c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The balls it took to proclaim a creative profession, the narcissism.
— Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies
Your hearing status does not make you a better person. Your humanity does.
— Rosie Malezer, How to be Deaf
If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, then the love of GOD is the apex of it!
— TemitOpe Ibrahim
True friends are ones who hurt you for your own good.
— Jackson Taviri
Love is like a prison..difficult to breakout,painful to get caught and easier to get in.
— Jackson Taviri
But the Seeker, who is of unsure gait, also has unsure traits. The way that he moves is unstable and ungainly. It is also unnatural. No other life form adopted this precarious locomotion method of walking on two legs. Intrinsically off balance at all times, it takes just a small stone or a banana peel to topple him over. It is a mysterious wobbly motion much like that of a bicycle. How easy it is, to throw a cyclist off balance, need not be elaborated. But try throwing a truck off balance? Unsettling the Seeker’s balance is also equally easy. But try throwing a horse or a tiger off balance? Even a child knows that four wheels or, at least, three wheels are more stable than two wheels.
— Biju Vasudevan, The Molecular Slaves
As I grew older and when I became wiser, I realized that not only are we made of molecules, we are also governed and ruled by them. We are just molecular slaves in this vast limitless creation.
— Biju Vasudevan, The Molecular Slaves
It’s not about the powers, man; it’s that we aren’t kids anymore. Look what we’ve been through. Look what we’ve done. Look at yourself, surfer dude. We’ve done something none of our parents have even come close to. We didn’t take over their boring world; we took over a world about a thousand times tougher. If we walk out of this alive, we won’t have to bow our heads to anyone.
— Michael  Grant, Light (Gone Series, #6)
Do you know, Sandy dear, all my ambitions are for you and Rose. You have got insight, perhaps not quite spiritual, but you're a deep one, and Rose has got instinct.' 'Perhaps not quite spiritual' said Sandy.'Yes,' said Miss Brodie, 'you're right. Rose has got a future by virtue of her instinct.'...'I ought to know because my prime has brought me instinct and insight, both.
— Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
To nourish a tree you must get to the roots, the same is true if you must uproot it.
— TemitOpe Ibrahim
What you see and feel depends on what you know and what you are looking for.
— Debasish Mridha
When would insight, knowledge, hope, and beauty meld?
— Larry Kramer, Faggots
Despite the mountain of gold that has been built downtown, Los Angeles remains vulnerable to the same explosive convergence of street anger, poverty, environmental crisis, and capital flight that made the early 1990s its worth crisis period since the early Depression.
— Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles
To excel in life, one must become conscious that the way lived is not the only way of living.
— Anonymous
For a man who was to exhibit such acute political sharpness later in his career, Napoleon completely misread the revolution's opening stages. 'I repeat what I have said to you,' he wrote to Joseph on July 22, a week after the fall of the Bastille, 'calm will return. In a month, there will no longer be a question of anything. So, if you send me 300 livres [7,500 francs] I will go to Paris to terminate our business.
— Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life
In the end, we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand and we will understand only what we are taught.
— Baba Dioum
He had a look of composed dissatisfaction, as if he understood life thoroughly.
— Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories
The perishableness of life...imparts value, dignity, interest to life.
— Thomas Mann
Some persons can't accept the truth, due to their inability to let go of their own perceptions
— Anonymous
Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.
— Virginia Woolf
Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape.These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
If you help someones bank account rise But you can't help their heart feel... Really, what is your value?
— Nikki Rowe
I've always been fascinated by weather.
— Shepard Smith
You must know what God is expecting from you in the ministry that He has entrusted to you
— Sunday Adelaja
Choices are few and sometimes one, to him who hath wisdom; but in abundance are they to the heart of he who lacketh understanding.
— Anonymous
The Widdern — the non-magical world, where science rules and many people believe that magic only exists in books. They’re wrong.
— Caro King, Shadow Spell
Let us then understand at once that change or variety is as much a necessity to the human heart and brain in buildings as in books; that there is no merit, though there is some occasional use, in monotony; and that we must no more expect to derive either pleasure or profit from an architecture whose ornaments are of one pattern, and whose pillars are of one proportion, than we should of a universe in which the clouds were all of one shape, and the trees all of one shape.
— John Ruskin, The Nature Of Gothic
Child, you do not forgive because the person who wronged deserves it.You misunderstand the point of forgiveness entirely. The only cage that a grudge creates is around the holder of that grudge. Forgiveness is not saying that the person who hurt you was right, or has earned it, or is allowed to hurt you again. All forgiveness means is that you will carry on without the burdens of rage and hatred.
— Merrie Haskell, The Castle Behind Thorns
You can only fail to pick the Castellan's pocket once
— Brian Farrey, The Vengekeep Prophecies
I asked him: Why didn’t you just tell me? He said: ‘If I tell you, you’ll just forget at some critical point. If you figure it out for yourself, you’ll always remember.
— Merrie Haskell, The Castle Behind Thorns
Dad fastens his knife jacket before putting his black pea coat on. He’s like a walking armoury. He has two guns on either side of his chest secured in his black shoulder holsters, an array of magazines on his belt and of course the knives. I don’t need to check to know he has two more guns strapped to both his legs. With his dark coat on, dark jeans and boots, and his weapons hidden away, he looks imposing but harmless. Unsuspecting people would never think of him otherwise.He cocks his head. “Too much?” he asks.
— M. Rees, Insight
I rarely take time to feel embarrassed. I just figure it's God keeping me humble, and try not to mess up again.
— Peggy Perry
In vain does the disguised traveller inwardly rebel against the influences and impressions which are wearing away his real self. The impressions of the past lose more and more their hold on him until they fade away, leaving the traveller hopelessly struggling in the toils of his own fiction, and the rôle he had assumed soon becomes second nature with him.
— Ármin Vámbéry, Arminius Vambery: His Life and Adventures
The poet, the artist, the sleuth - whoever sharpens our perception tends to be antisocial; rarely "well-adjusted", he cannot go along with currents and trends. A strange bond often exists between antisocial types in their power to see environments as they really are. This need to interface, to confront environments with a certain antisocial power is manifest in the famous story "The Emperor's New Clothes".
— Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage
Ultimately, we are all products of the experiences we have and the decisions we make as children, and it remains a peculiar detail of the human condition that something as precious as a future is entrusted to us when we possess so little foresight. Perhaps that’s what makes hindsight so intriguing. When you’re young the future is a blank canvas, but looking back you are always able to see the big picture.
— Simon Pegg, Nerd Do Well
Everything can be seen directly except the eye through which we see.
— Ernst F. Schumacher, A Guide for the Perplexed
Use beautiful to describe a sandwich, and the word means nothing.
— Jess Walter, Beautiful Ruins
Change will lead to insight far more often than insight will lead to change.
— Milton H. Erickson
Insights, after all, come from the overlap between seemingly unrelated thoughts. They emerge when concepts are transposed, when the rules of one place are shifted to a new domain.
— Jonah Lehrer, Imagine: How Creativity Works
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
— Anonymous
The world is a merrier place to live if people do things more out of sincerity, not just out of formality.
— Maggy San Jose-Baas
When you’re poor and hungry and frightened of failure, you often don’t have the luxury of high values, lofty goals, and social conscience. Funny how fear and poverty will acid-wash your value set, burn away all the flimflam and artifice and learned morality and leave you with nothing but the urgency of survival. - Dr. Dan Trix - Chasing the Horizon.
— Rodney Romig, Chasing the Horizon
I was a sinner. I knew that without a doubt. But I was not alone. And the night was the accomplice of us all.
— William Kent Krueger, Ordinary Grace
People are wonderful one at a time. Each one of them has an entire hologram of the universe somewhere within them.
— George Carlin, Last Words
...the guards sought to deprive them of something that had sustained them, even as all else had been lost: dignity.This self-respect and sense of self-worth, the innermost armament of the soul, lies at the heart of humanness. To be deprived of it is to be de-humanized, to be cleaved from, and cast below mankind. Men subjected to dehumanizing treatment experience profound wretchedness and loneliness, and find that hope is almost impossible to retain. Without dignity, identity is erased...[They] learned a dark truth known to the doomed in Hitler’s death camps, the slaves of the American South, and a hundred other generations of betrayed people: Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man’s soul in his body long past the point in which the body should have surrendered it. The loss of it can carry a man off as surely as thirst, hunger, exposure and asphyxiation, and with greater cruelty... degradation could be as lethal as a bullet.
— Laura Hillenbrand
There are no good girls gone wrong - just bad girls found out
— Mae West
Fate is a lazy man’s excuse for avoiding curiosity.
— Brian Farrey, The Vengekeep Prophecies
Sudden revelations vanish just as suddenly.
— Marty Rubin
Understanding’s not enough. Understanding’s from outside; merely a function of the mind. [. . .] To enter, that’s the secret. To become the bridge, to crawl into its sap, to sway with it, to rot over centuries as its heartwood rots. When you are the bridge you will know what the bridge knows. It takes time. A lifetime. And skill.
— Catherine Fisher, The Dark City
Evidence is the debris of a careless mind.
— Brian Farrey, The Vengekeep Prophecies
Accusations are merely the envy of the unenlightened given form.
— Brian Farrey, The Vengekeep Prophecies
Now here's the thing about being a little off-center; you're never sure if you're a bona fide loon or if you have insight that other people don't have.You have to navigate through life using a kind of psychic gyroscope to keep from falling too far one way or another, and you feel a peculiar kinship with other people who are also a little bit off-center.
— Blaize Clement, Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues
What man knows is little enough and most of his general concepts in every field are vitiated by the artificial concepts he has created to cover his ignorance. These concepts must be destroyed. One tool exists that can accomplish this destruction, and this tool is in your hands. It is simply curiosity—the instinct to ask and to question. It should be kept sharp and used without mercy.
— Charles H. Hapgood, The Path of the Pole
When you want wisdom and insight as badly as you want to breathe, it is then you shall have it.
— Socrates
Whether the bear beats the wolf or the wolf beats the bear, the rabbit always loses.
— Robert Jordan, The Eye of the World
Two things are to be remembered: that a man whose opinions and theories are worth studying may be presumed to have had some intelligence, but that no man is likely to have arrived at complete and final truth on any subject whatever. When an intelligent man expresses a view which seems to us obviously absurd, we should not attempt to prove that it is somehow true, but we should try to understand how it ever came toseemtrue. Thisexercise of historical and psychological imagination at once enlarges the scope of our thinking, and helps us to realize how foolish many of our own cherished prejudices will seem to an age which has a different temper of mind.
— Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy
He was shaken by an unwelcome insight. Lives did not add as integers. They added as infinities.
— Lois McMaster Bujold, Borders of Infinity
The dilemma of the critic has always been that if he knows enough to speak with authority, he knows too much to speak with detach
— Raymond Chandler, The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler; and English Summer: A Gothic Romance
When it happens to you, you will be surprised. That thing they say about how you knew all the time but just weren't facing it? That might be the case, but nevertheless, there you will be. You will feel like you have been kicked in the stomach, that your insides have just separated to make room for something big.
— Molly Ringwald, When it Happens to You
I knew everything! Yet, I'm still not perfect.
— kent Ian N. Cny
I'm not here only just for a visit
—  but I'm here cuz' i knew I'm HOME.
It seems like all the time people are making themselves themselves, but they don't really know it. You can only have true visions when you look behind. A person can slide so fast into being something they never really intended. I wonder if you can truly resurrect your own self.
— Elizabeth Berg
It seems to me that my whole life I've been standing on some tower or a pillbox or a trampoline, waving the names of writers, as if we needed rescue. And the first person I had to rescue was myself.
— John Leonard, Reading for My Life: Writings, 1958-2008
There are patterns in everything, in the whole of Nature, from the way the stars turn in the heavens to the whorl of a shell or the petals of a flower and the way leaves arrange themselves about a twig. There are forces, hidden forces. If I can discover what they are, how they operate, I will have my hands upon the levers of creation and can work them myself.
— Celia Rees, The Fool's Girl
It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.
— Edith Beale
Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it.
— Bruce Lee, Tao of Jeet Kune Do
You must tell Lady Alanna that sometime. I'd do it from a distance.
— Tamora Pierce, Emperor Mage
He began to realize that you cannot even fight happily with creatures that stand upon a different mental basis to yourself.
— H.G. Wells
What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises—no matter the mood! Mood's a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It's not for fighting.
— Frank Herbert, Dune
I must do whatever I can to find the best partners possible." "Did you kick their butts?" He frowned. "The buttocks are among the least sensitive places to hit someone." I laughed. "It's a figure of speech." "To kick butts. Interesting.
— Allison van Diepen, The Vampire Stalker
I think it's odd that grown-ups quarrel so easily and so often and about such petty matters. Up to now I always thought bickering was just something children did and that they outgrew it.
— Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
The next time somebody announces that he plans to get Medieval on your ass, tell him you're going to get Renaissance on his gonads.
— James K. Morrow, The Last Witchfinder
And now, born from the ashes, she’s a warrior in bloodied black.
— Amie Kaufman, Gemina
The "Wet Tongue Gets Stuck To A Frozen Flagpole" attack!
— Hiromu Arakawa, Fullmetal Alchemist, Vol. 18
Hey, bodyguard. You better get down to the gymnasium. This jumbo pixie guy is killing your sister." "Really?" said Butler, unconvinced. "Really. Juliet just does not seem to be herself. She can't put two moves together. It's pathetic, really. Everybody is betting against her." "I see," said Butler, straightening. Mulch held the door. "It's going to make things really interesting when you show up to help." Butler grinned. "I'm not coming to help. I just want to be there when she stops faking." "Ah," said Mulch, comprehension dawning on his face. "So I should switch my bet to Juliet?" "You certainly should" said Butler.
— Eoin Colfer
There are no 'ifs' in combat. When you win, you win, When you lose, you lose.
— CLAMP, Tsubasa: RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE, Vol. 06
Fighting with him was like trying to solve a crossword and realizing there's no right answer
— Taylor Swift
Dealing with jackasses on every front today. Good thing I have tiger blood and Adonis DNA. (Charlie Sheen Reference)
— Greg Campbell
A man who fights you as he does is no better than an opportunist and no worse than a thug.
— Kristin Cashore, Graceling
I appeal for cessation of hostilities, not because you are too exhausted to fight, but because war is bad in essence. You want to kill Nazism. You will never kill it by its indifferent adoption.
— Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth
Wraith snorted. "Cowards. Seriously. Who brings a gun to a knife fight? That's cheating.""You don't have a gun?" Kynan asked.Wraith made a face of digust. "It's not very sporting to shoot people.""So you're saying that you didn't shoot the people who shot you?""Hell, yeah, I shot them.
— Larissa Ione, Desire Unchained
Go fuck yourself," I replied, always the lady. "I'm staying here.
— Ava Gardner, Ava: My Story
Ender didn't like fighting. He didn't like Peter's kind, the strong against the weak, and he didn't like his own kind either, the smart against the stupid.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
The road to hell was paved with the bones of men who did not know when to quit fighting.
— Paulette Jiles, Enemy Women
In a fair fight, the don's man would almost certainly paint the walls with Locke and Calo's blood, so it stood to reason that this fight would have to be as unfair as possible.
— Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora
Love is not running away or giving up, it is standing and fighting for every moment.
— M.F. Moonzajer
What dire offence from am'rous causes springs,What mighty contests rise from trivial things,...
— Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock
And I won 'em back fair and square. So what are you going to do about it? Want to fight? Who wants the first bloody nose?
— Ava Gardner, Ava: My Story
the battle's in your hands now, but I would lay my armor down, if you said you'd rather love than fight.
— Taylor Swift
Great idea," I said. "Call the police. Call the fucking police.
— Ava Gardner, Ava: My Story
I'll show you an imaginative re-creation, my fist imaginatively re-creating your fucken face for starters.
— Neil Gaiman, American Gods
Then, aided by the booze, like a fool I tossed off one of those throwaway lines that would have been better thrown away. "Ah, Frank! I thought you were going to be down here fucking Lana.
— Ava Gardner, Ava: My Story
If they look as though they're worried, we'll move in.''And do what exactly?' said Polly.'Threaten to shoot them,' said Maladict firmly.'And if they don't believ
— Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment
Who hit you?""Clara.""Clara!""She whaled me one in return for upsetting you. Well, at least, that was the main reason.
— Kristin Cashore, Fire
I’ve often thought it unfair that women are expected to stay at home when there’s a fight to be won. If awoman has the strength to bear a child, she can swing a sword as well as any man.
— Karen Hawkins, How to Abduct a Highland Lord
Stefan spat. "Oh, aye, he fell. O' course, Master Ralon helped him fall, several times. Poor li'l tyke didn't have a chance.
— Tamora Pierce, Alanna: The First Adventure
The afternoon breeze would incite to a weird and flabby activity all that crowded mass of clothing, with its vague suggestions of drowned, mutilated and flattened humanity. Trunks without heads waved at you arms without hands; legs without feet kicked fantastically with collapsible flourishes; and there were long white garments, that taking the wind fairly through their neck openings edged with lace, became for a moment violently distended as by the passage of obese and invisible bodies. On these days you could make out that ship at a great distance by the multi-coloured grotesque riot going on abaft her mizzen-mast.
— Joseph Conrad, Falk
There was a ringing in his ears, like a dead phone line that he couldn’t hang up on.
— Mark Capell, Run, Run, Run
My father was a Catholic, a coal miner in the Big Pit. My mother a Jew. A charwoman, when she could find the work. They didn’t fit in Wales. Nor in the U.K., either. They didn’t fit with each other all that well, for that matter. They fought every day for as long as I can remember and loved each other more than anyone I’ve ever known. At least they did right up till a night when he looked right and not left at a train crossing in Chepstow and ended up half a mile from where he’d started, dead as the Ghost. Looking for a job, he was. Turned out he didn’t need one.
— Patrick Reinken, Omicron
THE FLECKS OF MY ENEMY'S BLOOD THAT STAIN THIS SUIT. THEY'RE MY PRIDE AND JOY. "THIS SUIT LOOKS WHITE BECAUSE OF THE RED OF THE BLOOD ON IT." THAT'S WHY I FIGHT.FOR YOU BIG BRO. THE AWSOMELY INSANE. TO MAKE YOU AWSOMELY HAPPY...WHETHER AT AOGIRI OR AT GOAT, I'VE FOUGHT AT THE VERY FRONT LINES. ALL THE WAY.AND TOWARDS THE END, I EVEN LEARNED A FEW NEW WORDS. I HAD FUN. IF ONLY I HAD KNOWN A FEW MORE WORDS, I'D HAVE BEEN ABLE TO TALK TO YOU MORE, BIG BRO.I THINK ABOUT THAT SOMETIMES. I DON'T THINK JUST LIVING IS THAT BIG OF A DEAL. I REALLY BELIEVE I'LL BE ABLE TO SEE YOU IF I DIE.SO I'M NOT SCARED. DEATH ISN'T THAT BAD. I HATE THE FACT THAT I LOST, THOUGHBUT YOU KNOW, BRO. I... I'M NOT SAD AT ALL.NAKI
— Sui Ishida
I watch the trees all dressed up in the Spring,  While posing as they stand in line, Placing their best foot forward, showing off their leaves and fighting for attention,One tree at a time
— Charmaine J Forde
I wanted to fix things, obviously. You know it’s like… the planets are out of alignment when we’re fighting.
— Siera Maley, Dating Sarah Cooper
Shattered, broken and still can fight for what I believe in and make my dreams come true I won't give up never
— Nourhan Mamdouh
Fighting is never good. But sometimes necessary.
— Jim Butcher, Death Masks
Don't go thinking you can bounce me all over the ground just because I look like somebody's grandmother," the woman said dryly. "Some grandchildren need more raising than others, and I supply it," she grinned, showing very white teeth. -- Esa Bell, Shang Wildcat
— Tamora Pierce, First Test
Fear never leaves you. It just adapts to you. And that’s the meaning of strengthening a warrior spirit from within, as you can’t fight all your battles with the same weapons.
— Bryan Keyleader
Women fight differently from men. You couldn’t get me to hurt a woman’s breasts for anything. I know how tender my own are when I’m PMSing. Besides, we feed babies with them.
— Karen Marie Moning, Faefever
We had scar-tissueromance and ours wasa relationship of sayinggoodbye—every timewe fought, every timewe fucked, and every timewe called it quits, beforepicking up our knivesagain
— Phil Volatile, Crushed Black Velvet
I thought how wise he was to lure his rival out into the woods, where every fight's fair.
— Peter Geye
Good,” said Creed. “I always like it when a captain has a plan; makes getting killed a lot less random.
— Raymond E. Feist, Talon of the Silver Hawk
Father Hobbe, his cassock skirts hitched up to his waist, was fighting with a quarterstaff, ramming the pole into French faces. ‘In the name of the Father,’ he shouted, and a Frenchman reeled back with a pulped eye, ‘and of the Son,’ Father Hobbe snarled as he broke a man’s nose, ‘and of the Holy Ghost!
— Bernard Cornwell, The Archer's Tale
We all fight monsters, she knew. There was no shame in losing.
— Kameron Hurley, Our Faces, Radiant Sisters, Our Faces Full of Light!
You know the life you have committed yourself to often ends in death.All life does.pg 217
— Lesley Livingston, The Valiant
Where in the nine hells did you ever find the notion that I would fight fair?”-Drizzt Do'Urden
— R.A. Salvatore, The Icewind Dale Trilogy Collector's Edition
An uncertain warrior is no warrior at all.
— Heather Day Gilbert, Forest Child
You become a champion by fighting one more round.
— James Corbett
You're one to talk about talking crap, Forester." Dunstan's voice interrupts the memory, and I can't help but feel a little grateful. "Accusing my dad of poisoning the swamp? What a bunch of bull.""It's not bull,"I snarl. "Your dad's dumping trash into the swamp and you know it!"Dunstan finally loses it and stands up. The boat tilts dangerously. Melanie and the twins shriek, grasping the sides like they're glued to them."You two sit down this minute!" Babette bellows. She's holding onto the motor for dear life. Neither of us listens."You wanna run that by me again?" Dunstan growls. His fingers curl into fists."Your. Dad. Is. Poisoning. The. Swamp." I let each word out slowly like Dunstan's a dumb little kid who needs help understanding.
— Colleen Boyd, Swamp Angel
Defeat is in the mind, if you think you have been defeated then you have lost, but if you believe they have won just one battle in the war, then you are the one who is truly ahead. Never give up, never give in, that is the way to win the war.
— Satuin Segi
Shoot faceless, white blobs. Roger that Menace, Gamma Kitten One over and out.
— Alanea Alder, My Savior
Do you know what I think?" Marcone said."You think we should shoot Nicodemus in the back at the first opportunity and let Michael dismember him.""Yes."I drew my gun. "Okay.
— Jim Butcher, Death Masks
The hall erupted into punches, blows, and kicks. The dancing ended but the band played on. The older men escorted the women from the premises and so ended a bloody-good night.
— Luggs, Jack the Ripper: The Long Arm of the Law
He was painfully aware of the fact that he was in his underwear. Not the best situation in which to fight people.
— Christian M. Frank, Catholic, Reluctantly: John Paul 2 High School - Book 1
There’s nothing wrong with fighting when you have no choice. As a matter of fact, it’s what you should do, but when you fight, fight to win.
— Dan Groat, A Punctual Paymaster
He that dare not die, dare scarce fight valiantly (475).
— Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest
He rested his head on top of mine and whispered, "I'm warning you now. I'm a horrible patient."	I smiled in spite of myself and pulled back. "Of course you are. That's why you're a doctor.
— Lisa Kessler, Harvest Moon
...the band broke into a cover of "Hungry Like the Wolf." I smiled up at mine. He was sexy even in soaking wet blue jeans. "Dance with me.
— Lisa Kessler, Harvest Moon
I've been fighting every single day of my life. Sometimes I think all I have left is fight.
— Jay Crownover, Better When He's Brave
There is no pleasure in fighting a weak opponent
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Cecil The Lion's Testament
You stay in the war because it would be shameful to stay out of it. An then grief seizes you and hold its grip till anger has turned you into a soldier.
— Erri De Luca, Tre cavalli
I am a beautiful thing, shaped for fighting.
— Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves
I don't fight without reason. I don't want war without end.
— Rick Riordan, The Son of Neptune
Flowers and jewelry worked for most girls as a romantic gesture, but here I was, misty-eyed at watching him show my mother how to stab the shit out of him.
— Jeaniene Frost, Magic Graves
If fighting for a cause and for one's right is an indication of aggressiveness then I am proud to be aggressive - you all are free to hate me.
— Amit Abraham
Don't get like these assholes and fall in love with the fighting. Then you're just setting off bombs because you like the noise they make.
— Hugh Howey, Sand Omnibus
My face was growing hot, but I kept talking. "You're the only one who believes in me most of the time."He shook his head. "You keep us going. Everybody knows that.""But you're the one who keeps me going. You're what I'm fighting for in all this.
— Tarah Benner, The Last Uprising
Loving a warrior is hard. Dying in the line of duty is an honor to them. They would rather take that road than to dishonor their sacred oath
— Ronie Kendig, Hawk
Still humanity is in her infancy, so often we engage in fighting to destroy ourself.
— Debasish Mridha
When I’m fighting, my rival becomes like a skeleton to me, without any flesh on him.
— Waheed Ibne Musa, Johnny Fracture
Well, at first I was thinking we could challenge them to a few rounds of Scattergories, but then I realized fighting would be way more emotionally satisfying." -Buffy
— Brian K. Vaughan
Do not fight with your brother. There are things that God expects us to fight for, true. But string is not one of them. Do you understand?
— Rebecca DeMarino, A Place in His Heart
But it’s better to lose some of the battles in the struggle for your dreams than to be defeated without ever even knowing what you’re fighting for
— Paulo Coelho, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
Standing up for yourself is about more than flinging barbed-wire insults around. Its about picking your battles, knowing when to fight, knowing exactly what and who is worth fighting for.
— Paula Stokes, The Art of Lainey
But if you want him, you might have to fight for him." I let my head fall to the tabletop. "For the love of all that is dead and Chinese, please, no more fighting. This army needs a break.
— Paula Stokes, The Art of Lainey
Valek was liquid in motion. As i watched him, one word came to mind: beautiful.
— Maria V. Snyder
He regarded marriage as an arbitrary and essentially adversarial relationship, akin to the yoking of prisoners on the chain gang.
— T.C. Boyle, If the River Was Whiskey
You fight with Niles?" Max asked suddenly."No.""Never?""No! And stop asking about Niles," I demanded.He ignored my demand and kept questioning. "Didn't care enough to fight, didn't match you in fire, or was so lazy he just put up with your shit?
— Kristen Ashley, The Gamble
Regardless of what others may tell you, you only need two Mexican-Americans for a Mexican standoff.
— Alejandra Díaz Mattoni, The Wet Woman
Is there ever a time you’re not an arrogant bastard?”“Is there ever a time you’re not a difficult bitch?”“No.”“Then I guess that makes us perfectly matched, now doesn’t it?
— G.A. Aiken, About a Dragon
Too much time is wasted fighting one self and life itself. Peace and fulfilment emerge the moment you embrace both.
— Rasheed Ogunlaru
So how you're gonna play this?" Trenton asked."Divide and conquer.""Divide what?""His head from the rest of his body."Trenton nodded quickly. "Good plan.
— Jamie McGuire, Walking Disaster
Eby wanted to say so much to her. She wanted to say that waking up is the most important part of grieving, that so many women in their family failed to do it, and she was proud of Kate for fighting her way back. But Eby didn't say anything. She could fix a lot of things, but family wasn't one of them. It was one of the hardest things she'd ever had to come to terms with.
— Sarah Addison Allen, Lost Lake
Small quarrels and tensions were expected because of our new environment. Every relationship has them. Each quarrel was soon forgotten and floated away on a wave. And then sometimes, on our silly days, the arguments returned on the wave, but the wave returned taller, a Tsunami, and neither of us knew where to run or what to do.
— Craig  Stone, Life Knocks
You're not interesting in the least," she spat. "I don't need to be," I smiled. "That's what you need...And you're welcome to it.
— Donna Lynn Hope
We get crazy when we can't make things be like the world tells us they are". She looked back out the window. "It was that way for me and your brother, I think. I mean, how could I have loved him that last year? I didn't even know who he was. He was way more attracted to drugs and bikers and that whole lifestyle than he was to me. But somebody told me that if you really loved somebody,you stayed with him no matter what. You had to fight for him." She laughe. "Hell, I was convinced.
— Chris Crutcher, Chinese Handcuffs
Caleb and Tris exchange a look. The skin on his face and on her knuckles is nearly the same colour, purple-blue-green, as if drawn with ink. This is what happens when siblings collide - they injure each other in the same way.
— Veronica Roth, Allegiant
Proper apologies have three parts:1) What I did was wrong.2) I feel badly that I hurt you.3) How do I make this better?
— Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
I don't lose. Do you hear me? I don't lose and that includes losing you. I'm done being kept in the dark. Im done feeling like you're slipping right past me. You are not saying goodbye to me. I'm in love with you and you love me back. You are staying.
— Katie McGarry, Dare You To
I can't lie. This—me and you—scares the shit out of me."I'd be worried if she weren't frightened. "Me too, but wouldn't you rather be scared together thanbe miserable apart? Because I know that's what I'd be without you.
— Georgia Cates, Beauty from Surrender
Halfhearted or insincere apologies are often worse than not apologizing at all because recipients find them insulting. If you've done something wrong in your dealings with another person, it's as if there's an infection in your relationship. A good apology is like an antibiotic; a bad apology is like rubbing salt I the wound.
— Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
A knight can fight. As you well know, I fight about as well as a pillow.""That's an insult to pillows. At least they can take a beating.
— Eli Brown, Cinnamon and Gunpowder
So you do have some claws after all!' (Wyea)'You have no idea,' Ren responded and charged.
— Colleen Houck, Tiger's Destiny
The answer to enemies who heal annoyingly fast is always, always decapitation. That is why swords will never go out of style.
— Kevin Hearne, Hexed
If other people owe you an apology, and your words of apology to them are proper and heartfelt, you still may not hear from them for a while. After all, what are the odds that they get to the right emotional place to apologize at the exact moment you do? So just be patient. Many times in my career, I saw students apologize, and then several days later, their teammates came around. Your patience will be both appreciated and rewarded.
— Randy Pausch
My skill didn't lie in planning battles, only in fighting them.
— Ann Aguirre, Horde
You deny our vows. You deny my rights. You abuse my pride and leave me nothing of yourself. You send me from you on some lackey's strength. You betray me at every turn." Shanna met his glare and hurled a fierce reply. "You took my heart and set your fingers firm around it, then, no doubt delighted at your success, you rent it with unfaithfulness.""Unfaithfulness is only from a husband. You play the same to me and yet do say I am no spouse.""You plead you are my husband true and spite the suitors come to woo me.""Yea!" Ruark raged. "Your suitors flock about your skirts in heated lust, and you yield them more than me."Shanna paused before him, rage etched upon her face. "You're a churlish cad!""They fondle you boldly and you set not their hands away from you.""A knavish blackguard!""You are a married woman!""I am a widow!""You are my wife!" Ruark shouted to be heard over the rising wind outside.
— Kathleen E. Woodiwiss, Shanna
... I slipped our wicker bed and walked the sands where we were also roughly repeated: some young couple, "you did," "I didn't," "you sure the fuck did" – they huggedthat bicker to their chests like blankets fighting cold.
— Albert Goldbarth
Both his voice and eyes had the burning cold of alcohol. His strength no longer lay in his military experience or his knowledge of the map, but in his harsh, impetuous soul.
— Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate
The fight migjt be over but nobody wins if you both go home in body bags.
— Mikayla Nicole
He grabbed me with both hands and began pushing me backward.I lost my balance. The ledge was at an angle, and it was covered with loose gravel. I was less than a foot from the edge.It was at that very moment that the clouds parted. The September sun burst through. The entire world was illuminated.Time shattered into moments.I could see for a hundred miles in every direction.I could see mountain peeks and pristine lakes. And I could somehow feel as well as see the never-ending drop that toyed with me, ruffling my hair, pulling at my back, one step behind me.
— Axel Avian, Agent Colt Shore Domino 29
Grand Mage,” Ghastly said, as he put the map away, “did you know the sparrow flies south for the winter?”“What an odd thing to say,” Ravel said, and as he turned, he snapped his palm against the air and Paloma slammed into the wall.”…..“What do you know,” Ravel said, breathing a little faster, “Skulduggery’s silly little code actually works.”“Grand Mage,” Ghastly said, as he put the map away, “did you know the sparrow flies south for the winter?”“What an odd thing to say,” Ravel said, and as he turned, he snapped his palm against the air and Paloma slammed into the wall.”…..“What do you know,” Ravel said, breathing a little faster, “Skulduggery’s silly little code actually works.
— Derek Landy, Kingdom of the Wicked
There are three kinds of fighters: the aggressive fighter who charges in blindly trying to get the upper hand, the defensive fighter who blocks and evades until his opponent is tired, and then the most dangerous type of fighter, the one who waits for his opponent to make a mistake.
— Aaron B. Powell, C-Town
Being physically tough is measured by how many fights you win, but mental toughness is measured by how you react when all the chips are stacked against you, how fast you get back on track when life kicks you in the nuts. Any fool can win a fight, but it takes a person with true grit to never give up when all seems lost.
— Benjamin Bayani, The Nation
If you can hit a guy once, you can hit him twice.
— Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
Men broke into their homes, killed their families, threatened you--and you won't let them do anything for fear you'll be hurt. That's selfish. How would you like it if I took your bow and said I cared too much about you to let you fight?
— Tamora Pierce, Wild Magic
It amazed Forrest that so many men seemed to wake up in the morning needing some kind of beating or another, men saying and doing fantastic things for the sake of getting another man to smash his face.
— Matt Bondurant, The Wettest County in the World: A Novel Based on a True Story
I wanted something that I could look back on and say, yes, you were fighting too, you burned to be alive, and whatever failure or accident of nature caused you to be killed could be explained by something other than the fact that I'd missed your giving up.
— Kevin Powers, The Yellow Birds
I kept trying to explain and he kept shouting until I began to cry from frustration. Then he felt remorseful, which was so unlike him and endearing that I almost changed my mind and said yes. But then I imagined a lifetime of having to cry to get him to be kind, and I went back to no again.
— Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
When you are in a combat situation, you mustn’t let your mind be polluted by emotions like fear and anger. Simply accept the situation and react, even if you are facing impossible odds. Keep your head clear and you will be one step ahead of your attackers.
— Aaron B. Powell, Doomsday Diaries
It was easier to deal with Tennyson when he was fighting me; but having him on my side was frightening, because now I didn't know who the enemy was.
— Neal Shusterman, Bruiser
Zahara roared and threw herself at him, smacking Bryan back against the ground and swinging a right hook into his nose. She exclaimed in triumph as her fist connected with his face, hoping it hurt his nose as bad as the punch hurt her knuckles. Zahara’s triumphant smile turned into a yelp of pain as Bryan knocked her onto her back and rolled her onto her stomach, twisted her arms behind her, and locked them in place with a grip strong enough to bend steel.
— Annabell Cadiz, Lucifer
When we neared the orchard a flock of birds lit from its outer rows. They hadn't been there long. The branches shook with their absent weight and the birds circled above in the riddy mackerel sky, where they made an artless semaphore. I was afraid, I smelled copper and cheap wine. The sun was up, but a half-moon hung low on the opposite horizon, cutting through the morning sky like a figure from a child's pull-tab book.We were lined along the ditch up to our ankles in a soupy muck. It all seemed in that moment to be the conclusion of a poorly designed experiment in inevitability. Everything was in its proper place, waiting for a pause in time, for the source of all momentum to be stilled, so that what remained would be nothing more than detritus to be tallied up. The world was paper-thin as far as I could tell. And the world was the orchard, and the orchard was what came next. But none of that was true. I was only afraid of dying.
— Kevin Powers, The Yellow Birds
If We Must DieIf we must die, let it not be like hogsHunted and penned in an inglorious spot,While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,Making their mock at our accursèd lot.If we must die, O let us nobly die,So that our precious blood may not be shedIn vain; then even the monsters we defyShall be constrained to honor us though dead!O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!What though before us lies the open grave?Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
— Claude McKay, Selected Poems of Claude McKay
There is a crack in everything
— Leonard Cohen
I wanted to beat the heck out of the JV guys for that, except I wouldn't know what to do in a fistfight without a manual.
— Carrie Harris, Bad Taste in Boys
I've never, ever, ever -- in my entire life -- fought over a man. I've fought women who've hit me because of a man, but then I was fighting to bust her ass, not defend his.
— Karen E. Quinones Miller
Wisdom is merely the movement from fighting life to embracing it.
— Rasheed Ogunlaru
You are the closest I will ever come to magic.
— Suzanne Finnamore, The Zygote Chronicles
. . . I would have let him go one finger at a time, until, without his realizing, he'd be floating without me. And then I thought, perhaps that is what it means to be a [parent] - to teach your child to live without you.
— Nicole Krauss
He seriously thought that there is less harm in killing a man than producing a child: in the first case you are relieving someone of life, not his whole life but a half or a quarter or a hundredth part of that existence that is going to finish, that would finish without you; but as for the second, he would say, are you not responsible to him for all the tears he will shed, from the cradle to the grave? Without you he would never have been born, and why is he born? For your amusement, not for his, that’s for sure; to carry your name, the name of a fool, I’ll be bound – you may as well write that name on some wall; why do you need a man to bear the burden of three or four letters?
— Gustave Flaubert, November
When you moved, I felt squeezed with a wild infatuation and protectiveness. We are one. Nothing, not even death, can change that.
— Suzanne Finnamore, The Zygote Chronicles
If John Lennon was right that life is what happens when you're making other plans, parenthood is what happens when everything is flipped over and spilling everywhere and you can't find a towel or a sponge or your "inside" voice.
— Kelly Corrigan, Lift
She was an alien, really - a sort of eating, pooping, tantrum machine - and he didn't understand anything about her species.
— Christopher Moore
If I had to do it all again, I would still want my same daughter and two sons; through laughter, tears, prayers, and blessings.
— Ana Monnar
After you are here, I will try not to become one of those parents who brag incessantly about their children, who force them to recite the alphabet backward or sing the Lord's Prayer in German to horrified dinner guests. One of those parents who tell people who aren't interested and haven't askd what their progeny's grade-point average is, what school they go to, how handsome and brilliant and psychic they are. If something goes awry and I do become one of those parents, you have my permission to sneak into my bedroom while I am sleeping and pinch my nostrils shut.
— Suzanne Finnamore, The Zygote Chronicles
Having kids - the responsibility of rearing good, kind, ethical, responsible human beings - is the biggest job anyone can embark on. As with any risk, you have to take a leap of faith and ask lots of wonderful people for their help and guidance. I thank God every day for giving me the opportunity to parent.
— Maria Shriver
The plants and flowersI raised about my hutI now surrenderTo the willOf the wind
— Ryōkan
Many a night I woke to the murmer of paper and knew (Dad) was up, sitting in the kitchen with frayed King James - oh, but he worked that book; he held to it like a rope ladder.
— Leif Enger, Peace Like a River
Helplessness in the face of a child's suffering is the curse of parenthood.
— Nancy Atherton, Aunt Dimity's Good Deed
There are times when parenthood seems nothing more than feeding the hand that bites you.
— Peter De Vries
Worry not that your child listens to you
—  worry most that they watch you.
We'd traveled, we'd been to lots of parties, lots of movies and concerts, we'd slept in. We'd done all those things that people with children seem to miss so passionately. We didn't want those things anymore. We wanted a baby.
— Liane Moriarty, What Alice Forgot
There's a Drunk Midget in My HouseAh, babies! They're more than just adorable little creatures on whom you can blame your farts. Like most people who have had one baby, I am an expert on everythiing and will tell you, unsolicited, how to raise your kid!
— Tina Fey, Bossypants
The sound of her breathing reminded me, as it so often did, of how vulnerable she was. And how vulnerable we were because of how much we loved her. The fear - that something could happen to her at any moment, something I'd be helpless to stop - had become so omnipresent in my life that I sometimes pictured it growing, like a third arm, out of the center of my chest.
— Dennis Lehane, Moonlight Mile
Scratch a female inmate, I've discovered, and you'll usually find a girl whose mother had terrible taste in men.
— Cammie McGovern, Neighborhood Watch
It's not so much that I mind listening to her stories. Everybody likes to have an audience - that's why most people have kids, isn't it?
— Robin Epstein, God Is in the Pancakes
I said that additionally, since I was planning to nurse, it be best if you were off the breast before I came back to work. My boss just looked at me dreamily and said, 'That won't be for sixty years, at least.
— Suzanne Finnamore, The Zygote Chronicles
In the mystifying world that was Victorian parenthood, obedience took precedence over all considerations of affection and happiness, and that odd, painful conviction remained the case in most well-heeled homes up until at least the time of the First World War.
— Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life
She has seen him fight his own brutal nature, and the Earth itself, in order to be the parent she needs. He has helped her learn to love herself for what she is.
— N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky
Biology doesn't make anyone a parent," Cassia added as she tucked her Eturian prayer stone beneath her shirt.
— Melissa Landers, Starflight
Black children need waves of present, multifaceted love, not simply present fathers.
— Kiese Laymon, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America