Quotes about use
page 73

“Things get bad for all of us, almost continually, and what we do under the constant stress reveals who/what we are.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

“Our histories cling to us. We are shaped by where we come from.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977) Nigerian writer

History

“What I want is for both of us to feel safe. What you and I have together shouldn't be draining us like this. It should be the one rock-solid thing we both count on.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Reflected in You

Feeling

“I cannot have chaos erupting around me until I am prepared for it. I am a collector. I am an observer. I don't participate. My resources, and my standing, must be secure before I can allow the uncertainty of war to crash down upon us.”

Derek Landy Skulduggery Pleasant

Source: Skulduggery Pleasant

War

“Love is implicit in every connection. It should be. Thus when absent it makes us insane. (You Shall Know Our Velocity)”

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

Love

“God knows there certainly ought to be a window around here somewhere, for all of us.”

Richard Yates book Eleven Kinds of Loneliness

Source: Eleven Kinds of Loneliness

God

“The world? The world is not interested in us. Today, everything is possible, even the crematoria…”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Source: Night (1960)

World

“Stop being so fruitlessly busy and. Use your. Reach out into the unknown and dream of how you can enlarge your experience and improve your mind and your soul and your world.”

Mary Balogh (1944) Welsh-Canadian novelist

World, Dreams, Soul, Business

“you can’t use logic on human behavior.”

Jeff Lindsay book Dearly Devoted Dexter

Source: Dearly Devoted Dexter

Behavior

“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”

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

“The answer is that we don't choose our freaks, they choose us.”

Steve Almond (1966) American writer

Source: Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America

“I think I'd probably tell you that it's easier to desire and pursue the attention of tens of millions of total strangers than it is to accept the love and loyalty of the people closest to us.”

William Gibson book Idoru

Source: Idoru

Love, People, Thinking, Loyalty

“I'll use the knives for spreading
jam, and the gas to warm
my greying love.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

Love

“I know that grief, like regret, settles into our DNA and remains forever a part of us.”

Kristin Hannah book The Nightingale

Source: The Nightingale

Parting

“One does not kill oneself for love of a woman, but because love—any love—reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

Love

“What's that?" he asked, when I stood beside him again.

"Halos," I said with a grin. "For heavenly creatures like us."

"That might be a stretch.”

Richelle Mead Blood Promise

Source: Blood Promise

“We can't any of us do all we would like, but we can do our best for every case that comes to us, and that helps amazingly.”

Louisa May Alcott book An Old-Fashioned Girl

Source: An Old-Fashioned Girl

Help

“If we sip the wine, we find dreams coming upon us out of the imminent night”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Dreams, Wine, Night

“I no longer believe that we can keep silent. We never really do, mind you. In one way or another we articulate what has happened to us through the kind of people we become.”

Azar Nafisi (1955) Iranaian academic and writer

Source: Things I've Been Silent About: Memories

People, Way

“We must nurture and love, if life is to have any real meaning. But First we must find a way to survive against the things that prevent us from doing so.”

Terry Brooks (1944) American writer

Love, Life, Way

“Fear separates--makes us feel alone--disconnected--while love--love does just the opposite--it unites. {shadowland}”

Alyson Nöel (1965) writer

Love, Fear, Feeling

“Accounts are not quite settled between us," said she, with a passion that equaled my own. "I can love, and I can hate. You had your choice. You chose to spurn the first; now you must test the other.”

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

Love, Hate, Passion

“We were each other's rock. But did it make us each other's destiny?”

Rachel Hawthorne (1950) American author

Source: Full Moon

“We have not touched the stars,
nor are we forgiven, which brings us back
to the hero’s shoulders and the gentleness that comes,
not from the absence of violence, but despite
the abundance of it.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Source: Crush

Star

“It's funny whom we end up choosing to love and who ends up choosing to love us. It's rarely the people we think it should be.”

Robin Jones Gunn (1955) American writer

Source: Gardenias for Breakfast

Love, People, Thinking

“What do you feel? I’ve never been asked this question once. None of us has. We aren’t supposed to feel. We’re British.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

Feeling, Question

“She used to say she could taste sleep and that it was as delicious as a BLT on fresh French bread.”

Rebecca Wells book Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Source: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Sleep

“I could just remember how my father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Variant: ... the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.
Source: As I Lay Dying

Time, Dead

“Time comes to us softly, slowly. It sits beside us for a while. Then, long before we are ready, it moves on.”

Jacqueline Woodson (1963) American writer

Source: If You Come Softly

Time

“Vin: I don't know -- and it's all your fault, you know. I used to understand everything. Now it's all confused.

Kelsier: Yes, we've messed you up right properly.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Final Empire

Understanding

“You can't ever guess at life, at pain. All pain is real, and all pain is personal. It's the most personal thing we have. It eats each of us differently.”

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

Source: You Shall Know Our Velocity!

Life, Pain, Personality

“We have a saying in Tibet: If a problem can be solved there is no use worrying about it. If it can't be solved, worrying will do no good.”

Heinrich Harrer book Seven Years in Tibet

Source: Seven Years in Tibet

Problem

“wonder what day god created the egg' 'how should we know? we should not question. our stay on earth is not for long. let us rejoice and believe and give thanks'. 'eat a egg”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Source: The Sun Also Rises

God, Question

“Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.”

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

Life

“Advice! Nobody tells us how to be men. We just are." "That is probably why you make such a bad job of it.- Perrin and Egwene”

Robert Jordan book The Eye of the World

Source: The Eye of the World

Men

“Please use your liberty to promote ours.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Please Use Your Liberty to Promote Ours (1997)
Context: There are multinational business concerns which have no inhibitions about dealing with repressive regimes. Their justification for economic involvement in Burma is that their presence will actually assist the process of democratization. But investment that only goes to enrich an already wealthy elite bent on monopolizing both economic and political power cannot contribute toward égalité and justice — the foundation stones for a sound democracy.
I would therefore like to call upon those who have an interest in expanding their capacity for promoting intellectual freedom and humanitarian ideals to take a principled stand against companies that are doing business with the Burmese military regime. Please use your liberty to promote ours.

“Sometimes, it takes us a while to appreciate something new, something that might change us for the better.”

Rick Riordan book The Throne of Fire

Source: The Throne of Fire

Change

“God creates us free, free to be selfish, but He adds a mechanism that will penetrate our selfishness and wake us up to the presence of others in this world, and that mechanism is called suffering.”

William Nicholson movie Shadowlands

Source: Shadowlands

God, World, Suffering, Selfishness

“Nothing uses up alcohol faster than political argument.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

Source: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Alcohol

“If suffering like hers had any use, she reasoned, it was not to the sufferer. The only way that an individual's pain gained meaning was through its communication to others.”

Diane Wood Middlebrook (1939–2007) biographer

Source: Anne Sexton: A Biography

Pain, Way, Communication, Suffering

“A science which does not bring us nearer to God is worthless.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

God, Science

“Cicero smiled at us. 'The art of life is to deal with problems as they arise, rather than destory one's spirit by worrying about them too far in advance. Especially tonight.”

Robert Harris (1957) novelist

Source: Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome

Life, Smile, Art, Problem

“Our span of life is brief, but is long enough for us to live well and honestly.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Life

“Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work.”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

“Perhaps the most "spiritual" thing any of us can do is simply to look through our own eyes, see with eyes of wholeness, and act with integrity and kindness.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn (1944) American academic

Source: Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

“We're fine together, just like this: Our silence protects us from ourselves”

Yasmina Khadra (1955) Algerian writer

Source: The Attack

Silence

“Lies are neither bad nor good. Like a fire they can either keep you warm or burn you to death, depending on how they're used.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

Death, Dependency

“There will never be a good time, financially, to get married, unless you're Shaq or Ray Romano. But somehow people manage. If your man is using money as an excuse not to marry you, it's your relationship that's insecure, not his bank account.”

Greg Behrendt (1963) American comedian

Source: He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys

Money, People, Time

“Isn't this the truth of any good mother? That in all of our lives. We worry only about those we brought into this world, regardless of whether they loved us back or treated us fairly or understood our shortcomings.”

Adriana Trigiani (1970) American film director

Source: Big Cherry Holler

Love, Truth, World

“But yes. Come, faulty dragon people. Follow us.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

People

“All these years I've had a story in my mind, the story about us that never really existed. And because of that story, I've kept you framed up on the wall in a little box of nostalgic moonlight.”

Cathleen Schine (1953) American writer

Source: The Love Letter

Box

“Let us have integrity and not write checks with our tongues which our conduct cannot cash.”

Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) Mormon leader

“That's not a thing any of us are granted. To go back. Wipe away what later doesn't suit us and make it the way we wish it. You just go on”

Charles Frazier book Cold Mountain

Source: Cold Mountain

Way

“Religion is the great balm of existence because it takes us outside ourselves, connects us to something larger”

Robert Greene book The Art of Seduction

Source: The Art of Seduction

Religion

“The two most important phrases in the human language are "If only" and "Maybe someday". Our past mistakes and our unrequited longings. The things we regret and the things we yearn for. That's what makes us who we are.”

Will Ferguson (1964) Canadian writer, especially humor about Canada

Source: Happiness

Past

“God sees us with the eyes of a Father. He sees our defects, errors and blemishes. But He also sees our value.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

God, Error

“An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't. It's knowing where to go to find out what you need to know, and it's knowing how to use the information once you get it.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

The first two sentences of this statement first appear as attributed to France in the 1990s, but the full statement is earlier attributed to William Feather, as quoted in Telephony, Vol. 150 (1956), p. 23 http://books.google.com/books?id=Wm0jAQAAMAAJ&q=%22being+able+to+differentiate+between+what+you+do+know%22&dq=%22being+able+to+differentiate+between+what+you+do+know%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=qYJOU9dAzoXRAYumgcAP&ved=0CMsCEOgBMDQ <br class="br">Misattributed

Education, Memory

“To quote the Tsalagi, you should never allow your yesterday to use up too much of today. The past is gone and tomorrow is at best a maybe. Live for this moment because it may be all you'll ever have.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Retribution

Quotes, Past

“Think on it, Chani: the princess will have the name, yet she'll live as less than a concubine - never to know a moment of tenderness from the man to whom she's bound. While we, Chani, we who carry the name of concubine - history will call us wives.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

History, Thinking, Princess

“I'm going to love you so good and so long you're gonna be convinced no earthly thing could have brought us together”

Jessica Bird book Lover Unbound

Source: Lover Unbound

Love

“I'm not as reckless as I used to be. You know, when I was little.”

Scott Lynch The Lies of Locke Lamora

Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora

“I am your brother. I was supposed to be your brother before either of us was born. Karmic debt. It appears I was Vlad the Impaler or Genghis Khan in a past life.”

Rob Thurman (1950) American writer

Source: Blackout

Life, Appearance, Past

“Everything that happened in the past "It was all necessary to bring us to where we are.”

Anita Stansfield (1961) American writer

Past

“Memory is the sense of loss, and loss pulls us after it.”

Marilynne Robinson book Housekeeping

Source: Housekeeping

Sense, Memory, Loss

“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Thinking, Personality

“Too often they don't realize what they have until it's gone.
… they're too stubborn to say, 'Sorry, I was wrong'
they hurt the ones closest to their hearts,
and we let the most foolish things tear us apart”

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

Tear, Heart, Hurt

“If Romeo had never met Juliet, maybe they both would have still been alive, but what they would have been alive for is the question Shakespeare wants us to answer.”

Gary D. Schmidt book The Wednesday Wars

Source: The Wednesday Wars

Question

“Can't any of us stand up to those women?"

"Nope," said at least three men in unison.”

Robyn Carr American writer

Source: Shelter Mountain

Women, Men

“If theater is ritual, then dance is too… It's as if the threads connecting us to the rest of the world were washed clean of preconceptions and fears. When you dance, you can enjoy the luxury of being you.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Witch Of Portobello

World, Fear, Dance

“I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2001, I Can Hear You, the Rest of the World Hears You (September 2001)

People, World

“When someone dies, you don't get over it by forgetting; you get over it by remembering, and you are aware that no person is ever truly lost or gone once they have been in our life and loved us, as we have loved them.”

Leslie Marmon Silko (1948) American writer

Love, Life, Personality, Forgetting

“We talked death with burned-up intensity, both of us drawn to it like moths to an electric light bulb. Sucking on it!”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Source: Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters

Death, Light

“This, for many people, is what's most offensive about hunting—to some, disgusting: that it encourages, or allows, us not only to kill but to take a certain pleasure in killing”

Michael Pollan (1955) American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism

People, Pleasure

“Autumn teaches us that fruition is also death; that ripeness is a form of decay. The willows, having stood for so long near water, begin to rust. Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons.”

Gretel Ehrlich (1946) American writer

Source: The Solace of Open Spaces

Death, Autumn, Water, Season

“Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war.”

Loren Eiseley (1907–1977) US philosopher (1907-1977)

Source: The Unexpected Universe

War, Shoe, Time

“They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast (1964), Ch. 11

Life

“Every man finds his limitations, Mr. Holmes, but at least it cures us of the weakness of self-satisfaction.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

“Often we ask ourselves
to make absolute sense
out of what just happens,
and in this way, what we are practicing

is suffering,
which everybody practices,
but strangely few of us
grow graceful in.”

Tony Hoagland (1953–2018) American writer

Way, Sense, Suffering

“Words are worth little when the heart refuses to hear. Therefore, judge us by our works.”

Stephen R. Lawhead (1950) American writer

Heart

“I have a private theory, Sir, that there are no heroes and no monsters in this world. Only children should be allowed to use these words”

Alfred De Vigny book Stello

Source: Stello

Children, World

“Being a wizard gives you more power than most, but it doesn't change your heart. We're all human. We're all of us equally naked before the jaws of pain.”

Jim Butcher book White Night

Source: White Night

Pain, Change, Heart

“We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them -- a diminishing number in my case.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Diaries of Evelyn Waugh (1976) p. 786

“It's subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.”

Alan Bennett The History Boys

Source: The History Boys

Imagination, History, Mood

“My father used to say that it’s not enough to just beat an attacker off. You have to hurt them enough that they’ll know not to tangle with you anymore. Or preferably kill them. (Wren)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Unleash the Night

Hurt

“the history of melancholia
includes all of us.”

Charles Bukowski book Love Is a Dog from Hell

Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell

History

“Love - true love - is a precious thing. It is painful, uncomfortable, makes fools of us all, but it is what breathes meaning and color and purpose into our lives.”

Kate Mosse book Sepulchre

Source: Sepulchre

Love, Pain, Fools, Color

“If God only used perfect people, nohting would get done. God will use anybody if you're available.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

God, People, Perfection

“I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn’t park anywhere near the place.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“Everything comes home, my mother used to say; every word spoken, every shadow cast, every footprint in the sand. It can't be helped; it's part of what makes us who we are.”

Joanne Harris book The Lollipop Shoes

Source: The Lollipop Shoes

Home, Help, Parting

“I was raised around heterosexuals, as all heterosexuals are, that's where us gay people come from… you heterosexuals.”

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

People

“They hurt you. You hurt 'em back. Or maybe it is the other way around. Whatever. Someday you might find a way to forgive each other. But it won't be like it used to 'cause that pain never really goes away.”

Brian K. Vaughan (1976) American screenwriter, comic book creator

Source: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: No Future for You

Pain, Way, Forgiveness, Hurt

“How come when it’s us, it’s an abortion, and when it’s a chicken, it’s an omelette?”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

"Abortion"
Back in Town (1996)
Context: Here's another question I have. How come when it's us, it's an abortion, and when it's a chicken, it's an omelet? Are we so much better than chickens all of a sudden? When did this happen; that we passed chickens in goodness? Name six ways we're better than chickens... See, nobody can do it! You know why? 'Cause chickens are decent people. You don't see chickens hanging around in drug gangs, do you? No. You don't see a chicken strapping some guy to a chair and hooking up his nuts to a car battery, do you? When's the last chicken you heard about came home from work and beat the shit out of his hen, huh? Doesn't happen... 'cause chickens are decent people.

“The knowledge of the past stays with us. To let go is to
release the images and emotions, the grudges and fears, the
clingings and disappointments of the past that bind our
spirit.”

Jack Kornfield (1945) American writer

Fear, Disappointment, Knowledge, Past

“I like that Zarek. He quality people! He even gave me a can opener so I don’t have to use my fangs. I like that. Metal is hard on the teeth. Pork and beans popsicle. Yummy! My favorite! (Simi)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Dance with the Devil

Source: Dance with the Devil

People

“Fear is an instinct, like hunger or anger. We need it to help us survive, and it is nothing to be ashamed of. It lets us know whether we should fight or flee.”

David Clement-Davies book The Sight

Source: The Sight

Hunger, Fear, Help, Fight

“It is only the darkness in our own hearts that will defeat us, in the end.”

Alison Croggon book The Crow

Source: The Crow

Heart

“Some of us are born in the right place, and some of us have to go look for it.”

Chris Wooding book Poison

Source: Poison

“I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts.”

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

Letter to Michele Besso (8 October 1952). According to Scientifically speaking: a dictionary of quotations, Volume 1 (2002), p. 154 http://books.google.com/books?id=FFIBzawsfPEC&lpg=PR1&pg=PA154#v=onepage&q&f=false, the letter is reprinted on p. 487 of Correspondance 1903-1955 (1972) by Michele Besso. <br class="br">1950s

Thinking

“anyway. Leo said, I hope you've got your worksheet, 'cause I used mine for spit wads days ago. Why are you looking at me like that? Somebody draw on my face again?”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Hope, Drawing

“So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

Children, World, Light

Quotes about use page 73

Quotes about use
page 73