Easier Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Easier. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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Destroying things is much easier than making them.
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Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1))
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Life becomes easier and more beautiful when we can see the good in other people.
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Roy T. Bennett
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Dumbledore says people find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right.
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J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6))
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It's a lot easier to be lost than found. It's the reason we're always searching and rarely discovered--so many locks not enough keys.
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Sarah Dessen (Lock and Key)
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It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.
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William Blake
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Because you can't argue with all the fools in the world. It's easier to let them have their way, then trick them when they're not paying attention.
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Christopher Paolini
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Sometimes, when I have to do something I don't want to do, I pretend I'm a character from a book. It's easier to know what they would do.
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Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
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The most beautiful makeup of a woman is passion. But cosmetics are easier to buy.
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Yves Saint-Laurent
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Does it hurt?" The childish question had escaped Harry's lips before he could stop it. "Dying? Not at all," said Sirius. "Quicker and easier than falling asleep.
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J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
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Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say β€œMy tooth is aching” than to say β€œMy heart is broken.
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C.S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain)
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It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
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Frederick Douglass
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Just because someone hurts you doesn't mean you can simply stop loving them. It's not a person's actions that hurt the most. It's the love. If there was no love attached to the action, the pain would be a little easier to bear.
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Colleen Hoover (It Ends with Us (It Ends with Us, #1))
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Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I'm one of them.
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Ray Bradbury (Dandelion Wine)
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Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.
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Fyodor Dostoevsky
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Most times, it's just a lot easier not to let the world know what's wrong.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
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When a woman becomes her own best friend life is easier.
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Diane Von Furstenberg
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There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn't matter anymore.
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Laurie Halse Anderson (Wintergirls)
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Books are a poor substitute for female companionship, but they are easier to find.
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Patrick Rothfuss (The Wise Man’s Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2))
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Power is much easier to acquire than it is to hold on to.
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Holly Black (The Wicked King (The Folk of the Air, #2))
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In time, the hurt began to fade and it was easier to just let it go. At least I thought it was. But in every boy I met in the next few years, I found myself looking for you, and when the feelings got too strong, I'd write you another letter. But I never sent them for fear of what I might find. By then, you'd gone on with your life and I didn't want to think about you loving someone else. I wanted to remember us like we were that summer. I didn't ever want to lose that.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook (The Notebook, #1))
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If you stay, I'll do whatever you want. I'll quit the band, go with you to New York. But if you need me to go away, I'll do that, too. I was talking to Liz and she said maybe coming back to your old life would be too painful, that maybe it'd be easier for you to erase us. And that would suck, but I'd do it. I can lose you like that if I don't lose you today. I'll let you go. If you stay.
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Gayle Forman (If I Stay (If I Stay, #1))
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It's my experience that people are a lot more sympathetic if they can see you hurting, and for the millionth time in my life I wish for measles or smallpox or some other easily understood disease just to make it easier on me and also on them.
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Jennifer Niven (All the Bright Places)
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Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.
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Robert A. Heinlein
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It’s much easier not to know things sometimes.
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Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)
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What a sad era when it is easier to smash an atom than a prejudice.
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Albert Einstein
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Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient.
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Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
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Don't wish it were easier. Wish you were better.
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Jim Rohn
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Vanity is a factor, but it is more a question of control. It is easier to trick others into perceiving you as beautiful if you can convince yourself you are beautiful. But mirrors have an uncanny way of telling the truth.
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Marissa Meyer (Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles, #1))
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Maybe, sometimes, it's easier to be mad at the people you trust because you know they'll always love you, no matter what.
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Ann Brashares (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Sisterhood, #1))
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I make it easier for people to leave by making them hate me a little.
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Cecelia Ahern (The Book of Tomorrow)
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It's easier to floss with barbed wire than admit you like someone in middle school.
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Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)
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Life would be a lot easier if conversations were rewindable and erasable, like videos. Or if you could instruct people to disregard what you just said, like in a courtroom.
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Sophie Kinsella (Confessions of a Shopaholic (Shopaholic, #1))
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Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.
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Fyodor Dostoevsky
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It's easier not to say anything. Shut your trap, button your lip, can it. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say.
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Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)
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It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
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Mark Twain
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You know,” he said, β€œthis is why I love you so much.” Her tone was heartbreakingly warm. β€œWhat do you mean?” You don’t ask me to go inside because it’s cold. You just want to make it easier for me to be where I want to stand.
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J.R. Ward (Lover Avenged (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #7))
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I find my life is a lot easier the lower I keep my expectations.
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Bill Watterson
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Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.
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Muhammad Ali
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Z: "You know, this was a hell of a lot easier when you were out cold in the back of that truck." Phury: "That was you?" Z:"You think it was Santa Claus or some shit?
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J.R. Ward (Lover Awakened (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #3))
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Sorry wastes time. You have to live your life like you'll never be sorry. It's easier just to do the right thing from the start so there's nothing to apologize for.
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Jennifer Niven (All the Bright Places)
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Once we give up searching for approval we often find it easier to earn respect.
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Gloria Steinem
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It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don't know everything.
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Alexander McCall Smith (Morality for Beautiful Girls (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #3))
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I miss you', he admitted. 'I'm here', she said. 'That's when I miss you most. When you're here. When you aren't here, when you're just a ghost of the past or a dream from another life, it's easier then.
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Neil Gaiman (American Gods (American Gods, #1))
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And when I came in with tears in my eyes, you always knew whether I needed you to hold me or just let me be. I don't know how you knew, but you did, and you made it easier for me.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook (The Notebook, #1))
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People can cry much easier than they can change.
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James Baldwin
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It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself. The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if you have never faced it before. It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question 'who am I' except the voice inside herself.
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Betty Friedan
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The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.
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Graham Greene (The End of the Affair)
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Love thy neighbor -- and if he happens to be tall, debonair and devastating, it will be that much easier.
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Mae West
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To forgive is wisdom, to forget is genius. And easier. Because it's true. It's a new world every heart beat.
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Joyce Cary (The Horse's Mouth)
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Why are some things easier to write than say?
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Ally Condie (Matched (Matched, #1))
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Women fall in love quicker than men. Easier and more often. But when guys fall? We go down harder. And when things go bad? When it's not us who ends it? We don't get to walk away. We crawl.
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Emma Chase (Tangled (Tangled, #1))
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People," Geralt turned his head, "like to invent monsters and monstrosities. Then they seem less monstrous themselves. When they get blind-drunk, cheat, steal, beat their wives, starve an old woman, when they kill a trapped fox with an axe or riddle the last existing unicorn with arrows, they like to think that the Bane entering cottages at daybreak is more monstrous than they are. They feel better then. They find it easier to live.
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Andrzej Sapkowski (The Last Wish (The Witcher, #0.5))
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It is ever so much easier to be good if your clothes are fashionable.
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L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1))
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It's much easier to not know things sometimes. Things change and friends leave. And life doesn't stop for anybody. I wanted to laugh. Or maybe get mad. Or maybe shrug at how strange everybody was, especially me. I think the idea is that every person has to live for his or her own life and than make the choice to share it with other people. You can't just sit their and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can't. You have to do things. I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to be who I really am. And I'm going to figure out what that is. And we could all sit around and wonder and feel bad about each other and blame a lot of people for what they did or didn't do or what they didn't know. I don't know. I guess there could always be someone to blame. It's just different. Maybe it's good to put things in perspective, but sometimes, I think that the only perspective is to really be there. Because it's okay to feel things. I was really there. And that was enough to make me feel infinite. I feel infinite.
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Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)
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Sometimes the truth is a secret you're keeping from yourself because living a lie is easier.
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Adam Silvera (They Both Die at the End (They Both Die at the End Series, 1))
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Well, wouldn't it have been easier if she'd just asked me whether I liked her better than you?" "Girls don't often ask questions like that," said Hermione. "Well, they should!" said Harry forcefully.
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J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5))
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Pieces and parts were always easier to process. The full picture, the entire story, was another thing entirely. But you just never knew. Sometimes, people could surprise you.
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Sarah Dessen (Just Listen)
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It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
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Leonardo da Vinci
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The world will always choose convenience over reality. It's easier to hate, blame, and fear than it is to understand. No one wants the truth; they want entertainment.
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Chris Colfer (The Wishing Spell (The Land of Stories, #1))
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Smile, because it confuses people. Smile, because it's easier than explaining what is killing you inside.
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The Joker - Heath Ledger
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Selling my soul would be a lot easier if I could just find it.
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Nikki Sixx (The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star)
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It's so much easier to convince yourself you're madly in love with someone when you know nothing about him.
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Megan McCafferty (Second Helpings (Jessica Darling, #2))
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Hatred would have been easier. With hatred, I would have known what to do. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love.
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Margaret Atwood (CAT'S EYE.)
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i loved you because it was easier than loving myself.
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Nayyirah Waheed
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That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.
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François de la Rochefoucauld
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Whoever said that loss gets easier with time was a liar. Here's what really happens: The spaces between the times you miss them grow longer. Then, when you do remember to miss them again, it's still with a stabbing pain to the heart. And you have guilt. Guilt because it's been too long since you missed them last.
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Kristin O'Donnell Tubb (The 13th Sign)
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Grown up, and that is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another.
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F. Scott Fitzgerald
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It's much easier to wear your pain on the outside...
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E.L. James (Fifty Shades Freed (Fifty Shades, #3))
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Understanding a situation doesn't always make it easier
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Colleen Hoover (Slammed (Slammed, #1))
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Just about everything in this world is easier said than done, with the exception of "systematically assisting Sisyphus's stealthy, cyst-susceptible sister," which is easier done than said.
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Lemony Snicket (The Hostile Hospital (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #8))
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Life becomes easier when you learn to accept an apology you never got.
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Robert Brault
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She left pieces of her life behind her everywhere she went. It's easier to feel the sunlight without them, she said.
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Brian Andreas (Story People)
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Who is he when he isn't Dauntless, isn't an instructor, isn't Four, isn't anything in particular? Whoever he is, I like him. It's easier to admit that to myself now, in the dark, after all that just happened. He is not sweet or gentle or particularly kind. But he is smart and brave, and even though he saved me, he treated me like I was strong. That is all I need to know.
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Veronica Roth (Divergent (Divergent, #1))
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I suppose I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.
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Tennessee Williams
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We all get lost once in a while, sometimes by choice, sometimes due to forces beyond our control. When we learn what it is our soul needs to learn, the path presents itself. Sometimes we see the way out but wander further and deeper despite ourselves; the fear, the anger or the sadness preventing us returning. Sometimes we prefer to be lost and wandering, sometimes it's easier. Sometimes we find our own way out. But regardless, always, we are found.
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Cecelia Ahern (Thanks for the Memories)
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All marriages have a time limit if you enter them for the wrong reasons. Marriage doesn't get easier...it only gets harder. If you marry someone hoping it will improve things, you might as well set your timer the second you say, 'I do.
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Colleen Hoover (Hopeless (Hopeless, #1))
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Cycles exist because they are excruciating to break. It takes an astronomical amount of pain and courage to disrupt a familiar pattern. Sometimes it seems easier to just keep running in the same familiar circles, rather than facing the fear of jumping and possibly not landing on your feet. My mother went through it. I went through it. I'll be damned if I allow my daughter to go through it. I kiss her on the forehead and make her a promise. "It stops here. With me and you. It ends with us.
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Colleen Hoover (It Ends with Us (It Ends with Us, #1))
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There are some things we do because we convince ourselves it would be better for everyone involved. We tell ourselves that it's the right thing to do, the altruistic thing to do. It's far easier than telling ourselves the truth.
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Jodi Picoult (My Sister’s Keeper)
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I breathe in slowly. Food is life. I exhale, take another breath. Food is life. And that's the problem. When you're alive, people can hurt you. It's easier to crawl into a bone cage or a snowdrift of confusion. It's easier to lock everybody out. But it's a lie.
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Laurie Halse Anderson (Wintergirls)
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It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.
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Terry Pratchett (Jingo (Discworld, #21; City Watch, #4))
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The Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God. I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has had a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me. God is bigger, like my mother, easier to find, even in the dark. I could be anywhere, and since I can't describe myself I can't ask for help.
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Jeanette Winterson (Sexing the Cherry)
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Lady Katsa, is it?" "Yes, Lord Prince." "I've heard you have one eye green as the Middluns grasses, and the other eye blue as the sky." "Yes, Lord Prince." "I've heard you can kill a man with the nail of your smallest finger." She smiled. "Yes, Lord Prince." "Does it make it easier?" "I don't understand you." "To have beautiful eyes. Does it lighten the burden of your Grace, to know you have beautiful eyes?
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Kristin Cashore (Graceling (Graceling Realm, #1))
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It would’ve been easier to die. It’s not that I want to be dead now. I don’t. I have a lot in my life that I get satisfaction from, that I love. But some days, especially in the beginning, it was so hard. And I couldn’t help but think that it would’ve been so much simpler to go with the rest of them. But youβ€”you asked me to stay. You begged me to stay. You stood over me and you made a promise to me, as sacred as any vow.
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Gayle Forman (Where She Went (If I Stay, #2))
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I think it would be easier to fight in a dress,” says Marlene, tapping her chin. β€œIt would give your legs freer movement. And who really cares if you flash people your underwear, as long as you’re kicking the crap out of them?” Lynn goes silent, like she recognizes that as a spark of brilliance but can’t bring herself to admit it. β€œWhat’s this about flashing underwear?” says Uriah, sidestepping a bunk. β€œWhatever it is, I’m in.
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Veronica Roth (Insurgent (Divergent, #2))
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Forgiveness is a strange thing. It can sometimes be easier to forgive our enemies than our friends. It can be hardest of all to forgive people we love. Like all of life's important coping skills, the ability to forgive and the capacity to let go of resentments most likely take root very early in our lives.
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Fred Rogers
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I don't hate you, Jace." "I don't hate you, either." She looked up at him, relieved. "I'm glad to hear thatβ€”" "I wish I could hate you," he said. His voice was light, his mouth curved in an unconcerned half smile, his eyes sick with misery. "I want to hate you. I try to hate you. It would be so much easier if I did hate you. Sometimes I think I do hate you and then I see you and Iβ€”" Her hands had grown numb with their grip on the blanket. "And you what?" "What do you think?" Jace shook his head. "Why should I tell you everything about how I feel when you never tell me anything? It's like banging my head on a wall, except at least if I were banging my head on a wall, I'd be able to make myself stop." Clary's lips were trembling so violently that she found it hard to speak. "Do you think it's easy for me?" she demanded.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments, #2))
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Being soaked alone is cold. Being soaked with your best friend is an adventure.
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Emily Wing Smith (Back When You Were Easier to Love)
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To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision. Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity. It becomes easier to die and avoid conflict than to maintain a constant battle with the superior forces of maturity.
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Maya Angelou (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #1))
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What is success? To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate the beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch Or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn't through love, because love is hard, It makes demands. Hate is simple. So the first thing that happens in a conflict is that we choose a side, because that's easier than trying to hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time. The second thing that happens is that we seek out facts that confirm what we want to believe - comforting facts, ones that permit life to go on as normal. The third is that we dehumanize our enemy.
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Fredrik Backman (Beartown (Beartown, #1))
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Another page turns on the calendar, April now, not March. ......... I am spinning the silk threads of my story, weaving the fabric of my world...I spun out of control. Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living was hardest. I wanted to swallow the bitter seeds of forgetfulness...Somehow, I dragged myself out of the dark and asked for help. I spin and weave and knit my words and visions until a life starts to take shape. There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn't matter anymore. I am thawing.
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Laurie Halse Anderson (Wintergirls)
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It's easy to run to others. It's so hard to stand on one's own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can't fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is your strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running. It's easier to donate a few thousand to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It's simple to seek substitutes for competence--such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence.
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Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead)
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Don't lies eventually lead to the truth? And don't all my stories, true or false, tend toward the same conclusion? Don't they all have the same meaning? So what does it matter whether they are true or false if, in both cases, they are significant of what I have been and what I am? Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.
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Albert Camus (The Fall)
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It has made me better loving you... it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter. I used to want a great many things before, and to be angry that I did not have them. Theoretically, I was satisfied. I flattered myself that I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to have morbid sterile hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I really am satisfied, because I can’t think of anything better. It’s just as when one has been trying to spell out a book in the twilight, and suddenly the lamp comes in. I had been putting out my eyes over the book of life, and finding nothing to reward me for my pains; but now that I can read it properly I see that it’s a delightful story.
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Henry James (The Portrait of a Lady)
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I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.... What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language." I began to ask each time: "What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?" Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, "disappeared" or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever. Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end. And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.
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Audre Lorde
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It is a curious thing, but as one travels the world getting older and older, it appears that happiness is easier to get used to than despair. The second time you have a root beer float, for instance, your happiness at sipping the delicious concoction may not be quite as enormous as when you first had a root beer float, and the twelfth time your happiness may be still less enormous, until root beer floats begin to offer you very little happiness at all, because you have become used to the taste of vanilla ice cream and root beer mixed together. However, the second time you find a thumbtack in your root beer float, your despair is much greater than the first time, when you dismissed the thumbtack as a freak accident rather than part of the scheme of a soda jerk, a phrase which here means "ice cream shop employee who is trying to injure your tongue," and by the twelfth time you find a thumbtack, your despair is even greater still, until you can hardly utter the phrase "root beer float" without bursting into tears. It is almost as if happiness is an acquired taste, like coconut cordial or ceviche, to which you can eventually become accustomed, but despair is something surprising each time you encounter it.
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Lemony Snicket (The End (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #13))
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Question: I am interested in so many things, and I have a terrible fear because my mother keeps telling me that I'm just going to be exploring the rest of my life and never get anything done. But I find it really hard to set my ways and say, "Well, do I want to do this, or should I try to exploit that, or should I escape and completely do one thing?" AnaΓ―s Nin: One word I would banish from the dictionary is 'escape.' Just banish that and you'll be fine. Because that word has been misused regarding anybody who wanted to move away from a certain spot and wanted to grow. He was an escapist. You know if you forget that word you will have a much easier time. Also you're in the prime, the beginning of your life; you should experiment with everything, try everything.... We are taught all these dichotomies, and I only learned later that they could work in harmony. We have created false dichotomies; we create false ambivalences, and very painful one's sometimes -the feeling that we have to choose. But I think at one point we finally realize, sometimes subconsciously, whether or not we are really fitted for what we try and if it's what we want to do. You have a right to experiment with your life. You will make mistakes. And they are right too. No, I think there was too rigid a pattern. You came out of an education and are supposed to know your vocation. Your vocation is fixed, and maybe ten years later you find you are not a teacher anymore or you're not a painter anymore. It may happen. It has happened. I mean Gauguin decided at a certain point he wasn't a banker anymore; he was a painter. And so he walked away from banking. I think we have a right to change course. But society is the one that keeps demanding that we fit in and not disturb things. They would like you to fit in right away so that things work now.
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AnaΓ―s Nin
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Do not confuse "duty" with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect. But there is no reward at all for doing what other people expect of you, and to do so is not merely difficult, but impossible. It is easier to deal with a footpad than it is with the leech who wants "just a few minutes of your time, pleaseβ€”this won't take long." Time is your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few. If you allow yourself to fall into the vice of agreeing to such requests, they quickly snowball to the point where these parasites will use up 100 percent of your timeβ€”and squawk for more! So learn to say Noβ€”and to be rude about it when necessary. Otherwise you will not have time to carry out your duty, or to do your own work, and certainly no time for love and happiness. The termites will nibble away your life and leave none of it for you. (This rule does not mean that you must not do a favor for a friend, or even a stranger. But let the choice be yours. Don't do it because it is "expected" of you.)
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Robert A. Heinlein (Time Enough for Love)
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There was a girl, and her uncle sold her. Put like that it seems so simple. No man, proclaimed Donne, is an island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived and then by some means or other, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes- forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'll mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection) but still unique. Without individuals we see only numbers, a thousand dead, a hundred thousand dead, "casualties may rise to a million." With individual stories, the statistics become people- but even that is a lie, for the people continue to suffer in numbers that themselves are numbing and meaningless. Look, see the child's swollen, swollen belly and the flies that crawl at the corners of his eyes, this skeletal limbs: will it make it easier for you to know his name, his age, his dreams, his fears? To see him from the inside? And if it does, are we not doing a disservice to his sister, who lies in the searing dust beside him, a distorted distended caricature of a human child? And there, if we feel for them, are they now more important to us than a thousand other children touched by the same famine, a thousand other young lives who will soon be food for the flies' own myriad squirming children? We draw our lines around these moments of pain, remain upon our islands, and they cannot hurt us. They are covered with a smooth, safe, nacreous layer to let them slip, pearllike, from our souls without real pain. Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives. A life that is, like any other, unlike any other. And the simple truth is this: There was a girl, and her uncle sold her.
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Neil Gaiman (American Gods (American Gods, #1))