Quotes about year

A collection of quotes on the topic of year, time, timing, doing.

Quotes about year

“For the reader, perhaps, this situation will be sadly familiar: witnessing, discovering in these lines, how in a matter of years, what was an eternal oath, had become something so fragile, so disposable, so insignificant.”

José Baroja book El curioso caso de la sombra que murió como un recuerdo y otros cuentos

“Waking up, at forty years old, had become somewhat difficult, not only that morning, but since he was thirty.”

José Baroja book Un hijo de perra y otros cuentos

“It's been years, months, days, but he still can't get out of his mind those horrible, inhuman images, monstrous creations of subjects who look the same as everyone else; equal to him.”

José Baroja book Un hijo de perra y otros cuentos

“Already in his old age, at seventy-five years old, after being seriously hospitalized for a severe heart attack, Javier Pérez would remember that only once in his entire existence had he believed he understood what life was.”

José Baroja book Sueño en Guadalajara y otros cuentos

Life, Heart, Age

“When I'm 80 years old and sitting on my rocking chair, I'll be reading Harry Potter. And my family will ask me: «After all this time?» and I'll say: «Always».”

Alan Rickman (1946–2016) English film, television and stage actor

Family, Time, Reading

“The Tenczyn castle dates from the 14th century and it was built as a defensive edifice by Andrzej Toporczyk who after some time took the name of Tenczyński - after the name of the place. For many years the castle was a source of power of the family who played an important part in the politics of old Poland.”

Marek Żukow-Karczewski (1961) Polish historian, journalist and opinion journalist

Tenczyn - a "Bastille"-type castle of the Tenczyński family, "Aura" 2, 1990-02, p. 19-21. http://yadda.icm.edu.pl/yadda/element/bwmeta1.element.agro-7ab5a4ef-bee9-490b-8838-4917699dfedc?q=d88195b-abee-4385-bd61-43f313e62483$6&qt=IN_PAGE

Family, Time, Parting

“For several years we have witnessed climatic irregularities that prompt fear and anxiety about the conditions of our future existence. However, the climatic anomalies occurred also in the past when the blame for environmental destruction could hardly be put on humans.”

Marek Żukow-Karczewski (1961) Polish historian, journalist and opinion journalist

Weather anomalies in Poland's past, "Aura" 7, 1990-07, p. 6-8. http://yadda.icm.edu.pl/yadda/element/bwmeta1.element.agro-545c16f1-b48e-46e2-a0d2-6a4babeeeea0?q=89e2d267-8e35-4c74-b570-25a195714d27$8&qt=IN_PAGE

Fear, Past, Future

“Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Happy, Birthday, Wise, Life

“What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway!”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

Happy

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Variant: When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.

Inspirational, Motivational, Deep, Happy

“In my mind, I'm always the best. I don't care what people think, what they say. In my mind, not just this year but always, I'm always the best.”

Cristiano Ronaldo (1985) Portuguese association football player

[BBC Sport, Cristiano Ronaldo: I'm the best player in the world, 5 November 2015, 4 February 2018, http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/34737914]
In an interview with the BBC ahead of the release of Ronaldo.

People, Thinking

“I didn’t grow up in a man’s man world. I grew up with my mum and my sister. But I definitely think in the last two years, I’ve become a lot more content with who I am. I think there’s so much masculinity in being vulnerable and allowing yourself to be feminine, and I’m very comfortable with that. Growing up you don’t even know what those things mean. You have this idea of what being masculine is and as you grow up and experience more of the world, you become more comfortable with who you are. Today it’s easier to embrace masculinity in so many different things. I definitely find – through music, writing, talking with friends and being open – that some of the times when I feel most confident is when I’m allowing myself to be vulnerable. It’s something that I definitely try and do.”

Harry Styles (1994) English singer, songwriter, and actor

In conversation with Timothée Chalamet for i-D Magazine (2 November 2018) https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/evwwma/harry-styles-interviews-timothee-chalamet-photos

Confidence, Time, Music, Self-confidence

“Percy smiled at her - that sarcastic troublemaker smile that had annoyed her for years but eventually had become endearing. His sea-green eyes were as gorgeous as she remembered. His dark hair was swept to one side, like he'd just come from a walk on the beach. He looked even better than he had six months ago - tanner and taller, leaner and more muscular.

Percy threw his arms around her. They kissed and for a moment nothing else mattered. An asteroid could have hit the planet and wiped out all life, and Annabeth wouldn't have cared.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Life, Smile, Kiss, Sea

“I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.”

Rosa Parks (1913–2005) African-American civil rights activist

Quiet Strength (2000)

Inspirational, Wise, For women, Deep

“I don't understand how people can stand next to you one year, and next year, they cannot. They're going crazy, screaming. They can't take it that you're there. But last year I was in the same club, walking around, lonely. Couldn't get a date or a dance. I was too skinny, too something, and now, "He's just adorable. He's just, oh!”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Source: Resurrection, 1971-1996

Understanding, People, Dance

“Make sure that you are next year's big success story. Don't fall into the pit of people who have given up on making something of themselves, and make sure you make everything out of yourself. I'm getting too old for this. And when I retire someday, I'm going to want to sit down at a computer and play your games, read your stories, and watch your videos. Don't fall in with the people who have already given up on themselves. You are tomorrow's next big thing.”

Scott Cawthon (1971) American independent video game designer

People, Game, Reading, Success

“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Quoted in: Peter Erskine, ‎Rick Mattingly (1998), Drum Perspective, p. 73.
Alternative forms:
"At eight, I was Raphael", he used to say. "It took me a whole lifetime to paint like a child"
From Picasso, my grandfather, Marina Picasso (2001).
Attributed from posthumous publications

Painting

“Men characterize pornography as something mental because their minds, their thoughts, their dreams, their fantasies, are more real to them than women's bodies or lives; in fact, men have used their social power to characterize a $10-billion-a-year trade in women as fantasy.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Pornography, Men Possessing Women (1979)

Women, Men, Dreams

“Life is short, but the years are long.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Methuselah's Children

Part of the secret "call and response" codewords by which members of the long-lived Howard Families can identify others:
: Life is short.
But the years are long.
Not while the evil days come not.
Methuselah's Children (1958)

Mother's Day, Life

“It took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success.”

Lionel Messi (1987) Argentine association football player

Powerful, Success

“When kids hit 1 year old, it's like hanging out with a miniature drunk. You have to hold onto them. They bump into things. They laugh and cry. They urinate. They vomit.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Cry

“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”

Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People

Variant: You can make more friends in two months by being interested in them, than in two years by making them interested in you.
Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), p. 52 (in 1998 edition)

Deep, Success, Friendship, Relationship

“I knew I was different. I thought that I might be gay or something because I couldn't identify with any of the guys at all. None of them liked art or music, they just wanted to fight and get laid. It was many years ago but it gave me this real hatred for the average American macho male.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

As quoted in Melody Maker (1991-09-14).
Interviews (1989-1994), Print

Art, Music, Guy, Fight

“You could spend your whole life imagining ghosts, worrying about the pathway to the future but all there will ever be is what's happening here and the decisions we make in this moments which are based in either love or fear. So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality. What we really want seems impossibly out of reach and ridiculous to expect so we never dared the universe for it. I'm saying I'm the proof that you can ask the universe for it. My father could have been a great comedian, but he didn't believe that that was possible for him and so he made a conservative choice instead, he got a safe job as an accountant and when I was 12 years old he was let go from that safe job and our family had to do whatever we could do to survive. I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you could fail at what you don't want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.”

Jim Carrey (1962) Canadian-American actor, comedian, and producer

Love, Life, Fear, Family

“The past year and a half has been really transitional for me, just personally, as well as transitioning into becoming a woman.”

Selena Gomez (1992) American singer and actress

Past, Personality

“Books should be closed each year, especially in partnership because frequent accounting makes for long friendship.”

Luca Pacioli book Summa de arithmetica

Summa de arithmetica, geometria. Proportioni et proportionalita (Venice 1494)

Friendship, Books, Partnership

“The Rock: I am married to savannah mullins; I need to take this moment, and I need to tell you something as Dwayne. It's been a long time since I've been back. Seven years to be exact; but I want to take this moment, in the middle of this ring, to tell you why I'm back. It's not because of the money. It's not to promote a movie. I am back in the middle of this ring because of you. When I left - when I left the WWE seven years ago I dreamed big, and you guys dreamed big with me. You helped me accomplish my goals - accomplish my dreams - because you never. left. my side; and I wanna take this moment to tell you all here - you're live here - millions watching around the world. I wanna tell you thank you. I love you, and it is because of you that I am back in this ring, and it is because of you - and I give you my word - I am never ever going away. Simply put, ladies and gentlemen, The Rock is back!”

Dwayne Johnson (1972) American actor and professional wrestler

The Rock's return to WWE Raw as host of WrestleMania XXVII (14 February, 2011) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8ejiG5-BtA&feature=related.

Love, Money, World, Dreams

“I win because I learned years ago that scared money always loses. I never care, so I win.”

Hedy Lamarr (1914–2000) Austrian-American actress and co-inventor of an early technique for spread spectrum communications and freq…

Popcorn in Paradise (1980)

Money, Learning

“It's dangerous & humiliating. The whalers killed whales while green peace watched. Now, you don't walk by a child that is being abused, you don't walk by a kitten that is being kicked to death and do nothing. So I find it abhorrent to sit there and watch a whale being slaughtered and do nothing but "bear witness" as they call it. I think it was best illustrated a few years ago, the contradictions that we have, when a ranger in Zimbabwe shot and killed a poacher that was about to kill a black rhinoceros and uh human rights groups around the world said "how dare you? Take a human life to protect an animal". I think the rangers' answer to that really illustrated a hypocrisy. He said "Ya know, if I lived in, If I was a police officer in Herrari and a man ran out of Bark Place Bank with a bag of money and I shot him in the head in front of everybody and killed him, you'd pin a medal on me and call me a national hero. Why is that bag of paper more valued than the future heritage of this nation?" This is our values. WE fight, WE kill, WE risk our lives for things we believe in… Imagine going into Mecca, walk up to the black stone and spit on it. See how far you get. You’re not going to get very far. You’re going to be torn to pieces. Walk into Jerusalem, walk up to that wailing wall with a pick axe, start whacking away. See how far you’re going to get, somebody is going to put a bullet in your back. And everybody will say you deserved it. Walk into the Vatican with a hammer, start smashing a few statues. See how far you’re going to get. Not very far. But each and every day, ya know, people go into the most beautiful, most profoundly sacred cathedrals of this planet, the rainforests of the Amazonia, the redwood forests of California, the rainforests of Indonesia, and totally desecrate & destroy these cathedrals with bulldozers, chainsaws and how do we respond to that? Oh, we write a few letters and protest; we dress up in animal costumes with picket signs and jump up and down; but if the rainforests of Amazonia and redwoods of California, were as, or had as much value to us as a chunk of old meteorite in Mecca, a decrepit old wall in Jerusalem or a piece of old marble in the Vatican, we would literally rip those pieces limb from limb for the act of blasphemy that we’re committing but we won’t do that because nature is an abstraction, wilderness is an abstraction. It has no value in our anthropocentric world where the only thing we value is that which is created by humans.”

Paul Watson (1950) Canadian environmental activist

Life, Death, Money, People

“I studied Italian five hours a day for many months to ensure I could communicate with the players, media and fans. [Claudio] Ranieri had been in England for five years and still struggled to say ‘good morning’ and ‘good afternoon.”

José Mourinho (1963) Portuguese association football player and manager

http://www.goal.com/en/news/1716/champions-league/2009/02/23/1122426/italy-v-england-10-classic-jose-mourinho-quotes Chelsea FC

Communication, Study

“Youth is something very new: Twenty years ago no one mentioned it.”

Coco Chanel (1883–1971) French fashion designer

As quoted in Coco Chanel : Her Life, Her Secrets (1971)

Youth

“I'm very happy, very delighted.... for I am surrounded here by all that I love. I spent my time out of doors.... and naturally I'm working all the time, and I think this year I'm going to do some serious things. And then in the evening, dear fellow, I come home to my little cottage to find a good fire and a dear little family... Dear friend, it's a delight to watch this person [his first son Jean, born in 1867] grow, and I am glad to have him to be sure…”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in a letter to Frédéric Bazille: as cited by K.E. Sullivan. Monet: Discovering Art, Brockhampton press, London (2004), p. 22
1850 - 1870

Love, Family, Home, Nature

“I can’t believe how fast 20 years went by. I mean, this is crazy… To be standing here, standing on the court with my teammates behind me, and appreciate this journey that we’ve been along… I grew up a die heart—I mean it—a die heart Laker fan. Die heart. I mean, I knew everything about every players’ that had played here. So, to be drafted, and then traded to this organization, and to spend 20 years here, I mean, you can’t write something better than this… The thing that had me crackin’ me up all night long was, in fact, I go though 20 years of everybody screaming, ‘pass the ball!’ and I was like, ‘No passing!’ (laugh)… (I also have to thank) my family: my wife, Vanessa, my daughters, Natalia and Gianna. Thank you guys for your sacrifice… What can I say? Mamba Out!”

Kobe Bryant (1978–2020) American basketball player

A speech after Bryant's last game, 13 April 2016, posted on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg0mxPXIpLY&t=5s.

Family, Night, Daughters, Heart

“they say that time heals all things,
they say you can always forget;
but the smiles and the tears across the years
they twist my heart strings yet!”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Smile, Tear, Time, Heart

“If someone were to harm my family or a friend or somebody I love, I would eat them. I might end up in jail for 500 years, but I would eat them.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Love, Family

“It's okay,” he said. “We're together.” He didn't say, or. After all they'd been through over the last year, he knew that the most important thing was that they were together. She loved him for saying that.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Love

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940) American writer

Source: P.S. I Love You

Courageous, Success, Life, Dreams

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Men, Children, Freedom

“Watch a man at play for an hour and you can learn more about him than in talking to him for a year.”

Plato (-427–-347 BC) Classical Greek philosopher

Attributed to Plato in Confidence : How to Succeed at Being Yourself (1987) by Alan Loy McGinnis, this is probably a paraphrase of a statement which occurs in Letter of Advice to a Young Gentleman Leaving the University Concerning His Behaviour and Conversation in the World (1907) by Richard Lindgard: "Take heed of playing often or deep at Dice and Games of Chance, for that is more chargeable than the seven deadly sins; yet you may allow yourself a certain easie Sum to spend at Play, to gratifie Friends, and pass over the Winter Nights, and that will make you indifferent for the Event. If you would read a man’s Disposition, see him Game; you will then learn more of him in one hour, than in seven Years Conversation, and little Wagers will try him as soon as great Stakes, for then he is off his Guard." Variants: You can learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. Attributed to Plato in Food Is the Frosting-Company Is the Cake (2007) by Maggie Marshall You learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. Attributed to Plato by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, as quoted in "Aspiring philosopher Palin quotes 'Plato'" (9 July 2009) http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/09/palin-plato/ Misattributed

Learning

“After a year and half Mamu told me if you see anything don’t talk about it. One night I was playing deep in meditation. I smelled something. It was an indescribable scent, something like sandalwood and jasmine. I thought it was the aroma of Ganges but the scent got more powerful. When I opened my eyes, there was Balaji standing right next to me, exactly as he is pictured. My door was locked from inside; nobody was allowed to enter when I did riyaz.”

Bismillah Khan (1916–2006) Indian musician

He said ‘play my son’ but I was sweating. I stopped playing.
Khan used to do riyaz (practice) before the temple of Balaji as advised by his mamu (maternal uncle) who had also told him not talk to any body about anything that might happen. But when he told his mamu about his seeing Balaji, mamu was annoyed and slapped him.
Quote, Power Profiles

Night

“And people say to me, they say Jesus wasn't Jewish. I say of course he was Jewish. 30 years old, single, lives with his parents. Come on! Work in his father's business, his mom thought he was God's gift! He's Jewish! Give it up!”

Robin Williams (1951–2014) American actor and stand-up comedian

Robin Williams: Live on Broadway (2002)

God, People, Moms, Business

“I'm probably not going to get married unless I live with somebody for 10 or 20 years. But these people (Romeo and Juliet) took a chance and they did it. We don't have the balls that Romeo did.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.flixster.com/actor/leonardo-di-caprio/leonardo-dicaprio-quotes

People, Chance

“Being an atheist must be like living in a closed cell with no windows. I’d hate to live like that, wouldn’t you? We see them, mind you, on television today, many brilliant people who are professional atheists who say they know for a fact that it’s insanity to have a God or to believe in religion. Well, OK, God bless them for feeling that way and I hope they’re happy. But I couldn’t live with that certainty, and I wonder about some of them: why are they protesting so much? How are they so sure of what is out there? And who am I to refute the beliefs of so many great philosophers and martyrs all the way down the years?”

Anthony Hopkins (1937) Welsh stage and television actor

"Sir Anthony Hopkins: I couldn't be an atheist". https://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2011/02/11/sir-anthony-hopkins-i-couldnt-be-an-atheist/ (February 11, 2011)

God, Hate, People, Religion

“I don't know if I ever really get mad in real life. It's what my shrink was saying to me all those years: You need to get mad! I think rage is so ugly. I just think there's a way to be mad and discuss it.”

Jennifer Aniston (1969) television and film actress from the United States

Interview for Vogue magazine (December 2008)

Life, Way, Thinking, Rage

“So far as I can see, all political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"London Letter" (December 1944), in Partisan Review (Winter 1945)

People, Way, Thinking, Past

“I write and leave behind me this letter at St. Petersburg. I feel that I shall leave life before January 1st. I wish to make known to the Russian people, to Papa, to the Russian Mother and to the children, to the land of Russia, what they must understand. If I am killed by common assassins, and especially by my brothers the Russian peasants, you, Tsar of Russia, have nothing to fear, remain on your throne and govern, and you, Russian Tsar, will have nothing to fear for your children, they will reign for hundreds of years in Russia. But if I am murdered by boyars, nobles, and if they shed my blood, their hands will remain soiled with my blood, for twenty-five years they will not wash their hands from my blood. They will leave Russia. Brothers will kill brothers, and they will kill each other and hate each other, and for twenty-five years there will be no noblers in the country. Tsar of the land of Russia, if you hear the sound of the bell which will tell you that Grigory has been killed, you must know this: if it was your relations who have wrought my death then no one of your family, that is to say, none of your children or relations will remain alive for more than two years. They will be killed by the Russian people…I shall be killed. I am no longer among the living. Pray, pray, be strong, think of your blessed family.”

Grigori Rasputin (1869–1916) Russian mystic

Grigory Rasputin in a letter to the Tsarina Alexandra, 7 Dec 1916

Life, Death, Hate, Children

“Without a doubt, Banksy is the most influential street artist in the world today. It took him many years vandalizing the streets of London with his iconic stencils to receive a worldwide recognition. I am not sure, but I don’t think there is any city or any police department in the world that wants to have a vandal that is so famous as Banksy.”

Clandestine Culture (1970) American artist

http://artdistricts.com/clandestine-culture-between-street-art-and-social-activism/

World, Thinking

“And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

This quote is often misattributed to Lincoln. The earliest instance that Quote Investigator could locate was "in an advertisement in 1947 for a book about aging by Edward J. Stieglitz, M.D". The advertisement for “The Second Forty Years” which ran in the Chicago Tribune newspaper read like this: The important thing to you is not how many years in your life, but how much life in your years! (Compare 1947 March 16, Chicago Tribune, “How Long Do You Plan to Live?”, [Advertisement for the book "The Second Forty Years" by Edward J. Stieglitz, M.D.], p. C7, Chicago, Illinois. (ProQuest)). Source of misattribution: It’s Not the Years in Your Life That Count. It’s the Life in Your Years - Abraham Lincoln? Adlai Stevenson? Edward J. Stieglitz? Anonymous? by Quote Investigator on July 14, 2012 http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/07/14/life-years-count/ To my way of thinking it is not the years in your life but the life in your years that count in the long run. Adlai Stevenson II, Address at Princeton University, "The Educated Citizen" (22 March 1954) http://infoshare1.princeton.edu/libraries/firestone/rbsc/mudd/online_ex/stevenson/adlai1954.html. This has also been paraphrased "What matters most is not the years in your life, but the life in your years" and misattributed to Abraham Lincoln and Mae West. Adlai Stevenson II, "If I Were Twenty-One" in Coronet (December 1955). Misattributed Variant: It is not the years in your life but the life in your years that counts.

Deep, Birthday, Life, Positive

“It’s sad to think what the state of rock and roll will be twenty years from now. It just seems like when rock and roll is dead the whole world’s gonna explode. It’s already so rehashed and so plagariazed that it’s barely alive now. It’s disgusting. I mean, kids don’t even really care about rock and roll as much as they used to, as the other generations have. It’s already turned into nothing but a fashion statement and an identity for kids to use as a tool for them to fuck and have a social life. And at that point I really can’t see music being of any importance to a teenager, really.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

to Michael Azerrad in an interview from 1992 or 1993, in Kurt Cobain: About a Son
Interviews (1989-1994), Video

Dead, Music, Thinking, World

“Eichmann is 34 or 35 years old, a very active, adventurous man. He felt that this act against Jews was necessary and was fully convinced of its necessity and correctness, as I was.”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

Rudolf Höss [to Leon Goldensohn, April 9, 1946].

“Alot of people ask me... Where the fuck I've been at the last few years? Shit, I don't know... But I do know I'm back now!”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Underground".
2000s, Relapse (2009)

People

“How long have you been away from the country?" Laruja asked Ibarra.

"Almost seven years."
"Then you have probably forgotten all about it."

"Quite the contrary. Even if my country does seem to have forgotten me, I have always thought about it.”

José Rizal book Noli Me Tángere

Source: Noli Me Tángere

Country

“No more memories, no more silent tears. No more gazing across the wasted years. Help me say goodbye.”

Andrew Lloyd Webber (1948) British composer

Tear, Memory, Help

“If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn't love as much in eighty years as I could in a day.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Heathcliff (Ch. XIV).
Source: Wuthering Heights (1847)
Context: I was a fool to fancy for a moment that she valued Edgar Linton's attachment more than mine; if he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn't love as much in eighty years as I could in a day. And Catherine has a heart as deep as I have; the sea could be as readily contained in that house-trough as her whole affection be monopolized by him. Tush! He is scarcely a degree dearer to her than her dog, or her horse. It is not in him to be loved like me; how can she love in him what he has not?

Love

“There was no need to do any housework at all. After four years the dirt doesn’t get any worse.”

Quentin Crisp book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 15

“(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Variant: Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.
Source: Thirst

Love, Dreams, Understanding, Sleep

“She had been born for this man, and she had spent so many years trying to accept the fact that he had been born for someone else…”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: Romancing Mister Bridgerton

“And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

New Year

“For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

British Telecom advertisement (1993), part of which was used in Pink Floyd's Keep Talking (1994) and Talkin' Hawkin'<nowiki/> (2014)
Context: For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.

Imagination, Learning, Animals

“Be not as one that hath ten thousand years to live; death is nigh at hand: while thou livest, while thou hast time, be good.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Meditations. iv. 17.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Death, Time

“[…] no one had lived up to the roles they acted out in public. They wasted their years trying to live the lies that they had created for themselves. Only in private could they really be the demons, hypocrites and sinners they really were, and woe betide anyone who caught them at their game, because the only thing worse than a lie is a lie exposed.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Source: The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

Lie, Game

“We spend the first year of a child's life teaching it to walk and talk and the rest of its life to shut up and sit down. There's something wrong there.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

Life, Funny

“What if I told you 10 years from now your life would be exactly the same?
Doubt you'd be happy.
So, why are you afraid of change?”

Karen Salmansohn American writer

Life, Change, Happiness

“Last year nothing happened
The year before nothing happened
And the year before that nothing
happened.”

Osamu Dazai book The Setting Sun

Source: The Setting Sun

“Our total reality and total existence are beautiful and meaningful…. We should judge reality by the little which we truly know of it. Since that part which conceptually we know fully turns out to be so beautiful, the real world of which we know so little should also be beautiful. Life may be miserable for seventy years and happy for a million years: the short period of misery may even be necessary for the whole.”

Kurt Gödel (1906–1978) logician, mathematician, and philosopher of mathematics

Life, World, Beauty, Reality

“Time is not measured by the passing of years but by what one does, what one feels, and what one achieves.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

As quoted in Al Arab Vol. 9 (1970) by the League of Arab States, p. 9

Feeling, Time

“First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.
If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.
Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million… despite all this, the Americans are once again trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.
So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.
Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

1990s, Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders (1998)

War, People, Past, Fight

“The biggest thing has been realizing how much people really do love the early Sabbath music. People have said it in the past but I've never really believed them before. I remember years ago when Metallica opened up for me, I went backstage and they were playing old Black Sabbath albums and I thought they were taking the piss! They said, 'No, we really love Sabbath.' I couldn't see that at the time--because towards the end of my time with Sabbath 20 years ago I thought what we were doing was boring and stupid, because we were boring and stupid, totally sick of what we were doing and totally out of our brains with drink or drugs when we were playing it.”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

Launch.com, November 2, 2000

Love, People, Stupidity, Music

“It is useless for you to ask me single facts. Whatever has been committed against Italy and the Italians for the past ten years was willed and permitted by me, whenever I did not personally take part in the acts themselves. … The raids, too, were ordered by me and some of them carried out by me.”

Omar Mukhtar (1858–1931) Libyan resistance leader

Trial proceedings (15 September 1931)

Past, Parting, Personality

“Through years of my prime
I walked with a heart
crazy about love.”

Suman Pokhrel (1967) Nepali poet, lyricist, playwright, translator and artist

The Tajmahal and my Love http://www.best-poems.net/love_poems/the_taj_mahal_amp_my_love.html/ From Poetry

Love, Heart

“Sometimes I have visions of myself driving through hell, selling sulphur and brimstone, or through heaven peddling refreshments to the roaming souls. If me and the children I've got left could find a place where there's no shooting, I wouldn't mind a few years of peace and quiet.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

Mother Courage
Mother Courage and Her Children (1939)

Children, Peace, Soul, Hell

“I’ve been in the business since I was 16, so I’ve had a 14-year career. I’ve always had acting in my blood. Doing this, whatever it is, was something I was drawn to since my earliest memories. Ironically, I lived in Hollywood, but never understood that all it took was getting an agent and being persistent.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm

Business, Memory

“There are two trade marts on the land route between Hindustan and Khurasan; one is Kabul, the other, Qandhar… from Hindustan, come every year caravans… bringing slaves (barda) and other commodities, and sell them at great profit.”

Babur (1483–1530) 1st Mughal Emperor

quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 4

“I want to live my next life backwards: You start out dead and get that out of the way. Then you wake up in a nursing home feeling better every day. Then you get kicked out for being too healthy. Enjoy your retirement and collect your pension. Then when you start work, you get a gold watch on your first day. You work 40 years until you're too young to work. You get ready for High School: drink alcohol, party, and you're generally promiscuous. Then you go to primary school, you become a kid, you play, and you have no responsibilities. Then you become a baby, and then… You spend your last 9 months floating peacefully in luxury, in spa-like conditions – central heating, room service on tap, and then… You finish off as an orgasm.”

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

Variations of this piece have also been misattributed to Andy Rooney and Woody Allen. The original source is a variation on a piece by Sean Morey. ( "snopes.com: Andy Rooney on Everything", Snopes.com, 2012-09-09 http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/rooney3.asp, ) Misattributed

Life, Alcohol, School, Way

“Diego is Diego and for me he is the greatest player of all time. Even after a million years I am not even going to be close to Maradona. I have no intention of comparing myself with Maradona - I want to make my own history for something I have achieved.”

Lionel Messi (1987) Argentine association football player

Response to the Maradona comparisons, 2010 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/players/lionel-messi/7527633/Barcelonas-Lionel-Messi-says-he-will-never-be-as-good-as-Diego-Maradona.html

History, Time

“Well, in some ways we’re not successful at all. We’re destroying our home. That’s not a bit successful. Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans have been living for hundreds of thousands of years in their forest, living fantastic lives, never overpopulating, never destroying the forest. I would say that they have been in a way more successful than us as far as being in harmony with the environment.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

In response to: "If chimps are so much like us, why are they endangered while humans dominate the globe?" Discover Magazine interview with Virginia Morell (28 March 2007)

Way, Home, Success

“I had never been a violent person in nature, but after building up so much hatred over the years, I realized that I wouldn’t hesitate to kill or even torture my hated enemies if I was given the opportunity.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Building to Violence

Hate, Nature, Personality

“I have spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, helping them have a good time, and all I get is abuse, the existence of a hunted man.”

Al Capone (1899–1947) American gangster

As quoted in How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936) by Dale Carnegie, p. 26

Life, People, Pleasure, Time

“I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”

Smedley D. Butler (1881–1940) United States Marine Corps General, 2 time Medal of Honor recipient and activist

From a speech (1933)

Business, Time, Country

“To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am.”

Bernard Baruch (1870–1965) American businessman

On his 85th birthday, as quoted in The Observer [London] (21 August 1955)

Age

“As a fraction of the lifespan of the universe as measured from the beginning to the evaporation of the last black hole, life as we know it is only possible for one-thousandth of a billion billion billionth, billion billion billionth, billion billion billionth, of a percent (10^-84). And that's why, for me, the most astonishing wonder of the universe isn't a star or a planet or a galaxy. It isn't a thing at all. It's an instant in time. And that time is now. Humans have walked the earth for just the shortest fraction of that briefest of moments in deep time. But in our 200,000 years on this planet we've made remarkable progress. It was only 2,500 years ago that we believed that the sun was a god and measured its orbit with stone towers built on the top of a hill. Today the language of curiosity is not sun gods, but science. And we have observatories that are almost infinitely more sophisticated than those towers, that can gaze out deep into the universe. And perhaps even more remarkably through theoretical physics and mathematics we can calculate what the universe will look like in the distant future. And we can even make concrete predictions about its end. And I believe that it's only by continuing our exploration of the cosmos and the laws of nature that govern it that we can truly understand ourselves and our place in this universe of wonders.”

Brian Cox (physicist) (1968) English physicist and former musician

Conclusion in Wonders of the Universe - Destiny

Life, God, Law, Star

“Whoever did not live in the years neighboring 1789 does not know what the pleasure of living means.”

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754–1838) French diplomat

Qui n'a pas vécu dans les années voisines de 1789 ne sait pas ce que c'est le plaisir de vivre.
Reported in Memoirs pour Servir a l'histoire de nous Temps by François Guizot, Volume I, p. 6.

Pleasure

“You don't learn anything in school. It's just a waste of time. You lug around books and all and do homework. They give too much homework. You shouldn't be doing homework. Nobody's interested in it. The teachers are stupid. They shouldn't have any women in there. They don't know how to teach. And they shouldn't make anyone go to school. You don't want to go, you don't go, that's all. It's ridiculous. I don't remember one thing I learned in school. I don't listen to weakies. My two and a half years in Erasmus High I wasted. I didn't like the whole thing. You have to mix with all those stupid kids. The teachers are even stupider than the kids. They talk down to the kids. Half of them are crazy. If they'd have let me, I would have quit before I was sixteen.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

1960s, Portrait of a Genius As a Young Chess Master (1961)

Women, Books, Stupidity, School

“In recent times Italy have been in a World Cup final every 12 years and I hope to still be there in 2018.”

Gianluigi Buffon (1978) Italian association football player

Gianluigi Buffon, as quoted in Football Italia (07/07/29)

World, Hope, Time

“Ask yourself what “problem” you have right now, not next year, tomorrow, or five minutes from now. What is wrong with this moment?”

Eckhart Tolle book The Power of Now

The Power of Now (1997)

Problem

“Courage! I have shown it for years; think you I shall lose it at the moment when my sufferings are to end?”

Marie Antoinette (1755–1793) last Queen of France prior to the French Revolution

Responding to the priest who had accompanied her to the foot of the guillotine, who had whispered, "Courage, madame! Now is the time for courage." Quoted in Women of Beauty and Heroism (1859) by Frank B. Goodrich, p. 301.
Variant translations:
Courage! The moment when my ills are going to end is not the moment when courage is going to fail me.
To the juror, Abbé Girard, shortly before her death, quoted in Marie-Antoinette a la Conciergerie (du ler août au 16 octobre 1793) 2nd edition (1864) by M. Émile Campardon
Courage? The moment when my troubles are going to end is not the moment when my courage is going to fail me.
As quoted in Marie Antoinette (2008) by Jane Bingham, p. 39

Courageous, Courage, Thinking, Suffering

“Everyone thought I was going to die like a year later, they didn't know. So I helped educate sports, and then the world, that a man living with HIV can play basketball. He's not going to give it to anybody by playing basketball.”

Magic Johnson (1959) American basketball player

Then & Now: Magic Johnson http://edition.cnn.com/2005/US/01/17/cnn25.tan.johnson/index.html

World, Education, Sport, Help

“Jesus will take me safe trough… I shall see Jesus, who created all things, Jesus, who made the worlds; I shall see Him as He is;… Yes; I have had the Light for many years, and Oh! how bright it is! I feel SO SAFE, SO SATISFIED.”

David Brewster (1781–1868) British astronomer and mathematician

His last words, as quoted in The Home Life of Sir David Brewster (2010), by his daughter, Margaret Maria Gordon. Cambridge University Press. Chapter XXI.

World, Feeling, Light

“I can better understand the inert blindness & defiant ignorance of the reactionaries from having been one of them. I know how smugly ignorant I was—wrapped up in the arts, the natural (not social) sciences, the externals of history & antiquarianism, the abstract academic phases of philosophy, & so on—all the one-sided standard lore to which, according to the traditions of the dying order, a liberal education was limited. God! the things that were left out—the inside facts of history, the rational interpretation of periodic social crises, the foundations of economics & sociology, the actual state of the world today … & above all, the habit of applying disinterested reason to problems hitherto approached only with traditional genuflections, flag-waving, & callous shoulder-shrugs! All this comes up with humiliating force through an incident of a few days ago—when young Conover, having established contact with Henneberger, the ex-owner of WT, obtained from the latter a long epistle which I wrote Edwin Baird on Feby. 3, 1924, in response to a request for biographical & personal data. Little Willis asked permission to publish the text in his combined SFC-Fantasy, & I began looking the thing over to see what it was like—for I had not the least recollection of ever having penned it. Well …. I managed to get through, after about 10 closely typed pages of egotistical reminiscences & showing-off & expressions of opinion about mankind & the universe. I did not faint—but I looked around for a 1924 photograph of myself to burn, spit on, or stick pins in! Holy Hades—was I that much of a dub at 33 … only 13 years ago? There was no getting out of it—I really had thrown all that haughty, complacent, snobbish, self-centred, intolerant bull, & at a mature age when anybody but a perfect damned fool would have known better! That earlier illness had kept me in seclusion, limited my knowledge of the world, & given me something of the fatuous effusiveness of a belated adolescent when I finally was able to get around more in 1920, is hardly much of an excuse. Well—there was nothing to be done … except to rush a note back to Conover & tell him I'd dismember him & run the fragments through a sausage-grinder if he ever thought of printing such a thing! The only consolation lay in the reflection that I had matured a bit since '24. It's hard to have done all one's growing up since 33—but that's a damn sight better than not growing up at all.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Catherine L. Moore (7 February 1937), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 407-408
Non-Fiction, Letters

God, Age, World, Education

“The philosophy of friendship has definitely paid off, because after all the highs and lows we’re still sticking together and we haven’t lost the passion for what we’re doing. In the Seventies, there were few changes, then we had this line-up with Herman [Rarebell] and Francis [Buchholz] for almost twenty years.”

Klaus Meine (1948) German singer

Friendship, Passion, Change

“Women should not feel obliged towards any men for eternity. They earned this privilege by gathering berries, digging roots, picking wild rice, and chewing the skin to make it soft for 999 thousand years, while the men were having fun in the open chasing deer and fighting among themselves.”

Vinko Vrbanić (1951)

Women

Women, Men, Feeling, Fight

“After 7 long years, Finally, FINALLY, FINALLY, The Rock has come back to Anaheim! Which means FINALLY, The Rock has come back to Monday Night Raw! Which means FINALLY, The Rock HAS COME BACK… home.”

Dwayne Johnson (1972) American actor and professional wrestler

The Rock's return to WWE Raw as host of WrestleMania XXVII (14 February, 2011) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8ejiG5-BtA&feature=related.

Home, Night

“You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1960s, A Time for Choosing (1964)
Context: You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness. We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.

Children, Hope

“All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one bee:
All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the heart of one gem:
In the core of one pearl all the shade and the shine of the sea:
Breath and bloom, shade and shine, — wonder, wealth, and — how far above them —
: Truth, that's brighter than gem,
: Trust, that's purer than pearl, —
Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe, — all were for me
: In the kiss of one girl.
:* "Summum Bonum" (1889).”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

Truth, Girl, Kiss, Universe

“The chain of young life is broken,
The journey is ended, the hour has struck, it is time to leave,
Time to go where there is no future,
No past, no eternity, no years;
Where there are no expectations, no passions,
No bitter tears, no fame, no honour;
Where memory sleeps deeply
And the heart in its narrow coffin home
Does not feel the worm gnawing it.”

Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841) Russian writer, poet and painter

"Death" (1830 or 1831)
Poems

Life, Feeling, Home, Tear

“Be reverent before the dawning day. Do not think of what will be in a year, or in ten years. Think of to-day. Leave your theories. All theories, you see, even those of virtue, are bad, foolish, mischievous. Do not abuse life. Live in to-day. Be reverent towards each day. Love it, respect it, do not sully it, do not hinder it from coming to flower. Love it even when it is gray and sad like to-day. Do not be anxious. See. It is winter now. Everything is asleep. The good earth will awake again. You have only to be good and patient like the earth. Be reverent. Wait. If you are good, all will go well. If you are not, if you are weak, if you do not succeed, well, you must be happy in that. No doubt it is the best you can do. So, then, why will? Why be angry because of what you cannot do? We all have to do what we can.... Als ich kann.”

Romain Rolland (1866–1944) French author

Gottfried to Jean-Christophe. Part 3: Ada
Jean-Christophe (1904 - 1912), Youth (1904)

Waiting, Making love, Bad luck, Flowers

“We are convinced that we must aim for contentment and happiness. Whether we take five years or 10 to raise the per capita income and increase prosperity is not going to guarantee that happiness, which includes political stability, social harmony, and the Bhutanese culture and way of life.”

Jigme Singye Wangchuck (1955) King of Bhutan 1972–2006

Quoted in The Modern Path to Enlightenment, by John Elliott of the Financial Times of London (2 May 1987,

Way, Life, Happiness

“It has been complicated for the past four years (2017–2021) and it will continue to be complicated. But maybe it is also healthy having to work with people who don't agree with you on everything.”

Katrín Jakobsdóttir (1976) 28th Prime Minister of Iceland

Source: Katrín Jakobsdóttir (2021) cited in: " Iceland's left-right coalition takes office for second term https://www.dw.com/en/icelands-left-right-coalition-takes-office-for-second-term/a-59962630" in DW, December 2021.

Past, People

“After a year of therapy, my psychiatrist said to me, "Maybe life isn't for everyone.”

Larry Brown

Life

“She hated that she was still so desperate for a glimpse of him, but it had been this way for years.”

Julia Quinn book The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever

Source: The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever

Hate, Way