Quotes about use
page 74

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Life, Soul, Star, Birth

“Definitely not—you optimists just can't understand that a depressed person doesn't want you to try and cheer them up. It makes us sick.”

Brandon Sanderson Elantris

Source: Elantris

Understanding, Personality

“If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.”

W.C. Fields (1880–1946) actor

Fools, Funny, Success

“To some of us, the nights are too long. To some, the days.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted

Source: Haunted

Night

“You used to be able to tell a person's nationality by the face. Immigration ended that. Next you discerned nationality via the footwear. Globalization ended that.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

Personality

“I write description in longhand because that's hardest for me and you're closer to the paper when you work by hand, but I use the typewriter for dialogue because people speak like a typewriter works.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

People

“If God wanted us to bend over he would put diamonds on the floor.”

Joan Rivers (1933–2014) American comedian, actress, and television host

„I'm Jewish. I don't work out.."

As quoted in Dick Enberg's Humorous Quotes for All Occasions (2000), p. 101
Variant: I'm Jewish. I don't work out. If God had wanted us to bend over, he would have put diamonds on the floor.

God

“We all make mistakes, Steele. It’s what we do afterward that defines us more than the actual incident that led to the mistake. (Joe)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Bad Attitude

“It is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even to killing.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Personality

“You hope Raphael survives this?" Luke said."Come on- how many people has he killed?
Magnus turned cold eyes on him. "Who among us has bloodless hands? What did you do, Lucian Graymark, to gain yourself a pack- two packs- of werewolves?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

People, Hope

“Our achievements may make us interesting, Tyler, but our darkness makes us lovable.”

Douglas Coupland book Shampoo Planet

Source: Shampoo Planet

“I wanted to cry but I didn't, I probably should have cried, I should have drowned us there in the room ending our suffering.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Suffering, Cry

“We had and incident. I took care of it."
"Really." Jace's voice dripped sarcasm. "Do you even know how to use that knife, Clarissa? Without poking a hole in yourself or any innocent bystanders?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

“This is our big chance to see what people think of us. The real us. We have to show em there's nothing to be afraid of. If we don't get over our fears, they never will.”

Lisi Harrison Monster High

Source: Monster High

People, Fear, Thinking, Chance

“He gives my hand a tight squeeze, but that desperation, that urgency between us is gone. No insecurities. Max and Fang. Fang and Max. No longer a question. We just are.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Question

“Love is the most dangerous craving of all, if you ask me. It turns us into people we aren't. It makes us feel like hell, and makes us walk on water. It ruins us for anything else.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

Love, People, Feeling, Hell

“A human being is like a television set with millions of channels…. We cannot let just one channel dominate us. We have the seed of everything in us, and we have to recover our own sovereignty.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

“God surpasses our dreams when we reach past our personal plans and agenda to grab the hand of Christ and walk the path he chose for us. He is obligated to keep us dissatisfied until we come to him and his plan for complete satisfaction.”

Beth Moore (1957) American evangelist

Source: Breaking Free: Discover the Victory of Total Surrender

God, Dreams, Past, Christ

“What man of us has never felt, walking through the twilight or writing down a date from his past, that he has lost something infinite?”

Jorge Luis Borges Dreamtigers

Source: Dreamtigers

Past

“The spirit who inhabits her animates us all. Destroy the host, you destroy the power. The young die first; the old wither slowly; the eldest perhaps would go last. But she is the Queen of the Damned, and the Damned can't live without her.”

Anne Rice book The Queen of the Damned

Source: The Queen of the Damned

Animals

“Used to be goddy Now uptown feeling shoddy Bah, haiku don’t rhyme”

Rick Riordan book The Hidden Oracle

Source: The Hidden Oracle

Feeling

“The only thing that separates us from the animals… is we have pornography.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

Animals

“All of us have a secret desire to be seen as saints, heroes, martyrs. We are afraid to be children, to be ourselves.”

Jean Vanier (1928–2019) Canadian humanitarian

Source: Community And Growth

Children, Secret

“Where does it all lead? What will become of us? These were our young questions, and young answers were revealed. It leads to each other. We become ourselves.”

Patti Smith Just Kids

Source: Just Kids

Question

“How different our lives are when we really know what is deeply important to us, and keeping that picture in mind, we manage ourselves each day to be and to do what really matters most.”

Stephen R. Covey (1932–2012) American educator, author, businessman and motivational speaker

“And the memories of all we have loved stay and come back to us in the evening of our life. They are not dead but sleep, and it is well to gather a treasure of them.”

Vincent Van Gogh book The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Source: The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Love, Life, Sleep, Memory

“I truly believed that the cost of success for us shouldn't be the cost of failure for a good friend.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Failure, Success

“It's remarkable how we go on year after year, doing the same old things. We get tired and bored, and ask when they'll come for us”

Yasunari Kawabata book The Sound of the Mountain

Source: The Sound of the Mountain

“the first quality of an honest man is contempt for religion, which would have us afraid of the most natural thing in the world, which is death; and would have us hate the one beautiful thing destiny has given us, which is life.”

Umberto Eco book The Island of the Day Before

Source: The Island of the Day Before

Life, Death, Hate, World

“Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Killing Rage: Ending Racism

World, Communication

“When the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large, scientific method in most cases fails us. One need only think of the weather, in which case prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible. Nevertheless no one doubts that we are confronted with a causal connection whose causal components are in the main known to us.
Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature.”

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

1940s, Science and Religion (1941)

Nature, Thinking, Weather

“At times God puts us through the discipline of darkness to teach us to heed Him. Song birds are taught to sing in the dark, and we are put into the shadow of God’s hand until we learn to hear Him.”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

Source: My Utmost for His Highest: Traditional Updated Edition

God, Bird, Learning, Singing

“We are like chameleons; we take our hue and the color of our moral character from those who are around us.”

John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher and physician

Attributed to Locke on various quotes sites and on social media, this quotation is a false rendering of "We are all a sort of chameleons, that still take a tincture from things near us: nor is it to be wondered at in children, who better understand what they see, than what they hear" from Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693).
Misattributed

Color

“I guess we often get the deep blues, both of us, and wonder what it all means- the people, the buildings, the day by day things, the waste of time, of ourselves.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

People, Time

“Because he has the best equipment in the City and he knows how to use it!”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds

“Grace changes us and change is painful".”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Pain, Change

“There’s no use in denying it: this has been a bad week. I’ve started drinking my own urine.”

Bret Easton Ellis book American Psycho

Source: American Psycho

Drink

“We clung to books and to our friends; they reminded us that we had another part to us.”

Annie Barrows book The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Books, Parting

“the psyche has been burned
and left us senseless,
the world has been darker than lights-out
in a closet full of hungry bats,
and the whiskey and wine entered our veins
when blood was too weak to carry on”

Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last

World, Light, Wine

“Temper us in fire, and we grow stronger. When we suffer, we survive.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Suffering

“Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.”

Zadie Smith book White Teeth

Source: White Teeth (2000)
Context: You hear girls in the toilets of clubs saying, 'Yeah, he fucked off and left me. He just couldn't deal with love. He was too fucked up to know how to love me.' Now how did that happen? What was it about this unlovable century that convinced us we were, despite everything, eminently lovable as a people, as a species? What made us think that anyone who fails to love us is damaged, lacking, malfunctioning in some way? And particularly if they replace us with a god, or a weeping madonna, or the face of Christ in a ciabatta roll—then we call them crazy. Deluded. Regressive. We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.

Love, Water, Time

“I had become, with the approach of night, once more aware of loneliness and time - those two companions without whom no journey can yield us anything.”

Lawrence Durrell (1912–1990) British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer

Source: Bitter Lemons of Cyprus

Time, Loneliness, Night

“Novels tell us the most truth about life: what it is, how we live it, what it might be for, how we enjoy and value it, and how we lose it.”

Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending

Source: The Sense of an Ending

Life, Truth

“Forgive my asking you to use your mind. It is a thing which no novelist should expect of his reader…”

Owen Wister (1860–1938) American writer

Source: The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains

Forgiveness

“Why do I and everyone I love pick people who treat us like we're nothing"; - "We accept the love we think we deserve”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Love, People, Thinking

“Everybody around us was weeping. Someone began to recite Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. I don't know whether, during the history of the Jewish people, men have ever before recited Kaddish for themselves.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Source: Night

Men, People, History, Dead

“You just don't know writers. They'll use anything, anybody. They'll eat their young.”

Dennis Potter (1935–1994) English television dramatist, screenwriter and journalist

Source: The Singing Detective

“All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to fingerprints.”

David Sedaris book Holidays on Ice

Source: Holidays on Ice

Pleasure

“I understood we used to be close. But they were like books i'd read two summer ago; I knew I'd liked them, but I couldn't tell you now what they'd been about.”

Sara Shepard The Lying Game

Source: The Lying Game

Books, Reading, Summer

“He felt a spasm of excitement because he knew instinctively who it was, or at least knew who it was he wanted it to be, and once you know what it is you want to be true, instinct is a very useful device for enabling you to know that it is.”

Douglas Adams book So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Source: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“You’re free to dream however you wish,” Nollin teased. “But don’t ask the rest of us to share your unrealistic—”
“Then don’t ask us to share your weakness!” Jason interrupted.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: Chasing the Prophecy

Dreams

“Having someone who looks like us but thinks like them is worse than having no one at all.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Thinking

“This may sound a little West Texan to you, but I like it. When I'm talking about.. when I'm talking about myself, and when he's talking about myself, all of us are talking about me.”

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

“Not kill us," Pigeon corrected. "She was mainly just trying to turn us into mindless slaves.”

Brandon Mull The Candy Shop War

Source: The Candy Shop War

“Now something so sad has hold of us that the breath leaves and we can't even cry.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

Sadness, Cry

“If the gods had intended for people to vote, they would have given us candidates.”

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian

God, People

“Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves”

Laura Esquivel book Like Water for Chocolate

Source: Like Water for Chocolate

Box

“Is it my birthday again? Already? Wherethe time go?"
"Behind us --or in front. It depends on which way you are looking.”

David Eddings book Belgarath the Sorcerer

Source: Belgarath the Sorcerer

Way, Birthday, Time, Dependency

“If we develop in-depth knowledge it will enable us to give our best to others and help to make a better world.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big (1996), p. 152
Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence
Context: THINK BIG means opening our horizons, reaching for new possibilities in our lives, being open to whatever God has in store for us on the road ahead.
T=TALENT : If you recognize your talents, use them appropriately, and choose a field that uses those talents, you will rise to the top of your field.
H=HONEST : If we live by the rule of honesty and accept our problems, we can go far down the road of achievement.
I=INSIGHT : If we observe and reflect and commit ourselves to giving our best, we will come out on top.
N=NICE : If we are nice to others, other respond to us in the same way, and we can give our best for each other.
K=KNOWLEDGE : If we make every attempt to increase our knowledge in order to use it for human go, it will make a difference in us and in our world.
B=BOOKS : If we commit ourselves to reading thus increasing our knowledge, only God limits how far we can go in this world.
I=IN-DEPTH LEARNING : If we develop in-depth knowledge, it will enable us to give our best to others and help to make a better world.
G=GOD : If we acknowledge our need for God, he will help us.

World, Knowledge, Help

“Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.”

Steven Pressfield book The War of Art

Source: The War of Art (2002), p. 13

Life, Courageous

“I thought she'd make some comment about the bloodthirsty gods chasing us, but when she finally found her voice, she said, "That boy kissed you!"
Leave it to Liz to have her priorities straight.”

Rick Riordan book The Throne of Fire

Source: The Throne of Fire

God, Boy, Kiss

“Hey, guys!" Grover yelled somewhere above us. "I think she's unconscious!"
"Roooaaarrr!"
"Maybe not," Grover corrected.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

Guy, Thinking

“Last year I went fishing with Salvador Dali. He was using a dotted line. He caught every other fish.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Fish

“just like a murderer jumps of nowhere in an ally, love jumped out in front of us and struck us both at once”

Mikhail Bulgakov book The Master and Margarita

Source: The Master and Margarita

Love

“I pulled him closer to me, wrapping my arms around him, kissing him just as desperately as he was kissing me. Like if we could just love long enough and hard enough and deep enough, then the world outside would never, could never hurt us.”

Malorie Blackman Noughts & Crosses

Source: Noughts & Crosses

Love, World, Kiss, Hurt

“Why would John bother using windows or doors like a normal person? Why would he bother to say hello? Just. Crunch. Bye.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Abandon

Personality

“Some of us have hearts, you know. Some of us don't give up on true love.”

Sophie Kinsella book Twenties Girl

Source: Twenties Girl

Love, Heart

“A whizzpopper!" cried the BFG, beaming at her. "Us giants is making whizzpoppers all the time! Whizzpopping is a sign of happiness. It is music in our ears! You surely is not telling me that a little whizzpopping if forbidden among human beans?”

Roald Dahl The BFG

Source: The BFG

Happiness, Music, Time

“Sociopaths have no regard whatsoever for the social contract, but they do know how to use it to their advantage. And all in all, I am sure that if the devil existed, he would want us to feel very sorry for him.”

Martha Stout (1953) American psychologist

Source: The Sociopath Next Door

Feeling

“I swear on the Angel.” He ducked his head down, kissed her cheek. “The hell with that.
I swear on us.”
Clary wound her fingers into the sleeve of his T-shirt. “Why us?”
“Because there isn’t anything I believe in more.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Angels, Hell, Kiss

“Let us now set forth one of the fundamental truths about marriage: the wife is in charge.”

Bill Cosby (1937) American actor, comedian, author, producer, musician, activist

Marriage, Truth

“If our brains were simple enough for us to understand them, we'd be so simple that we couldn't.”

Ian Stewart (1945) British mathematician and science fiction author

Source: The Collapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World

Understanding

“We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Men, Sleep, Night

“Listen to this, okay? Just listen. You hear that? That's market bacon hitting the pan. Today a child is born unto us, and his name will be bacon.”

Bryan Lee O'Malley (1979) Artist

Source: Scott Pilgrim, Volume 3: Scott Pilgrim & The Infinite Sadness

“Why does the mind do such things? Turn on us, rend us, dig the claws in. If you get hungry enough, they say, you start eating your own heart. Maybe it's much the same.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Heart

“We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

World

“If we are all alive ten years hence, let's meet, and see how many of us have got our wishes, or how much nearer we are then than now.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

“I used my history degree about twice a year whether I needed to or not.”

Patricia Briggs book River Marked

Source: River Marked

History

“I am so tired of waiting.
Aren’t you,
for the world to become good
and beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
and cut the world in two —
and see what worms are eating
at the rind.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

World, Beauty, Waiting

“… when we say we're looking for a spiritual adviser, we're really looking for someone to tell us what to do with our bodies. Decisions of the flesh. We forget to learn from pleasure as well as pain.”

Anne Michaels book Fugitive Pieces

Source: Fugitive Pieces

Pain, Pleasure, Decision, Learning

“What are you looking at, foreigner?” the guard demanded roughly. The smile was a little unsettling. A prisoner shouldn’t smile at his captors like that.
“I’m just making sure I can remember you,” Gilan told him. “Never know when that might be useful.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: Erak's Ransom

Smile

“Greg made us see, after an enormous amount of effort, that if a (sane) guy really likes you, there ain’t nothing that’s going to get in his way. And if he’s not sane, why would you want him?”

Liz Tuccillo book He's Just Not That into You

Source: He's Just Not That Into You

Way, Guy, Effort

“For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”

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

Business

“If you're going to kick authority in the teeth, you might as well use two feet.”

Keith Richards (1943) British rock musician, member of The Rolling Stones

Source: Keith Richards: In His Own Words

“Neither of us says the word love, not once. It would be tempting fate; it would be romance, bad luck.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Love, Fate, Bad luck

“All of sudden, this shooting star went by, and all I could think was that they were listening to us somehow.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Star, Thinking

“The days that make us happy make us wise.”

John Masefield (1878–1967) English poet and writer

Happiness

“WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE: RAPUNZEL
For horse thieving, kidnapping, jail breaking, and using her hair in a manner other than nature intended!
REWARD”

Shannon Hale (1974) American fantasy novelist

Source: Rapunzel's Revenge

Nature, Horse, Dead

“There is no choice more intensely personal, after all, than whom you choose to marry; that choice tells us, to a large extent, who you are.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Personality

“Maybe the truth is, there's a little bit of loser in all of us. Being happy isn't having everything in your life be perfect. Maybe it's about stringing together all the little things.”

Ann Brashares The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Source: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Life, Happiness, Truth, Perfection

“Conservatives say if you don't give the rich more money, they will lose their incentive to invest. As for the poor, they tell us they've lost all incentive because we've given them too much money.”

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

Money

“I had rescued the moment by using my camera and in that way had found how to stop time and hold it. No one could take that image away from me because I owned it.”

Alice Sebold book The Lovely Bones

Source: The Lovely Bones

Way, Time

“Hate is all that keeps us alive when love is gone. You’re almost there. Not quite ready to let it go yet.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Ever After

Love, Hate

“And so it turned out that only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness…”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

И вот оказалось, что только жизнь, похожая на жизнь окружающих и среди нее бесследно тонущая, есть жизнь настоящая, что счастье обособленное не есть счастье...
As quoted in The Reporter, Volume 19, 1958
Doctor Zhivago (1957)

Life, Happiness