c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I am so sad. I am so sad it makes me heavier than the sum of my parts. I shift, restless, but it doesn’t help. It’s like—time. All this time in here is on me, has its hooks in me. Maybe if I sleep more, I’ll wake up and I’ll feel different, but I can’t. The storm is really happening now and it makes the room feel emptier. Makes me feel emptier.
— Courtney Summers, This is Not a Test
I have to go home, Masi.You are my home, bella. I am lost without you. He couldn’t speak. There were no words to recoil the loss consuming him. Massimo brought his hands up to her face. Kissing her one last time. He had to for his sanity. And he did with great passion, knowing he’d hurt her face when she kissed him back. But she did. He heard the cry in her throat as their tongues danced. Warm tears touched his palms as they continued to kiss. His fingertips were wet with sadness. He kept on kissing her. Unable to stop, he needed ten more seconds. Ti amo, I love you. Please don’t leave. I’ve waited my whole life for you. When he pulled his face back, she cried, and he realized he did also.
— Avery Aster, Undressed
The weird thing about saying good-bye is that it never gets easier.
— Alyson Noel, Blue Moon
No one was normal, not really.
— Richelle Mead, Vampire Academy
Never love that which you cannot keep.
— Alexandra Adornetto, Hades
My heart was in a perpetual state of sadness and the only relief I could find were in those cathartic cries. I lived a fragile existence.
— Fisher Amelie, Vain
I'm pretty lost in becoming all this frost. Bitter, like Winter. Strung-out like a string of pearls.
— Ashly Lorenzana
A thousand laughing suns are in your eyes. A thousand crying stars in mine.
— Ahmad Shamlou
Everyone wanted what she couldn't have.
— Richelle Mead, Vampire Academy
I made so many promises when I arrived here.Now I'm not so sure. Now I'm worried. Now my mind is a traitor because my thoughts crawl out of bed every morning with darting eyes and sweating palms and nervous giggles that sit in my chest, build in my chest, threaten to burst through my chest, and the pressure is tightening and tightening and tighteningLife around here isn't what I expected it to be.
— Tahereh Mafi
Through the anger came something I recognized
—  the sadness that can result from too many years absorbing the poison of others. - Alex Delaware on Dr. Lehmann
no matter how big his smile or how loud his laugh, you could hear the hurt underneath.
— Kirby Larson, Hattie Big Sky
Dear, sweet, beautiful girl,
— Tahereh Mafi
I realize all the uncountable manifestations the thinking-mind invents to place wall of horror before its pure perfect realization that there is no wall and no horror just Transcendental Empty Kissable Milk Light of Everlasting Eternity's true and perfectly empty nature.
— Jack Kerouac, Tristessa
Because minds do blow and hearts do break. Those are not just sayings. And wolves and roaches are not the only creatures that chew off their legs to get out of traps—human beings do that, too.
— Robin Silverman, Lemon Reef
And as I venture into anothers pit of everlasting darkness, I'll return with a simple blackened rose. and with that rose I shall write the stories it tells.
— Larul Andrews
My dad was a magician too. Got in his car and disappeared.
— Cath Crowley, Graffiti Moon
I wanted to putt my hand on this hand and hold it still under mine, made still by his made still. Oh he was bright and I was dark and I gave him all my darkness on that ship; but we joined, for all good things in the world, and to find somethin together; and loved, I never knew I could do it and was afraid; and on the bow of the ship that night that he said, "What have we done Christy?"I said, wonderin too, "But somethin good will come of this, I know somethin good will come of this..."Only sorrow came.
— William Goyen, The House of Breath
Aika often says that she is the only one capable of loving me the same way I am is the one capable of loving her, and no one will be able to stand my twisted personality other than her and for me to betray her is unthinkable and impossible
— Cullen Thomas
Then I played the song that hides in the center of me. That wordless music that moves through the secret places in my heart. I played it carefully, strumming it slow and low into the dark stillness of the night. I would like to say it is a happy song, that it is sweet and bright, but it is not.
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear
Hands that never touch. Lips that never meet. The Almost Lovers, never to be.
— Rae Hachton, Frankie's Monster
Booze makes you stupid and like it. It makes you fall around and not care. And eventually, stupid is the only way you know how to be. Cocaine makes you feel important, that life matters, that you matter. That the music is better than it really is. That every conversation is profound and that all pretenses have been stripped away. Ecstasy makes you dance all night and love your friends so much, in a way that you've never been able to tell them about before. Acid makes you see pretty colours and makes things breathe. But Sadness, there is nothing like Sadness.
— pleasefindthis, Intentional Dissonance
Zoe—" I said."Stars," she whispered. "I can see the stars again, my lady."A tear trickled down Artemis's cheek. "Yes, my brave one. They are beautiful tonight.""Stars," Zoe repeated. Her eyes fixed on the night sky. And she did not move again.Thalia lowered her head. Annabeth gulped down a sob, and her father put his hands on her shoulders. I watched as Artemis cupped her hand above Zoe's mouth and spoke a few words in Ancient Greek. A silvery wisp of smoke exhaled from Zoe's lips and was caught in the hand of the goddess. Zoe's body shimmered and disappeared.Artemis stood, said a kind of blessing, breathed into her cupped hand and released the silver dust to the sky. It flew up, sparkling, and vanished.For a moment I didn't see anything different. Then Annabeth gasped. Looking up in the sky, I saw that the stars were brighter now. They made a pattern I had never noticed before—a gleaming constellation that looked a lot like a girl's figure—a girl with a bow, running across the sky."Let the world honor you, my Huntress," Artemis said. "Live forever in the stars.
— Rick Riordan, The Titan's Curse
I walk out the door with a heavy feeling in my heart as another secret falls on top of it.
— Jessica Sorensen, The Coincidence of Callie & Kayden
He looks at me, and I don't know what he sees. I used to think it was Rose. But she's not here with us now, in this room. It's just him and me, and the books. I feel like our lives are in those books. I feel like all the words on the pages are for us.
— Lauren DeStefano, Sever
I preferred to look at the sea, which said nothing and never made you feel alone.
— Paula McLain, The Paris Wife
It's quiet for a while, and then Rowan says; "We could talk now. We're alone out here. No walls.""There are always walls." I say.
— Lauren DeStefano, Sever
Madoka: I want to erase the tears of all those who trusted in hope. I want them to be left with a smile on their faces.
— Magica Quartet, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Vol. 03
Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind. The flawless object throws into perspective the mediocrity that surrounds it. We are reminded of the way we would wish things always to be and of how incomplete our lives remain.
— Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness
The only thing that will ever be real, is this moment,' I turned to the statue, 'when you made me feel alive, when you made me feel real, when I felt like you really love me. Now? I'm just your monster, Frankie. I will always be a monster.
— Rae Hachton, Frankie's Monster
One day," you said to me, "I saw the sunset forty-four times!"And a little later you added:"You know-- one loves the sunet, when one is so sad...""Were you so sad, then?" I asked, "on the day of the forty-four sunsets?"But the little prince made no reply.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Nights without work I spent with whisky and books.
— Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
As reason returned to me, memory came with it, and I saw that even on the worst days, when I thought I was utterly and completely miserable, I was nevertheless, and nearly all the time, extremely happy. That gave me something to think about. The discovery was not a pleasant one. It seemed to me that I was losing a great deal. I asked myself, wasn't I sad, hadn't I felt my life breaking up? Yes, that had been true; but each minute, when I stayed without moving in a corner of the room, the cool of the night and the stability of the ground made me breathe and rest on gladness.
— Maurice Blanchot, The Madness of the Day
People do not belong to others, either. How can the huincas buy and sell people if they do not own them. Sometimes the boy went two or three days without speaking a word, surly, and not eating, and when asked what was the matter, the answer was always the same: "There are content days and there are sad days. Each person is a master of his silence.
— Isabel Allende, Inés of My Soul
Humanity's greatest achievement will come when the happiness of some will no longer be the sadness of others.
— Mario Stinger, Destined for Oblivion: As Nature Intended
I hate the sound of the world outside. Because everybody here can't wait to come and say goodbye...
— Dulara Perera
He stopped complaining, but now I was annoyed. I went to the roof and drank alone.
— Haruki Murakami
I promised I'd save him, take him home! I promised him!" . . . Thomas hugged Chuck to his chest, squeezed him as tightly as possible, as if that could somehow bring him back, or show thanks for saving his life, for being his friend when no one else would.Thomas cried, wept like he'd never wept before. His great, racking sobs echoed through the chamber like the sounds of tortured pain. (pg 358 hardback)
— James Dashner, The Maze Runner
When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calender that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from the chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table. I spent my life learning to feel less. Every day I felt less. Is that growing old? Or is it something worse? You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
He hugged her tight, mixing their tears to be bottled and fermented, so they could be drunk on each other when this was all over.
— Pete Wentz, The Boy With The Thorn In His Side
My Sadness is Deeper than YoursMy sadness is deeper than yours. My interior life is richer than yours. I am more interesting than you. I don’t care about anybody else’s problems. They are not as serious as mine. Nobody knows the weight I carry, the trouble I’ve seen. There are worlds in my head that nobody has access to: fortunately for them, fortunately for me. I have seen things that you will never see, and I have feelings that you are incapable of feeling, that you would never allow yourself to feel, because you lack the capacity and the curiosity. Once you felt the hint of such a feeling, you would stamp it out. I am a martyr to futility and I don’t expect to be shut down by a pretender. Mothballs are an aphrodisiac to me, beauty depresses me. You could never hope to fathom the depth of my feelings, deeper than death. I look down upon you all from my lofty height of lowliness. The fullness of your satisfaction lacks the cadaverous purity of my pain. Don’t talk to me about failure. You don’t know the meaning of the word. When it comes to failure, you’re strictly an amateur. Bush league stuff. I’m ten times the failure you’ll ever be. I have more to complain about than you, and regrets: more than a few, too many to mention. I am a fully-qualified failure, I have proven it over and over again. My credentials are impeccable, my resume flawless. I have worked hard to put myself in a position of unassailable wretchedness, and I demand to be respected for it. I expect to be rewarded for a struggle that produced nothing. I want the neglect, the lack of acknowledgment. And I want the bitterness that comes with it too.
— John Tottenham
It is true that I am a person with black pockets of evil and hatred in my heart. There are underground places inside of me
— Lynda Barry, Cruddy
Pain could be killed. Sadness could not, but the drugs did shut its mouth for a time.
— Colson Whitehead, Zone One
Because memories fall apart, too. And then you're left with nothing, left not even with a ghost but with its shadow. In the beginning she haunted me, haunted my dreams, but even now, just weeks later, she was slipping away, falling apart in my memory and everyone else's, dying again.
— John Green, Looking for Alaska
I'd like to have a good long talk with you once you've calmed down. Please call me soon. Happy Birthday.
— Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
You said I could be anything I wanted when I was older', I said.She smiled and said, 'And you can be. But it's not very easy to become Jewish.''I know,' I said forlornly, 'I need a number.'And she suddenly stopped smiling.
— Sarah Winman, When God Was a Rabbit
Enslavement of the heart is worse than enslavement of the body
— ابن تيمية
...in my dream the shadings of your soul are the dark tincture of rain...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
For each door of sadness that opens, there are a thousand means of shutting it...
— محمد عبد الرحمن العريفي, Enjoy Your Life
Life is as sad as a glass of grenadine.' ... It’s almost that. It is sad. But, at the same time, how a glass of grenadine sparkles!
— Mylène Farmer
I feel like a real dead one: having neither blood to bleed nor any flesh or bone to feel the scars
—  yet I want to hold on to my spirit.
Love is a Beautiful Thing that makes us to Adjust ourselves Forcely
— Avinash Babu Anand
Then, all but instinctively, I took her in my arms. Pressed against me, her whole body trembling, she continued to cry without a sound.
— Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
...sorrow binds us - I will always cherish you - my only disillusionment is unspoken words ...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
She has failed. She wishes she didn't mind. Something, she thinks, is wrong with her.
— Michael Cunningham, The Hours
Heads: This girlTails: That girl
— Lisa Schroeder, The Day Before
Crying out loud but there is no one to regret it ,Smile a little and they'll join the party
— Naim Ibn Iqbal Khan نعيم خا
I had never liked, even feared a little, this wild reach of marsh and mud flats where everything seemed turned away from the land, looking off desperately toward the horizon as if in mute search for a sign of rescue.
— John Banville, The Sea
I believe you did not have a happy life.I believe you were cheated.I believe your best friends were loneliness and misery.I believe your busiest enemies were anger and depression.I believe joy was a game you could never play without stumbling.I believe comfort, though you craved it, was forever a stranger.I believe music had to be melancholy or not at all.I believe no trinket, no precious metal, shone so bright as your bitterness.I believe you lay down at last in your coffin none the wiser and unassuaged.Oh, cold and dreamless under the wild, amoral, reckless, peaceful flowers of the hillsides.
— Mary Oliver
Part of me aches at the thought of her being so close yet so untouchable.
— Nicholas Sparks, Dear John
Here is a girl who is pretty in a quiet way. I bet she's had a very sad life.
— Wally Lamb, She's Come Undone
To be forgotten by the one to whom you never forget is the worst thing ever happens.
— Na
I wanted to fall
—  good thing you pushed me.
Rainy, gloomy, drab, sunless day.  There are times when hope seems entirely clouded over, when looking for the blessings in your circumstances feels like trying to catch a ray of sunshine from six feet under.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
I am poppies in the fieldRed and cold I am sleeping alone and I am lightI am lightI am light
— Bella Betina
The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more.
— G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
I know in a way I never knew before that there is nowhere for me to go, nothing for me to do, and no one for me to know. The voice in my head keeps reciting these old principles of mine. The voice is his voice, and the voice is also my voice. And there are other voices, voices I have never heard before, voices that seem to be either dead or dying in a great moonlit darkness. More than ever, some sort of new arrangement seems in order, some dramatic and unknown arrangement -- anything to find release from this heartbreaking sadness I suffer every minute of the day (and night), this killing sadness that feels as if it will never leave me no matter where I go or what I do or whom I may ever know.
— Thomas Ligotti, The Nightmare Factory
But now the joy is gone and the sadness is back, the sadness feels like something deserved, the price of some not-quite-forgotten betrayal.
— Stephen King, Dreamcatcher
A clown needn't be the same out of the ring as he has to be when he's in it. If you look at photographs of clowns when they're just being ordinary men, they've got quite sad faces.
— Enid Blyton, Five Go Off in a Caravan
He had been for many years, a quiet silent man, associating but little with other men, and used to companionship with his own thoughts. He had never known before the strength of the want in his heart for the frequent recognition of a nod, a look, a word; or the immense amount of relief that had been poured into it by drops through such small means.
— Charles Dickens, Hard Times
There is nothing so cleansing or reassuring as a vicarious sadness.
— David Rakoff, Half Empty
Sadness is the ambrosia of all art.
— Frances Fong
From that moment our love became sad, and sadness is a disease which gives the death-blow to affection.
— Giacomo Casanova
Silence is the source of healing. When we bring things from within ourselves out into the light of awareness, a healing process happens. In the silence, we can let go of all anger, sadness, fear, loneliness and frustration.
— Swami Dhyan Giten, Presence - Working from Within. The Psychology of Being
My mother's death supervened, and this was the greatest blow I had experienced in my life. I worshipped her... I could not resign myself to the loss of a being on whom I counted to make invisible the unavoidable blemishes of my soul.
— Salvador Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí
And it feels strange, almost sad, to walk through ther empty halls. Each step I take sounds so lonely.
— Jay Asher
I believe that in a way, sadness is happiness for there can be no wrong without right, no light without dark, no success without failure, no relief without pain, no love without hatred and no Snow White without the evil queen.
— Girl234
That’s what love is like: mother of the greatest bliss and stepmother of the most tragic misery.
— Stefanos Livos, A Life In A Moment
You know what 'Dolores' means? It's Latin, means sadness. Our Lady of Sorrow. Why are you so sad?
— Wally Lamb, She's Come Undone
She knows what it is to be sad and miserable, but those emotions are almost enjoyable. They throw moments of happiness and laughter into sharper relief.
— Simon Mawer, The Glass Room
We began our hospital visits: one day Susan, one day me, everyday The Big Hoom. On one of these visits, she told me about the tap that opened at my birth and the lack drip filling her up, and it tore a hole in my heart. If this was what she could manage with a single sentence, what did thirsty years of marriage do to The Big Hoom?
— Jerry Pinto
True confessions are written with tears only. But my tears would drown the world, as my inner fire would reduce it to ashes.
— Emil M. Cioran, On the Heights of Despair
I could disappear from the face of the earth, and the world would go on moving without the slightest twinge. Things were tremendously complicated, to be sure, but one thing was clear: no one needed me.
— Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
I'm not sure if you even want me around or if you just feel sorry for me. I'm not sure of anything.
— Sarah Ockler, Bittersweet
I have fooled life and life has fooled me. We are quits. I say good-bye. Think sometimes in the hour of happiness of your poor, comical fool who loved you truly and so well.
— Richard von Krafft-Ebing
The happiest she'd ever been was with him, and the saddest. Was that the true test of love?
— Stewart O'Nan, The Odds: A Love Story
But there is nothing enduring in the world, and therefore even joy in the second minute is already not as acute as in the first; in the third minute it becomes still weaker and finally merges unnoticeably with the usual condition of the soul, as a circle on the water, caused by the fall of a pebble, finally merges with the smooth surface.
— Nikolai Gogol
...that breath of relief that there is someone in the world, finally, who understands what hurts you.
— Lysley Tenorio, Monstress
The parts of me that hurt the worst want me to write something for them, but I can't. I don't know what to say. I'm lost in all this sadness, and so are they.
— Ashly Lorenzana
Oh, dry the glistening tear that dues that marshal cheekThy loving childern here in them thy comfort seek With sympathetic care their arms around the creep, For oh they can not bear to see their father weep
— W.S. Gilbert, The Pirates of Penzance
How do you file a restraining order against sadness?
— Alex Adams, White Horse
She looked at me with those empty eyes, and I thought, I'm going to make sure I fill them up with something.
— Cath Crowley, A Little Wanting Song
I wish... I wish he wasn't quite so ashamed of me. And if he could stop feeling so ashamed of himself, then maybe we might stand a chance.
— Malorie Blackman, Boys Don't Cry
Chamara. What is the word that comes closest to it? Soo-Ja wondered. To stand it, to bear it, to grit your teeth and not cry out? To hold on, to wait until the worst is over? There is no other word for it, no way to translate it. It is not a word. It is a way to console yourself. He is not just telling her to stand the pain, but giving her comfort, the power to do so. Chamara is an incantation, and if she listens to its sound, she believes that she can do it, that she will push through this sadness. And if she is strong about it, she'll be rewarded in the end. It is a way of saying, I know, I feel it, too. This burns my heart, too.
— Samuel Park, This Burns My Heart
Something I'm not ready to name works itself under the grip of Charlies death and loosens it, and keeps the nightmare at bay when I fall back asleep.
— Trish Doller, Something like Normal
The falling apart of a man's life should make more noise. It should startle passesrby with its Sturm and Drang. It ought to sound like the Parthenon crashing down. Not this ordinary, everyday kind of quiet...He closed his eyes...And still it was quiet, this falling apart of his life, as silent as the last beat of an old man's heart. A quiet, echoing thud, and then...nothing.
— Kristin Hannah, Angel Falls
Why weren’t you beautiful? That would’ve solved everything.’('Left from Dhakeshwari')
— Kunal  Sen
Griff held his breath, waiting for it, knowing the axe would fall and he‘d start dying as soon as he walked out the fucking door, and Dante would just grin and joke and try to forget what they had done together in this room.
— Damon Suede
Back then, come July, and the blazers would again make their way out of the steel trunks and evenings would be spent looking at snow-capped mountains from our terrace and spotting the first few lights on the hills above. It was the time for radishes and mulberries in the garden and violets on the slopes. The wind carried with it the comforting fragrance of eucalyptus. It was in fact all about the fragrances, like you know, in a Sherlock Holmes story. Even if you walked with your eyes closed, you could tell at a whiff, when you had arrived at the place, deduce it just by its scent. So, the oranges denoted the start of the fruit-bazaar near Prakash ji’s book shop, and the smell of freshly baked plum cake meant you had arrived opposite Air Force school and the burnt lingering aroma of coffee connoted Mayfair. But when they carved a new state out of the land and Dehra was made its capital, we watched besotted as that little town sprouted new buildings, high-rise apartments, restaurant chains, shopping malls and traffic jams, and eventually it spilled over here. I can’t help noticing now that the fragrances have changed; the Mogra is tinged with a hint of smoke and will be on the market tomorrow. The Church has remained and so has everything old that was cast in brick and stone, but they seem so much more alien that I almost wish they had been ruined.’('Left from Dhakeshwari')
— Kunal  Sen
There’s always been sadness hidden at the core of Hitch, but it’s never been big enough to taste. Occasionally, I’d get a whiff of it, salty on the wind, but it never pressed in between us like it does now, threatening to drown us both.
— Stacey Jay, Dead on the Delta
In Despite Of Sadness Don't Let It Conquer Ur Heart But Let Forgiveness and Acceptance Do And Happiness Will Reign Over You
— Ronaldo David Jr.
I'm always telling myself I don't have many feelings. Even when something does affect me I'm only moderately moved. I almost never cry. It's not that I'm stronger than the ones with teary eyes, I'm weaker. They have courage. When all you are is skin and bones, feelings are a brave thing. I'm more of a coward. The difference is minimal though, I just use my strength not to cry. When I do allow myself a feeling, I take the part that hurts and bandage it up with a story that doesn't cry, that doesn't dwell on homesickness.
— Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel
It is necessary to fall in love – the better to provide an alibi for all the despair we are going to feel anyway.
— Albert Camus
She struggled with her sadness, but tried to conceal it, to divide it into smaller and smaller parts and scatter these in places she thought no one would find them.
— Nicole Krauss, Great House
Like them you are tall and taciturn, and you are sad, all at once, like a voyage.
— Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
Underneath my imagination there didn't seem to be anything solid except for the space where I shoved my pain and sadness. Besides that, there were only twisted steel threads of axiety, woven through my body and brain, wired into me like a constant warning. Watch out, stay still, move away, stay silent, fight back, run and hide. Even when I was dreaming, but more so when I was awake, there was the constant fear of being caught off-guard, or by the wrong person at the wrong time.
— Jane Devin, Elephant Girl: A Human Story
When people say they are happy for you it may mean they are sad for themselves.
— Josephine Humphreys, The Fireman's Fair
Outside it was dark, but not as dark as it was inside of me.
— Anna N.
Wonderland was all we had in common, after all; Wonderland was what was denied the two of us. I had denied him his; he had denied me mine.
— Melanie Benjamin, Alice I Have Been
A whole tree of lightning stood in the sky. She kept looking out the window, suffused with the warmth from the fire and with the pity and beauty and power of her death. The thunder rolled.
— Eudora Welty
What's the use of crying, and retching, and belching, all day long, like your lady downstairs? Life has its sad side, and we must take the rough with the smooth. Why, maids have died on their marriage eve, or, what's worse, bringing their first baby into the world, and the world's wagged on all the same. Life's sad enough, in all conscience, but there's nothing to be frightened about in it or to turn one's stomach. I was country-bred, and as my old granny used to say, "There's no clock like the sun and no calendar like the stars." And why? Because it gets one used to the look of Time. There's no bogey from over the hills that scares one like Time. But when one's been used all one's life to seeing him naked, as it were, instead of shut up in a clock, like he is in Lud, one learns that he is as quiet and peaceful as an old ox dragging the plough. And to watch Time teaches one to sing. They say the fruit from over the hills makes one sing. I've never tasted so much as a sherd of it, but for all that I can sing.
— Hope Mirrlees, Lud-in-the-Mist
The flowers were beaten down, their bent-over heads bejeweled with diamond droplets like earring on sad, rich widows
— Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
The mere fact that Lottie had come and gone away again made things seem a little worse-just as perhaps prisoners feel a little more desolate after visitors come and go, leaving them behind.
— Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess
They're indifference should not be the cause of your non-existence.
— Flor Hernandez
For, thought Ahab, while even the highest earthly felicities ever have a certain unsignifying pettiness lurking in them, but, at bottom, all heartwoes, a mystic significance, and, in some men, an archangelic grandeur; so do their diligent tracings-out not blue the obvious deduction. To trail the genealogies of these high mortal miseries, carries us at last among the sourceless primogenitures of the gods; so that, in the face of all the glad, hay-making suns, and the softcymballing, round the harvest-moons, we must needs give in to this: that the gods themselves are not for ever glad. The ineffaceable, sad birth-mark in the brow of man, is but the stamp of sorrow in the signers.
— Herman Melville
precious laughing time is wasted, because I have to put up with Satan's stupid minions who smile without attempting to anger somebody else - leave us alone already.
— A Gentlemen
What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.
— Seneca
Anyone can grow into something beautiful.
— Vanessa Diffenbaugh, The Language of Flowers
Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.
— Craig Lancaster, Quantum Physics and the Art of Departure
I wondered what things what things became when you no longer needed them, and I wondered what the future would hold once we'd gotten past our personal tragedies and proven them ultimately survivable.
— Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything
If good things lasted forever, would we appreciate how precious they are?
— Bill Watterson, It's a Magical World: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection
Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, "So what.""My mother didn't love me." So what."My husband won't ball me. So what."I'm a success but I'm still alone." So what.I don't know how I made it through all the years before I learned how to do that trick. It took a long time for me to learn it, but once you do, you never forget.
— Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.
— Steven Furtick
Die slowlyHe who becomes the slave of habit,who follows the same routes every day,who never changes pace,who does not risk and change the color of his clothes,who does not speak and does not experience,dies slowly.He or she who shuns passion,who prefers black on white,dotting ones "it’s" rather than a bundle of emotions, the kind that make your eyes glimmer,that turn a yawn into a smile,that make the heart pound in the face of mistakes and feelings,dies slowly.He or she who does not turn things topsy-turvy,who is unhappy at work,who does not risk certainty for uncertainty,to thus follow a dream,those who do not forego sound advice at least once in their lives,die slowly.He who does not travel, who does not read,who does not listen to music,who does not find grace in himself,she who does not find grace in herself,dies slowly.He who slowly destroys his own self-esteem,who does not allow himself to be helped,who spends days on end complaining about his own bad luck, about the rain that never stops,dies slowly.He or she who abandon a project before starting it, who fail to ask questions on subjects he doesn't know, he or she who don't reply when they are asked something they do know,die slowly.Let's try and avoid death in small doses,reminding oneself that being alive requires an effort far greater than the simple fact of breathing.Only a burning patience will leadto the attainment of a splendid happiness.
— Pablo Neruda, Selected Poems
Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull's life is so short, and with those gone from his thought, he lived a long fine life indeed.
— Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull
There's no shame in enjoying the quiet life.
— Daniel Radcliffe
To have some deep feeling about Buddhism is not the point; we just do what we should do, like eating supper and going to bed. This is Buddhism.
— Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice
You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last.
— Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
People like us, we think differently, don't we? We are different. We do all the things that others do. But when it comes down to it, we don't need anyone else. We're happy doing what we do and having obligation interferes with that. And sometimes I think we don't even need ourselves. What's most important is to find out whether we're right or not.
— Simon Morden, Equations of Life
You love life because life's all there is.
— Glen Duncan, The Last Werewolf
Impossible is Nothing,” it said. “Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.
— Elna Baker, The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir
It was like being at the bottom of an ocean, she said. There was no light and a whole ocean crushing down on you. But most people had gotten so used to it they thought it normal, they forgot even that there was a world above.
— Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
What you seek you shall never find. For when the Gods made man, They kept immortality to themselves.Fill your belly.Day and night make merry.Let Days be full of joy.Love the child who holds your hand.Let your wife delight in your embrace.For these alone are the concerns of man.
— The Epic of Gilgamesh
Just think! This whole world of ours is only a speck of mildew sprung up on a tiny planet, yet we think we can have something great - thoughts,, actions! They are all but grains of sand
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
I feel like I am either on the cusp of something great, or standing on the edge of my abyss, discovering something brand new, or uncovering somebody elses lost imagination.
— Carroll Bryant
Life's full of surprises, and they ain't all bad.
— Barbara Rogan
To live your life afraid of others and deny them a chance to come close is to not live at all.
— Heather Marie Adkins
Talking is nothing. Doing is something.
— Hlovate, Contengan Jalanan
Life is full of changes. And surprises. And the inexplicable(s).
— Hlovate, Contengan Jalanan
Maybe it's just not the right time for us to be married. I don't want to be a bounty hunter for the rest of my life, but I certainly don't want to be a housewife right now. And I really don't want to be married to someone who gives me ultimatums.And maybe Joe needs to examine what he wants from a wife. He was raised in a traditional Italian household with a stay-at-home mother and domineering father. If he wants a wife who will fit into that mold, I'm not for him. I might be a stay-at-home mother someday, but I'll always be trying to fly off the garage roof. That's just who I am.
— Janet Evanovich, Seven Up
A man who pays respect to the great paves the way for his own greatness
— Chinua Achebe
He's going to jail. He can't see. He can't hear. He can't take a leak that lasts under fifteen minutes. But he has an erection and all the other problems are small change. Next time around I'm coming back as a man. Priorities are clearly defined. Life is simple.
— Janet Evanovich, Seven Up
Life is not sugar coated.
— Edna Stewart
Did I help someone to realize a dream they thought they'd lost? Did I listen when someone told me the reward is worth the cost? Did I praise someone for their efforts and encourage someone toward their dreams? Did I help someone to understand the end never justifies the means? Did I make someone laugh and smile when they would much, rather frown? Was I the one who picked them up when everyone put them down? Am I, the one they confide in and know their conversations secure? Did I provide them with someone to trust in knowing their friendship will always endure? Am I humble and constantly striving to become more than I was yesterday? Did I focus on the successes of others and follow through with all that I say? If I constantly strive to become the one who can say I did to did I's. Then my life is fulfilled, knowing I have achieved life's greatest prize.
— Carl Morris
If you don't participate, you're just taking up oxygen. (Bunny)Life is a banquet. Approach it with hunger. (Chuck)
— Deb Caletti, Wild Roses
The strange thing about life is that though the nature of it must have been apparent to every one for hundreds of years, no one has left any adequate account of it. The streets of London have their map; but our passions are uncharted. What are you going to meet if you turn this corner?
— Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room
Trying to change the outside by making changes to the outside, is like trying to make your lips red in your reflection by putting lipstick on the mirror!
— Odille Rault
And the stars: the sky gets crowded at night, and it is a bit like watching a clock, seeing the constellations slide across the sky. It’s comforting to know that they’ll show up, however bad the day has been, however crook things get. That used to help in France. It put things into perspective—the stars had been around since before there were people. They just kept shining, no matter what was going on. I think of the light here like that, like a splinter of a star that’s fallen to earth: it just shines, no matter what is happening. Summer, winter, storm, fine weather. People can rely on it.
— M.L. Stedman, The Light Between Oceans
The first day of the rest of my life.
— Lee Child, The Affair
We don’t sleep to sleep, dammit, any more than we eat to eat . We sleep to dream. We’re amphibians. We live in two elements and we need both." Edward Nesbit
— Lindsay Clarke, The Chymical Wedding
life ain't supposed to be nothing, 'cept maybe tough
— Katherine Paterson, The Great Gilly Hopkins: Literature Guide
Nobody wants to be nothing. But that's the greatest thing in the world to be.
— Marty Rubin
Over the years I've really believed when you think you're in danger, you are probably not and when you have no idea, you probably are.
— Rodney Cocks
Everybody's got their own fight in different ring.
— Innasafa
to express our dream about life in words is not easy but to show it with an example will surprise a lot of people and give them a shock.
— Jan Jansen
I know now that doors open as quickly as they close. That nothing very good or very bad lasts for very long.
— Shehan Karunatilaka, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew
My God, is this a date?" Jeff had asked when I asked if I could bring her along."I don't know," I said. "She might still be happily lesbian.
— Jefferson Bass, Carved in Bone
It was Don Paolo's birthday and all the people of the village were gathered in the piazza to celebrate him. The band played, the wine flowed, the children danced, and, as he stood for a moment alone under the pergola, a little girl approached the the beloved priest. "But Don Paolo, are you not happy?" she asked him. "Of course I am happy," he assured the little girl. "Why, then, aren't you crying?
— Marlena de Blasi, The Lady in the Palazzo: At Home in Umbria
Normality wasn't in the days I'd left behind me: it was only to be found in whatever fortune placed in my path each morning.
— María Dueñas
How did you get back?' asked Vautrin. 'I walked,' replied Eugene.'I wouldn't like half-pleasures, myself,' observed the tempter. 'I'd want to go there in my own carriage, have my own box, and come back in comfort. All or nothing, that's my motto.''And a very good one,' said Madame Vauquer.
— Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot
Oh, life, life!" Bastidas complained, sipping his drink. "What is life? A little flame at the tip of a candle, exposed to a strong wind.
— Julio Ramón Ribeyro, Marginal Voices: Selected Stories
We always crave what we don't have.
— Bunny Naidu
Love is unity of two souls but one spirit.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Be the hero of your own life story. Live to the hilt.
— Sravani Saha Nakhro
Never again will your footsteps b repeated upon this earth. your life is the life that can make a difference.
— Sravani Saha Nakhro
I think weeping is orgasmic. The feeling from the origin of the tears to their end is orgasmic.
— Shivam Chaudhary
Hard and cruel though it may seem," said the Cardinal, "yet we, who hold our high office as keepers and watchmen to the story, may tell you, verily, that to its human characters there is salvation in nothing else in the universe. If you tell them -- you compassionate and accommodating human readers -- that they may bring their distress and anguish before any other authority, you will be cruelly deceiving and mocking them. For within our whole universe the story only has authority to answer that cry of heart of its characters, that one cry of heart of each of them: 'Who am I?
— Karen Blixen, Last Tales
Life is an adventure in growing up, and when you have lost a lot of people you realize each day is a gift.
— Sravani Saha Nakhro
Wear your heart upon your sleeves and your soul upon your smiles.
— Sravani Saha Nakhro
Just as every challenge helps us in evolving
—  similarly every difficult person gives us the opportunity to be more understanding and humane.
Values are like Jell-O. They take time to set.
— Karla Brandenburg, The Twins
Life is as fair as you perceive it to be.
— Sravani Saha Nakhro
People will bow down in front of your result not in front of you.
— Rajesh Walecha
Real life wasn’t a game. In a game, what is required is rashness, to strike back without any hesitation. In real life, there are many things to consider. There is a need to pick the most rational course of action. Not retaliating was a bit depressing, but it was better than putting on a show for others.
— 顾漫, 微微一笑很倾城 [Just One Smile Is Very Alluring]
Delight is all around us you know, from the food we eat, to the night sky, to the dreams we have. It surrounds us with every moment, you just have to stop and take it in whenever you can.
— Jonathan Maas, City of Gods II: Horsemen
(T)here are only two things that are true 100 out of 100 times and that is that you live and also that you die and every other thing is not true or false it is a mix. It is both. It is none.
— Matt Haig, The Dead Fathers Club
Don't walk behind me
—  I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me
Being prepared is not just the beginning, it is also the end and everything in between. Without being fully prepared, your chances of success depends on anything but you.
— Tonny K. Brown
Angels are everywhere. The angelic encounter lies in every given moment.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Are we insane? The moment we awake, we shall acknowledged God as the Divine Being.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
I can never understand someone by his strengths. Nothing is revealed there. I can only understand people by their weaknesses.
— Michael Ondaatje, Anil's Ghost
The breath of being is all that matters in this moment.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
The birth of a child is the bliss of joyous celebration of new human being.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Is the any spectacular moment like the angelic birth of a child?
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Your biggest obstacle, is the man in the mirror
— Thabiso Monkoe, The Azanian
In our life there is one side which is finite and another side which is infinite. I want you to think about both the sides and design the best life and stand in their true values.
— Amit Ray, Walking the Path of Compassion
Lips half open,Words unsaid; And yet He understandsThe puzzles of life’s threads!
— Neelam Saxena Chandra
Celebrate your journey of life.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
I don't see why it matters what is written. Not when it's about people. It can always be crossed out.
— Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
Everything that happens in your life is beautiful. Find yourself in the appreciation of life.
— Sravani Saha Nakhro
Adults are nothing more than decadent children.
— Sravani Saha Nakhro
Don't die with your music still in you, play your music unencumbered. Should your guitar remain unstrung?
— Sravani Saha Nakhro
There exist one shepherd of all souls.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
if a corner is possibly aheadbreathe slowly and preparewhat is in front of this turn can benot only across but upthis in turn should allow a better vision above and beyond,at the same time to turn and peer backto where we have come to and from where ..lt
— levi paul taylor
That day, after barely resurfacing from a seventy-two meter warm up dive into the Blue Hole, Mevoli went into cardiac arrest and died. This time, he wasn’t able to bring himself back. When asked to comment on the accident, Natalia Molchanova, regarded by many as the greatest freehold breath diver in the world, said, “the biggest problem with freedivers . . . [is] now they go too deep too fast.” Less than two years later, off the coast of Spain, Molchanova took a quick recreational dive of herown. She deliberately ran though her usual set of breathing exercises, attached a light weight to her belt to help her descend, and swam downward, alone. It wassupposed to be a head-clearing reset. But, Molchanova didn’t come back either. And that’s the problem that free diving shares with many other state-shifting techniques: return too soon, and you’ll always wonder if you could have gonedeeper. Go too far, and you might not make it back.
— Steven Kotler, Stealing Fire: The Secret Revolution in Altered States
Loneliness is the world of self-discovery where undiscovered you buds.
— Akshmala Sharma, Prism of Nature
That was my mom. Don't fight the system. Mock the system.
— Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
It is better to travel on the rough right road than smooth wrong way.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
The more difficult is your journey the sweater the destination
— Thabiso Monkoe, The Azanian
I want to turn my life into sad adventure and myths.
— J. Limbu
Plenty of people think the same thing. All of them are teenagers, mentally if not physically. Only teenagers think boring is bad. Adults, gown men and women who’ve been around the block a few times, know that boring is a gift straight from God.
— Tana French, Littekenweefsel
You and I can handle certain pressures. We don't feel the need to exaggerate or indulge in, quote, unquote, stress. We're survivors. We have perspective. Remember that.
— Hilary Reyl, Lessons in French
Any man can grow a moustache and a beard! And this does not make him a man! What it takes to be a man is to help a needy person, stand up for the innocent, and lead one's life in the most courteous, dignified and sophisticated way possible to a man.
— Avijeet Das
Life is about execution rather than purpose.
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb
All I want to do now is look at life. You may come and look at it with me, if you care to.
— Oscar Wilde
There was too much at stake for him not to attempt it! He had to win! And he had to win big!
— Avijeet Das
Sometimes saying 'goodbye' may be the best thing to say to someone!
— Avijeet Das
Never stop when you are tired. Stop when you are done!
— Avijeet Das
If lying was an asset, the world would have been full of rich people
— Thabiso Monkoe, The Azanian
Plan me if you can"... Challenges LIFE
— Talees Rizvi
We write our own destiny
—  we become what we do.