c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
You also know you’re surrendered when you don’t react to criticism and rush to defend yourself. Surrendered hearts show up best in relationships. You don’t edge others out, you don’t demand your rights, and you aren’t self-serving when you’re surrendered.
— Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth am I Here for?
All stories are true,” Skarpi said. “But this one really happened, if that’s what you mean.” He took another slow drink, then smiled again, his bright eyes dancing. “More or less. You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way. Too much truth confuses the facts. Too much honesty makes you sound insincere.
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
You’re my change of skin / my summer-winter-fall / I spring to follow you / this loss is beautiful.
— Maggie Stiefvater, Shiver
that love is the most powerful force in the world. That love can do anything.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Fallen Angels
Friends we shall never be, you know that yourself. Whether we shall be the happiest or the wretchedest of people--that's in your hands.
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
You think you want love, Mary. You think it is this beautiful gift that does nothing but fill you and make you whole. But you are wrong. Love can be cruel and ugly. It can become dark and cause the deepest pain.
— Carrie Ryan, The Forest of Hands and Teeth
I felt no shame in these activities, because I understood what almost no one else seemed to grasp: that there was only an infinitesimal difference, a difference so small that it barely existed except as a figment of the human imagination, between working in a tall green glass building on Park Avenue and collecting litter in a park. In fact, there may have been no difference at all.
— Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad
What do you know of poetry?” Ambrose said without bothering to turn around. “I know a limping verse when I hear it,” I said. “But this isn’t even limping. A limp has rhythm. This is more like someone falling down a set of stairs. Uneven stairs. With a midden at the bottom.” “It is a sprung rhythm,” he said, his voice stiff and offended. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.” “Sprung?” I burst out with an incredulous laugh. “I understand that if I saw a horse with a leg this badly ‘sprung,’ I’d kill it out of mercy, then burn its poor corpse for fear the local dogs might gnaw on it and die.
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
Language, that most human invention, can enable what, in principle, should not be possible. It can allow all of us, even the congenitally blind, to see with another person’s eyes.
— Oliver Sacks
I had them all fooled into believing I was normal and well-adjusted, a rock of sensibility who could always be counted on to have a positive attitude.
— Sara Zarr, Sweethearts
Isaac Asimov's remark about the infantilism of pseudoscience is just as applicable to religion: 'Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold.' It is astonishing, moreover, how many people are unable to understand that 'X is comforting' does not imply 'X is true'.
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
Happiness, satisfaction, fulfillment, joy, love... All these things work the same way. The more you search for them, the less likely you are to find them.
— Patrick Rhone, Keeping It Straight: You, Me & Everything Else
His face and arms are so artfully disguised as to be invisible. I kneel beside him. “I guess all those hours decorating cakes paid off.” Peeta smiles. “Yes, frosting. The final defense of the dying.
— Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
Because something is significantly wrong with a creature that sacrifices its children’s lives to settle its differences.
— Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay
Have something to bring to the table, because that will make you more welcome.
— Randy Pausch
I realize that sometimes death comes before you expect it. That while we are rarely prepared for our friends, family and loved ones to die, we are never prepared for our own deaths. Never prepared to reconcile our own regrets.
— Carrie Ryan, The Forest of Hands and Teeth
Before all masters, necessity is the one most listened to, and who teaches the best.
— Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island
I failed math twice, never fully grasping probability theory. I mean, first off, who cares if you pick a black ball or a white ball out of the bag? And second, if you’re bent over about the color, don’t leave it to chance. Look in the damn bag and pick the color you want.
— Janet Evanovich, Hard Eight
Maybe he didn’t really encourage me to do things, but he didn’t prevent me from doing them either. But after a while, I didn’t do things because I didn’t want him to think different about me. But the thing is, I wasn’t being honest. So, why would I care whether or not he loved me when he didn’t really even know me?
— Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
There’s a coward and a fool, and both of them are you, My heart is cracked and broken, but yours is frozen through.
— Jay Bell, Something Like Summer
Almost everybody I know has died,” Grandma said. “Bunch of wimps.
— Janet Evanovich, High Five
Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity which at bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, but simply to realize where you already are.
— Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are
In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts
—  they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
Never make a decision until you have to.
— Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
When God looks at you, he doesn’t see you; he sees the One who surrounds you. That means that failure is not a concern for you. Your victory is secure.
— Max Lucado, Grace for the Moment
I’d heard he had started a fistfight in one of the seedier local taverns because someone had insisted on saying the word “utilize” instead of “use.
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear
Teach me how to fly, my beautiful butterfly.
— Jay Bell, Something Like Summer
Donny recovered herself. “Dude, that was the seventh sign of the apocalypse. I’m so not going to class on the last day of the world.
— Gwen Hayes, Falling Under
Seems to me-" Lee said, feeling for the words, "seems to me the place you fight cruelty is where you find it, and the place you give help is where you see it needed....
— Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials Trilogy: The Golden Compass / The Subtle Knife / The Amber Spyglass
(My proudest moment as a child was the time I beat my uncle Pierre at Scrabble with the seven-letter word FARTING.)
— Tina Fey, Bossypants
Protecting people from the truth is another way of shutting them out.
— Blaize Clement
Though you see nothing, he is acting.
— Max Lucado, Grace for the Moment
The entire point of life is to find ways to get others to do your work for you. Don’t you know anything about basic economics?
— Brandon Sanderson
For a split second longer she stood motionless. Then, somehow, she had caught at the front of his shirt and pulled him toward her. His arms went around her, lifting her almost out of her sandals, and then he was kissing her—or she was kissing him, she wasn’t sure, and it didn’t matter. The feel of his mouth on hers was electric; her hands gripped his arms, pulling him hard against her. The feel of his heart pounding through his shirt made her dizzy with joy. No one else’s heart beat like Jace’s did, or ever could.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Glass
I wasn’t a fabulous cook. I didn’t have a boyfriend, much less a husband. And I wasn’t a big financial success. I could live with all those failings as long as I knew that once in a while I looked really hot.
— Janet Evanovich, High Five
I don’t know what boldness came over me, but the resolute heaviness of Dash’s demeanor threatened to crush my soul. My pinky finger crept over and nestled against his, for comfort. Like a magnet, his pinky finger latched onto and intertwined with mine. I like magnets a whole lot.
— Rachel Cohn, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares
The beauty of the human soul Is not the pretty face. It’s found within the heart and hands Of those who look — and stay.
— Laura Greenwald, Eye of the Beholder: True Stories of People with Facial Differences
The world is full of shitheads, Rhea. Don’t listen to them—listen to me. And I know that Lou is one of those shitheads. But I listen.
— Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad
I noticed the plants growing around me. Tall with leaves like arrowheads. Blossoms with three white petals. I knelt down in the water, my fingers digging into the soft mud, and I pulled up handfuls of the roots. Small, bluish tubers that don’t look like much but boiled or baked are as good as any potato. “Katniss,” I said aloud. It’s the plant I was named for. And I heard my father’s voice joking, “As long as you can find yourself, you’ll never starve.
— Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. People simply like to have reasons for what they do.
— Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
The feeling I have reminds me of New Year’s Eve, when the countdown is coming and I’m not quite sure whether to grab my camera or just live in the moment. Usually I grab the camera and later regret it when the picture doesn’t turn out. Then I feel enormously let down and think to myself that the night would have been more fun if it didn’t mean quite so much, if I weren’t forced to analyze where I’ve been and where I’m going.
— Emily Giffin, Something Borrowed
Whoever named Himmel Street certainly had a healthy sense of irony. Not that is was a living hell. It wasn't. But is sure as hell wasn't heaven, either.
— Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
Don’t ever get old. With each year that passes, the old Viking idea of jumping off a cliff to one’s death looks better and better. The only thing to hope for is that you get so senile that you think you’re twenty years old again. That would be fun to relive.
— Camilla Läckberg, The Ice Princess
Theoretically the planet could suddenly crack in half, leaving me on one side and you on the other side, forever and tragically parted, but I’m not worried about that, either. Some things,” Jace said,
— Cassandra Clare, City of Fallen Angels
How many psychiatrists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” “I don’t know. How many?” “Eight.” “Why?” “Oh, stop overanalyzing it.
— Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island
How about you, Mockingjay? You feel totally safe?” “Oh, yeah. Right up until I got shot,” I say.
— Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay
Like all failed experiments, that one taught me something I didn’t expect: one key ingredient of so-called experience is the delusional faith that it is unique and special, that those included in it are privileged and those excluded from it are missing out. And I, like a scientist unwittingly inhaling toxic fumes from the beaker I was boiling in my lab, had, through sheer physical proximity, been infected by that same delusion and in my drugged state had come to believe I was Excluded: condemned to stand shivering outside the public library at Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street forever and...
— Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad
happened as I listened: I felt pain. Not in my head, not in my arm, not in my leg; everywhere at once. I told myself there was no difference between being “inside” and being “outside,” that it all came down to X’s and O’s that could be acquired in any number of different ways, but the pain increased to a point where I thought I might collapse, and I limped away.
— Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad
The search for the purpose of life has puzzled people for thousands of years. That’s because we typically begin at the wrong starting point—ourselves. We ask self-centered questions like What do I want to be? What should I do with my life? What are my goals, my ambitions, my dreams for my future? But focusing on ourselves will never reveal our life’s purpose.
— Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth am I Here for?
There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth.   Not going all the way, and not starting.”   Siddhrtha Gautama
— Seth Godin, Poke the Box
He hesitated, then lifted his head and sniffed. “Have you been drinking?” The question was more curious than accusatory. “No,” Bast said. The innkeeper raised an eyebrow. “I’ve been tasting,” Bast said, emphasizing the word. “Tasting comes before drinking.
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear
Confession is the act of inviting God to walk the acreage of our hearts. “There is a rock of greed over here, Father. I can’t budge it. And that tree of guilt near the fence? Its roots are long and deep. And may I show you some dry soil, too crusty for seed?” God’s seed grows better if the soil of the heart is cleared.
— Max Lucado, Grace for the Moment
The point of life was to press on, to do the best you can, to make the world a better place.
— Tom Clancy, Clear and Present Danger
Addiction is the hallmark of every infatuation-based love story. It all begins when the object of your adoration bestows upon you a heady, hallucinogenic dose of something you never even dared to admit that you wanted—an emotional speedball, perhaps, of thunderous love and roiling excitement. Soon you start craving that intense attention, with the hungry obsession of any junkie. When the drug is withheld, you promptly turn sick, crazy and depleted (not to mention resentful of the dealer who encouraged this addiction in the first place but who now refuses to pony up the good stuff anymore—despite...
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
Sir, this lane is for ten items or less. I’m counting thirteen items in your cart, including that hemorrhoid cream. And while hemorrhoids might give you a reason to be nasty, they don’t give you a reason to be in this lane.
— J.A. Konrath
The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit. Of course, Tally thought, you’d have to feed your cat only salmon-flavored cat food for a while, to get the pinks right.
— Scott Westerfeld, Uglies
While it did smash, breaking a bottle over someone’s head requires a lot more force than movies had led me to believe.
— Amanda Hocking, Hollowland
Peeling off my skin / leaving just my eyes behind / You see inside my head / Still know that you are mine.
— Maggie Stiefvater, Shiver
Never, never marry, my friend. Here’s my advice to you: don’t marry until you can tell yourself that you’ve done all you could, and until you’ve stopped loving the woman you’ve chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise you’ll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Marry when you’re old and good for nothing…Otherwise all that’s good and lofty in you will be lost.
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
It is how we respond to loss that matters. That response will largely determine the quality, the direction, and the impact of our lives.
— Gerald L. Sittser
Speak your latent conviction. . . Else tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays
We’re miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentments and mortality. We wrongly believe that our limited little egos constitute our whole entire nature. We have failed to recognize our deeper divine character.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
Sanity is a sonnet with a strict meter and rhyme scheme-and my mind is free verse.
— Holly Schindler, A Blue So Dark
All that glitters is not hovery.
— Scott Westerfeld
with his customary crooked smile, “are just too unlikely to dwell upon.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Fallen Angels
In the end, it doesn’t matter how well we have performed or what we have accomplished—a life without heart is not worth living.
— John Eldredge
sloughing my skin / escaping it's grip / stripped of my wit / it hurts to be me .
— Maggie Stiefvater, Shiver
Mama says it’s just her nature. Some people are flowers, and some are thorns.
— Jennifer Archer, Through Her Eyes
I’ve always resented Hermione, because I wanted to be her so badly and she never seemed to appreciate as much as I thought she should that she got to be her. She got to live at Hogwarts and be friends with Harry and kiss Ron, which was supposed to happen to me.
— David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares
Gage opens the door. I’m not sure whether he gets out or Logan yanks him into the street, but a fight erupts. Full throttle kicks to the balls
— Addison Moore, Ethereal
So, here’s what you do. You win, you go home. She can’t turn you down then, eh?” says Caesar encouragingly. “I don’t think it’s going to work out. Winning…won’t help in my case,” says Peeta. “Why ever not?” says Caesar, mystified. Peeta blushes beet red and stammers out. “Because…because…she came here with me.
— Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
The problem is that most people spend their lives looking but not truly seeing, or, as Sherlock Holmes, the meticulous English detective, declared to his partner, Dr. Watson, “You see, but you do not observe.
— Joe Navarro, What Every Body is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Speed-Reading People
Deep in the meadow, hidden far away A cloak of leaves, a moonbeam ray Forget your woes and let your troubles lay
— Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
Sighing, she shut the book with a snap. “All right. You need to vent, so I’ll listen to you vent. But do it quickly, because Rydstorm was about to plunder Sabine with his thick, hard—
— Gena Showalter, Twice as Hot
If that's what you believe the Lord is calling you to do, then you can be confident He'll go ahead of you.
— Cynthia Ruchti, They Almost Always Come Home
Looking back, I question whether I really loved Nate, or just the security of our relationship. I wonder if my feelings for him didn’t have a lot to do with hating my job. From the bar exam through that first hellish year as an associate, Nate was my escape. And sometimes that can feel an awful lot like love.
— Emily Giffin, Something Borrowed
Everyone knew what he was thinking. Certainly there were demons in the world. But they were like Tehlu’s angels. They were like heroes and kings. They belonged in stories. They belonged out there. Taborlin the Great called up fire and lightning to destroy demons. Tehlu broke them in his hands and sent them howling into the nameless void. Your childhood friend didn’t stomp one to death on the road to Baedn-Bryt. It was ridiculous.
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
If all the evidence in the universe turned in favour of creationism, I would be the first to admit it, and I would immediately change my mind. As things stand, however, all available evidence (and there is a vast amount of it) favours evolution.
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
I just think people overvalue argument because they like to hear themselves talk.
— Iain Banks, Use of Weapons
Treat 'em like dogs, and you'll have dogs' works and dogs' actions. Treat 'em like men, and you'll have men's works.
— Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
So convenient a thing to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do.
— Benjamin Franklin
He hadn’t been peeping intentionally; he’d been trying to sneak into my room. So that was slightly less creepy, I supposed.
— Amanda Hocking, Switched
You come before the judgment seat of God full of rebellion and mistakes. Because of his justice he cannot dismiss your sin, but because of his love he cannot dismiss you. So, in an act which stunned the heavens, he punished himself on the cross for your sins. God’s justice and love are equally honored. And you, God’s creation, are forgiven.
— Max Lucado, Grace for the Moment
The desperation was coming off you in waves. You were all but begging to dance with me. I am doing you a favor.
— Amanda Hocking, Switched
He had known several men who blew their heads off, and he had pondered it much. It seemed to him it was probably because they could not take enough happiness just from the sky and the moon to carry them over the low feelings that came to all men.
— Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove
To reject Christ because the church has sin of this sort in it is like rejecting hospitals because they are full of sick people.
— Douglas Wilson
We all tell our stories the way we want to. And sometimes those stories have nothing to do with reality.
— Danielle Ganek, The Summer We Read Gatsby
Unfortunately, zombies aren’t very flammable, and it went out instantly.
— Amanda Hocking, Hollowland
If you think about something for long enough,' she explained, `more than likely, that thing will happen.' She tapped her head. `It's all in the mind.
— Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
It was the laughter of birthdays, of money found in an old pocket.
— Ian Rankin, Knots and Crosses
She draws patterns on my face / These lines make shapes that can’t replace / the version of me that I hold inside / when lying with you, lying with you, lying with you.
— Maggie Stiefvater, Shiver
It's as if there is infinity between our lips and we will never actually touch. Like math, where dividing by half can last for eternity.
— Carrie Ryan, The Forest of Hands and Teeth
Isn’t it amazing how much good people can do for each other when you give them the opportunity to help?
— Dorothea Benton Frank, Bulls Island
She laughed out loud, a warm, knowing laughter that made me once again wonder about the secret ingredient in these women’s lives. Whatever it was, I was clearly missing it. It was so much more than just self-confidence; it seemed to be the ability to love oneself, enthusiastically and unsparingly, body and soul, naturally followed by the assumption that every man on the planet is dying to get in on the act.
— Anne Fortier, Juliet
But bringing people together is what music has always done best.
— Rob Sheffield, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut
Dear White Fella When I am born I’m black When I grow up I’m black When I am sick I’m black When I go out ina sun I’m black When I git cold I’m black When I git scared I’m black And when I die I’m still black. But you white fella When you’re born you’re pink When you grow up you’re white When you git sick you’re green When you go out ina sun you go red When you git cold you go blue When you git scared you’re yellow And when you die you’re grey And you got the cheek to call me coloured?
— Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature
We hand the meat over to Greasy Sae in the kitchen. She likes District 13 well enough, even though she thinks the cooks are somewhat lacking in imagination. But a woman who came up with a palatable wild dog and rhubarb stew is bound to feel as if her hands are tied here.
— Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay
I stand there unmoving while they take part in the boldest form of dissent they can manage. Silence.
— Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
My prayer as you read this book is that you will find comfort for the disappointment of unanswered prayer, but also courage to continue on the epic journey that prayer is.
— Gerald L. Sittser, When God Doesn't Answer Your Prayer
Perfume companies ought to bottle the smell of crisp bacon. Forget pheromones. I’ll bet a woman with a little spot of bacon grease behind her ears would attract every male within a five-mile radius.
— Blaize Clement, Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter
Maybe that's why people have friends at all. Not because they like them so much but because they don't make them feel so much worse.
— Joe Meno, How the Hula Girl Sings
And when again it’s morning, they’ ll wash away. Here it’s safe, here it’s warm Here the daisies guard you from every harm
— Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
There are two ways,” he told me, “and they are love and not love. I choose love.
— Tony Jones
Great love, you believe, carries the seeds of great sorrow. Well, perhaps you are right. Perhaps the wise spurn one to remain safe from the other, but I should rather choose to have my eyes burnt in their sockets than to have been born without.
— Anne Fortier, Juliet
We describe a person without compassion as “heartless,” and we urge him or her to “have a heart.” Our deepest hurts we call “heartaches.” Jilted lovers are “brokenhearted.” Courageous soldiers are “bravehearted.” The truly evil are “black-hearted” and saints have “hearts of gold.” If we need to speak at the most intimate level, we ask for a “heart-to-heart” talk. “Lighthearted” is how we feel on vacation. And when we love someone as truly as we may, we love “with all our heart.” But when we lose our passion for life, when a deadness sets in which we cannot...
— John Eldredge, The Sacred Romance Drawing Closer To The Heart Of God
I think the more we fill our lives with more and more things we have to do, the less and less time we are spending on who we have to be.
— Patrick Rhone, Keeping It Straight: You, Me & Everything Else
need to let go of the need to be in control.
— Charlene Li, Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead
The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.
— Kate Chopin, The Awakening
A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her,—the light which, showing the way, forbids it.
— Kate Chopin, The Awakening
The ultimate freedom for creative groups is the freedom to experiment with new ideas. Some skeptics insist that innovation is expensive. In the long run, innovation is cheap. Mediocrity is expensive—and autonomy can be the antidote.”   TOM KELLEY General Manager, IDEO
— Daniel H. Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
a life without investigation is not worth living
— Plato, Apology/Crito/Phaedo
Living like an empty shell is not really living, no matter how many years it may go on. The heart and flesh of an empty shell give birth to nothing more than the life of an empty shell.
— Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
The little things are important, Mr. Wind-Up Bird,
— Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
The song we’re composing already exists in potential. Our work is to find it.
— Steven Pressfield, Do the Work
The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth,
— Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
If you focus your awareness only upon your own rightness, then you invite the forces of opposition to overwhelm you.
— Frank Herbert, Children of Dune
Cause I lit him on fire,” I shrugged and brushed dust from my pants.
— Amanda Hocking, Hollowland
I don’t know. She was a sweet girl. As sweet as they come. I don’t know why I didn’t love her. It’s something you can’t really control.
— Emily Giffin, Something Borrowed
Whatever the Clave was discussing, the Council meeting was dragging on brutally late. “But he knows New York. He doesn’t know Alicante—
— Cassandra Clare, City of Glass
I got out of the elevator and confronted Mr. Wexler. “Killing is wrong.” “We kill chickens,” Mr. Wexler said. “We kill cows. We kill trees. So big deal, we kill some drug dealers.”It was hard to argue with that kind of logic because I like cows and chickens and trees much better than drug dealers.
— Janet Evanovich, Three to Get Deadly
He is not a bad fellow, though an absolute imbecile in his profession. He has one positive virtue. He is as brave as a bulldog and as tenacious as a lobster if he gets his claws upon anyone.
— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
That’s how you tell what a man’s really made of. It’s one thing for a man to be big and brave and kill a spider. Any man could do that. Trailin’ after a woman when she’s shopping for thongs and push-up bras is a whole other category of man. And then if you want to see how far you can go with it, you ask him to carry one of those little pink bags they give you.
— Janet Evanovich, To the Nines
At least twice a week, I pause in the rush of work and have a meeting with myself. (If I were part of a team, I’d call a team meeting.) I ask myself, again, of the project: “What is this damn thing about?” Keep refining your understanding of the theme; keep narrowing it down.
— Steven Pressfield, Do the Work
We kissed all the way through the fireworks display. We didn’t even notice that there was a fireworks display… …I guess because we’d been making fireworks of our own.
— Meg Cabot, Teen Idol
Had you been lying all along? Mum gently stroked my hair. I whispered into her shoulder. “I can’t go back. Not yet. I can’t leave.” And she held my head tight to her chest and wrapped her arms around me. “You don’t have to,” she said, rocking me. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, not anymore.” And I cried.
— Lucy Christopher
Wouldn’t that be an incredibly stupid thing to do? To say ‘I never want to smoke again’, then spend the rest of your life saying ‘I’d love a cigarette.’ That’s what smokers who use the Willpower Method do. No wonder they feel so miserable. They spend the rest of their lives desperately moping for something that they desperately hope they will never have.
— Allen Carr, Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking: Be a Happy Non-smoker for the Rest of Your Life
Facebook also has a fundamental characteristic that has proven key to its appeal in country after country—you only see friends there.
— David Kirkpatrick, The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World
One of the many difficult things about women was that they tended to pick the most unsuitable times to tell you something they considered to be important, and then became irrationally upset when you failed to remember it.
— Ruth Downie, Terra Incognita
Sleep is just a good idea. I bow to the god caffeine.
— Jo-Ann Mapson, Solomon's Oak
He was in my nose, my mouth, on my skin, inside my cells, deep in the marrow of my bones. Just then, he was everything to me.
— Gena Showalter, Twice as Hot
I wasn’t sure anymore what made a good marriage. There had to be love, of course, but there were so many different kinds of love. And clearly, some love was more enduring than others.
— Janet Evanovich, Visions of Sugar Plums
He’s called you, like, four times in the past week. And seriously, you should be embarrassed. I’ve never met anyone who has as much phone sex as you two.” My eyes narrowed on her. “How do you know about the phone sex?” “Duh. I pick up the phone and listen.” I gaped at her.
— Gena Showalter, Twice as Hot
Soul ties. The thing that can make you hear an old-school slow jam and think of somebody you haven’t seen in years. Soul ties. The thing that makes old people who’ve been together for years finish each other’s sentences. Don’t you wish mama had told you when you were young that, when you lie with someone, you lie not just with her body but also with her soul? And whatever condition the other person’s soul is in, you are guaranteed to take a piece with you—whether you want to or not. Instead of being amazed at her booty, you should have focused on her mind.
— Kirk Franklin, The Blueprint
Live each day as if it’s your last’, that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that? What if it rained or you felt a bit glandy? It just wasn’t practical. Better by far to simply try and be good and courageous and bold and to make a difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you. Go out there with your passion and your electric typewriter and work hard at … something. Change lives through art maybe. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever...
— David Nicholls, One Day
The word connects the visible trace with the invisible thing, the absent thing, the thing that is desired or feared, like a frail emergency bridge flung over an abyss.
— Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium
But it is not your own Shire,’ said Gildor. ‘Others dwelt here before hobbits were; and others will dwell here again when hobbits are no more. The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
FORGIVE FAILURE. The corollary to accountability is forgiveness. Things go wrong all the time in relationships, and the healthiest ones move on from them, leaving behind grudges and blame. This is not to say that failure is accepted; rather, that it is acknowledged and understood.
— Charlene Li, Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead
The brain is more than an assemblage of autonomous modules, each crucial for a specific mental function. Every one of these functionally specialized areas must interact with dozens or hundreds of others, their total integration creating something like a vastly complicated orchestra with thousands of instruments, an orchestra that conducts itself, with an ever-changing score and repertoire.
— Oliver Sacks
They’re both bungholes who think they’re too noble to shit,
— George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
It was as if this night were only one of thousands of nights, world without end, night curving into night to make a great arching line of which I couldn’t see the end, a night in which I roamed alone under cold, mindless stars.
— Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
now look, she said, stretched out on the bed, I don’t want anything personal, let’s just do it, I don’t want to get involved, got it? she kicked off her high-heeled shoes… sure, he said, standing there, let’s just pretend that we’ve already done it, there’s nothing less involved than that, is there? what the hell do you mean? she asked. I mean, he said, I’d rather drink anyhow. and he poured himself one. it was a lousy night in Vegas and he walked to the window and looked out at the dumb lights. you a fag? she asked, you a god damned fag? no, he said. you don’t have to get shitty,...
— Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense
D snorted. “Gotta be prepared.” He looked up at Jack’s face, frowning. “What?” Jack shrugged. “It’s just….” He sighed. “I’m starting to see words like ‘accessory’ and ‘accomplice’ floating around my head.” D barely reacted. “How about ‘dead on arrival’? Ya like that better?” Jack nodded, pressing his lips together. “Get more ammo. Ammo is good.
— Jane Seville, Zero at the Bone
When something needs to be ironed I put it in the ironing basket. If a year goes by and the item is still in the basket I throw the item away. This is a good system since eventually I end up only with clothes that don’t need ironing.
— Janet Evanovich, Three to Get Deadly
A work-in-progress generates its own energy field. You, the artist or entrepreneur, are pouring love into the work; you are suffusing it with passion and intention and hope.
— Steven Pressfield, Do the Work
Duke’s warm pink lips brushed his gently at first and then more firmly. He held the kiss for a long, breathless moment before pulling back a fraction of an inch. “Who’s a fag now?” His deep voice was low and intimate. “Do you give, roomie?
— Evangeline Anderson, Str8te Boys
There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance
—  that imitation is suicide...
I am alone in the world, and yet not alone enough to make each hour holy. I am lowly in this world, and yet not lowly enough for me to be just a thing to you, dark and shrewd. I want my will and I want to go with my will as it moves towards action.
— Maggie Stiefvater, Shiver
The big truth for men is that often we have to leave home in the first half of life before we can return home at a later stage and find our soul there.
— Richard Rohr
yes, Wagner and the storm intermix with the wine as nights like this run up my wrists and up into my head and back down into the gut
— Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense
One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp too strongly is to be taken over by power, and thus to become its victim.
— Frank Herbert, Children of Dune
Like people would ever want to read books on an electronic screen.
— Jack Kilborn, Serial Uncut: Extended Edition
Tally wondered if you could talk somebody out of their brain damage.
— Scott Westerfeld
God also cheers when we come to him with our wobbling, unsteady prayers. Jesus does not say, “Come to me, all you who have learned how to concentrate in prayer, whose minds no longer wander, and I will give you rest.
— Paul Miller, A Praying Life
At moments of departure and a change of life, people capable of reflecting on their actions usually get into a serious state of mind. At these moments they usually take stock of the past and make plans for the future.
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
believe that giving up is the same thing as being realistic.
— Seth Godin, Poke the Box
It smelled pretty rank, but I was getting used to the smell of death, as much as anyone could get used to it.
— Amanda Hocking, Hollowland
with a touch of sarcasm. “Glass is an amazing material. Versatile,
— Maria V. Snyder, Storm Glass
I pictured the two of them alone. Perhaps showering together, as Rome and I liked to do. My stomach clenched painfully, amusement forgotten. “Cody, will you take me to the nearest clinic? I need someone to dig the knife out of my back. Lexis might need it again. And the good doctor might want to give me a tetanus shot. I think she bled on me.” Stunned silence. I often had that effect.
— Gena Showalter, Twice as Hot
When I think of how Jesus loved people, the word “cherish” comes to mind. When we cherish someone, we combine looking and compassion—we notice and care for that person. We don’t shut him or her out.
— Paul Miller, Love Walked Among Us: Learning to Love Like Jesus
The good that may come out of the loss does not erase its badness or excuse the wrong done. Nothing can do that.
— Gerald L. Sittser
Because the human experience involves loss, we need to feel it, express it, and then release it. Only then do we achieve healing.
— Laura Greenwald, Eye of the Beholder: True Stories of People with Facial Differences
I stand and grab a hefty bottle of perfume from the bathroom shelf and return to the bedroom door. It’s not much of a weapon, I know, but it’s heavy and square, and hitting someone over the head with a glass brick has got to be better than bitch-slapping them.
— Nick Alexander, The Case of the Missing Boyfriend
We begin to resemble what we focus on. If we devote our lives to our jobs, then we mentally take the office to our daughter’s lacrosse game.
— Paul Miller, Love Walked Among Us: Learning to Love Like Jesus
They believed that if a mouse found your hair clippings and built a nest with them you got a headache. If the nest was big enough, you might go mad.
— Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
For Leopardi, unhappy hedonist that he was, what is unknown is always more attractive than what is known; hope and imagination are the only consolations for the disappointments and sorrows of experience. Man therefore projects his desire into infinity and feels pleasure only when he is able to imagine that this pleasure has no end.
— Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium
Principle 1: By setting limitations, we must choose the essential. So in everything you do, learn to set limitations.   Principle 2: By choosing the essential, we create great impact with minimal resources. Always choose the essential to maximize your time and energy.
— Leo Babauta, The Power Of Less: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential
What sets lion chasers apart isn’t the outcome. It’s the courage to chase God-sized dreams.
— Mark Batterson, In A Pit With A Lion On A Snowy Day: How To Survive And Thrive When Opportunity Roars
It is a curious fact, but nobody ever is sea-sick - on land. At sea, you come across plenty of people very bad indeed, whole boat-loads of them; but I never met a man yet, on land, who had ever known at all what it was to be sea-sick. Where the thousands upon thousands of bad sailors that swarm in every ship hide themselves when they are on land is a mystery.
— Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat
Hobbits!’ he thought. ‘Well, what next? I have heard of strange doings in this land, but I have seldom heard of a hobbit sleeping out of doors under a tree. Three of them! There’s something mighty queer behind this.’ He was quite right, but he never found out any more about it.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
I refer of course to the soaring wonder of the age known as the Eiffel Tower. Never in history has a structure been more technologically advanced, materially obsolescent, and gloriously pointless all at the same time.
— Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life
Talk of the abuses of slavery! Humbug! The thing itself is the essence of all abuse!
— Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
My Spanish is limited to burrito and taco,
— Janet Evanovich, Hard Eight
Once we turn, it’s new pretty, middle pretty, late pretty.” Shay dropped her arms, and her board stopped drifting. “Then dead pretty.
— Scott Westerfeld, Uglies
I understand why we do that now. It’s a help, not a threat. It’s something to remind you how important words are. Ideas are important. Principles are important. Words are important. Your word is the most important of all. Your word is who you are.
— Tom Clancy, Clear and Present Danger
Bears are simultaneously so graceful and so strong. Bears know who they are, but they often don’t know who you are, which is why they kill you.
— Mike Birbiglia, Sleepwalk with Me
It’s a lot harder to pull your head up and ask why.
— Jason Fried, Rework
I review my three boyfriends, the three men I slept with in my twenties, searching for a common thread. Nothing. No consistent features, coloring, stature, personality. But one theme does emerge: they all picked me. And then dumped me. I played the passive role. Waiting for Hunter and then settling for Joey. Waiting to feel more for Nate. Then waiting to feel less. Waiting for Alec to go away and leave me in peace. And now Dex. My number four. And I am still waiting. For all of this to blow over. For his September wedding. For someone who gives me that tingly feeling as I watch him sleeping in...
— Emily Giffin, Something Borrowed
Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies? The result was that once again nearly all (93 percent) agreed, even though no real reason, no new information, was added to justify their compliance. Just as the “cheep-cheep” sound of turkey chicks triggered an automatic mothering response from maternal turkeys—even when it emanated from a stuffed polecat—so, too, did the word “because” trigger an automatic compliance response
— Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
Brick walls are there for a reason. They give us a chance to show how badly we want
— Jeffrey Zaslow, The Last Lecture
Kindle, isn’t it?” the waitress asked. “I got one for Christmas, and I love it. I’m reading my way through all of Jodi Picoult’s books.” “Oh, probably not all of them,” Wesley said. “Huh? Why not?” “She’s probably got another one done already. That’s all I meant.” “And James Patterson’s probably written one since he got up this morning!” she said, and went off chortling.
— Stephen King, UR
The perfect human being is uninteresting. — Joseph Campbell
— Laura Greenwald, Eye of the Beholder: True Stories of People with Facial Differences
It’s my belief that animals can help a human being travel to the wounds of childhood. The best part is, once you go there, you can fix things. Get on with life.
— Jo-Ann Mapson, Solomon's Oak
New Rule #1 – Don't date women who paint. Arty-farty doesn't just equal freaky in the sack, it also equals nasty genius revenge. I don't like genius when it's happening to me.
— Naomi Kramer, DEAD[ish]
Every one knew he could foretell wars and famines, though that was not so hard, for there was always a war, and generally a famine somewhere.
— Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories
All great programmers learn the same way. They poke the box. They code something and see what the computer does. They change it and see what the computer does. They repeat the process again and again until they figure out how the box works.
— Seth Godin, Poke the Box
Not darkness, for that implies an understanding of light. Not silence, for that suggests a familiarity with sound. Not loneliness, for that requires knowledge of others. But still, faintly, so tenuous that if it were any less it wouldn’t exist at all: awareness. Nothing more than that. Just awareness—a vague, ethereal sense of being. Being . . . but not becoming. No marking of time, no past or future—only an endless, featureless now, and, just barely there in that boundless moment, inchoate and raw, the dawning of perception . . .
— Robert J. Sawyer, WWW: Wake
Surely God loves to get out of church buildings and go visit people where they hunger for reality.
— Dylan  Morrison, The Prodigal Prophet
followed a step behind. My thoughts churned as my emotions seesawed
— Maria V. Snyder, Storm Glass
What are you not doing today that you were doing when I first met you?
— Tim Sanders, Today We Are Rich: Harnessing The Power Of Total Confidence
I am afraid that I rather give myself away when I explain," said he. "Results without causes are much more impressive.
— Arthur Conan Doyle
although science interests me just because of its efforts to escape from anthropomorphic knowledge, I am nonetheless convinced that our imagination cannot be anything but anthropomorphic.
— Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium
The coward’s fear of death stems in large part from his incapacity to love anything but his own body. The inability to participate in others’ lives stands in the way of his developing any inner resources sufficient to overcome the terror of death. — J. Glenn Gary, The Warriors
— Sebastian Junger, War
we are simply inviting ourselves to interface with this moment in full awareness, with the intention to embody as best we can an orientation of calmness, mindfulness, and equanimity right here and right now.
— Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are
Affectation of candour is common enough—one meets with it everywhere. But to be candid without ostentation or design—to take the good of everybody's character and make it still better, and say nothing of the bad—belongs to you alone.
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Stop doing stuff that doesn’t help you reach your goals. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? It’s a shame almost no one does it. The most common way we work more and do less is by working on the wrong stuff. We spend our time doing, doing, doing, even if the doing has nothing to do with our goals, business, or life.
— Stever Robbins, Get-It-Done Guy's 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More
I fell, as they say. Into love. I practiced saying it, first to myself, in my head. I believed in it. I did. I thought love and I bought it completely. I was excited by my belief but was careful not to let this excitement influence or manipulate the belief in any way. The belief had to be pure. So I said it to her, I love you, and she said it back. And this was our contract. We treated the words seriously and respected that they came with implications.
— Kyle Beachy, The Slide
Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.
— Seth Godin, Poke the Box
I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck.
— Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat
They wouldn’t even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Welcome to freakdom, Dave. It’ll be time to start a Web site soon, where you’ll type out everything in one huge paragraph.
— David Wong, John Dies at the End