c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Because it begins to seem to me at such times that I am incapable of beginning a life in real life, because it has seemed to me that I have lost all touch, all instinct for the actual, the real; because at last I have cursed myself; because after my fantastic nights I have moments of returning sobriety, which are awful! Meanwhile, you hear the whirl and roar of the crowd in the vortex of life around you; you hear, you see, men living in reality; you see that life for them is not forbidden, that their life does not float away like a dream, like a vision; that their life is being eternally renewed, eternally youthful, and not one hour of it is the same as another; while fancy is so spiritless, monotonous to vulgarity and easily scared, the slave of shadows, of the idea, the slave of the first cloud that shrouds the sun... One feels that this inexhaustible fancy is weary at last and worn out with continual exercise, because one is growing into manhood, outgrowing one's old ideals: they are being shattered into fragments, into dust; if there is no other life one must build one up from the fragments. And meanwhile the soul longs and craves for something else! And in vain the dreamer rakes over his old dreams, as though seeking a spark among the embers, to fan them into flame, to warm his chilled heart by the rekindled fire, and to rouse up in it again all that was so sweet, that touched his heart, that set his blood boiling, drew tears from his eyes, and so luxuriously deceived him!
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights
I am never alone wherever I am. The air itself supplies me with a century of love. When I breathe in, I am breathing in the laughter, tears, victories, passions, thoughts, memories, existence, joys, moments, and the hues of the sunlight on many tones of skin; I am breathing in the same air that was exhaled by many before me. The air that bore them life. And so how can I ever say that I am alone?
— C. JoyBell C.
The only certainty life contains is death.
— Patricia Briggs, When Demons Walk
You're only young once, but you can be immature forever
— Germaine Greer
This new day has greeted us with no rules
—  unconditional opportunity. Do not dilute the power of this new day with the hardship of yesterday. Greet this day the way it has greeted you
One of the best ways to influence people is to make those around you feel important.
— Roy T. Bennett
I had a dream about you last night.. you were holding a pine cone and introducing him as Gerald.
— Nicole McKay, I Had a Dream About You
She felt... how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach.
— Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
It’s life. You don’t figure it out. You just climb up on the beast and ride.
— Rebecca Wells, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
— Helen Keller, The Open Door
Every challenge you face today makes you stronger tomorrow. The challenge of life is intended to make you better, not bitter.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Life is so constructed that an event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.
— Charlotte Brontë, Villette
There are times in our lives when we have to realize our past is precisely what it is, and we cannot change it. But we can change the story we tell ourselves about it, and by doing that, we can change the future.
— Eleanor Brown, The Weird Sisters
You can't regret the life you didn't lead.
— Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
I don’t want to be little again. But at the same time I do. I want to be me like I was then, and me as I am now, and me like I’ll be in the future. I want to be me and nothing but me. I want to be crazy as the moon, wild as the wind and still as the earth. I want to be every single thing it’s possible to be. I’m growing and I don’t know how to grow. I’m living but I haven’t started living yet. Sometimes I simply disappear from myself. Sometimes it’s like I’m not here in the world at all and I simply don’t exist. Sometimes I can hardly think. My head just drifts, and the visions that come seem so vivid.
— David Almond, Jackdaw Summer
Love changes things
—  hope allows us to endure until the change arrives.
It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Rule of life. If you bother to ask someone’s advice, then bother to listen to it.
— Sophie Kinsella, Confessions of a Shopaholic
There are two ways to live a life either forget everything or, remember nothing.
— Santosh Kalwar, Quote Me Everyday
Every time I thought I was being rejected from something good, I was actually being re-directed to something better.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
and every day I thank [God] that I am alive, not because I fear death, but because my wife has a husband and my son is not an orphan.
— Khaled Hosseini
A little kid asks my dad why that man is chopping down the tree.Dad: He's not chopping it down. He's saving it. Those branches were long dead from disease. All plants are like that. By cutting off the damage you make it possible for the tree to grow again. You watch - by the end of summer, this tree will be the strongest on the block.
— Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak
‎Today is a new day. It's a day you have never seen before and will never see again. Stop telling yourself the 'same crap, different day' lie! How many days has that lie stolen from you? Seize the wonder and uniqueness of today! Recognize that throughout this beautiful day, you have an incredible amount of opportunities to move your life into the direction you want it to go.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
By the truth we are undone. Life is a dream. 'Tis the waking that kills us. He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life.
— Virginia Woolf, Orlando
It is always betterto avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning.For every one of us, living in this worldmeans waiting for our end. Let whoever canwin glory before death. When a warrior is gone,that will be his best and only bulwark.
— Seamus Heaney, Beowulf
Be in love with your life, every detail of it.
— Jack Kerouac
Holding a grudge & harboring anger/resentment is poison to the soul. Get even with people...but not those who have hurt us, forget them, instead get even with those who have helped us.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Life's not black-and-white. Sometimes the ends justifies the means.
— Emily Giffin, Something Borrowed
For one day there will be nothing left, yet we will have something. -me-I tried to wait for my life to begin. Something has to happen. Like an amazing boy. I know he's out there. I just have to find him.
— Susane Colasanti, When It Happens
I am a fashion person, and fashion is not only about clothes -- it's about all kinds of change
— Karl Lagerfeld
..because never in my life have I ever been picked when there was another alternative.
— Jasmine Warga, My Heart and Other Black Holes
You have every right to a beautiful life.
— Selena Gómez
Stuff your eyes with wonder," he said, "live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that," he said, "shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.
— Ray Bradbury
That's not a bad word...hate and war are bad words, but fuck isn't.
— Judy Blume, Forever . . .
Son. Everyone dies alone. That's what it is. It's a door. It's one person wide. When you go through it, you do it alone. But it doesn't mean you've got to be alone before you go through the door. And believe me, you aren't alone on the other side.
— Jim Butcher, Dead Beat
Life isn't worth living, unless it is lived for someone else.
— Albert Einstein
Don't let your luggage define your travels, each life unravels differently.
— Shane L. Koyczan
I realize that life is risks. It’s acknowledging the past but looking forward. It’s taking a chance that we willmake mistakes but believing that we all deserve to be forgiven.
— Carrie Ryan, The Dead-Tossed Waves
The spiritual life does not remove us from the world but leads us deeper into it
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.
— Irvin D. Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept
Life is life. You choose to live it or you do not.
— Carrie Ryan, The Dead-Tossed Waves
You have to rely on whatever sparks you have inside.
— Lisa Kleypas, Sugar Daddy
We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.
— Jim Rohn
The ego relies on the familiar. It is reluctant to experience the unknown, which is they very essence of life.
— Deepak Chopra, The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore
This is the strangest life I have ever known.
— Jim Morrison
Pain is a byproduct of life. That’s the truth. Life sometimes sucks. That’s true for everyone. But if you don’t face the pain and the suck, you don’t ever get the other things either. Laughter. Joy. Love. Pain passes, but those things are worth fighting for. Worth dying for.
— Jim Butcher, Vignette
In life, there are no mistakes, only lessons.
— Vic Johnson, Day by Day with James Allen
I just want to do something that matters. Or be something that matters. I just want to matter.
— John Green, An Abundance of Katherines
Fuck it... That's really the attitude that keeps a family together, it's not "we love each other", it's just "fuck it, man.
— Louis C.K.
The difference between a non-suicide and an ex-suicide leaving the house for work, at eight o'clock on an ordinary morning:The non-suicide is a little traveling suck of care, sucking care with him from the past and being sucked toward care in the future. His breath is high in his chest.The ex-suicide opens his front door, sits down on the steps, and laughs. Since he has the option of being dead, he has nothing to lose by being alive. It is good to be alive. He goes to work because he doesn't have to.
— Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book
Anything was better than nothing. Half-full was better than empty. Ignorance was the lowest form of humiliation and suffering.
— Becca Fitzpatrick, Silence
When we set out on the path, we always have a fairly clear idea of what we hope to find. Women are generally seeking their Soul Mate, and men looking for Power. Neither party is really interested in learning. They simply want to reach the thing they have set as their goal.
— Paulo Coelho, Brida
Isn’t it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years.
— Willa Cather, O Pioneers!
Life goes on. Get over it. You're still young. It'll get better. Blah, Blah, Blah
— David Levithan, Marly's Ghost
We wait and think and doubt and hate. How does it make you feel? The overwhelming feeling is rage. We hate ourself for being unable to be other than what we are. Unable to be better. We feel rage. The feelings must be followed. It doesn't matter whether you're an ideologue or a sensualist, you follow the stimuli thinking that they're your signposts to the promised land. But they are nothing of the kind. What they are is rocks to navigate the past, each on your brush against, ripping you a little more open and they are always more on the horizon. But you can't face up to the that, so you force yourself to believe the bullshit of those you instinctively know are liars and you repeat those lies to yourself and to others, hoping that by repeating them often and fervently enough you'll attain the godlike status we accord those who tell the lies most frequently and most passionately. But you never do, and even if you could, you wouldn't value it, you'd realise that nobody believes in heroes any more. We know that they only want to sell us something we don't really want and keep from us what we really do need. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe we're getting in touch with our condition at last. It's horrible how we always die alone, but no worse than living alone.
— Irvine Welsh, Filth
We don’t truly appreciate what we have until it’s gone… We don’t really appreciate something until we have experienced some events; we don't really appreciate our parents until we ourselves have become parents. Be grateful for what you have now, and nothing should be taken for granted.
— Roy T. Bennett
The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with — nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they can add up to the story of a life.
— Rob Sheffield, Love Is a Mix Tape
Potential has a shelf life.
— Margaret Atwood, CAT'S EYE.
The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.
— Audre Lorde
There is nothing perfect...only life.
— Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees
I should feel the air move against me, and feel the things I touched, instead of having only to look at them. I'm sure life is all wrong because it has become much too visual - we can neither hear nor feel nor understand, we can only see. I'm sure that is entirely wrong.
— D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love
I wonder if that's how darkness wins, by convincing us to trap it inside ourselves, instead of emptying it out.I don't want it to win.
— Jasmine Warga, My Heart and Other Black Holes
Some say life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
— Ruth Rendell, A Judgement in Stone
God put us here, on this carnival ride. We close our eyes never knowing where it'll take us next.
— Carrie Underwood
You will receive everything you need when you stop asking for what you do not need
— Nisargadatta Maharaj
The best way to prepare for life is to begin to live.
— Elbert Hubbard
When nothing is sure, everything is possible.
— Margaret Drabble
Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in, not about what you were interested in.
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time......why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time, my greatest regret is how much I believed in the future.
— Jonathan Safran Foer
Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger, portion of truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.
— Edgar Allan Poe, The Mystery of Marie Rogêt
People took such awful chances with chemicals and their bodies because they wanted the quality of their lives to improve. They lived in ugly places where there were only ugly things to do. They didn't own doodley-squat, so they couldn't improve their surroundings. so they did their best to make their insides beautiful instead.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Breakfast of Champions
She who reconciles the ill-matched threadsOf her life, and weaves them gratefullyInto a single cloth – It’s she who drives the loudmouths from the hallAnd clears it for a different celebration.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
We need people in our lives with whom we can be as open as possible. To have real conversations with people may seem like such a simple, obvious suggestion, but it involves courage and risk.
— Thomas  Moore, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life
Parla come magni,' It means, 'Speak the way you eat,' or in my personal translation: 'Say it like you eat it.' It's a reminder - when you're making a big deal out of explaining something, when you're searching for the right words - to keep your language as simple and direct as Roman rood. Don't make a big production out of it. Just lay it on the table.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
You know, people ask me. They say 'Dan, three years later do you really want to be drawing cat whiskers on your face?' but they don't understand. The cat whiskers, they come from within.
— Dan Howell
Everything will be alright in the end so if it is not alright it is not the end.
— Deborah Moggach, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
It takes no more time to see the good side of life than to see the bad.
— Jimmy Buffett
They say that not matter how old you become, when you are with your siblings, you revert back to childhood.
— Karen   White, The Memory of Water
If you think something is missing in your life, it is probably YOU...
— Robert Holden
Personally I am very pessimistic. But when, for instance, one of my staff has a baby you can't help but bless them for a good future. Because I can't tell that child, 'Oh, you shouldn't have come into this life.' And yet I know the world is heading in a bad direction. So with those conflicting thoughts in mind, I think about what kind of films I should be making.
— Hayao Miyazaki
Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.
— Walter Bagehot
It's okay. We aren't in the same class. Just don't forget that some of us watch the sunset too.
— S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders
People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura oflife which bears no relation to true immortality but through which theycontinue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. Itis as though they were traveling abroad.
— Marcel Proust
Womanhood is a wonderful thing. In womankind we find the mothers of the race.There is no man so great, nor none sunk so low, but once he lay a helpless, innocent babe in a woman's arms and was dependent on her love and care for his existence. It is woman who rocks the cradle of the world and holds the first affections of mankind. She possesses a power beyond that of a king on his throne....Womanhood stands for all that is pure and clean and noble. She who does not make the world better for having lived in it has failed to be all that a woman should be.
— Mabel Hale, Beautiful Girlhood: A Timeless Guide for Christian Adolescense
But all I could think of was how when nothing made sense and hadn't for ages, you just have to grab onto anything you feel sure of.
— Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever
Dreamers are mocked as impractical. The truth is they are the most practical, as their innovations lead to progress and a better way of life for all of us.
— Robin S. Sharma
Life is not fair get used to used to it
— Bill Gates
Many things are not as they seem: The worst things in life never are.
— Jim Butcher, White Night
What is evil? Killing is evil, lying is evil, slandering is evil, abuse is evil, gossip is evil, envy is evil, hatred is evil, to cling to false doctrine is evil; all these things are evil. And what is the root of evil? Desire is the root of evil, illusion is the root of evil.
— Gautama Buddha
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.
— Vladimir Nabokov
We just had a near-life experience!
— Chuck Palahniuk
The Way is not in the sky
—  the Way is in the heart.
Life starts out with everyone clapping when you take a poo and goes downhill from there. 
— Sloane Crosley, I Was Told There'd Be Cake
And now I am here, as alone as I've ever been. I am seventeen years old. This is not how it's suppose to be. This is not how my life is suppose to turn out.
— Gayle Forman, If I Stay
Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep.
— Fran Lebowitz
I am still in the land of the dying
—  I shall be in the land of the living soon. (his last words)
Being faithful in the smallest things is the way to gain, maintain, and demonstrate the strength needed to accomplish something great.
— Alex  Harris
Paper is more patient than man.
— Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
It is your responsibility to find fault with me, it is mine to hear you out. But don't expect me to change.
— John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
Slowly, with many lost days, I come back to life.
— Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay
Happiness is a state of mind, a choice, a way of living; it is not something to be achieved, it is something to be experienced.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Yesterday was a closed book, tomorrow, however, was another story.
— Cecelia Ahern, The Book of Tomorrow
The best way to waste your life, is by taking notes. The easiest way to avoid living is to just watch. Look for the details. Report. Don't participate.
— Chuck Palahniuk
To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation; we need to see over-all patterns in our lives. We need hope, the sense of a future. And we need freedom (or, at least, the illusion of freedom) to get beyond ourselves, whether with telescopes and microscopes and our ever-burgeoning technology, or in states of mind that allow us to travel to other worlds, to rise above our immediate surroundings.We may seek, too, a relaxing of inhibitions that makes it easier to bond with each other, or transports that make our consciousness of time and mortality easier to bear. We seek a holiday from our inner and outer restrictions, a more intense sense of the here and now, the beauty and value of the world we live in.
— Oliver Sacks
I need to stop fantasizing about running away to some other life and start figuring out the one I have.
— Holly Black, The Darkest Part of the Forest
Only when you accept that one day you'll die can you let go, and make the best out of life. And that's the big secret. That's the miracle.
— Gabriel Bá, Daytripper
For many have but one resource to sustain them in their misery, and that is to think, “Circumstances have been against me, I was worthy to be something much better than I have been. I admit I have never had a great love or a great friendship; but that is because I never met a man or a woman who were worthy of it; if I have not written any very good books, it is because I had not the leisure to do so; or, if I have had no children to whom I could devote myself it is because I did not find the man I could have lived with. So there remains within me a wide range of abilities, inclinations and potentialities, unused but perfectly viable, which endow me with a worthiness that could never be inferred from the mere history of my actions.” But in reality and for the existentialist, there is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving; there is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art.
— Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism
Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.
— Cormac McCarthy
To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.
— Mary Oliver
Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life.
— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one's life with her.
— W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil
I can chase you, and I can catch you,but there is nothing I can do to make you mine.
— Morrissey
The path to success is to take massive, determined action.
— Anthony Robbins
I may never be happy, but tonight I am content. Nothing more than an empty house, the warm hazy weariness from a day spent setting strawberry runners in the sun, a glass of cool sweet milk, and a shallow dish of blueberries bathed in cream. When one is so tired at the end of a day one must sleep, and at the next dawn there are more strawberry runners to set, and so one goes on living, near the earth. At times like this I'd call myself a fool to ask for more...
— Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.
— Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation
Don't set your goals by what other people deem important.
— Jaachynma N.E. Agu, The Prince and the Pauper
The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.
— Frank Herbert
He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life.
— Virginia Woolf, Orlando
I am my own experiment. I am my own work of art.
— Madonna
I want to drag knives over my skin, just to feel something other than shame, but I'm not even brave enough for that
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train
A life isn't measured in hours and minutes. It's the quality, not the length.
— Gabrielle Zevin, Elsewhere
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
— Woody Allen, Without Feathers
Anything that you learn becomes your wealth, a wealth that cannot be taken away from you; whether you learn it in a building called school or in the school of life. To learn something new is a timeless pleasure and a valuable treasure. And not all things that you learn are taught to you, but many things that you learn you realize you have taught yourself.
— C. JoyBell C.
It's impossible to go through life unscathed. Nor should you want to. By the hurts we accumulate, we measure both our follies and our accomplishments.
— Christopher Paolini, Inheritance
Guilt reminds me of a stray cat. You chase it away and yet, it comes back when you least expect it. If you let yourself feel pity for it and feed the thing, it parks its ugly, puny, lonely-for-attention butt on your doormat and won't go away. Scat kitty cat, scat. I don't need you sitting around here like that.
— Lisa Schroeder, I Heart You, You Haunt Me
I had always had a little problem looking out for myself in love. I was afraid people would leave me. So I sort of clung and did everything possible to keep someone around. I didn't have a hard talk with myself about who I was keeping around. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. I clung to people like human life preservers. I thought i'd die if someone left me. Its ironic because now I'm the one who's leaving.
— Deb Caletti, The Secret Life of Prince Charming
Our life is made by the death of others.
— Leonardo da Vinci
...Life is much simpler if you don’t notice anything....
— Tom Upton, Just Plain Weird
HOBBES:Virtue needs some cheaper thrills.
— Bill Watterson
Life… For some it is battle for others its dance...For rich it is party for poor it is chance!
— Nino Varsimashvili
Every path is the right path. Everything could've been anything else.﻿ And it would have just as much meaning.
— Mr. Nobody
Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bullfighters.
— Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.
— Robert Frost
I am so grateful for my troubles. As I reflect back on my life, I have come to realize that my greatest triumphs have been born of my greatest troubles.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
The more you talk about them, the more important they will feel. The more you listen to them, the more important you will make them feel.
— Roy T. Bennett
Real change is difficult at the beginning, but gorgeous at the end. Change begins the moment you get the courage and step outside your comfort zone; change begins at the end of your comfort zone.
— Roy T. Bennett
I had a dream about you. I was sitting on your couch, relating my succession of ideas on subconscious influence. I asked you what they meant, and you told me that free associations were a bad way to advance my political career.
— Bauvard, I Had a Dream About You
Every ounce of my cynicism is supported by historical precedent.
— Glen Cook, Shadow Games
Oh, God of Dust and Rainbows,Help us to seeThat without the dust the rainbowWould not be.
— Langston Hughes
Hope is such a beautiful word, but it often seems very fragile. Life is still being needlessly hurt and destroyed.
— Michael  Jackson
Journey’s endIn western lands beneath the SunThe flowers may rise in Spring,The trees may bud, the waters run,The merry finches sing.Or there maybe 'tis cloudless night,And swaying branches bearThe Elven-stars as jewels whiteAmid their branching hair.Though here at journey's end I lieIn darkness buried deep,Beyond all towers strong and high,Beyond all mountains steep,Above all shadows rides the SunAnd Stars for ever dwell:I will not say the Day is done,Nor bid the Stars farewell.J.
— J.R.R. Tolkien
Rock 'n' roll is not red carpets and MySpace friends, rock'n'roll is dangerous and should piss people off
— Gerard Way
Her happiness floated like waves of ocean along the coast of her life. She found lyrics of her life in his arms but she never sung her song.
— Santosh Kalwar
You know my name, not my story. You've heard what I've done, but not what I've been through.
— Jonathan Anthony Burkett, Neglected But Undefeated
The heart may freeze, or it can burn. The pain will ease and I can learn. There is no future, there is no past. I live this moment as, my last.
— Jonathan Larson, Rent: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Broadway Musical
To be heroic is to be courageous enough to die for something
—  to be inspirational is to be crazy enough to live a little.
You're here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world.(Matthew 5:14, The Message)
— Anonymous, The Message Remix
Atheism, a religion dedicated to its own sense of smug superiority.
— Stephen Colbert
Be a true Heart, not a follower.
— Ed Sheeran
I wouldn't have missed a single minute of it, Not for the whole world.
— Stephen King
Once upon a time there was a young prince who believed in all things but three. He did not believe in princesses, he did not believe in islands, he did not believe in God. His father, the king, told him that such things did not exist. As there were no princesses or islands in his father's domains, and no sign of God, the young prince believed his father.But then, one day, the prince ran away from his palace. He came to the next land. There, to his astonishment, from every coast he saw islands, and on these islands, strange and troubling creatures whom he dared not name. As he was searching for a boat, a man in full evening dress approached him along the shore.Are those real islands?' asked the young prince.Of course they are real islands,' said the man in evening dress.And those strange and troubling creatures?'They are all genuine and authentic princesses.'Then God must exist!' cried the prince.I am God,' replied the man in full evening dress, with a bow.The young prince returned home as quickly as he could.So you are back,' said the father, the king.I have seen islands, I have seen princesses, I have seen God,' said the prince reproachfully. The king was unmoved.Neither real islands, nor real princesses, I have seen God,' said the prince reproachfully.The king was unmoved.Neither real islands, nor real princesses, nor a real God exist.'I saw them!'Tell me how God was dressed.'God was in full evening dress.'Were the sleeves of his coat rolled back?'The prince remembered that they had been. The king smiled.That is the uniform of a magician. You have been deceived.'At this, the prince returned to the next land, and went to the same shore, where once again he came upon the man in full evening dress.My father the king has told me who you are,' said the young prince indignantly. 'You deceived me last time, but not again. Now I know that those are not real islands and real princesses, because you are a magician.'The man on the shore smiled.It is you who are deceived, my boy. In your father's kingdom there are many islands and many princesses. But you are under your father's spell, so you cannot see them.'The prince pensively returned home. When he saw his father, he looked him in the eyes.Father, is it true that you are not a real king, but only a magician?'The king smiled, and rolled back his sleeves.Yes, my son, I am only a magician.'Then the man on the shore was God.'The man on the shore was another magician.'I must know the real truth, the truth beyond magic.'There is no truth beyond magic,' said the king.The prince was full of sadness.He said, 'I will kill myself.'The king by magic caused death to appear. Death stood in the door and beckoned to the prince. The prince shuddered. He remembered the beautiful but unreal islands and the unreal but beautiful princesses.Very well,' he said. 'I can bear it.'You see, my son,' said the king, 'you too now begin to be a magician.
— John Fowles
The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.
— Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
Isn't it sad how some people's grip on their lives is so precarious that they'll embrace any preposterous delusion rather than face an occasional bleak truth?
— Bill Watterson, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
Properly practiced, knitting soothes the troubled spirit, and it doesn't hurt the untroubled spirit either.
— Elizabeth Zimmermann
Take advantage of it now, while you are young, and suffer all you can, because these things don't last your whole life.
— Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
Life is a perpetual yesterday for us.
— Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones
Desire is half of life
—  indifference is half of death.
In examining disease, we gain wisdom about anatomy and physiology and biology. In examining the person with disease, we gain wisdom about life.
— Oliver Sacks
Knowing it and seeing it are two different things.
— Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay
He stood up straight and looked the world squarely in the fields and hills. To add weight to his words he stuck the rabbit bone in his hair. He spread his arm out wide. "I will go mad!" he annouced.
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus
Sometimes you just have those days where everything goes wrong. But sometimes, and totally unexpectedly, something can go right.
— Leila Sales, This Song Will Save Your Life
It's like this old patchwork quilt my momma used to have...Each piece on that quilt meant something. And some of those pieces were the damn ugliest things you've ever seen...But some of the pieces were so beautiful they almost hurt my eyes to look at when I was a kid...That's the best you can hope for, Danny. That your life turns out like that patchwork quilt. That you can add some bright, sparkling pieces to the dirty, stained ones you have so far. That in the end, the bright patches might take up more space on your quilt than the dark ones.
— Brooke McKinley, Shades of Gray
life and love are very precious when both are in full bloom.
— Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
Don't lose heart if it's very difficult at times, everything will come out all right and nobody can in the beginning do as he wishes.
— Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
No one is without troubles, without personal hardships and genuine challenges.  That fact may not be obvious because most people don't advertise their woes and heartaches.  But nobody, not even the purest heart, escapes life without suffering battle scars.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
All good children's stories are the same: young creature breaks rules, has incredible adventure, then returns home with the knowledge that aforementioned rules are there for a reason.Of course, the actual message to the careful reader is: break rules as often as you can, because who the hell doesn't want to have an adventure?
— Brian K. Vaughan, Saga, Vol. 3
I pull my foot back again, but Four's hands clamp around my arms, and he pulls me away from her with irresistible force. I breathe through gritted teeth, staring at Molly's blood-covered face, the color deep and rich and beautiful, in a way. She groans, and I hear a gurgling in her throat, watch blood trickle from her lips. "You won," Four mutters. "Stop." I wipe the sweat from my forehead. He stares at me. His eyes too wide; they look alarmed. "I think you should leave," he says. "Take a walk." I'm fine," I say. "I'm fine now," I say again, this time for myself.I wish I could say I felt guilty for what I did.I don't.
— Veronica Roth, Divergent
The irony of life is that those who wear masks often tell us more truths than those with open faces.
— Marie Lu, The Rose Society
Envy, after all, comes from wanting something that isn't yours. But grief comes from losing something you've already had.
— Jodi Picoult, Perfect Match
You live it forward, but understand it backward.
— Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone
But I have my life, I’m living it. It’s twisted, exhausting, uncertain, and full of guilt, but nonetheless, there’s something there.
— Banana Yoshimoto, The Lake
If you want something you can have it, but only if you want everything that goes with it, including all the hard work and the despair, and only if you're willing to risk failure. 
— Philip Pullman, Clockwork
Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.
— Ambrose Bierce
I liked being a person. I wanted to keep at it.
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.
— J.M. Barrie, The Little Minister
People will always have opinions about your decision because they're not courageous enough to take action on their opinion.
— Steve Maraboli
We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules.
— Alan Bennett, Getting On
You wanted to feel alive, right? It doesn't matter if you're monster or human. Living hurts.
— Victoria Schwab, This Savage Song
In heaven an angel is no one in particular.
— George Bernard Shaw
God surely did not create us, and cause us to live, with the sole end of wishing always to die. I believe, in my heart, we were intended to prize life and enjoy it, so long as we retain it. Existence never was originally meant to be that useless, blank, pale, slow-trailing thing it often becomes to many, and is becoming to me, among the rest.
— Charlotte Brontë, Shirley
May all that have life be delivered from suffering
— Gautama Buddha
It is when we think we can act like God, that all respect is lost, and I think this is the downfall of peace. We lie if we say we do not see color and culture and difference. We fool ourselves and cheat ourselves when we say that all of us are the same. We should not want to be the same as others and we should not want others to be the same as us. Rather, we ought to glory and shine in all of our differences, flaunting them fabulously for all to see! It is never a conformity that we need! We need not to conform! What we need is to burst out into all these beautiful colors!
— C. JoyBell C.
The whole house seemed to exhale a melancholy breath of emptiness
— Michael Chabon
It is part of the human nature always to judge others very severely and,when the wind turns against us,always to find an excuse for our own misdeeds,or to blame someone else for our mistakes.
— Paulo Coelho, Like the Flowing River
We fool ourselves so much we could do it for a living.
— Stephen King, Duma Key
Art and life are subjective. Not everybody's gonna dig what I dig, but I reserve the right to dig it.
— Whoopi Goldberg
People see stories everywhere...We take random events and we put them together in a pattern so we can comfort ourselves with a story, no matter how much it obviously isn't true...We have to lie to ourselves to live. Otherwise, we'd go crazy.
— Patrick Ness, More Than This
Inside of all of us there is the need and the desire to be heard, to have our innermost thoughts, feelings and desires expressed for others to hear, to see and to understand. We all want to matter to someone, to leave a mark. Writers just take those thoughts, feelings and desires and express them in such a way that the reader not only reads them but feels them as well.
— Vicktor Alexander
But what are loyalty and caring really worth?""To me? Everything.
— Richelle Mead, The Golden Lily
WE two boys together clinging,One the other never leaving,Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making,Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,Arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving.No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving,threatening,Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, onthe turf or the sea-beach dancing,Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feeblenesschasing,Fulfilling our foray.
— Walt Whitman
When you're the most happening person at the party, it's time to leave
— Kelly Cutrone, If You Have to Cry, Go Outside: And Other Things Your Mother Never Told You
If her enemies were Brigan's friends and her friends were Brigan's enemies, then the two of them could walk through the world arm in arm and never be hit by arrows again.
— Kristin Cashore, Fire
The greatest wealth is health
— Virgil
I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it’ll make sense.
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
— Steve Jobs
The most important thing is this: to be able at any moment to be free to choose a life that makes you happy.
— Roy T. Bennett
Letting go is the lesson. Letting go is always the lesson. Have you ever noticed how much of our agony is all tied up with craving and loss?
— Susan Gordon Lydon, The Knitting Sutra: Craft as a Spiritual Practice
We all have such fateful objects -- it may be a recurrent landscape in one case, a number in another -- carefully chosen by the gods to attract events of specific significance for us: here shall John always stumble; there shall Jane's heart always break.
— Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
The difference between school and life? In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson.
— Tom Bodett
You had to risk your life to get love. You had to get right to the edge of death to ever be saved.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
It doesn't matter who you are, or where you come from, or how much money you've got in your pocket. You have your own destiny and your own life ahead of you.
— Lady Gaga
The trick. . .is to find the balance between the bright colors of humor and the serious issues of identity, self-loathing, and the possibility for intimacy and love when it seems no longer possible or, sadder yet, no longer necessary.
— Wendy Wasserstein
Oh sorry, I was taking life seriously.
— Bill Hicks
The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.
— Quentin Crisp
I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense.
— Harold S. Kushner
There are a million rules for being a girl. There are a million things you have to do to get through each day. High school has things that can trip you up, ruin you, people say one thing and mean another, and you have to know all the rules, you have to know what you can and can't do.
— Elizabeth Scott, The Unwritten Rule
If you want to be a new man you have to stay in new places, and do new things, with people who never knew you before. If you go back to the same old ways, what else can you be but the same old person?
— Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings
There are no happy endings... There are no endings, happy or otherwise. We all have our own stories which are just part of the one Story that binds both this world and Faerie. Sometimes we step into each others stories - perhaps just for a few minutes, perhaps for years - and then we step out of them again. But all the while, the Story just goes on.
— Charles de Lint, Dreams Underfoot
But I think we both knew, even then, that what we had was something even more rare, and even more meaningful. I was going to be his friend, and was going to show him possibilities. And he, in turn, would become someone I could trust more than myself.
— David Levithan, Boy Meets Boy
The span of three or four minutes is pretty insignificant in the scheme of things. People lose hundreds of minutes everyday, squandering them on trivial things. But sometimes in those fragments of time, something can happen you'll remember the rest of your life.
— Lisa Kleypas, Sugar Daddy
HOBBES:If you don't get a goodnight kiss you get Kafka dreams.
— Bill Watterson
I thought that if I owned nothing, had nothing, was nothing, I would have nothing left to lose, and I wouldn't be scared anymore. Because my whole life I’ve been so damn scared. Scared to live because I was scared to die. But at the same I was so scared of living, so I wanted to die. Or maybe so scared of dying that I refused to live. You don't have to be afraid to fall, when you're already on the ground. You don't have to be scared to lose someone, when there's no one around to lose.
— Charlotte Eriksson, Empty Roads & Broken Bottles; in search for The Great Perhaps
...he asked, "Where are you today, right now?"Eagerly, I started talking about myself. However, I noticed that I was still being sidetracked from getting answers to my questions. Still, I told him about my distant and recent past and about my inexplicable depressions. He listened patiently and intently, as if he had all the time in the world, until I finished several hours later."Very well," he said. "But you still have not answered my question about where you are.""Yes I did, remember? I told you how I got to where I am today: by hard work.""Where are you?""What do you mean, where am I?""Where Are you?" he repeated softly."I'm here.""Where is here?""In this office, in this gas station!" I was getting impatient with this game."Where is this gas station?""In Berkeley?""Where is Berkeley?""In California?""Where is California?""In the United States?""On a landmass, one of the continents in the Western Hemisphere. Socrates, I...""Where are the continents?I sighed. "On the earth. Are we done yet?""Where is the earth?""In the solar system, third planet from the sun. The sun is a small star in the Milky Way galaxy, all right?""Where is the Milky Way?""Oh, brother, " I sighed impatiently, rolling my eyes. "In the universe." I sat back and crossed my arms with finality."And where," Socrates smiled, "is the universe?""The universe is well, there are theories about how it's shaped...""That's not what I asked. Where is it?""I don't know - how can I answer that?""That is the point. You cannot answer it, and you never will. There is no knowing about it. You are ignorant of where the universe is, and thus, where you are. In fact, you have no knowledge of where anything is or of What anything is or how is came to be. Life is a mystery."My ignorance is based on this understanding. Your understanding is based on ignorance. This is why I am a humorous fool, and you are a serious jackass.
— Dan Millman, Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives
Kindness, I’ve discovered, is everything in life.
— Isaac Bashevis Singer
One day can change your life. One day can ruin your life. All life is is three or four big days that change everything.
— Beverly Donofrio
Excellence/Perfection is not a destination
—  it is a continuous journey that never ends.
It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped. 
— Anthony Robbins
Ethical veganism results in a profound revolution within the individual; a complete rejection of the paradigm of oppression and violence that she has been taught from childhood to accept as the natural order. It changes her life and the lives of those with whom she shares this vision of nonviolence. Ethical veganism is anything but passive; on the contrary, it is the active refusal to cooperate with injustice
— Gary L. Francione