a hand instead of staring into space like a constipated camel," Terry Tarsal rudley broke into Marcia's spinning thoughts.”

Angie Sage book Queste

Source: Queste

“Funny how we think of romance as always involving two, when the romance of solitude can be ever so much more delicious and intense. Alone, the world offers itself freely to us. To be unmasked, it has no choice.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Source: Still Life with Woodpecker

World, Thinking, Solitude

“Meditation is the ultimate mobile device; you can use it anywhere, anytime, unobtrusively.”

Sharon Salzberg (1952) American writer

Source: Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation

“Of course they didn't give us this much, Sage. But I had to make sure I nailed my first assignment. Takes a lot of tries before you hit perfection." He paused to reconsider that. "Well, except for my parents. They got it on the first try.”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

Parent, Perfection

“We are not meant to know the time or the nature of our deaths (for all of us secretly hope that we may be immortal).”

John Connolly The Book of Lost Things

Source: The Book of Lost Things

Death, Hope, Nature, Time

“Nah. I got it. Just try not to stake Jean-Luc again if you meet up with him. (Acheron)
I can’t help it. All you fanged people look alike in the dark. (Tabitha)
Yeah. I know what you mean. All you soul-full people look alike to us, too. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Seize the Night

People, Soul, Help

“Sexually progressive cultures gave us mathematics, literature, philosophy, civilization and the rest, while sexually restrictive cultures gave us the Dark Ages and the Holocaust.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

"BOG VENUS VERSUS NAZI COCK-RING: Some Thoughts Concerning Pornography" in Arthur magazine, Vol. 1, No. 25 (November 2006) http://www.arthurmag.com/magpie/?p=1685 <br class="br">Source: 25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom <br class="br">Context: Sexually progressive cultures gave us mathematics, literature, philosophy, civilization and the rest, while sexually restrictive cultures gave us the Dark Ages and the Holocaust. Not that I’m trying to load my argument, of course.

Age, Literature, Mathematics

“The whole summer lay ahead of us-time to rest, time to wait. And when the future comes-no matter what comes with it-I'll be smarter. I'll be stronger. I'll be ready.”

Ally Carter Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy

Source: Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy

Time, Waiting, Future, Summer

“The wishes of our hearts are weapons that can be used against us.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Heart

“The trouble with most of us is that we'd rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.”

Norman Vincent Peale book The Power of Positive Thinking

Variant: The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism
Source: The Power of Positive Thinking

“Time just gets away from us.”

Charles Portis book True Grit

Source: True Grit (1968), Chapter 7, p. 215 : thoughts of 'Mattie Ross'

Time

“Is he nuts?"
"I think the expression used to be 'touched by God'."
"So that would be a yes.”

Jonathan Maberry book Rot & Ruin

Source: Rot & Ruin

God, Thinking

“Nobody looks good in their darkest hour. But it's those hours that make us what we are. We stand strong, or we cower. We emerge victorious, tempered by our trails, or fracture by a permanent, damning fault line.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Faefever

Strong, Victory

“So you want me to go to a human orgy, where I will not be welcome, and you want us to leave before I get to enjoy myself? ~Eric Northman”

Charlaine Harris book Living Dead in Dallas

Source: Living Dead in Dallas

“I don't think Harry cares about being forgiven," Poppy said glumly.
"Of course he does. Men love to be forgiven. It makes us feel better about our inability to learn from our mistakes.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Tempt Me at Twilight

Love, Men, Feeling, Thinking

“Change
is the one unavoidable,
irresistible,
ongoing reality of the universe.
To us,
that makes it the most powerful reality,
and just another word for
God.

Earthseed: The Books of the Living
Lauren Oya Olamina”

Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006) American science fiction writer

God, Books, Reality, Universe

“I learned that in each of us there burns a flame of independence that must never be allowed to go out. That as long as it exists within us we cannot be destroyed.”

Bryce Courtenay The Power of One

Source: The Power of One

Learning

“Each of us, face to face with other men, is clothed with some sort of dignity, but we know only too well all the unspeakable things that go on in the heart.”

Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) Italian dramatist, novelist, short story writer, and poet, Nobel Prize for Literature laureate

Source: Six Characters in Search of an Author and Other Plays

Men, Heart, Clothes

“It is only because he became like us that we can become like him.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer book The Cost of Discipleship

Source: The Cost of Discipleship

“We are who we are, because of those we choose to love and because of those who love us.”

Kate Mosse book The Winter Ghosts

Variant: And I shall set this last truth down. We are who we are because of those we choose to love and because of those who love us.
Source: The Winter Ghosts

Love

“There was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

“Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.”

Clive Barker Days of Magic, Nights of War

Source: Days of Magic, Nights of War

Happiness, Beauty, Fools, Heart

“He wasn't surprised. He was used to this anticlimactic feeling, where by the time you've done all the work to get something you don't even want it anymore.”

Lev Grossman The Magicians

Source: The Magicians

Feeling, Time

“What will happen to us?" I asked. "There will always be us," he answered.”

Patti Smith Just Kids

Source: Just Kids

“The purpose of the poetry is not to dazzle us with an astonishing thought, but to make one moment of existence unforgettable and worthy of unbearable nostalgia.”

Milan Kundera book Immortality

Source: Immortality

Nostalgia

“We come from people who brought us up to believe that life is a struggle, and if you should feel really happy, be patient: this will pass.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

Life, Happiness, People, Feeling

“But… what about us? What about the past?" she asks blankly.
"The past isn't real. it's just a dream," I say. "Don't mention the past.”

Bret Easton Ellis book American Psycho

Source: American Psycho

Dreams, Past

“I no longer drink nearly as much as I used to but, still, my motto is Sine coffea nihil sum. Without coffee, I'm nothing.”

Sarah Vowell (1969) American author, journalist, essayist and social commentator

Coffee, Drink

“In the end, it is our defiance that redeems us. If wolves had a religion – if there was a religion of the wolf – that it is what it would tell us.”

Mark Rowlands (1962) British philosopher

Source: The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death, and Happiness

Religion, Wolf

“Well, I hope you like it here, Leo. It used to be……. really nice.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Hope

“There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

“Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes?”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Episode 1, Chapter 12
The Power of Myth (1988)
Context: This is the threat to our lives. We all face it. We all operate in our society in relation to a system. Now is the system going to eat you up and relieve you of your humanity or are you going to be able to use the system to human purposes? … If the person doesn't listen to the demands of his own spiritual and heart life and insists on a certain program, you're going to have a schizophrenic crack-up. The person has put himself off center. He has aligned himself with a programmatic life and it's not the one the body's interested in at all. And the world's full of people who have stopped listening to themselves.

“To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from.”

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

“You can use a spear for a walking stick, but it will not change its nature.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Variant: He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.
Source: The Song of Achilles

Nature, Change

“This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before…The fortune of my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of spirit.”

Ayn Rand book Anthem

Source: Anthem (1937)

“Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary

Hope, Travel, Change

“It’s an odd thing, happiness. Some people take happiness from gold. Or black pearls. And some of us, far more fortunate, take their happiness from periwinkles.”

Patricia A. McKillip book The Changeling Sea

Source: The Changeling Sea

Happiness, People

“I shook my head no. For minutes, neither of us spoke a word. It breathed between us, what he had said, the pain of a life suppressed, of happiness never to be.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

Life, Pain, Happiness

“And she tricked us into taking walkie-talkie rings she could listen in on,” Simon said. “I wouldn’t trust her further than I could throw a medium-sized elephant.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

“You will find a way to live without me. You will find a way to live for both of us,' Alexander said to Tatiana as the swelling Kama River flowed from the Ural Mountains through a pine village named Lazarevo, once when they were in love, and young.”

Paullina Simons book The Bronze Horseman

Source: The Bronze Horseman

Love, Way, Mountain

“We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we've lived through, or feel we've had enough time.”

Kazuo Ishiguro book Never Let Me Go

Source: Never Let Me Go

Feeling, Understanding, Time

“Gaining superpowers doesn't mean you know how to use them.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

“There had been times when he knew, somewhere in him, that he would get used to it, whatever it was, because he had learnt that some hard things became softer after a very little while.”

Nick Hornby About a Boy

Source: About a Boy (1998), Ch. 3

Time

“We cannot solve the problems using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

"Einstein's famous saying in Copenhagen", as quoted in a FBIS Daily Report https://books.google.de/books?id=DfQTAQAAMAAJ&q=%22We+cannot+solve%22: East Europe (4 April 1995), p. 45 <br class="br">Disputed

Problem, Thinking

“Dreams: the place most of us get what we need.”

Amy Hempel (1951) Short story writer

Source: The Collected Stories

Dreams

“I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

Pleasure, Feeling, Change, Childhood

“You look too pretty to be useful.”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Variant: You look too pretty to be useful."

"Truer words were never spoken.
Source: Bloodlines

“The will of God will not take us where the grace of God cannot sustain us.”

Billy Graham (1918–2018) American Christian evangelist

God

“All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Peace, Justice

“You should be home sleeping. What is the use of having a man in the house, if he cannot take care of you for a while?”
“Mmm,” I said. “I give up. What's the use of having a man in the house?”

Patricia Briggs book Blood Bound

Source: Blood Bound

Home, Sleep, Housing

“Courage is very important. Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use.”

Ruth Gordon (1896–1985) American playwright and actress

Courage, Courageous

“When most of us talk to our dogs, we tend to forget that they're not people.”

Julia Glass (1956) Novelist, journalist, editor

People, Dogs, Forgetting

“I parked in front of the Field Museum under a NO PARKING sign. There were a couple of actual spots I could have used, but the drive was even closer. Besides, I found it aesthetically satisfying to defy municipal code.”

Jim Butcher Dead Beat

Source: Dead Beat

“Max, if you survive your final test, can you steal me one of those magic outfits for me?"
I'll try to get one for each of us. Hey! 'If'?”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

“It's a strange truth that no matter how persuaded we might be of our own correctness, the discomfiting realization that others disagree with us causes a paralyzing inability to argue the case convincingly.”

Brittney Ryan

Source: The Legend of Holly Claus

Truth

“Can we go back to using Facebook for what it was originally for - looking up exes to see how fat they got?”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

“God is the same, even though He has a thousand names; it is up to us to select a name for Him.”

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

Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

God

“The Book had in a high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the best effect of any book.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Bk. I, ch. 4.
1830s, Sartor Resartus (1833–1834)

Books

“Mercy will get you killed, but sometimes it's all that makes us human.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Burnt Offerings

Source: Burnt Offerings

“The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!”

Larry Niven (1938) American writer

As quoted by Arthur C. Clarke in "Meeting of the Minds : Buzz Aldrin Visits Arthur C. Clarke" by Andrew Chaikin (27 February 2001) http://web.archive.org/web/20010302082528/http://www.space.com/peopleinterviews/aldrin_clarke_010227.html

“Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

For Mother

“Do you know what I feel about you, Devin? About us?… Dazzled, you dazzle me. You make me feel things, and want things I never knew I could have. -Cassie”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: The Heart of Devin MacKade

Feeling

“We never cease wanting what we want, whether it's good for us or not.”

Stephen King book Full Dark, No Stars

Source: Full Dark, No Stars

“Life is available only in the present. That is why we should walk in such a way that every step can bring us to the here and the now.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart

Life, Way

“The beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added after a moment’s silence, "Perhaps more so.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Beauty, Silence

“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Way, Star, Universe

“Allowing someone else to make us happy will make them happy too.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

Happiness

“Memory is the only afterlife I have ever believed in. But the forgetting inside us cannot be stopped. We are programmed to betray.”

Michael Ignatieff book Scar Tissue

Source: Scar Tissue

Memory, Forgetting

“Most of us all walk around as if we're sleepwalking. We really don't experience the world fully, because we're half-asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

World, Thinking

“But really, the term “forgive and forget” doesn’t make sense to me. Forgiving does allow us to stop dwelling on an issue, which isn’t always healthy. But if we forget, we don’t learn from our mistakes. And that can be deadly.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Abandon

Forgiveness, Sense, Learning, Forgetting

“I’ve learned that waiting is the most difficult bit, and I want to get used to the feeling, knowing that you’re with me, even when you’re not by my side.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

Feeling, Learning, Waiting

“I suppose that each of us may have a great moment in our life, a month, a week a year, when we are most fully what we are meant to be”

Sebastian Faulks (1953) British journalist and novelist

Life

“Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves. It is a daily practice… No one can prevent you from being aware of each step you take or each breath in and breath out.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

Freedom

“He loves each one of us like there is only one of us to love

(when God whisper your name)”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Love, God

“That’s us,” he said. “Those five nuts right there.”
Which one is me?” I asked.
The little deformed one,” Zoe suggested.
Oh, shut up.”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Variant: That's us," he said. "Those five nuts right there."

"Which one is me?" I asked.

"The little deformed one," Zoe suggested.

"Oh, shut up.
Source: The Titan's Curse

“The opportunity to love a dog and to treat it with kindness is an opportunity for a lost and selfish heart to be redeemed. They are powerless and innocent, and it is how we treat the humblest among us that surely determines the fate of our souls”

Dean Koontz book The Darkest Evening of the Year

Source: The Darkest Evening of the Year

Love, Fate, Dogs, Soul