c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The brain is an incredible multitasker. At the same time that it’s piercing itself with superheated needles of anguish, it’s ruthlessly making plans, contingencies, plotting out a future, giving zero fucks whether it’ll ever see it. On the day I die, it’ll be calculating what to have for dinner as it bombards itself with pain signals from my amputated legs or my clocked-out heart.
— Leah Raeder, Unteachable
My heart didn’t break into a thousand pieces after he left. Instead, I realized all the things he didn’t do. He didn’t want to hear my stories. He didn’t ask me questions. He didn’t smile when I was talking to him. He didn’t hug me out of the blue to make me feel good. His hugs were always a preamble to something else and after he was gone, I wondered if he ever knew me at all.
— Diane Les Becquets
The hole in my heart, I can’t even begin to describe. It’s hard when you open your heart and let someone in and then suddenly they’re not in it anymore. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is; that empty spot stings so bad that you want to find any kind of relief, or wrap yourself up so tight you can’t feel it anymore. I knew it might be there a little while. Or maybe even a long while. For both of us.
— Bill Konigsberg, Openly Straight
Why couldn't my heart have picked him? Life would have been so much easier.""Because hearts are ornery, sneaky little bastards, designed to cause misery. They want what they want, and they don't give a damn about what would make life easier or harder for the heart's owner." Della snapped.
— C.C. Hunter
The "Fatal Female Flaw." It's when ordinarily sensible women fall madly in love with an unattainable man who can't or won't love them back. I also call it the Triple Fucked Factor.Rosslyn
— Nikki Sex, Bound and Freed Boxed Set
Please understand. Please forgive me.I prayed every day for you to be alive, until hope became painful.Don't hate me.I still love you.
— Lauren Oliver, Requiem
Here we are at the bottom, almost empty. It's like confetti, these dried remnants you find in the street for a party no one invited you to. But they used to be, I can admit, part of something beautiful.
— Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up
Dear Lord,” she said in a strangled whisper. “I can bear it for a while...but please don't let it hurt forever.
— Lisa Kleypas, Dreaming of You
I spent the rest of the day doing little more than that. I skipped dinner. I shed a few tears. But mostly, I just sat on my bed thinking and growing more and more depressed. I also discovered the only thing worse than imagining Dimitri and Tasha together was remembering when he and I had been together. He would never touch me again like that, never kiss me again…
— Richelle Mead, Frostbite
I'm nothing, not a single thing. The only particle I had, the only tiny thing raising me up, is that I was Ed Slaterton's girlfriend, loved by you for like ten secs, and who cares, so what, and not anymore so how embarrassing for me.
— Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up
You winked, took the change. I should have seen it, Ed, as a sign that you were unreliable. Instead, I saw it as a sign of charming, which is why I didn't break it off right then and there.
— Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up
There were a million things, everything, I didn't know. I was stupid, the official descriptive phrase for happy. I took this thing I'm giving you back, this thing you gave me as the star we were waiting for finally emerged.
— Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up
In the pause that followed, Shane understood why people said their hearts broke. She always thought it was a weak metaphor of strong emotion. She could feel each bit of shrapnel from her heart stab at her stomach and lungs. Her knees gave out beneath her as she heard the voice tell her what she already knew in her fragments of cardiac tissue.
— Thomm Quackenbush, We Shadows
We thought we had time. I waved but couldn't answer, because I was finally letting myself grin as wide as I'd wanted all afternoon, all evening, every sec of every minute with you, Ed. Shit, I guess I already loved you then.
— Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up
Realize that the tests you endure will mold your character, persona, and will. The more heartbreak and pain you will feel with your trials in life, the greater your joy and glory will be once you've overcome. Not IF, not POSSIBLY, not MAYBE, but ONCE you have overcome.
— J. Junior Reynolds II, Weathering the Storm
Who do those boys think they are, treating us as if we are their property, taking away our innocence?
— Tessa Emily Hall, Purple Moon
Because—truth?—on the scale of significance, that stuff doesn’t even register. What has me pushed past the boiling point...what has me really, really upset is learning the woman I thought was so incredibly strong I married her on the spot...is actually a quitter who runs from challenge, a coward too afraid to even try, a liar who makes promises she won’t keep and a cynic too bitter to believe what’s right in front of her face. Is that real enough for you?
— Mira Lyn Kelly, Waking Up Married
Life is all Love, unless you are with right people.
— Prathmesh
Why do you think you deserve happily ever after? You were offered it before and tossed it away.
— Donna Lynn Hope
She had hope in her heart but after a while, with each step forward, hope stepped back. And for the first time in months, the first time ever, she began to weep, and as she did she knew that with the retreat of hope her heart had finally caught up with her head. And as each tear spilled over she let them go, she was letting go.
— Donna Lynn Hope
Watch me go. Watch me. Because you said i couldn't. Because you thought I wouldn't. Go on, cry now. Cry.
— Kellie Elmore, Jagged Little Pieces
But maybe you never really had someone, she thought now. Maybe, no matter how much you loved them, they could slip through your fingers like water, and there was nothing you could do about it. She understood why people talked about hearts "breaking"; she felt as if hers were made of cracked glass, and the shards were like tiny knives inside her chest when she breathed.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Fallen Angels
Could he be prosecuted for murder? Cause of death: broken heart. Murder weapon: words laced with bullshit.
— Julie Prestsater, Against the Wall
Looking back, I wonder if mom saw it in my eyes: the storm clouds gathering, the dry crackle of electricity in the air. But it was already too late. No warning sirens were going to save me. I guess you never really know the danger, not until you’re the one left, huddled on the ground, surrounded by the pieces of your broken heart.
— Melody Grace, Unbroken
Deana Carter sings about it. Lady Antebellum sings about it. Eric Church. Gosh, not just country artists. Katy Perry. Everybody has a song about it because everybody's been through it. You find that person at eighteen and you lose yourself. And the tragedy is, it's the person who's completely opposed to everything you've ever wanted. You bond with that person, and that person breaks your heart. I'm that tragedy for you, and you're mine.
— Jennifer Echols, Dirty Little Secret
It can be heartbreaking when you find out that your fairytale image of the world doesn't match the reality.
— Taylor Swift
I wish i were a little girl again, because skinned knees are easier to fix than broken heart.
— Julia L. Roberts
Don't tell me how to grieve. Don't tell me ghosts fade away eventually, like they do in movies, waving goodbye with see-through hands. Lots of things fade away but ghosts like these don't, heartbreak like these doesn't.
— Anthony Doerr, Memory Wall
It was just a lie that seemed real.It was a promise that was never meant to be true.The forever that had a deadline.It felt like falling in love, but it was falling in aheartbreak café!
— Moffat Machingura, How I Kissed Heartbreak Goodbye
We had twenty eight days together but it feels like a lifetime. She’s right, without her it feels like I’m being strangled and fighting for air. I can’t just sit here day after day wishing I could at least see her face. -Colin
— K. Lars, Committed
It's the closest place to nowhere that she can think of. And nowhere is exactly where she wants to be today.
— Lisa Genova, Love Anthony
Ah! Happy they whose hearts can breakAnd peace of pardon win!How else may man make straight his pathAnd cleanse his soul from sin?How else but through a broken heartMay the Lord Christ enter in?
— Oscar Wilde
That first time, when he presses his lips against mine and kisses the words ‘I Love You’ right down into the very heart of my soul, that’s when I knew we were about to be ripped apart. -Morgan
— Melisa M. Hamling, Finding Forever
Don't worry, Evie; my heart isn't broken, only bruised.
— Gillian Shields, Betrayal
What am I supposed to do when the best part of me was always you?And what am I supposed to say when I'm all choked up and you're ok?
— The Script
Suddenly they were dancing, holding each other tight, moving in circles that symbolised their relationship, both afraid to let go, both willing the song to continue while silently their insides tore.
— Anna McPartlin, Apart From The Crowd
There will be a time when you are forced to follow your heart away from someone you love.
— Ashly Lorenzana
She remained silent. There was nothing left to say. He'd said it all the night before. He had to end it. He could never leave his wife. And, in fact, she had known this. Although she loved him - and truly she did - he wasn't hers. He belonged to his wife. She'd earned him. It didn't matter that he was her first love or that she was his passion. It didn't matter that they had loved one another for more than half their lives. It didn't matter that he had married his wife on the rebound. It didn't matter that he didn't love the woman. It didn't even matter that they had turned into some soap-opera cliche. He was married to someone else and that meant that she was leftovers and destined to remain on the periphery in the shadow of another woman's marriage. But no more. She was well and truly sick of it. 
— Anna McPartlin, Apart From The Crowd
I want him to reach out to me, but I know he can't. He can't for all the same reasons I can't. It hurts too much. It's like an alcoholic taking a sip of wine; the pleasure of the indulgence would be immediate and swift, but the aftermath would be devastating.
— Elizabeth Finn, Brother's Keeper
But then Mason touches my neck, to the spot on it where the cut from that night has since healed, and I pull away.He was right, after all; it didn't leave a scar, though part of me wishes it had. At least I'd have some evidence, some justification of this permanence. Stains are even worse when you're the only one who can see them.
— Gayle Forman, Just One Day
She'd either be a heartless mother and wife or a spineless enabler, when all she really wanted was the man she'd once believed him to be.
— Nicholas Sparks, The Best of Me
You selfish bitch!"She had known for a long time that putting her needs above those of Adam's wife and children was indeed selfish. She had no real answer to the accusation thrown at her."I'm sorry" she said, with her head in her hands."you're sorry?" came her adversary's disbelieving reply."I am. I'm sorry he married you when he was in love with me. I'm sorry I couldn't have loved someone else. I'm sorry your marriage is a joke and I'm sorry that I'm alone. I'm sorry for a lot of things - for you, for your kids, for me and for him. I spend most of my time being sorry."For a moment there was silence at the end of the line."all you had to do was stay away""if only I could have." tears escaped and raced down her cheeks."I hate you!
— Anna McPartlin, Apart From The Crowd
It's the broken plans you have made that are the hardest to get over.
— Cheryl Cole, Cheryl: My Story
She was drawn to damaged souls like a moth to a flame. 
— Anna McPartlin, Apart From The Crowd
I thought he'd pick me, I know he has kids, but when it came down to it, I really thought he'd pick me."Tears rolled down her face and her nose ran. She sniffed."I know I'm selfish""You're human""I wanted him to abandon his children
— Anna McPartlin, Apart From The Crowd
Nothing says hell has to be fire.
— Robert Goolrick, A Reliable Wife
I first got very thin after Ashley. I felt like my stomach was doing backflips - like my emotions had taken over and made me full.
— Cheryl Cole, Cheryl: My Story
They had lied, those who had extolled the virtues of love—its pleasures, its sublimity—those who had told her that it was beautiful and worthwhile.There was nothing beautiful abo
— Sarah MacLean, Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke's Heart
You trample on hearts as if they're grapes and you're making wine.
— Mallory Kane, It's In His Kiss
We are all Romeos looking for our Juliet, but never finding her.
— Rae Hachton, Frankie's Monster
The things that are priceless to my heart carry no currency where we are going.
— Suzanne Elizabeth Anderson, Mrs. Tuesday's Departure
It's my opinion, with some people, just knowing they are alone, living inside of their own miserable, self hating, dysfunctional mind, with their own immature, insecure, self pitying self is its own revenge. Their existence is their karma.
— Colleen Truscott Fry
There is a blessing in losing the one we love. It's the blessing of self-transformation. You don't have to who you were anymore. You've struggled. And now you can change. It doesn't mean that bits of that person won't cling to you, they will throughout your life, but they are now subsumed into something greater. That person has given you, in fact, the most important blessing, which is they gave you the blessing of transforming your soul into something better, something more beautiful.
— Emma Forrest, Your Voice in My Head
I'd breathe for her. I'd see for her, hear for her, and feel for her. I'd even die for her. Thousands of times. If I could see her smile at me one more time, it would all be worth it. Just one more time. Before I completely fell apart.
— Tiana Dalichov, Purification
How can you smile as though your whole life hasn't capsized
— Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
...the heart breaks in so many different ways that when it heals, it will have fault lines ...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
How do you make love to someone when you know they’ll be gone forever the next day? How do you spend the last few hours with someone when you know there will never beanything after that?
— B.G. Harlen, Break Her
You reached into my chest with your words. When you spoke, my heart danced. Love muddled thoughts based in reason. Interest withered like a flower in dry heat then your words wrapped themselves around my heart and yanked it from my body. Now I stand bewildered by the sight of my heart beating on the cold concrete floor.
— Sonya Watson, The Tide Breaker
Of course he freaked me out. Of course it's nothing to do with me. But none of that matters. He loved me and now he doesn't. I was everything to him and now I am nothing.
— Emma Forrest, Your Voice in My Head
I say, "Well then I don't know if it was real, and that makes me feel like I'm going insane again.""Absolutely it was real. It was a real, partial picture. Because it ended preemptively, things you would have learned about him in the relationship, you are instead learning in the breakup. You have learned that he has a desperate desire for intimacy and then a desperate desire for the cave. He will get lonely there eventually and come back.""To me?"He doesn't pause. "To someone new.""And I'll have to watch another girl?""You will have to, but you will also know what lies ahead for that poor girl.
— Emma Forrest, Your Voice in My Head
First he threw out all of his records, trashed his heart and then he went to sleep.
— Pete Wentz, The Boy With The Thorn In His Side
Now that he's gone, I feel like I'm a senior citizen who gave away her life savings over the phone. And this is the crux: I never in my life believed in someone as much as I believed in him. The shame is overwhelming.
— Emma Forrest, Your Voice in My Head
I had that feeling you have when you're watching a sad movie, sobbing at the heartbreak you are feeling at the same time that you know the heartbreak isn't exactly real, that it will be gone by the time you get home and make a cup of tea. I found a lot of life like that when I was younger, as though I was practicing for what came later.
— Anna Quindlen, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake
People don't know. We don't know ourselves so we tell ourselves what we really know is other people. We could say the depth of pain we feel for the lovers who've left us is because we knew them so well.
— Emma Forrest, Your Voice in My Head
It's only a heartache. It isn't a tragedy. A tragedy would be losing the father of my children to cancer. This I wrestle with the hardest. There are thirty-one flavors of pain, like Baskin Robbins in hell. Am I allowed to feel pain at a breakup? When there is so much other shit going on in this world? Love is extremely serious. I don't think this is trivial.
— Emma Forrest, Your Voice in My Head
I was a fool. I should have grabbed him when I could have had him all to myself, snatched him up like a ripe mango at the market. But how was I to know that this was what love felt like?
— Jean Kwok, Girl in Translation
It's like he has emotional amnesia... I think you have to accept that the person you knew isn't there at the moment. I was witness to how much he loved you. I have the photos. This isn't the person we knew. I don't recognize this person. He's shed his skin." Her heart is broken too. She has to say the thing that will give me back my life. She draws on every reserve. I see how much it hurts her and it hurts me too. I came from her joy and her pain, I lived in it and I live in it now.
— Emma Forrest, Your Voice in My Head
You want to know, but are afraid to ask, whether or not I found someone. If there could be anyone to fill that hole in my heart after I lost him. I did. "Life is futile," says my new therapist, Michaela, "and no one gets out of it alive. There is only love.
— Emma Forrest, Your Voice in My Head
I finally accept that not only do I not understand the death of my relationship, but I do not need to. These men were good and kind to me, they loved me and I loved them back and the shock at the finish holds no wisdom. The revelation is not that I lost them, but that I had them.
— Emma Forrest, Your Voice in My Head
For some reason, the despair that's welling up in me is transforming into white-hot rage. I feel it working its way up from my toes, winding around my legs, and burrowing into the pit of my stomach. It spears its razor-sharp tendrils through the pieces of my broken heart. It's crippling, and devastating, and unrelenting. I have only one choice to survive this; I turn that rage outward.
— Michelle Figley, The Saints of the Cross
When he asked if he was mine, tears in his eyes, I think he knew what he would do, what he would have to do, and he was mourning us. He was mourning us the whole time.
— Emma Forrest, Your Voice in My Head
She felt the loss of Willoughby's character yet more heavily than she had felt the loss of his heart.
— Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
You may right now be nursing a broken heart. Friends will say, "Aren't you glad you had the experience anyway?" And you may say "No." Eventually, unbelievably, you may not remember the boy that triggered it all. You'll recall all the places you visited, but not how you got there. You'll remember the songs that you listened to.
— Emma Forrest
It hurts to love. It's like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.
— Susan Sontag, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963
...and her dreams that didn't happen, that couldn't have happened because she'd pinned them on somebody too broken and unattainable to love her back.
— Janette Rallison, My Double Life
The harder you slam a ball into the ground, the higher it bounces back up... A divorce, a breakup, losing a job, or just feeling seriously down can ground you, rough you up a bit, leave calluses on your feet and grit under your finger nails. But more than that, it leaves you wiser and stronger next time... Life is about experiencing opposites isn’t it?
— Laurel House, QuickieChick's Cheat Sheet to Life, Love, Food, Fitness, Fashion, and Finance---on a Less-Than-Fabulous Budget
Because before the time when you're heartbroken, you get to be in love, and that's worth it.
— Leila Sales, Past Perfect
You dump trash. You dump yard waste and old ripped couches that smell like body odor and forgetfulness. You dump cigarette butts and banana peels and hazardous waste. But people?
— Autumn Doughton, I'll Be Here
What happens when someone breaks your heart? When someone breaks your heart, first you are shocked. Someone will say you are heartbroken and you examine the words break and heart and heartbroken and you immediately decide that it's inaccurate. You feel pain in the region of your heart and you think it's your heart breaking but one's heart doesn't really break, something else does - faith. You stop believing.
— M.D. Balangue, Mr. Write
A broken heart is something even I can’t protect you from. I’ve been alone for so long, and believe me, all that does is provide a false sense of security. Being alone doesn’t erase the deep yearning that exists in all of us. We are not solitary creatures. You have to love and open your heart. If not, what is it we are trying to save? When it swallows you whole, remember it means you’ve lived.
— Carol Oates, Iridescent
Seeing his face after months was as immediate as a pointed gun.
— Marie-Helene Bertino, Safe as Houses
...I never would have seen Chelsea reach up, take Logan's face in her hands, and kiss him. So the off again was definitely on again. And I knew then that Patrick was very wrong about my heart, because if it had actually been an encyclopedia I could have watched it all with perfect composure.
— Marni Bates, Awkward
Parade my trouble in front of you guys? Make you realize that my heart is broken . . . that as long as I live I'll have chains dragging me down to the oceans of sad tears that my feet are wet in already.
— Jack Kerouac, Maggie Cassidy
When I wrote this song I felt pretty unoriginal because everybody writes love songs, and everybody feels like their love is the most important and when their love ends and they get their heart broken, that nobody understands. And…that’s ridiculous, but so am I.
— Tegan Quin
Love is fragile at best and often a burden or something that blinds us. It's fodder for poets and song writers and they build it into something beyond human capacity. Falling in love means enrolling yourself in the school of disappointment. Being human means failing each other often, and no two people fail each other more than two people who pledge to do things for each other that they'll never do because they are just incapable of it...That's why art is enduring. The look of love or hope, or the look of compassion, bravery, whatever, is captured forever. We spend our lives trying to get someone to be as enduring as a painting or a sculpture and we can't because feelings crumble as quickly as the flesh.
— V.C. Andrews, Heart Song
Once in a while, I smell Clive on my skin and it stops my day. It's a train crossing; I wait to pass. Eventually the lights stop flashing, the barriers lift. I keep moving.
— Marie-Helene Bertino, Safe as Houses
One night I heard my dad say to my mom: I can't help but think of the good times we're having now as being painful memories later on. And my mom saying, c'mon now honey.
— Miriam Toews, A Complicated Kindness
...because there will never be any boy's wrist to tie the balloon of your helium heart to (it has floated high far away from the heavy stone of that unnameable boy in chicago), you would never be with someone and then someone else, and you would definitely never be someone to someone else's else.
— Terra Elan McVoy, After the Kiss
Suddenly it all seemed luminously clear. Love had very little to do with fear and emotional sabotage
—  love had to do with trust.
All at once it was just too much, and Harvey felt something about to snap. He drew back into the shadowy side of the doorway, out of site. Then he slid down the wall to the ground and put his palm over his mouth to hold in his breath and his feelings both. He'd forced in more air then he could hold, and his lungs were burning. More importantly, his heart hurt... He wished he hadn't eavesdropped.
— Yukako Kabei, Kieli, Volume 7: As the Deep Ravine's Wind Howls
I had fallen out of my secure world, precipitated beyond the territories I had only begun to control so skillfully. What a foolish step to take. What an insane move to make.
— Francesca Marciano, Rules of the Wild: A Novel of Africa
It didn't matter how wonderful Andrew was and how much effort he was prepared to put into their relationship. While Lou didn't feel the same way, his love was only building a tower without foundations.
— Chris Manby, Getting Personal
All that time tying herself up in knots because she simply couldn't think of a good reason not to be with him
— Chris Manby, Getting Personal
We hurt so much because we have lost a part of ourselves. If we have loved much, we must have given much also, and when everything's over, we feel as though we have lost everything.
— Jocelyn Soriano, Mend My Broken Heart
We cannot love a person with an all accepting, transcending and encompassing love without being hurt somewhat, without being disappointed, without being failed of our expectations. We cannot love without being broken, yet we cannot continue in love without being stronger than our brokenness.
— Jocelyn Soriano, Mend My Broken Heart
If I wasn't so phenomenal. I would go back to you.
— Coco J. Ginger
This next song is about when you get your heart broken and you try your best to glue it back together and you wake up one morning and you’re so happy because you realize, Oh my God, the tape’s holding!
— Sara Quin
I don't want to know that you don't want me. I don't want to know what you do without me. I don't want to know what I'll be without you. I dont wanna know. I don't wanna know.
— Sara Quin
No matter how many movies you watch, songs you listen to, and friends you talk to, you will never understand heartbreak. You want to disappear, crying feels like bleeding, the world is spinning. You watch a movie you have seen ten times, a song you’ve listened to a hundred times and a friend you’ve been talking to for a thousand days and suddenly it’s like your hearing everything for the first time. For the first time you’ve opened your heart and your mind, you want to listen, you want to heal others. For the first time you feel destroyed. The word pain cannot do what you are feeling justice. It is beyond pain, beyond fury, beyond sadness. You feel everything but nothing at once. Shocked. Numb. Empty. But I had also felt compassion that day, empathy for a heart that I had once broke. Love for all of those who had not broken my heart. Appreciation for all of those who had mended hearts. Happiness for all who had secured their hearts. The day that I first met heartbreak, the day that I got my heart snatched away from me, happens to be the day that I first found my heart as well.
— Everance Caiser
It's hard to close the door on optimistic expectations when you love someone.
— Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War
It was heavy, and I staggered when I lifted it; but it was strangely satifying to have a real burden upon my shoulders – a kind of counterweight to my terrible heaviness of heart.
— Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet
You know you've checked into Heartbreak Hotel for real when you feel less desirable than uncooked fish.
— Plum Sykes, Bergdorf Blondes
Not to be with the one you love, Laura, the one person you should be spending your life with--it’s like a kind of living death. To wake up every morning and know you are still here. To have that brief, sweet moment of blankness, before your mind reminds you who you are, and why you are unhappy. It was like hell. A living hell of the heart’s own making.
— Harriet Evans, A Hopeless Romantic
They died together; they'll always be remembered together. It's decided, once and for all. He was hers. The rumors don't matter; they'll fade...People may remember it was suicide, but my name won't be attached. It will just be two lovers, fused together forever.
— Rebecca Serle, When You Were Mine
She was telling me that I had a life of disappointment before me if I continued to love him as I did. A love that is too strong can turn poisonous and bring great unhappiness. And then, what is the remedy? Can you unlearn your heart's desire? Can you stop loving someone? Easier to drown yourself; easier to take the lover's leap.
— Alma Katsu, The Taker
I always say that anybody who’s single ― like Sara ― their love is the most intense love. The heartbreak they’re enduring is the most intense heartbreak. We cannot understand what Sara’s going through. When it’s love, it’s my love, you can’t understand it. You can’t compare. But I really related to where Sara was on this record. When she was writing these songs and coming to me like: You don’t understand, I was like: You’re right, but I also do.
— Tegan Quin
The very best and the very worst of life will come from [their] ability to love strangers.
— Simon Van Booy, The Coming and Going of Strangers
I know I'll hold this loss in my heart forever. I know I'll hold, I'll hold. I know.
— Sara Quin
She was this girl I once knew. Took my breath away, she was so pretty. Took my heart, if you want to know the truth. I was kind of angry about it at the time.
— Christy Hayes, Heart of Glass
I have nothing to offer you otherthan the undying love of my broken Heart.
— Angivel of Zanarcadia
It wasn't the "I love you" she heard that made her let him go. It was the "Come with me" that she didn't.
— Meghan O'Connor
Let us embrace, and from this very moment vow an eternal misery together.
— Thomas Otway, The Orphan
Fat’ is usually the first insult a girl throws at another girl when she wants to hurt her.I mean, is ‘fat’ really the worst thing a human being can be? Is ‘fat’ worse than ‘vindictive’, ‘jealous’, ‘shallow’, ‘vain’, ‘boring’ or ‘cruel’? Not to me; but then, you might retort, what do I know about the pressure to be skinny? I’m not in the business of being judged on my looks, what with being a writer and earning my living by using my brain…I went to the British Book Awards that evening. After the award ceremony I bumped into a woman I hadn’t seen for nearly three years. The first thing she said to me? ‘You’ve lost a lot of weight since the last time I saw you!’‘Well,’ I said, slightly nonplussed, ‘the last time you saw me I’d just had a baby.’What I felt like saying was, ‘I’ve produced my third child and my sixth novel since I last saw you. Aren’t either of those things more important, more interesting, than my size?’ But no – my waist looked smaller! Forget the kid and the book: finally, something to celebrate!I’ve got two daughters who will have to make their way in this skinny-obsessed world, and it worries me, because I don’t want them to be empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones; I’d rather they were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, opinionated, original, funny – a thousand things, before ‘thin’. And frankly, I’d rather they didn’t give a gust of stinking chihuahua flatulence whether the woman standing next to them has fleshier knees than they do. Let my girls be Hermiones, rather than Pansy Parkinsons.
— J.K. Rowling
When you find a man you wish to marry, Tessa, remember this: You will know what kind of man he is not by the things he says, but by the things he does.
— Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
— Helen Keller
I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding— certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of other so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost, is lost forever.
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
I would rather be a little nobody, then to be a evil somebody.
— Abraham Lincoln
It is better to be alone than in bad company.
— George Washington
Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is and the tree is the real thing.
— Abraham Lincoln
If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
All cruelty springs from weakness.
— Seneca, Seneca's Morals: Of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency
Character is doing what you don't want to do but know you should do.
— Joyce Meyer
Be an independent thinker at all times, and ignore anyone who attempts to define you in a limiting way.
— Sherry Argov, Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl—A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship
I'm afraid that we all make mistakes. One of the things that defines our character is how we handle mistakes. If we lie about having made a mistake, then it can't be corrected and it festers. On the other hand, if we give up just because we made a mistake, even a big mistake, none of us would get far in life.
— Terry Goodkind, Confessor
One's character is set at an early age. The choices you make now will affect you for the rest of your life. I hate to see you swim out so far you can't swim back.
— Wendelin Van Draanen, Flipped
Show me a man with a tattoo and I'll show you a man with an interesting past.
— Jack London
We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can't stop pissing on fire hydrants...I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. she walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. She knows the truth: We're as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we're not likely to do either.People will say it's sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it's not sad. It's triumphant. It's heroic. Isn't that the real heroism?The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention.
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
Your reputation is in the hands of others. That's what the reputation is. You can't control that. The only thing you can control is your character.
— Wayne W. Dyer
Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.
— James A. Michener
A man with no enemies is a man with no character.
— Paul   Newman
We cannot live better than in seeking to become better.
— Socrates
There was a saying that a man's true character was revealed in defeat. I thought it was also revealed in victory.
— Alison Goodman, Eon: Dragoneye Reborn
There is a very great difference — is there not? — between the temporal and the eternal judgments, a very great difference between a man's reputation and a man's character, for reputation is what men think and say of us, while character is what God and the angels know of us.
— Price  Collier
Beauty's only skin deep.Everybody has ugly days.We're all made of the same stuff underneath.Acting right is better than looking right.Realize what make you special beyond looks.Evil can look pretty on the outside.
— Shannon Delany, 13 to Life
A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.
— James Allen, As a Man Thinketh
Don't destroy yourself by allowing negative people add gibberish and debris to your character, reputation, and aspirations. Keep all dreams alive but discreet, so that those with unhealthy tongues won't have any other option than to infest themselves with their own diseases.
— Michael Bassey Johnson, The Infinity Sign
When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.
— Edna O'Brien
God gave you a gift of 84,600 seconds today. Have you used one of them to say thank you?
— William Arthur Ward
Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.
— Aristotle
If I take care of my character, my reputation will take care of itself.
— Dwight L. Moody
She taught me I should never do anything in private I did not want talked about in public, and cautioned me not to talk in my sleep.
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
Scars fade with time. And the ones that never go away, well, they build character, maturity, caution.
— Erin McCarthy, The Pregnancy Test
You could know a man not by what his friends said about him, but by how he treated his servants.
— Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
Poem by Howard A. Walter (Character)I would be true, for there are those who trust me;I would be pure, for there are those who care;I would be strong, for there are those who suffer;I would be brave, for there is much to dare.I would be friend of all--- the foe, the friendless;I would be giving, and forget the gift;I would be humble, for I know my weakness;I would look up, and laugh, and love, and lift.
— John C. Maxwell, Developing the Leader Within You
Character is much easier kept than recovered.
— Thomas Paine
Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.
— Bruce Lee
A man of character finds a special attractiveness in difficulty, since it is only by coming to grips with difficulty that he can realize his potentialities.
— Charles de Gaulle
Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.
— Theodore Roosevelt
I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.
— Thomas Paine
Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
That mess about judging people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin—that's some bullshit. Nobody has the right to judge anybody else. Period. If you ain't been in my skin, you ain't never gonna understand my character.
— Emily Raboteau, The Professor's Daughter
He whines, he complains, he ducks out of the most obvious responsibility. He is vain, petty and maddening, but he doesn't ever quit.
— Megan Whalen Turner, The King of Attolia
Character building begins in our infancy and continues until death.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
To measure the man, measure his heart.
— Malcolm Forbes
What comes out of you when you are squeezed is what is inside of you.
— Wayne W. Dyer
Good wombs have borne bad sons."-- (Miranda, I:2)
— William Shakespeare, The Tempest
The average personality reshapes frequently, every few years even our bodies undergo a complete overhaul - desirable or not, it is a natural thing that we should change. All right, here were two people who never would change. That is what Mildred Grossman had in common with Holly Golightly. They would never change because they'd been given their character too soon; which, like sudden riches, leads to a lack of proportion: the one had splurged herself into a top-heavy realist, the other a lopsided romantic.
— Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's
In all tests of character, when two viewpoints are pitted against one another, in the final analysis the thing that will strike you the most, is not who was right or wrong, strong or weak, wise or foolish.... but who would go to the greatest lengths in considering the other's perspective. 
— Mike Dooley
Dependability, integrity, the characteristic of never knowingly doing anything wrong, that you would never cheat anyone, that you would give everybody a fair deal. Character is a sort of an all-inclusive thing. If a man has character, everyone has confidence in him.
— Omar Nelson Bradley
Human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment.
— Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Character is plot, plot is character.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate - look to his character.
— Noah Webster
It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.
— Hermann Hesse
You're thoughtful, Barbara, but you're not open. You're passionate, but you're hard. You're a good, decent, funny, wonderful woman, and I love you, but you're a pain in the ass.
— Tracy Letts, August: Osage County
Towns are like people. Old ones often have character, the new ones are interchangeable.
— Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose
A man far oftener appears to have a decided character from persistently following his temperament than from persistently following his principles.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
Talent develops in tranquility, character in the full current of human life.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Manliness consists not in bluff, bravado or loneliness. It consists in daring to do the right thing and facing consequences whether it is in matters social, political or other. It consists in deeds not words.
— Mahatma Gandhi
You are good. But it is not enough just to be good. You must be good for something. You must contribute good to the world. The world must be a better place for your presence. And the good that is in you must be spread to others… In this world so filled with problems, so constantly threatened by dark and evil challenges, you can and must rise above mediocrity, above indifference. You can become involved and speak with a strong voice for that which is right.
— Gordon B. Hinckley
People adjust their behavior to fit the society they live in. They integrate because they have to. But what they are on the inside doesn't change.
— Sandra Brown, Tough Customer
Champions do not become champions when they win the event, but in the hours, weeks, months and years they spend preparing for it. The victorious performance itself is merely the demonstration of their championship character.
— Alan Armstrong
Don't the great tales never end?""No, they never end as tales," said Frodo. "But the people in them come, and go when their part's ended. Our part will end later – or sooner.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers
Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but she was able to use other people's in such a constructive way that she never felt the lack.
— Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories
Daja doesn't exactly need to be tested on whether she's honorable or not." "Doesn't she? Don't all of you? This is your first taste of the things which may come from your being powerful mages. People will offer you gold, status, even love. I want to know how you will react. If want to know if your teachers will release greedy, thoughtless monsters into the world.
— Tamora Pierce, Daja's Book
It's not what you do but that kind of job you do that makes the difference.
— Ben Carson, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story
Miss Vesper Holly has the digestive talents of a goat and the mind of a chess master. She is familiar with half a dozen languages and can swear fluently in all of them. She understands the use of a slide rule but prefers doing calculations in her head. She does not hesitate to risk life and limb- mine as well as her own. No doubt she has other qualities as yet undiscovered. I hope not.
— Lloyd Alexander, The Illyrian Adventure
The most difficult challenge an honest man will ever face is having to choose between duty and love.One creates a man of honorable character―a life worth dying for.The other creates a vulnerable soul that madly yearns for either death or immortality.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Eena, The Return of a Queen
Even water carves monuments of stone, so do our thoughts shape our character.
— Hugh B. Brown
Don't write about Man
—  write about a man.
Affliction is a good man's shining time.
— Edward Young
A black shadow dropped down into the circle. It was Bagheera the Black Panther, inky black all over, but with the panther markings showing up in certain lights like the pattern of watered silk. Everybody knew Bagheera, and nobody cared to cross his path, for he was as cunning as Tabaqui, as bold as the wild buffalo, and as reckless as the wounded elephant. But he had a voice as soft as wild honey dripping from a tree, and a skin softer than down.
— Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Books
The decent, strong person had to do decent, strong things like love unlovable people and keep peace even when it wasn't easy.
— Mary Connealy, Doctor in Petticoats (Center Point Christian Romance
These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.
— Abigail Adams
You have a valid complaint, and I do recognize it ... but you are reading into things a little bit. Just the same, I will do my best to make horrible things happen to a bunch of white people before something else so graphic hits a minority character.
— Robert Kirkman
I've discovered that in life, it doesn't matter how good of a person you are; it's human nature to be judged and to judge others by the blood they carry and the company they keep.
— Mz. Robinson, The Lies We Tell for Love
If something bad smells in the basement, it will eventually make its way to the attic.
— Anthony Liccione
Character is not made by crisis. It is only exhibited.
— Robert Freeman
Rascals are always sociable, and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others company.
— Arthur Schopenhauer
A melancholy air can never be the right thing; what you want is a bored air. If you are melancholy, it must be because you want something, there is something in which you have not succ
— Stendhal, The Red and the Black
A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books
If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that registered earthquakes ten thousand miles away.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
If you are well-mannered towards those whose views are similar to yours, you may be said to exhibit a fairly good character. But, if you behave properly wit those holding divergent views from you or who criticize you, then you deserve to be credited with having an excellent character. (p. 99)
— Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, The True Jihad: The Concept of Peace, Tolerance and Non Violence in Islam
Our imperfections make us unique as surely as our strengths.
— Toni Sorenson
A thorough inspection of someone you believed to be loveable will send you back into your shell if all you saw in their life was all bullshit.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
Anyone that has character leaves a mark on another. Would you like to leave the world without making a ripple?
— Nora Roberts
We are masters of our characters and in turn, slaves of their outgrowth.
— Mohammed Ali Bapir
Developing better people should be the number one goal for any coach when dealing with kids. In trying to develop better people, we are going to develop more and better pros.
— Bobby Orr
Thought creates character.
— Annie Besant
True worth is being not seeming
— Alice Cary
If any man despises me, that is his problem. My only concern is not doing or saying anything deserving of contempt.
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
In words are seen the state of mind and character and disposition of the speaker.
— Plutarch
There is a stage you reach, Deagle thinks, a time somewhere in early middle age, when your past ceases to be about yourself. Your connection to your former life is like a dream or delirium, and that person who you once were is merely a fond acquaintance, or a beloved character from a storybook. This is how memory becomes nostalgia. They are two very different things - the same way that a person is different from a photograph of a person.
— Dan Chaon, Stay Awake