Quotes about use
page 64

“We are one of those couples i used to watch, thinking to myself that I'd never be on the inside of something so special. I remember reassuring myself that it probably looked nicer than it actually was, I am happy to be wrong about that.”

Emily Giffin Something Borrowed

Source: Something Borrowed

Happiness, Thinking

“One of the tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon - instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.”

Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American writer and lecturer

Dreams, Nature

“So many things you promise yourself you won't get used to, and then you do.”

Kamila Shamsie book Burnt Shadows

Source: Burnt Shadows

“There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one's self, the very meaning of one's soul.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

Life, Soul, Personality, Friendship

“God does not give us overcoming life; He gives us life as we overcome.”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

Source: My Utmost for His Highest: Traditional Updated Edition

Life, God

“Well, if I can't be happy, I can be useful, perhaps.”

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) American novelist

Happiness

“… it will always remain my private persuasion that Nature was absorbed in making cabbages when Mrs. Vesey was born, and that the good lady suffered the consequences of a vegetable preoccupation in the mind of the Mother of us all.”

Wilkie Collins book The Woman in White

Source: The Woman in White

Nature, Suffering

“God gives us the vision, then he takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of the vision, and it is in the valley that so many of us faint and give way. Every vision will be made real if we will have patience.”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

Source: My Utmost for His Highest: Traditional Updated Edition

God, Way, Patience

“The doctor says there are such boys springing up amongst us—boys of a sort unknown in the last generation—the outcome of new views of life. They seem to see all its terrors before they are old enough to have staying power to resist them. He says it is the beginning of the coming universal wish not to live.”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Jude the Obscure

Life, Spring, Boy, Universe

“Ah, Beloved. Of all the things I must bid farewell to, you are the most difficult to lose. Forgive me that I have avoided you. Better, perhaps, that we make a space between us and become accustomed to it before fate forces that upon us.”

Robin Hobb book Fool's Fate

Source: Fool's Fate

Fate, Forgiveness

“All the people like us are we, and everyone else is they.”

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

Other works
Variant: Father, Mother, and Me,
Sister and Auntie say
All the people like us are We,
And every one else is They.

People

“God save us always," I said, "from the innocent and the good.”

Graham Greene book The Quiet American

Pt. I, ch. 1, pg 15
Source: The Quiet American (1955)

God

“Knowledge is something which you can use.
Belief is something which uses you.”

Idries Shah book Reflections

Source: Reflections

Knowledge

“Such short little lives our pets have to spend with us, and they spend most of it waiting for us to come home each day.”

John Grogan (1958) American journalist

Source: Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog

Home, Waiting

“You've always been what you are. That's not new. What you'll get used to is knowing it.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“How does fear become so powerful? We can’t see it. We can’t touch it, yet it gets its claws in us and begins to control us. Sigh. I hate feeling afraid, and I hate, hate, HATE feeling out of control.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Oh My Goth

Hate, Fear, Feeling

“Faith is not Desire. Faith is Will. Desires are things that need to be satisfied, whereas Will is a force. Will changes the space around us,…”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Witch Of Portobello

Faith, Change

“I used to measure the heavens, now I measure the shadows of Earth.
Although my mind was heaven-bound, the shadow of my body lies here.”

Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer

Epitaph he composed for himself a few months before he died, as quoted in Calculusː Multivariable (2006) by Steven G. Krantz and Brian E. Blank. p. 126
Unsourced variant: I used to measure the Heavens, now I measure the shadows of Earth. The mind belonged to Heaven, the body's shadow lies here.

“Here at last
We shall be free;
the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Hell, Envy

“The wind always brings us back to the same wall”

Joanne Harris book Chocolat

Source: Chocolat

“My mama used to say, 'Are you sad? Then just wait a minute.”

Shannon Hale book Book of a Thousand Days

Source: Book of a Thousand Days

Sadness, Waiting

“Oh Lord please don't burn us don't kill or toast your flock. Don't put us on the barbecue or simmer us in stock. Don't bake or baste or boil us or stir-fry us in a wok.”

Graham Chapman (1941–1989) English comedian, writer and actor

“but I don't want to wear a condom because I don't feel anything," and she says calmly… glaring at me,"If you don't use one you're not going to feel anything anyway.”

Bret Easton Ellis book American Psycho

Source: American Psycho

Feeling

“This is peculiarly an age in which each of us may, if he do but search diligently, find the literature suited to his mental powers.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Something New

Source: Something New

Age, Search, Literature

“Time is given us to be happy and for no other reason […] When we waste time, we waste happiness.”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

Happiness, Time

“Ayame: "Yuki, let's deepen the bond between us brothers!"
Yuki: "Before you can do that I'll drown you in the deepest part of that lake."
Ayame: "As long as we spend time together."
Yuki: "On second thought, go drown yourself.”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Time, Parting

“What’s the world’s greatest lie?” the boy asked. “It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Fate, Lie, World, Boy

“When my father would yell at me, I told myself someday I'd use it in a book.”

Paula Danziger (1945–2004) American children's writer

Books

“Of all the things trauma takes away from us, the worst is our willingness, or even our ability, to be vulnerable. There's a reclaiming that has to happen.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: Rising Strong

“You want us to fly off to save the world on Happy The Dragon?”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Happiness, World, Flying

“There's a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won't supply them.”

Philip Pullman (1946) English author

Hunger, Books, Reading

“Mahoney: "Thirty-seven seconds. Great, well done; now we wait."

Mr. Magorium: "No, we breathe, we pulse, we regenerate. our hearts beat, our minds create, our souls ingest. Thirty-seven seconds well used is a lifetime.”

Suzanne Weyn book Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

Source: Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

Soul, Waiting, Heart

“We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
Source: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems
Context: I grow old … I grow old...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Girl, Sea

“Even when we lose an arm or a leg, there's not less of us but more. Human experience weighs more than human tissue.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Source: This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.

“You can't know what it is like for us now--you will always be one step behind.

Be thankful for that.

You can't know what it was like for us then--you will always be one step ahead.

Be thankful for that, too.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Two Boys Kissing

“Shame, isn’t it? That we only like our heroes out in the street when they are looking their best and their uniforms are ‘spit and polished,’ and not when they’re showing us the wounds they suffered on our behalf.”

Jacqueline Winspear Maisie Dobbs

Source: Maisie Dobbs

Suffering

“There are thirty-two ways to write a story, and I’ve used every one, but there is only one plot – things are not as they seem.”

Jim Thompson (1906–1977) American writer

Way

“Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Life, Literature

“President Wilson says a leader must treat public opinion the way a sailor deals with the wind, using it to blow the ship in one direction or another, but never trying to go directly against it.”

Ken Follett book Fall of Giants

Source: Fall of Giants

Way

“Did you know," he said slowly, "That Victor Dashkov is sitting on your bed?"
"Yeah," I said. "It was kind of a shock to us too.”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

“Enthusiats are used to being mocked, maligned and misunderstood. We don't really mind.”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

Source: The Fry Chronicles

“I used to believe in forever, but forever's too good to be true”

A.A. Milne book Winnie-the-Pooh

Source: Winnie-the-Pooh

“Go where we may, rest where we will,
Eternal London haunts us still.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

“down with hell and heaven and all the religious fuss
infinity pleased our parents
one inch looks good to us”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Hell, Parent

“We 're all yearning for a wedge of sky, aren 't we? I suspect God plants these yearnings in us so we'll at least try and change the course of things. We must try, that's all" - Lucretia Mott in The Invention of Wings
― Sue Monk Kidd”

Sue Monk Kidd (1948) Novelist

Source: The Invention of Wings

God, Change

“Music is everywhere. It’s in the air between us, waiting to be sung.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: How They Met, and Other Stories

Music, Waiting

“This is where you and I are headed…. Look for us in history books and you'll find us in the margins. Look for us in legends and you might just find us celebrated”

Scott Lynch (1978) American writer

Books, History

“Those in power must spend a lot of their time laughing at us.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

Time

“Did you know that childhood is the only time in our lives when insanity is not only permitted to us, but expected?”

Louis De Bernières (1954) English novelist

Source: Corelli's Mandolin

Time, Childhood

“The master says it’s a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it’s a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there’s anyone in the world who would like us to live.”

Frank McCourt book Angela's Ashes

Source: Angela's Ashes

World, Faith

“Life used to move much more quickly when I was a girl. We needed to abbreviate just to keep up.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: All These Things I've Done

Life, Girl

“Borges said there are only four stories to tell: a love story between two people, a love story between three people, the struggle for power and the voyage. All of us writers rewrite these same stories ad infinitum.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Love, People

“At New Year's he had given Anne a present of silver forks with handles of rock crystal. He hopes she will use them to eat with, not to stick in people.”

Hilary Mantel book Wolf Hall

Source: Wolf Hall

People, Hope

“A study in scarlet, eh? Why shouldn't we use a little art jargon? There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.”

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish physician and author

Source: Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volume I

Life, Art, Study

“I suddenly realized. The zebra. It is not something outside of us. The zebra is something inside of us. Our fears. Our own self-destructive nature. The zebra is the worst part of us when we are face-to-face with our worst times. The demon is us!”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Fear, Nature, Time, Parting

“Both of us victims of the same twentieth-century plague. Not the Black Death, this time; the Grey Life.”

Aldous Huxley book Island

Source: Island (1962)

Life, Death, Time

“So somehow the "isness" of our present nature is out of harmony with the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts us. And this simply means this: That within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good. When we come to see this, we take a different attitude toward individuals.”

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

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (November 1957)
Context: There is something within all of us that causes us to cry out with Ovid, the Latin poet, "I see and approve the better things of life, but the evil things I do." There is something within all of us that causes us to cry out with Plato that the human personality is like a charioteer with two headstrong horses, each wanting to go in different directions. There is something within each of us that causes us to cry out with Goethe, "There is enough stuff in me to make both a gentleman and a rogue." There is something within each of us that causes us to cry out with Apostle Paul, "I see and approve the better things of life, but the evil things I do." So somehow the "isness" of our present nature is out of harmony with the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts us. And this simply means this: That within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good. When we come to see this, we take a different attitude toward individuals. The person who hates you most has some good in him; even the nation that hates you most has some good in it; even the race that hates you most has some good in it. And when you come to the point that you look in the face of every man and see deep down within him what religion calls "the image of God," you begin to love him in spite of. No matter what he does, you see God’s image there. There is an element of goodness that he can never sluff off. Discover the element of good in your enemy. And as you seek to hate him, find the center of goodness and place your attention there and you will take a new attitude.

Nature, Evil

“I wanted to say goodbye to someone, and have someone say goodbye to me. The goodbyes we speak and the goodbyes we hear are the goodbyes that tell us we´re still alive.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: Wolves of the Calla

“We tend to use knowledge as therapy.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007), p. 69

Knowledge

“Let us keep courage and try to be patient and gentle. And let us not mind being eccentric, and make distinction between good and evil.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Courage, Evil

“Fear tries to get us to give up but faith takes us all the way through to victory”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Fear, Faith, Way, Victory

“Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful!”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

When asked how the world had changed following the September 11, 2001 attacks <br class="br"> Has the world changed? http://books.guardian.co.uk/writersreflections/story/0,1367,567546,00.html, The Guardian (October 11, 2001)

People, Faith, Religion, Confidence

“God save us from people who mean well.”

Vikram Seth A Suitable Boy

Source: A Suitable Boy

God, People

“We shall live even in this state of living death, we shall love, we shall feel, we shall defy all who would judge and destroy us.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

Love, Death, Feeling

“This is my driver,’ Nico said. ‘Jules-Albert finished first in the Paris–Rouen motorcar race back in 1895, but he wasn’t awarded the prize because his steam car used a stoker.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Cars

“It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English - up to fifty words used in correct context - no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.”

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

Learning

“The body is an instrument which only gives off music when it is used as a body.”

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

The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)
Context: The body is an instrument which only gives off music when it is used as a body. Always an orchestra, and just as music traverses walls, so sensuality traverses the body and reaches up to ecstasy.

Music

“I used to think I knew what was right and what was wrong, and who the good guys are, and who the bad guys are. Then the world got very gray, and I didn't know anything for a long time”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Incubus Dreams

Source: Incubus Dreams

World, Guy, Thinking, Time

“We all have such stories. It is a brutal arithmetic. But I - I am alive. You are alive. As long as we breathe, we can see and hear. As long as we can remember, all those gone before are alive inside us.”

Jane Yolen book The Devil's Arithmetic

Source: The Devil's Arithmetic

“I used to sleep with my books in piles all over my bed and sometimes they were the only thing keeping me warm and always the only thing keeping me alive. Books are the best and worst defense.”

Sherman Alexie book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Source: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Books, Sleep

“Eating next to a twenty-foot-long crocodile took some getting used to, but Philip was well trained. He only ate bacon, stray waterfowl, and the occasional invading monster.”

Rick Riordan book The Serpent's Shadow

Source: The Serpent's Shadow

Training

“We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations.”

John Banville The Sea

Source: The Sea

Dead

“love make us poets, and the approach of death should make us philosophers.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Love, Death

“We have three kinds of family
1. Those we are born to
2. Those who are born to us
3. And those we let into our hearts”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Variant: Simi? What was it you told me once about families?
We have three kinds of family. Those we are born to, those who are born to us, and those we let into our hearts.
Source: Bad Moon Rising

Family, Heart

“We are all flawed, my dear. Every one of us. And believe me, we've all made mistakes. You've just got to take a good hard look at yourself, change what needs to be changed, and move one, pet.”

Lauren Myracle book Let It Snow

Source: Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances

Change

“This is why dreams can be such dangerous things: they smolder on like a fire does, and sometimes they consume us completely.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Dreams

“Thus worshiping, serving, studying, praying, each in its own way squeezes selfishness out of us; pushes aside our preoccupations with the things of the world.”

Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) Mormon leader

World, Way, Study, Selfishness

“Promise me no promises,
So will I not promise you:
Keep we both our liberties,
Never false and never true:
Let us hold the die uncast,
Free to come as free to go:
For I cannot know your past,
And of mine what can you know?”

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) English poet

Past, Falseness

“If we want to keep the blessings of life coming to us, we must learn to be grateful for whatever is given.”

Harold Klemp (1942) American writer

Source: The Language of Soul: Keys to Living a More Meaningful Life

Life, Learning

“She remembered timidly standing atop the Luthadel city wall, afraid to use her Allomancy to jump off, despite Kelsier's coaxing. Now she could step off a cliff and muse thoughtfully to herself on the way down.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Hero of Ages

Way

“Memories of ice and Trent surfaced, and I wrapped my arms around my middle. I had saved him, and he had saved me. What was wrong with us?”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Black Magic Sanction

Memory

“The craft is finding a decent drainpipe to get access to the site as much as it is in the art… Van Gogh used short, stumpy brush strokes to convey his insanity - I use short, thin ledges above mainline train tracks.”

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

Evening Post, 2004 (taken from "Home Sweet Home - Banksy's Bristol" by Steve Wright)
Other sources
Source: Wall and Piece

Art, Training

“Us," Peter corrects. "I did it for us." He links our fingers together. "It's you and me, kid.”

Jenny Han book P.S. I Still Love You

Source: P.S. I Still Love You

“These young men and women, longing to socialize their democracy, are animated by certain hopes which may be thus loosely formulated; that if in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people themselves crave; that it is difficult to see how the notion of a higher civic life can be fostered save through common intercourse; that the blessings which we associate with a life of refinement and cultivation can be made universal and must be made universal if they are to be permanent; that the good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in mid-air, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.”

Jane Addams (1860–1935) pioneer settlement social worker

"The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements" http://www.infed.org/archives/e-texts/addams6.htm; this piece by Jane Addams was first published in 1892 and later appeared as chapter six of Twenty Years at Hull House (1910) <br class="br">Context: These young people accomplish little toward the solution of this social problem, and bear the brunt of being cultivated into unnourished, oversensitive lives. They have been shut off from the common labor by which they live which is a great source of moral and physical health. They feel a fatal want of harmony between their theory and their lives, a lack of coördination between thought and action. I think it is hard for us to realize how seriously many of them are taking to the notion of human brotherhood, how eagerly they long to give tangible expression to the democratic ideal. These young men and women, longing to socialize their democracy, are animated by certain hopes which may be thus loosely formulated; that if in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people themselves crave; that it is difficult to see how the notion of a higher civic life can be fostered save through common intercourse; that the blessings which we associate with a life of refinement and cultivation can be made universal and must be made universal if they are to be permanent; that the good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in mid-air, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.

Life, Women, Men, People

“I tried to shake some water off. "I got a message from Angel,"i said, scanning the tunnel."She says there's massive danger down here, something too big for us to fix or deal with."
"So of course you immediately came down.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Fang

Angels, Water

“Every movement reveals us.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Source: The Complete Essays

“My daddy used to tell me not to chew on something that was eatin you.”

Cormac McCarthy book All the Pretty Horses

Source: All the Pretty Horses

“The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them… Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Book I, Ch. 20
Attributed

Life, Dependency

“I think I speak for all of us when I say, "Huh?”

Frank Beddor book The Looking Glass Wars

Source: The Looking Glass Wars

Thinking

“I have always thought that a wild animal never looks so well as when some obstacle of pronounced durability is between us.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

The Keeper in the Zoological Gardens
Source: Dracula (1897)
Context: I have always thought that a wild animal never looks so well as when some obstacle of pronounced durability is between us. A personal experience has intensified rather than diminished that idea.

Animals