c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I’m counting my drawer when Regn comes into the office. I hear her before she enters. I listen for her. The sound of the keypad, the sound of three doors. I saw her pull up on my way in. The anticipation is what I love. The details. The security of knowing she’s arrived and will be here for the day. Even if we don’t have the leisure of time, we have time. It is the unspoken acknowledgments to self. The constant checking and watching for expressions, inflections in the voice, mannerisms. It is a gradual advance. The more we are restrained, the stronger it grows. It is innocence and age that allows the affection to mature, naturally, as it should. Something inside stirs, the heart itself is attracted, much before the body responds. Knowing Regn looks forward to seeing me as much as I do her makes me happy.
— Wheston Chancellor Grove, Who Has Known Heights
Intimacy wasn't sex, she realized. It was knowing someone.
— Sarah Morgan, Sleepless in Manhattan
the rain in this room is low and thickand undressing my heart through the air. – intimacy 
— Nayyirah Waheed, Salt
The paradox of real love is that our capacity to sustain intimacy rests on our capacity to tolerate aloneness inside the relationship.
— Terrence Real, How Can I Get Through to You? Closing the Intimacy Gap Between Men and Women
I wished I could spend the rest of my life... being slightly crushed by someone who loved me.
— Gail Carson Levine, Ella Enchanted
The instinct is not completely satisfied unless a man's whole being, mental quite as much as physical, enters into the relation. Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give; unconsciously, if not consciously, they feel this and the resulting disappointment inclines them towards envy, oppression, and cruelty.
— Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals
As women shut down their needs, they also shut down their sense of pleasure.
— Terrence Real, How Can I Get Through to You? Closing the Intimacy Gap Between Men and Women
a city square that's designed on a scale to express national greatness is hostile to the human intimacy necessary for freedom's space [George Packer, "History: Influence on Humanity"].
— Catie Marron, City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World
Biographers know nothing about the intimate sex lives of their own wives, but they think they know all about Stendhal’s or Faulkner’s.
— Milan Kundera, Testaments Betrayed: An Essay in Nine Parts
I've given myself to you. You may have my body, soul, everything. Time passes, and all I want is the intimacy that slows, defeats. and confounds it. Love, that's what it is. You've always made the mistake that men often make, and carried forward the great fault that mars civilisation, which is that you believe that your philosophy is deeper than love.
— Mark Helprin, Freddy and Fredericka
Loneliness chosen is always preferable to loneliness imposed
— bell hooks
Intimacy, finally, had got the better of us.
— Andrew     Miller, Dub Steps
...intimacy isn't something men talk about. They may talk about politics, literature, stocks, or sports, depending on the man, but about their love lives they keep silent, even to their dying breath.
— Michel Houellebecq, Soumission
She had come to him the fool, thinking herself the experienced one. After all, she had nothing to give that another hadn't had, nothing so far as she knew. But he'd taken what hadn't been there; what was his; what was promised.
— Shewanda Pugh, Crimson Footprints II: New Beginnings
Every promise we kept, every squeeze of the hand, every secretive smile we exchanged, every crying child we comforted- every one of those moments narrowed the distance between us.
— Nadia Hashimi, When the Moon is Low
Terrifying, that the loss of intimacy with one person results in the freezing over of the world, and the loss of oneself.
— James     Baldwin
Connectivity becomes a craving.
— Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
We come here (literally) reaching for intimacy and love. But it seems soon after our arrival, we're made to believe that they're luxuries not necessities.
— Rashod Ollison
Intimacy isn’t something men talk about.
— Michel Houellebecq, Soumission
Children contend with parents who are physically close, tantalizingly so, but mentally elsewhere.
— Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
Everything fades away when we lock eyes with the one who calls us His own.
— Joshua Stannard, How Good Can It Get
No relationship can truly grow if you go on holding back. If you remain clever and go on safeguarding and protecting yourself, only personalities meet, and the essential centers remain alone. Then only your mask is related, not you. Whenever such a thing happens, there are four persons in the relationship, not two. Two false persons go on meeting, and the two real persons remain worlds apart.
— Osho
Of all the deep longings, this ache for missing intimacy, cuts through sharply, like a scream in a silent room, like the last gasping breath under a stifling mask, like the huge lump in the throat that one is unable to swallow. This deep ache to be held, to know touch both the casual and intense variety, to catch an eye in answering laughter, to merge into oneness, to sing through existence in resonance with another, to simply be in deep love in openness. to live and die in intimacy and vulnerability in a loved one's arms. And, you ache alone...
— Srividya Srinivasan
We need imperfection in our relationships, else we would die from the thickness of intimacy.
— Gail Caldwell
He turned and pulled her in, placed his hands on the sides of her face and gazed into her eyes, his head moving closer and closer----she still couldn't say anything, couldn't think of anything other than his mouth landing on hers.
— Jane Green, Summer Secrets
Intimacy and romance are not synonymous.
— Diana Gabaldon
He never, even in the most casual conversation with friends, spoke a sentence which did not sound as if it was ready for the air.
— David Halberstam, The Powers That Be
Intimacy with GOD is most exhilarating, most amazing, most exciting and most rewarding of all.
— TemitOpe Ibrahim
It's love when someone can touch you without using their hands.
— Faraaz Kazi
Fighting is the ultimate act of intimacy.(...) Intimacy is based on shared vulnerability.
— Dossie Easton, The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities
The strange thing about loneliness is that we feel it most intently when we are with people. Loneliness is the knowing in our heart that we were created to really, truly know each other in the deepest sense but we feel stuck with superficiality.
— Dannah Gresh
Hearts are connected by the slenderest of threads.
— Marty Rubin
She doesnt want your dark embrace. She'll let you hold her for a short time but she won’t submit to that kind of weakness and she'll only let you get so close. In the past it was easier pushing you into the arms of another rather than face what was or what could be. She doesn't want to love; not now, so she'll close the door and toss the key.
— Donna Lynn Hope
How many people are watching a movie right now, or reading a book or listening to a song or looking into their life or dreaming with this profound, conscious or not, yearning more than anything for some kind of relationship somewhere with someone or something that would cause them to stagger in intimate rawness in friendship and love?
— Darrell Calkins
May every man find the softest and most fragile expression of his personality with the right woman who would treasure and honour the beauty of his femininity and not misuse it and may all women find empowering and supportive men who would exult in her self expression and success without fear of being overshadowed by the power of her masculinity and in that beautiful new world, shall we enter as partners, equal and empowering, supporting and caring, vulnerable and strong.
— Srividya Srinivasan
Many people engage in physical relationships without ever experiencing intimacy
— DeBorrah K. Ogans, How Do I Love Thee: Food for Thought Before You Say "I DO"
Being an unveiled wife is about confronting and crushing your fears; believing in truth more than in doubt, worry, or lies, and finding your security in God alone
— Jennifer       Smith, The Unveiled Wife: Embracing Intimacy with God and Your Husband
If you're heartless, try not to steal someone else's
— A.M.M Alusi
They stood together in a false intimacy, a nervous contact. And he was in love with her.
— D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love
O how gently and how lovingly dost thou lie awake in the depth and centre of my soul, where thou in secret and in silence alone, as its sole Lord, abidest, not only as in Thine own house or in Thine own chamber, but also as within my own bosom, in close and intimate union.
— San Juan de la Cruz, Living Flame of Love
With so much unknown in this life, how little it takes for a face, a grove of trees, an outcropping of stone to become familiar.
— Larry Watson, Let Him Go
The growth of intimacy will teach us how to love—both ourselves and the other person. If we will allow ourselves to practice the skills of intimacy, we will learn to love. Boundaries protect love and intimacy. Certain behaviors support the integrity of intimacy. Other behaviors, harm, disrupt, or reverse, intimacy. By using skills that promote intimacy, boundaries are created that protect the relationship.
— Anne  Katherine, Where to Draw the Line: How to Set Healthy Boundaries Every Day
How do you control your telekinesis while intimate with your mate?""I broke a damn lot of furniture at the start, including two beds." A curious glance. "What are you doing?""Traveling around the world.
— Nalini Singh, Shield of Winter
'And so we exchange privacy for intimacy. We gamble with it, hoping that by exposing ourselves, someone will find a way in. This is why the human animal will always be vulnerable: because it wants to be.' 
— Max Barry, Lexicon
If you want the naked beauty of my vulnerability, you have to have the strength to share the burden of, the private pain, that makes me feel so tender and fragile. For i am as strong, as i am, weak. If you want me to come home to you, be the safe harbor, in which, i can seek refuge.
— Jaeda DeWalt
Our lives are like a house. Some people are allowed on the lawn, some onto the porch, some get into the vestibule or the kitchen. The better friends are invited deeper into our home, into our living room.''And some are let into the bedroom,' said Gamache.
— Louise Penny, How the Light Gets In
That would be fine,” she said “If we’re alone, we’ll leave the lamp lighted so that we can see each other, and I can holler as much as I want without anybody’s having to butt in, and you can whisper in my ear any crap you can think of.
— Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
We also fought about everything -- like real sisters. We fought about money, bedrooms, whose car to take. Everyone of these fights was actually about something else -- usually abandonment. I wanted to be first on her list and she wanted to be first on mine. I wanted all her attention, all her love, all her care. I wanted her to be my mommy, my daddy, my sister. She wanted the same from me. She wanted to be fed, cared for, nurtured without limit. She wanted backrubs, poems, pastas, and to be left alone when she needed to be left alone. She wanted to come before my writing, my child, my man. And I wanted no less from her.She was sick at first, so I took care of her. Then I was jealous of the attention and she took care of me. We had gone down into the primal cave of our friendship. we had felt loved enough to rage and fight, to show the inside of our naked throats and our bared fags, and the friendship took another leap toward intimacy. Without rage, intimacy can't be.
— Erica Jong, Fear of Fifty: A Midlife Memoir
Sometimes living with memory, with the thought of what friends, those who shared your soul and dreams, will do to you is worse than taking a bullet or having someone stab your flesh. There is a way of bleeding from one's soul.
— Megan McKenna, The New Stations of the Cross: The Way of the Cross According to Scripture
That intimacy is nice, too - knowing that you know so much about someone.
— Tim Relf, Stag
That night we push our cots just a little closer together, and look into each other's eyes in the moments before we fall asleep. When he finally drifts off, our fingers are twisted together in the space between the beds.I smile a little, and let myself go.
— Veronica Roth, Allegiant
I know love is dark work; you have to get your hands dirty. If you hold back, nothing interesting happens. At the same time, you have to find the right distance between people. Too close, and they overwhelm you; too far and they abandon you. How to hold them in the right relation?
— Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy
There is a magic to intimacy, a world built of sighs and skin that is thicker than brick, stronger than iron. There is only you, and him, so impossibly close that nothing can come between. Not the enemy, not your allies. In this safe haven, in this hallowed place and time, I could even ask the questions whose answers I feared.
— Jodi Picoult, The Storyteller
I can only think how good life on earth can be, at times. What grief two people can give to one another! And what pleasure!
— Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy
What if this was a sign? Maybe I’m not supposed to be an Outsider.He surprised her by taking her hand and threading his fingers through hers. “You already are an Outsider. You fit everywhere. You just don’t see it yet.”She stared at their hands. He’d never done that before.Roar gave her a droll look. “It’s just odd having you lay your hand on my arm all the time,” he said, responding to her thoughts.Yes, but this feels intimate. Don’t you think it does? I don’t mean that I think we’re being too intimate. I guess I do. Roar, sometimes it’s really hard to get used to this.Roar flashed a grin. “Aria, this isn’t intimate. If I were being intimate with you, trust me, you’d know.”She rolled her eyes. Next time you say something like that, you should toss a red rose and then leave with a swish of your cape.
— Veronica Rossi, Through the Ever Night
My son, there may be a time when I explain these things to you, because there may be a time when I understand them.
— Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy
…I have fallen in love with a painting. Though that phrase doesn’t seem to suffice, not really—rather’s it that I have been drawn into the orbit of a painting, have allowed myself to be pulled into its sphere by casual attraction deepening to something more compelling. I have felt the energy and life of the painting’s will; I have been held there, instructed. And the overall effect, the result of looking and looking into it’s brimming surface as long as I could look, is love, by which I mean a sense of tenderness toward experience, of being held within an intimacy with the things of the world.
— Mark Doty, Still Life with Oysters and Lemon: On Objects and Intimacy
With hard men intimacy is a thing of shame- and something precious.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
I offer you my mouth—Let me marry my lips to the tops of your thighs,I kneel between your legs. I offer you my hands—Your name written all over my palms,the fingers I press against you.I offer you my hips—My apologetic body.
— Chantelle Ann
I sit on the bed and kick off my shoes, and he kneels before me and takes the riding boots, holding one open for my bare foot. I hesitate; it is such an intimate gesture between a young woman and a man. His smiling upward glance tells me that he understands my hesitation but is ignoring it. I point my toe and he holds the boot, I slide my foot in and he pulls the boot over my calf. He takes the soft leather ties and fastens the boot, at my ankle, then at my calf, and then just below my knee. He looks up at me, his hand gently on my toe. I can feel the warmth of his hand through the soft leather. I imagine my toes curling in pleasure at his touch.‘Anne, will you marry me?’ he asks simply, as he kneels before me.
— Philippa Gregory, The Kingmaker's Daughter
When a man and woman are in love,some decisions and questions are answered in silence.
— Mitra June
The loneliness of command had made Eisenhower emotionally self-sufficient.
— Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace
Since I spent much of my childhood being left behind and ignored, one might think that, as an adult, moments of perceived abandonment would feel old hat. The truth is, as an adult, I am always waiting to be left behind. I’m always ready to be discarded and, therefore, I spend a significant amount of time preparing for this eventuality.I lower my expectations, I don’t seek out meaningful relationships, and I don’t engage in any sort of real intimacy, physical or otherwise.Engage is the key word here. Except, when I engage, when it happens, when I’m left behind it doesn’t feel old hat. It feels like it did the first time and it takes me by surprise. So, I don’t let it happen.
— Penny Reid, Neanderthal Seeks Human
What is it about intimacy that makes it so very disturbing?
— Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Sex is a sacred act which sadly, over the past few decades, has been demeaned and demoralized until it means almost nothing to most people. Veray few still appreciate the emotional and spiritual connection that can and should take place when two bodies and souls are joined together.
— Karen Amanda Hooper, Taking Back Forever
When you heart and soul are in it, making love is not just special, Maryah-- it's magical.
— Karen Amanda Hooper, Taking Back Forever
I'm amazed and disheartened at how quickly adolescents lose their innocence nowadays. Everyone is in such a rush to give themselves over to someone physically without truly knowing the person to whom they are entrusting with their body and emotions
— Karen Amanda Hooper, Taking Back Forever
The familiar is by far the most beautiful.
— Marty Rubin
When we were in bed, the only part of me she touched was my penis, because it was the most detached.
— Anatole Broyard, Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir
Can the purpose of a relationship be to trigger our wounds? In a way, yes, because that is how healing happens; darkness must be exposed before it can be transformed. The purpose of an intimate relationship is not that it be a place where we can hide from our weaknesses, but rather where we can safely let them go. It takes strength of character to truly delve into the mystery of an intimate relationship, because it takes the strength to endure a kind of psychic surgery, an emotional and psychological and even spiritual initiation into the higher Self. Only then can we know an enchantment that lasts.
— Marianne Williamson, Enchanted Love: The Mystical Power Of Intimate Relationships
God is not remote from us. He is at the point of my pen, my (pick) shovel, my paint brush, my (sewing) needle - and my heart and thoughts.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Simon stopped breathing until her forefinger touched his nipple, and then his hand shot up to cover hers. "I want you," he said.Her eyes flicked downward, and her lips curved ever so slightly. "I know.""No," he groaned, pulling her closer. "I want to be in your heart. I want-" His entire body shuddered when their skin touched. "I want to be in your soul.
— Julia Quinn, The Duke and I
Open your eyes, baby. Look at me.” He pressed his forehead down to meet mine, my eyelids fluttering open at his command. “Look at me and tell me you don’t want it.”I peered up at him with unsteady breaths, hearing his throat work when I tilted my lips to graze his. The contact was feather light, my heart hammering through my chest at the feel of it. “I’m looking,” I breathed against him.“Good. Because right now, all I want to do is rip your clothes off and make you come until you can’t stand, and I want your eyes on me the whole time, are we clear?”-Jackson and Emma
— Rachael Wade, Love and Relativity
If I die this instant will you be more content with the morning news? Will your coffee taste better? I am not your fate. I am not your government…I am not your mother, not your father or your nightmare or your health. I am not a fence, not a wall. I am not the law or actuarial tables of your insurance broker. I am a woman with my guts loose in my hands, howling and it’s not because I committed hari-kiri. I suggest either you cook me or sew me back up. I suggest you walk into my pain as into the breaking waves of an ocean of blood, and either we will climb out together and walk away.
— Marge Piercy, The Moon Is Always Female: Poems
...we use intimacy to refer to the physical when it really pertains to the spiritual ..
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
I like the way you touch me.""I like to touch you... That works out for us, huh?
— Jeffrey Brown
Now, watching her sleep, and closing his eyes, he felt, in this particular intimacy - stowed beneath her duvet - that he was intruding. At the same time, he knew, settling down, you couldn´t dislike anyone you'd seen sleep
— Hanif Kureishi, The Black Album
...the religion of the heart is as intimate as a wish breathed to the night sky...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
Umm, well do I have to tell you how it’s done?” I tease, as I get on my knees and lean over him, . A wide smile spreads over his face as I straddle his lap.“Oh, are you taking dominance? I think I like that.” He grips his hands on my hips, pulling me as close as he can get.
— Annie Brewer, Choices
oaking” seems like a crazy word in an intimacy book. Yet that is exactly what you want to do in your relational time with Him, you want to “soak in and soak up” His presence, “soak in and soak up” His love. Soaking is positioning yourself before God for the sole purpose of experiencing His presence and His love for you.
— Linda Boone, Intimate Life Lessons; developing the intimacy with God you already have.
Sex isn't what I'm after. Sex is just what I can get.
— John  Valentine, Puppies
Soaking is also positioning yourself for an encounter with God, to be with Him. You do the positioning, He does the encounter.
— Linda Boone, Intimate Life Lessons; developing the intimacy with God you already have.
Yet velvet curtains, soft cheese, compelling work and boys who can run full-tilt—it isn't enough. And if it isn't, it isn't. There's no living with that. The world is made from our imagination; our eyes enliven it, as our hands give it shape. Wanting makes it thrive; meaning is what you put in, not what you extract. You only see what you are inclined to see, and no more. We have to make the new.
— Hanif Kureishi
On the phone, it's about as intimate as it can get. The person's right in your ear. You got to be careful on the phone. You can leave yourself wide open
— Bono
Linda Boone
—  Intimate Life Lessons: developing the intimacy with God you already have.
You are the winner and the sole owner of my heart.Love u zakiya
— ZAKIYA AND MAJID
Love I never associated with the senses, it was not even passion that I wanted; it was a conscious, subtle, elaborate sensuality, which I knew not how to procure.
— Arthur Symons, Spiritual Adventures
Everyone says,Come to your senses, and I do, of you.Every touch electric, every taste you,every smell, even burning sugar, everycry and laugh. Toothpicked samplesat the farmers’ market, every melon,plum, I come undone, undone.
— Dean Young
Chance. Stupid, dumb, blind chance. Just a part of the strange mechanism of the world, with its fits and coughs and starts and random collisions.
— Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall
No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.
— Erich Maria Remarque
All of us, whether or not we are warriors, have a cubic centimeter of chance that pops out in front of our eyes from time to time. The difference between an average man and a warrior is that the warrior is aware of this, and one of his tasks is to be alert, deliberately waiting, so that when his cubic centimeter pops out he has the necessary speed, the prowess, to pick it up.
— Carlos Castañeda
Nothing could be more irrational than the idea that something comes from nothing.
— R.C. Sproul
Be brave, little rabbit. Take a chance.
— Cherise Sinclair, Breaking Free
how can the world in all its chaos come up with so many coincidences, so many similarities and exact opposites?
— Amy Tan
Life is too precious to be left to chance
— Walter Moers, The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear
When I was young I wanted to be just like him.One of the charm, of a bright orange smileand muscular laughter.Bold brown eyes flashing fearlesswhen he sat not alone on cold blue nights in empty boxcars.Riding a freight train'ssolitary wailaway from NebraskaDepression, accompanying dreamswithered farms.Nothing left but the leaves of possibilities.
— Larsen Bowker
I think perhaps love thrives on unlikely circumstances and chance : life thrives on these principles, and is life not love? And love not life?
— Brandon Boyd, White Fluffy Clouds: Found Inspiration Moving Forward
Yet, when these facts are seen side by side with other facts in the case, it is difficult not to become lost in superstitious awe. Their very absurdity seems to prohibit the use of the words 'chance' and 'coincidence.' For the sceptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman Law, it is administered with sub-human inefficiency.
— Eric Ambler, A Coffin for Dimitrios
Chances don't approach you,it's you who approach chances.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
Take a chance on me and I will prove how worthy your life is.
— Heenashree Khandelwal, Soulmates, By Chance
I'm sorry, but nothing 'just happens'. Stuff happens because either we make it happen or we let it.
— Jessie Jones, Rubbish boyfriends
You’ll never have the chance to work this stuff out unless you give yourself the chance.
— Jenn Marie Thorne, The Wrong Side of Right
But I don't believe coincidences are chance events. I think they're the times we happen to see the mysterious pattern connecting everything.
— Julie Gittus, Saltwater Moons
If a coin comes down heads, that means that the possibility of its coming down tails has collapsed. Until that moment the two possibilities were equal. But on another world, it does come down tails. And when that happens, the two worlds split apart.
— Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass
Chance is commonly viewed as a self-correcting process in which a deviation in one direction induces a deviation in the opposite direction to restore the equilibrium. In fact, deviations are not "corrected" as a chance process unfolds, they are merely diluted.
— Amos Tversky, Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases
Slacker becomes slower if given additional time.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
Life is full of chances, don't miss yours today.
— M Howson
The true law of economics is chance, and we learned people arbitrarily seize on a few moments and establish them as laws.
— Karl Marx, Early Writings
Be real. I'm going up against three of the world's most vicious ubervillains. I have a very, very slim chance of survival. I have a better chance of winning the lottery, and I don't even play.
— Jennifer Estep, Karma Girl
No one knew what she was doing in Colonia Hidalgo, although it was most likely, according to the police, that she'd been taking a walk and had come upon death purely by chance.
— Roberto Bolaño, 2666
We're all stumbling in the dark, and that makes for some pretty interesting collisions.
— Marty Rubin
I had to go outside. I had to let the element of chance in.
— Mark Forsyth, The Unknown Unknown: Bookshops and the Delight of Not Getting What You Wanted
Be unprepared, that's my motto. Be unprepared, and let life overwhelm you.
— Marty Rubin
Every breath we take from the airTakes oxygen from an insect’s lungs mid-prayerAnd every exhalation does loudly declareThat in the currency of life, we’re millionaires.A butterfly flapped it’s wings and Rome fellA passerby’s whistle cracked the liberty bellAnd I dare urge the daring not to yellLest we so bid a skyscraper a rough farewell.A snake’s tongue slithered and man did sinLet me tell you how the waves from a shark’s finDid set the tides on D-Day and let the allies win;Chance and destiny are identical twins.A word was spoken and the earth createdAnother phrase and the future was dictatedAnd so every action must be carefully weightedWe just never know how things are interrelated.
— Justin Wetch, Bending The Universe
It is never worth while to absolutely exhaust one's self or to take big chances unless for an adequate object.
— Theodore Roosevelt, Letters to His Children
Will I see you again?”I turned to him and I shrugged. “If what we feel is real, then yes I have no doubt we will.
— Rachel Rise
... plunged into chance,--that is to say, swallowed up in Providence
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
But was any future, anyone's future, unfraught by hazards of some sort? The only security was death. So long as one wanted to go on living on had to accept the risks. Well, she accepted them...
— Winston Graham, Jeremy Poldark
When you think about all the infinitely many galaxies and combinations of DNA, and against all those odds you meet this person - it's a miracle...' 'Right,' I said. I couldn't imagine viewing Bill's presence on Earth as any kind of a miracle, but wasn't that itself the miracle - that love really was an obscure and unfathomable connection between individuals, and not an economic contest where everyone was matched up by how quantifiably lovable they are?
— Elif Batuman, The Idiot
Since I sometimes won the race between my fancy and nature’s reality, the deception was bearable. Unbearable pain began when chance entered the fray and deprived me of the smile meant for me.
— Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
I didn't care much what happened to me, so chance didn't matter.
— Alice Notley, In the Pines
Chance likes to ride in back, standing up at red lights and pounding on the roof in (what he insists is) Morse code. We won't mention that to Dad.
— Kelley York, Made of Stars
Rescue operation," he says, breathless. "Saved Barbie from drowning.
— Kelley York, Made of Stars
Life is but a play of chance in the game of choice.
— Twinkle Khanna, The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad
You’ve given up on yourself before anyone else has a chance to.”Silence greeted me.I could feel Rider’s stare on me. Several moments passed. “That’s bullshit, and kind of priceless coming from you. You gave up on me yesterday.”I started to defend myself, but I couldn’t. I swallowed hard. “I know. You’re right about that, but I’m also right.”“And how’s that?” Challenge hardened his tone.“Because I give up on myself on a daily basis,” I admitted. My cheeks heated but I continued. “I know.”He sucked in an audible breath. “Mallory...”I shook my head as I thought about all the conflicting emotions and needs and wants. “It’s true. It’s what I do. I don’t mean to. Or maybe I do. It’s...it’s easier being scared of everything.”“How...how can that be?” His voice softened. “How can that be easier?”My smile was faint. Suddenly, I really wished I was at home, with my head under the blankets. “You can’t fail when you don’t really try, right? You’d know that.
— Jennifer L. Armentrout, The Problem with Forever
We’re probably leaving soon,” Rider said. “Might catch a movie.”Jayden leaned against the wall as he looked around the room. “I see how it is. You figure you don’t stand a chance with Mallory now that I’m here to show her what a real man looks like.” He winked as Rider just shook his head. “Fine, leave. But no dumb movie will be as entertainin’ as the Jayden Show. And I don’t charge admission.
— Jennifer L. Armentrout, The Problem with Forever
Tis no wonder, says one of the ancients, that chance has so great a dominion over us, since it is by chance we live.
— Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
...it wasn't for the love of a man that she took those chances, but for the love of a horse.
— Joan Hiatt Harlow, Midnight Rider
God is a God of second chances
— Sunday Adelaja
God sees it all and He gives you the chance to show faithfulness in your ministry to Him
— Sunday Adelaja
No one can express who you are and what you stand for more than you do. Don't leave that to chance or others. If you do so, the likelihood of other people misgauging you is high. Take charge!
— Assegid Habtewold Habtewold
But chance has a taste for conspiracy.
— Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum
Choice not chance will deliver your intuitive desires.
— Steven Redhead, Life Is Simply A Game
All people have one chance, if there is possibility of other life. It's again one chance your knowledge from the knees up to the head is reset like the games.
— Deyth Banger
Anyone deserves a second chance, but not everyone deserves a second chance.
— Shawn Lukas
Luck is sometimes merciful. The Game never is.
— Claire North, The Master
And in friendship and still more here, in this central business of love, accident rules it seems to me almost altogether. What personalities you will encounter in life, and have for a chief interest in life, is nearly as much a matter of chance as the drift of a grain of pollen in the pine forest. And once the light hazard has blown it has blown, never to drive again.
— H.G. Wells, The Passionate Friends
If there is a one-in-a-million chance that you will "make it," then SOMEBODY has to be that ONE. It may as well be YOU! So FIGHT, WARRIOR!
— Margaret Aranda
Everyone gets in life in about 3 chances in one place. But everything is about how he wise he will use this chances!
— Deyth Banger
Life is the greatest chance that has been given to all of us. So how do you choose to live your life? You’ve got a pen. Write it down.
— Kcat Yarza, KCAT CAN: I have a pen that writes
His hand cupped her face, his thumb caressing the delicate line of her jaw. “Listen to me, Raven.” He brushed a kiss on the top of her silky head. “I know I do not deserve you. You think you are somehow less than what I am, but in truth, you are so far above me, I have no right even to reach for you.” When she stirred as if to protest, Mikhail held her tighter. “No, little one, I know this is true. I see you clearly, whereas you do not have access to my thoughts and memories. I cannot give you up. I wish I was a stronger, better man so that I could do so, but I cannot. I can only promise you that I will do everything in my power to make you happy, to provide for you everything I can possibly give you. I ask for time to learn your ways, for room to make mistakes. If you need to hear words of love”— his mouth skimmed down the side of her face to find the corner of her mouth—“ then I can say them to you in all honesty. I never believed I would have a woman of my own, a true lifemate. I have never wanted a woman for my own.” His kiss was infinitely tender, a searing, smoky flame tasting of love and longing. “You are in my heart to stay, Raven. I know better than you the differences between us. I ask only for a chance.
— Christine Feehan, Dark Prince
If you were given one wish, what would you wish for? To wish no more.
— J.R. Rim
The chance to do it over again is called now.
— J.R. Rim
But how can I get enough experience if they don't give me a chance to get experience?
— Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Seventy years I regard as the limit of the life of man. In these seventy years are contained, without reckoning intercalary months, twenty-five thousand and two hundred days. Add an intercalary month to every other year, that the seasons may come round at the right time, and there will be, besides the seventy years, thirty-five such months, making an addition of one thousand and fifty days. The whole number of the days contained in the seventy years will thus be twenty-six thousand two hundred and fifty, whereof not one but will produce events unlike the rest. Hence man is wholly accident.
— Herodotus
When you give it a chance, IT will give YOU a chance.
— Sima Mittal
Some people get more of a chance to show who they are. Other people never get the chance.
— Todd Strasser, Wish You Were Dead
There’s no such thing as probability," she says, slowly, with minimal movement of her jaw. "Things turn out the way they do.
— Johnny Rich, The Human Script
At a time when the limits of leadership are being tested in so many places is your time to rule in your own territory.
— Auliq Ice
One chance--that's what she had seen she had--one flying leap that was really composed of eight thousand separate possibilities for falling, and she had taken that chance and come this far and been found out.
— Haven Kimmel
In the arc of an unremarkable life, a life whose triumphs are small and personal, whose trials are ordinary enough, as tempered in their pain as in their resolution of pain, the claim of exclusivity in love requires both a certain kind of courage and a good dose of delusion. Irish Mary, Eva's sister, would have been happy enough to accept my father's ring, I suppose, had Eva not chosen to stay in Ireland and marry Tom. My mother's first fiancé would have married her gladly if he hadn't been kept too long overseas by the Navy, if my father hadn't beaten him home, on points, a full year before. It might have been Cody or John in the car with your father, that day on Long Island. I might have been gone. Those of us who claim exclusivity in love do so with a liar's courage: there are a hundred opportunities, thousands over the years, for a sense of falsehood to seep in, for all that we imagine as inevitable to become arbitrary, for our history together to reveal itself as only a matter of chance and happenstance, nothing irrepeatable, or irreplaceable, the circumstantial mingling of just one of the so many million with just one more.
— Alice McDermott, Charming Billy
Chance was just an order that you hadn't yet perceived.
— Richard Powers, Orfeo
It’s a number.”“It’s not,” she said. “It’s a chance to wake up new.
— Rainbow Rowell, Attachments
The biggest opportunity one can get in life, it is a chance to make friends!
— Unarine Ramaru
It's funny isn't it? People claim to know what love is -- yet the minute they're given the opportunity to prove it -- they bail.
— Rachel Van Dyken, Toxic
Just maybe I was worthy of love.
— Abbi Glines, Bad for You
I believe that nothing happens by chance. Deep down, things have their secret plan, even though we don't understand it.
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind
If you don't seize the opportunity, how do you know what will happen? Sometimes you have to take the chance
— Eileen Cook, The Education of Hailey Kendrick
I have been enormously impressed by the role that pure chance plays in determining our life history. I was reminded of some famous lines of Robert Frost:Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothI took the one less travled by,And that has made all the difference.As I recalled my own experience and development, I was impressed by the series of lucky accidents that determined the road I traveled.> From "Lives of the Laureates" pg.67
— Milton Friedman
Oh, many a shaft at random sentFinds mark the archer little meant!And many a word at random spokenMay soothe, or wound, a heart that's broken!
— Walter Scott
You can't sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You've got to throw the ball over the damn plate and give the other man his chance. That's why baseball is the greatest game of them all.
— Earl Weaver
The world is governed by chance. Randomness stalks us every day of our lives.
— Paul Auster
So much of what happens by chance forms what becomes your life.
— Roger Ebert
I rely on one thing in this world:my actions. I will leave nothing to chance and prefer playing the game of life with thestrongest hand possible.
— Liv Morris, Adam's Apple
Study history, Alleluia. In this century history stopped paying attention to the old psychological orientation of reality. I mean, these days, character isn't destiny any more. Economics is destiny. Ideology is destiny. Bombs are destiny. What does a famine, a gas chamber, a grenade care how you lived your life? Crisis comes, death comes, and your pathetic individual self doesn't have a thing to do with it, only to suffer the effects. This Gibreel of yours: maybe he's how history happens to you.
— Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
He thinks of the all steps that gathered this party and marvels at the weaverless looms of fortune.
— David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
You have only one life! Take a chance, make a change, and live!
— Kim Yannayon
Accidents are built into the road.
— Marty Rubin
You are ass and I like class. I like diamonds, you are a glass. You brown mouse, I like black cats. You boy pussy but i like tom cats. Just because you got the dance, don't think you stand a fucking chance.
— Salman Rushdie
Nightmares are at all times better than real life
—  because you always have the chance to start over everything.
*You only get one chance to make a first impression.* Ah, whatever!!! Who said you get three chances to make the second impression?!!
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
I'm taking the chance, walking away, breaking the rules nobody here can tell me what to do.
— Kiki
The idea that their paths might have easily not crossed leaves her breathless, like a near-miss accident on a highway, and she can't help marveling at the sheer randomness of it all. Like any survivor of chance, she feels a quick rush of thankfulness, part adrenaline and part hope.
— Jennifer E. Smith, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight
When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.
— Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
When life gives you something that makes you feel afraid, that's when life gives you a chance to be brave.
— Lupytha Hermin
Betrayal. Lust. Secrecy. Devotion. I think we do these things to feel more alive. When the truth is that alive is alive -- you can feel it in anything, if you give it a chance.
— David Levithan, How They Met, and Other Stories
Take a chance on God. After all, He took a chance on you.
— Susan May Warren, Take a Chance on Me
You could become paralyzed with worry about what might happen to your family, or if you hadn’t yet had children you could decide not to, as a sort of proactive damage control. Either way, you would be derailing your life voluntarily out of fear that it might become ruined by chance. Or you could pick up and move on. Those were the only choices.
— Nichole Bernier, The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.
In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.
— Louis Pasteur
We are living now.We shall not live long.No one should tell us we shall live again.This is our little while.This is our chance.
— Susan Glaspell
He's throwing everything he can into the air on the chance that something might take flight. And we're the smallest, weakest bird.
— Ally Condie, Reached
A prisoner's shackles would always be a lawyers joy.
— Dennis E. Adonis
You're the most important person in my life," I whispered. "You're the only man I ever let in.""But I'm not in, Stace. I'm standing on the porch in the pouring rain, waiting for you to open the door. I've been waiting ever since you left after graduation, ever since you came back last year. Even now, you've let me into your bed, but not into your heart. I'm still waiting.
— Barbra Annino, Emerald Isle
You're not really in control, not with this falling-for-people stuff. You don't plan who you're going to fall in love with. It's all random - chance accidents of time and place.
— Julia Green, Breathing Underwater
It's my job to worry about you. I'm in love with you, Stacy. I have been ever since I can remember. It's always been you.
— Barbra Annino, Emerald Isle
I'm not so stupid as to believe that you've completely forgotten about your former boyfriend. I know you think there are others here more suited for me and this life, and I wouldn't want you to rush into trying to be happy with any of this. I just... I just want to know if it's possible...
— Kiera Cass, The Selection
Welcome to fear, said Moist to himself. It's hope, turned inside out. You know it can't go wrong, you're sure it can't go wrong...But it might.
— Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
Chance favours the prepared mind.
— Louis Pasteur
For existential mathematics, which does not exist, would probably propose this equation: the value of coincidence equals the degree of its improbability.
— Milan Kundera
You're a beautiful young woman walking without an escort at one in the morning. Why doesn't one of your staff at least see you to your car?""Because they're not sexist pigs who think women are incapable of taking care of themselves."Chance rolled his eyes. "This has nothing to do with feminism. I'm all for gender equality, but the fact remains that women are targeted for more specific crimes than men, and the perpetrators of those crimes often look for circumstances such as these to attack.""See this?" Isa pulled something dark and oblong out of her purse. Chance's mouth twitched."Turbo Vag
— Jeaniene Frost, Happily Never After
Chance gives a smile to the one who is ready to take it
— Hiroko Sakai
The most critical risk of all, is not taking the risk if means be dangerous.
— Anthony Liccione
…Amongst these legends of dragon hoards,Where secret, precious things are stored,There golden nugget and diamond shard,There treasure-keeper hoped to guard.As bolted doorway securely braced,hoping its treasures to ever hold,hoping beyond when time grows old,So stood the keeper in its place.A statue of unrelenting stanceStill stands victim to happenstance,For treasure-keeper did not bargainon a bit of chance and a bit of dwargen…”- Dwenzuak the dwargen
— T. William Watts
We take the elevator to the third floor, to the office of Dr. Harrison Chance. His name alone has put me off. Why not Dr. Victor?
— Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper
We're deciding the fate of the multiverse with a flip of a coin. Heads or tails, doc. If that isn't a game, I don't know what is.
— E.C. Myers, Quantum Coin
Human beings do not like being pushed about by gods. They may seem to, on the surface, but somewhere on the inside, underneath it all, they sense it, and they resent it.
— Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys
Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are...condemned. Each move is dictated by the previous one - that is the meaning of order. If we start being arbitrary it'll just be a shambles: at least, let us hope so. Because if we happened, just happened to discover, or even suspect, that our spontaneity was part of their order, we'd know that we were lost. A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty - and, by which definition, a philosopher - dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; his two-fold security. 
— Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
. . . it is presumptuous in me to wish to choose my path, because I cannot tell which path is best for me. I must leave it to the Lord, Who knows me, to lead me by the path which is best for me, so that in all things His will may be done.
— Teresa of Ávila, Interior Castle
You may fetter my leg, but Zeus himself cannot get the better of my free will.
— Epictetus
He sat a long time and he thought about his life and how little of it he could ever have foreseen and he wondered for all his will and all his intent how much of it was his doing.
— Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain
Free-will doesn't include shit-happens,unless that's the goal of one's intention.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
I can help you, Jorge. I can give you back your self. I can give you your will.' He held out his hand, palm open. 'Free will has to be taken,' I said.
— Mark  Lawrence, Prince of Thorns
The true free-will ain't a matter of choosing one of many choices...but of creating variety of options, then deciding the best choice of all.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
[Gonturan] is a true friend, but a friend with thoughts of her own, and the thoughts of others are dangerous.
— Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword