Quotes by Authors - Page 5104

If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here-and by 'we' I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better. It is a talent we have only barely begun to grasp.
Bill Bryson
What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this -- two things: I crave truth. And I lie.
Tana French
Tried living in the real world instead of a shell, but I was bored before I even began.
Morrissey
Life is not to be taken seriously, as we are really temporary here. We are like a pre-paid card with limited validity. If we are lucky, we may last another 50 years. And 50 years is just 2,500 weekends. Do we really need to get so worked up? It’s ok, bunk a few classes, goof up a few interviews, fall in love. We are people, not programmed devices.
Chetan Bhagat
The world is wide, and I will not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.
Frances E. Willard
It is beautiful, it is endless, it is full and yet seems empty. It hurts us.
Jackson Pearce
Well, sometimes I worry that my whole life will be based about what's comfortable and easy. I'll care too much about what makes me feel good to ever really reach for anything. And then I worry that even if I do, I won't succeed.
Julia Hoban
Holding this soft, small living creature in my lap this way, though, and seeing how it slept with complete trust in me, I felt a warm rush in my chest. I put my hand on the cat's chest and felt his heart beating. The pulse was faint and fast, but his heart, like mine, was ticking off the time allotted to his small body with all the restless earnestness of my own.
Haruki Murakami
Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.
Truman Capote
That woman doesn't have the sense God gave a retarded flea.
Nora Roberts
Dogs are great. Bad dogs, if you can really call them that, are perhaps the greatest of them all.
John Grogan
Life is a funny thing. We only get so many years to live it, so we have to do everything we can to make sure those years are as full as they can be. We shouldn't waste time on things that might happen someday, or maybe even never.
Colleen Hoover
Life is such a glorious trauma, is it not?
J.R. Ward
Life did not stop, and one had to live.
Leo Tolstoy
To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we recoil from the dull. Maybe it’s because dullness is intrinsically painful; maybe that’s where phrases like ‘deadly dull’ or ‘excruciatingly dull’ come from. But there might be more to it. Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that’s dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient, low-level way, and which most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from feeling, or at least from feeling directly or with our full attention. Admittedly, the whole thing’s pretty confusing, and hard to talk about abstractly…but surely something must lie behind not just Muzak in dull or tedious places any more but now also actual TV in waiting rooms, supermarkets’ checkouts, airport gates, SUVs’ backseats. Walkman, iPods, BlackBerries, cell phones that attach to your head. This terror of silence with nothing diverting to do. I can’t think anyone really believes that today’s so-called ‘information society’ is just about information. Everyone knows it’s about something else, way down.
David Foster Wallace
Whoever said that the past isn't dead had it backward. It's the future that's already dead, already played out.
Gayle Forman
Hurt is a part of life. To be honest, I think hurt is a part of happiness, that our definition of happiness has gotten very narrow lately, very nervous, a little afraid of this brawling, fabulous, unpredictable world.
Julian Gough
Tristan was silent for a few moments, looking at the leaves before them. "Life isn't about the past and the future. It's about today." He paused. "It's about five minutes from now and two seconds ago. It's moments, you know? Not years. Years aren't what define us.
Chelsea Fine
But what is life if you don't live it?
James Patterson
In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.
Peter Stone
When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated. This is why we sometimes attack who they are, which is far more hurtful than addressing a behavior or a choice.
Brené Brown
Don't wish it was easier wish you were better. Don't wish for less problems wish for more skills. Don't wish for less challenge wish for more wisdom
Jim Rohn
Dead people can be our heroes because they cant disappoint us later; they only improve over time, as we forget more and more about them.
Veronica Roth
I began to understand that suffering and disappointments and melancholy are there not to vex us or cheapen us or deprive us of our dignity but to mature and transfigure us.
Hermann Hesse
To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone and a funnybone.
Reba McEntire
If fate doesn't make you laugh, you just don't get the joke.
Gregory David Roberts
Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings.
John Updike
Everyone thinks that courage is about facing death without flinching. But almost anyone can do that. Almost anyone can hold their breath and not scream for as long as it takes to die. True courage is about facing life without flinching. I don't mean the times when the right path is hard, but glorious at the end. I'm talking about enduring the boredom, the messiness, and the inconvenience of doing what is right.
Robin Hobb
I knew that in the silence that followed, that anything could happen here. It might be too late again. I might have missed my chance. But I would at least know I tried, that I took my heart and extended my hand, whatever the outcome.
Sarah Dessen
Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people.
Orson Scott Card
You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid—and I know they are—yet I won't be wiser?
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I always knew, on some level, that I wouldn't live long. It's simply not written in my stars.
Marie Lu
One of the tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon - instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
Dale Carnegie
Each new day is a blank page in the diary of your life. The secret of success is in turning that diary into the best story you possibly can.
Douglas Pagels
There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.
Leo Tolstoy
Life's a freaking mess. In fact, I'm going to tell Sarah we need to start a new philosophical movement: messessentialism instead of existentialism: For those who revel in the essential mess that is life. Because Gram's right, there's not one truth ever, just a bunch of stories, all going on at once, in our heads, in our hearts, all getting in the way of each other. It's all a beautiful calamitous mess. It's like the day Mr. James took us into the woods and cried triumphantly, "That's it! That's it!" to the dizzying cacophony of soloing instruments trying to make music together. That is it.
Jandy Nelson
I don't know how I look, but I know how I feel: Young. Goofy. Infinite.
John Green
I've been embarrassing myself since about birth.
Phil Lester
The past can teach us, nurture us, but it cannot sustain us. The essence of life is change, and we must move ever forward or the soul will wither and die.
Susanna Kearsley
Isn't it strange that I know you'd risk your life to save mine, but I don't even know what your favorite color is?
Suzanne Collins
What kind of life can you have in a house without books?
Sherman Alexie
In fact no one recognizes the happiest moment of their lives as they are living it. It may well be that, in a moment of joy, one might sincerely believe that they are living that golden instant "now," even having lived such a moment before, but whatever they say, in one part of their hearts they still believe in the certainty of a happier moment to come. Because how could anyone, and particularly anyone who is still young, carry on with the belief that everything could only get worse: If a person is happy enough to think he has reached the happiest moment of his life, he will be hopeful enough to believe his future will be just as beautiful, more so.
Orhan Pamuk
It frightens me, the awful truth, of how sweet life can be...
Bob Dylan
Try patting them on the back or shoulder and telling them everything is going to be fine. Lots of times when girls cry, they don't want you to fix the problem, they just want to be consoled.
Kiera Cass
To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble.
Bill Watterson
In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn't creak.
Tom Robbins
Strange, I thought, how you can be living your dreams and your nightmares at the very same time.
Ransom Riggs
Keep your mind open. The meaning of things lies in how people perceive them. The same thing could mean different meanings to the same people at different times.
Roy T. Bennett
A stumble may prevent a fall.
Thomas Fuller
People who say that yesterday was better than today are ultimately devaluing their own existence.
Karl Lagerfeld
Sometimes letting go is simply changing the labels you place on an event. Looking at the same event with fresh eyes.
Steve Maraboli
If you fuel your journey on the opinions of others, you are going to run out of gas.
Steve Maraboli
Muscles aching to work, minds aching to create - this is man.
John Steinbeck
Sometimes you need a little crisis to get your adrenaline flowing and help you realize your potential.
Jeannette Walls
Whatever happens to your body, your soul will survive, untouched...
J.K. Rowling
Life takes a bit of time and a lot of relationship.
William Paul Young
The life you have left is a gift. Cherish it. Enjoy it now, to the fullest. Do what matters, now.
Leo Babauta
The connections we make in the course of a life--maybe that's what heaven is.
Fred Rogers
There are several ways to react to being lost. One is to panic: this was usually Valentina's first impulse. Another is to abandon yourself to lostness, to allow the fact that you've misplaced yourself to change the way you experience the world.
Audrey Niffenegger
Don't forget, a person's greatest emotional need is to feel appreciated.
H. Jackson Brown Jr.