Longest Quotes

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

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Time is the longest distance between two places.
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Tennessee Williams (The Glass Menagerie)
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It's the job that's never started as takes longest to finish.
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J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings)
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Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.
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James Joyce (Ulysses)
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The weariest nights, the longest days, sooner or later must perforce come to an end.
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Emmuska Orczy
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Sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine. I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.
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Richard Siken (Crush)
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The longest way must have its close - the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning.
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Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom’s Cabin)
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Poetry has been the longest pleasure of my life.
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Shirley Hazzard
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When you're lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you've just wandered off the path, that you'll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it's time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don't even know from which direction the sun rises anymore.
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Elizabeth Gilbert
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Do you ever wait for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always wait for the longest day of the year and then miss it!
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F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
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I was waiting for the longest time, she said. I thought you forgot. It is hard to forget, I said, when there is such an empty space when you are gone.
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Brian Andreas (Story People)
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How long?" His smile was amazingly sweet. "The longest." For ever?" Sam's lips smiled, but above his grin, his yellow eyes turned sad, as if he knew it was a lie. "Longer.
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Maggie Stiefvater (Shiver (The Wolves of Mercy Falls, #1))
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All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one: you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone!
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Jane Austen (Persuasion)
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If I knew words enough, I could write the longest love letter in the world and never get tired
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F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Best Early Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Modern Library Classics))
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I didn't want to spoil the mood. This was probably the longest Daemon and I had ever spoken without some statement earning him the finger.
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Jennifer L. Armentrout (Obsidian (Lux, #1))
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Laugh it up, asshole. But she who laughs last laughs longest, and I intend to belly roll tonight ~Tabitha
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Sherrilyn Kenyon (Seize the Night (Dark-Hunter #6))
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I am" is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that "I do" is the longest sentence?
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George Carlin
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The love that lasts the longest is the love that is never returned
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W. Somerset Maugham
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We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, remembered gate When the last of earth left to discover Is that which was the beginning; At the source of the longest river The voice of the hidden waterfall And the children in the apple-tree Not known, because not looked for But heard, half-heard, in the stillness Between two waves of the sea. β€”T.S. Eliot, from β€œLittle Gidding,” Four Quartets (Gardners Books; Main edition, April 30, 2001) Originally published 1943.
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T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
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There were once two sisters who were not afriad of the dark because the dark was full of the other's voice across the room, because even when the night was thick and starless they walked home together from the river seeing who could last the longest without turning on her flashlight, not afraid because sometimes in the pitch of night they'd lie on their backs in the middle of the path and look up until the stars came back and when they did, they'd reach their arms up to touch them and did.
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Jandy Nelson (The Sky Is Everywhere)
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There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves the nest it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, singing among the savage branches, it impales itself upon the longest, sharpest spine. And, dying, it rises above its own agony to outcarol the lark and the nightingale. One superlative song, existence the price. But the whole world stills to listen, and God in His heaven smiles. For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain… Or so says the legend.
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Colleen McCullough (The Thorn Birds)
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I didn't go to the moon, I went much furtherβ€”for time is the longest distance between two places
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Tennessee Williams (The Glass Menagerie)
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If we'd never met, I think I would have known my life wasn't complete. And I would have wandered the world in search of you, even if I didn't know who I was looking for.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
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And after I dropped him off, I took the longest possible route home... I explored alleys and hidden roads I never knew existed. I discovered neighborhoods entirely new to me. And finally... I discovered I was sick of this town and everything in it.
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Jay Asher (Thirteen Reasons Why)
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A marker drawn to show our end, is etched into its line. The briefest moment shared with youβ€”the longest on my mind.
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Lang Leav (Love & Misadventure)
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The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity.
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Edna St. Vincent Millay
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The briefest moment shared with youβ€” the longest on my mind.
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Lang Leav (Love & Misadventure)
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You made me happy and you made me laugh, and if I could do it all over again, I would not hesitate. Look at our life, at the trips we took, the adventures we had. As your father used to say, we shared the longest ride together, this thing called life, and mine has been filled with joy because of you.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
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After all, if there is a heaven, we will find each other again, for there is no heaven without you.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
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Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.
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Richard P. Feynman
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Casting aside other things, hold to the precious few; and besides bear in mind that every man lives only the present, which is an indivisible point, and that all the rest of his life is either past or is uncertain. Brief is man's life and small the nook of the earth where he lives; brief, too, is the longest posthumous fame, buoyed only by a succession of poor human beings who will very soon die and who know little of themselves, much less of someone who died long ago.
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Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
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We pull our boots on with both hands but we can't punch ourselves awake and all I can do is stand on the curb and say Sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine. I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.
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Richard Siken (Crush)
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Trust people, until they give you a reason not to. And then never turn your back
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Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
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If you think about human nature, our favourite pair of shoes are the ones we bought yesterday, our favourite thing is the newest thing that we have…and the thing we’ve seen the most and for the longest period of time is our reflection in the mirror, so obviously that’s going to be our least favourite thing.
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Taylor Swift
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if I am the longest relationship of my life isn't it time to nurture intimacy and love with the person I lie in bed with each night
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Rupi Kaur (the sun and her flowers)
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His voice, even now, follows me everywhere on this longest of rides, this thing called life.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
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One cannot seperate truth from actions...Physically inevitable or not, truth stands above all things. It is independant of who has the best army, who can deliver the longest sermons, or even who has the most priests. It can be pushed down, but it will always surface. Truth is the one thing you can never intimidate.
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Brandon Sanderson (Elantris (Elantris, #1))
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You were born on the longest night of the year.” His fingers again stroked down my back. Lower. β€œYou were meant to be at my side from the very beginning
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Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Frost and Starlight (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #3.5))
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When I was a child, all problems had ended with a single word from my father. A smile from him was sunshine, his scowl a bolt of thunder. He was smart, and generous, and honorable without fail. He could exile a trespasser, check my math homework, and fix the leaky bathroom sink, all before dinner. For the longest time, I thought he was invincible. Above the petty problems that plagued normal people. And now he was gone.
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Rachel Vincent (Alpha (Shifters, #6))
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People plan, God laughs.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
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A war of ideas can no more be won without books than a naval war can be won without ships. Books, like ships, have the toughest armor, the longest cruising range, and mount the most powerful guns.
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Franklin D. Roosevelt
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Even the longest con was never more than an assortment of moments that were in themselves very very short.
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Ally Carter (Uncommon Criminals (Heist Society, #2))
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He swallows. Snow has the longest neck and the showiest swallow I've ever seen. His chin juts out and his Adam's apple catches - it's a whole scene.
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Rainbow Rowell (Carry On (Simon Snow, #1))
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The longest journey is the journey inward.
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Dag HammarskjΓΆld (Markings: Spiritual Poems and Meditations)
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Remember me with joy, for this is how I always thought of you. That is what I want, more than anything. I want you to smile when you think of me. And in your smile, I will live forever
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Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
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The one claim I shall make for my own sex is that we love longest, when all hope is gone.
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Jane Austen (Persuasion)
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Ketterdam is made of monsters. I just happen to have the longest teeth.
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Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
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What difference does it make?" he says. "People can think whatever they like. I don't desire their validation." "So you don't mind," I ask him, "that people judge you so harshly?" "I have no one to impress," he says. "No one who cares about what happens to me. I'm not in the business of making friends, love. My job is to lead an army, and it's the only thing I'm good at. No one," he says, "would be proud of the things I've accomplished. My mother doesn't even know me anymore. My father thinks I'm weak and pathetic. My soldiers want me dead. The world is going to hell. And the conversations I have with you are the longest I've ever had.
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Tahereh Mafi (Ignite Me (Shatter Me, #3))
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I know I'm not going to be able to change the world, but I think it's important to try to make a difference
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Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
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You’re too hard on yourself,’she said. β€˜You can do long-term love. You’ve done it better than anyone I know.’ β€˜How? My longest relationship was two years and that was over when I was twenty-four.’ β€˜I’m talking about you and me, ’she said
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Dolly Alderton (Everything I Know about Love: A Memoir)
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Sam smiled. β€œThink of all the people in the world,” he said, tucking my longest hair behind my ear. β€œAnd I was lucky enough to find you twice.”.
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Taylor Jenkins Reid (One True Loves)
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If Jace was gold, catching the light and the attention, Alec was silver: so used to everyone else looking at Jace that that was where he looked too, so used to living in Jace’s shadow that he didn’t expect to be seen. Maybe it was enough to be the first person to tell Alec that he was worth being seen ahead of anyone in a room, and of being looked at longest. And silver, though few people knew it, was a rarer metal than gold.
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Cassandra Clare (The Course of True Love [and First Dates] (The Bane Chronicles, #10))
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He told me once that sometimes, with some people, it's not about winning or losing, That with some people, it's just about playing. Though for the longest time, I didn't really believe him.
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Ali Hazelwood (Check & Mate)
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In philosophy, as in politics, the longest distance between two points is a straight line.
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Will Durant (The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers)
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Where would we be without tomorrows? What we’d have instead are todays. And if that was the case, with you, I’d hope for the longest day for today. I’d fill today with you, doing everything I’ve ever loved. I’d laugh, I’d talk, I’d listen and learn, I’d love, I’d love, I’d love. I’d make every day today and spend them all with you, and I’d never worry about tomorrow, when I wouldn’t be with you. And when that dreaded tomorrow comes for us, please know that I didn’t want to leave you, or be left behind, that every single moment spent with you were the best times in my life.
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Cecelia Ahern (How to Fall in Love)
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For the longest time after that, neither of us said anything. I was unaccustomed to his silence, but I didn't mind it. I knew near everything about him, and he knew near everything about me, and all that made our quiet a kind of song. The kind you hum without even knowing what it is or why you're humming it. The kind that you've always known.
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Gabrielle Zevin (Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac)
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For the longest time, it felt kind of like my chest was cracking open, but not precisely in an unpleasant way.
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John Green (Paper Towns)
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As he was about to leave, she said, "Murtagh." He paused and turned to regard her. She hesitated for a moment, then mustered her courage and said, "Why?" She thought he understood her meaning: Why her? Why save her, and now why try to rescue her? She had guessed at the answer, but she wanted to hear him say it. He stared at her for the longest while, and then, in a low, hard voice, he said, "You know why.
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Christopher Paolini (Inheritance (The Inheritance Cycle, #4))
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It's not what people do to you, but what they mean, that hurts.
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E.M. Forster (The Longest Journey)
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Friendship isn't about whom you have known the longest... It's about who came, and never left your side. β™₯
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Mikaela Tiu
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What deep wounds ever closed without a scar? The hearts bleed longest, and heals but to wear That which disfigures it.
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Lord Byron
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You don't know how strong something is until you actually test it.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
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The only thing I do know for sure is that if we both want to, we’ll find a way to make it work.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
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Yet experience has taught me that fate is sometimes cruel and that even a boatload of hope is sometimes not enough.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
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Do not worry about tomorrow until you have to.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
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I think that the point is that people rarely understand that nothing is ever exactly what you think it will be.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
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Why is the word yes so brief? it should be the longest, the hardest, so that you could not decide in an instant to say it, so that upon reflection you could stop in the middle of saying it.
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Vera Pavlova (If There is Something to Desire: One Hundred Poems)
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When you chose to follow the way of purity, did you expect it to be easy? When you decided to wait for the best, did you think that waiting would be fun? Did you think that your faith would not be tested? When you decided to take the narrow path, did no one warn you that difficulties, hardship, and tears would be part of the journey, and that you would often face rejection from others and be forced to walk alone? My daughter, that which you wait for the longest you treasure the most, and through much struggle the prize is won.
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Sarah Mally (Before You Meet Prince Charming: A Guide to Radiant Purity)
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The bed was warm and ordinary and perfect, and it had been such a long, long day. Probably the longest day of my life. I felt like I had proof that not all days are the same length, not all time has the same weight. Proof that there are worlds and worlds and worlds on top of worlds, if you want them to be there.
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Carol Rifka Brunt (Tell the Wolves I'm Home)
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Getting smacked in the face with a Harry Potter book does not qualify as a fight," Charlie says. "First of all, it wasn't just any Harry Potter book. It was Order of the Phoenix." Matt gasps. He knows that Order of the Phoenix is the longest and most potentially dangerous of all the Harry Potter books when used as a weapon.
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Robin Roe (A List of Cages)
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That's the difference between family and friends. Family is always there, no matter what, even when it's not right next door. Which means that you'll find a way to keep the connection alive. Especially since you realize how important it is.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
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There is a legend about a bird which sings only once in it's life, more beautifully than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves it's nest, it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, it impales it's breast on the longest, sharpest thorn. But as it is dying, it rises above it's own agony to outsing the Lark and the Nightingale. The Thornbird pays it's life for that one song, and the whole world stills to listen, and God in his heaven smiles, as it's best is brought only at the cost of great pain; Driven to the thorn with no knowledge of the dying to come. But when we press the thorn to our breast, we know, we understand.... and still, we do it." ~ Colleen McCullough
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Colleen McCullough (The Thorn Birds)
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Remember two things: i. that everything has always been the same, and keeps recurring, and it makes no difference whether you see the same things recur in a hundred years or two hundred, or in an infinite period; ii. that the longest-lived and those who will die soonest lose the same thing. The present is all that they can give up, since that is all you have, and what you do not have you cannot lose.
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Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
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How about we just see where life takes us for awhile?
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Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
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It's strange, I think, the way our lives turn out. Moments of circumstance, when later combined with conscious decisions and actions and a boatload of hope, can eventually forge a future that seems predestined.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
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I know you miss me terribly. I miss you, too. But we still have each other, for I am - and always have been - part of you. You carry me in your heart, just as I carried you in mine, and nothing can ever change that. I love you, my darling, and you love me. Hold on to that feeling. Hold on to us. And little by little, you will find a way to heal.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
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I wish I had the talent to paint the way I feel about you, for my words always feel inadequate. I imagine using red for your passion and pale blue for your kindness; forest green to reflect the depth of your empathy and bright yellow for your unflagging optimism. And still I wonder: can even an artist’s palette capture the full range of what you mean to me?
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Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
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What grinds me the most is we're sending kids out into the world who don't know how to balance a checkbook, don't know how to apply for a loan, don't even know how to properly fill out a job application, but because they know the quadratic formula we consider them prepared for the world` With that said, I'll admit even I can see how looking at the equation x -3 = 19 and knowing x =22 can be useful. I'll even say knowing x =7 and y= 8 in a problem like 9x - 6y= 15 can be helpful. But seriously, do we all need to know how to simplify (x-3)(x-3i)?? And the joke is, no one can continue their education unless they do. A student living in California cannot get into a four-year college unless they pass Algebra 2 in high school. A future psychologist can't become a psychologist, a future lawyer can't become a lawyer, and I can't become a journalist unless each of us has a basic understanding of engineering. Of course, engineers and scientists use this shit all the time, and I applaud them! But they don't take years of theater arts appreciation courses, because a scientist or an engineer doesn't need to know that 'The Phantom of the Opoera' was the longest-running Broadway musical of all time. Get my point?
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Chris Colfer (Struck By Lightning: The Carson Phillips Journal (The Land of Stories))
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If it makes you feel better, I promise to forget.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
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i am a little church(no great cathedral) far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities --i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest, i am not sorry when sun and rain make april my life is the life of the reaper and the sower; my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving (finding and losing and laughing and crying)children whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness around me surges a miracle of unceasing birth and glory and death and resurrection: over my sleeping self float flaming symbols of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains i am a little church(far from the frantic world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature --i do not worry if longer nights grow longest; i am not sorry when silence becomes singing winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to merciful Him Whose only now is forever: standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence (welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)
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E.E. Cummings
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In other words, our opinions and our thoughts and feelings, anything we experience, need not define us forever.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
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And in your smile, I will live forever
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Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
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I was still owed an explanation, I thought, but so what? What good was it going to do me? It wouldn't have made me any happier. It was like scratching when you have chicken pox. You think it's going to help, but the itch moves over, and then moves over again. My itch suddenly felt miles away, and I couldn't have reached it with the longest arms in the world. Realizing that made me scared that I was going to be itchy forever, and I didn't want that.
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Nick Hornby (A Long Way Down)
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I’m not good at talking,” Naoko said. β€œHaven’t been for the longest while. I start to say something and the wrong words come out. Wrong or sometimes completely backward. I try to go back and correct it, but things get even more complicated and confused, so that I don’t even remember what I started to say in the first place. Like I was split into two or something, one half chasing the other. And there’s this big pillar in the middle and they go chasing each other around and around it. The other me always latches onto the right word and this me absolutely never catches up
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Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)
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Now I'm making a decision. I choose life. I shall live because there are few people I want to stay with for the longest possible time and because I have duties to discharge. It is not my concern whether or not life has meaning. If I am unable to forgive, then I shall try to forget. I shall live by force and cunning."Β­
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Tayeb Salih (Season of Migration to the North)
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In her eyes and in her touch I felt the echoes of my words.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
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I'd like to marry you, if you think that would be okay.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
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It's easy to joke when you don't care any more. I'm not saying it didn't hurt me, because it did.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
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So where are they now? Your friends, I mean? You're always telling me about your friends and how you would do anything for them because they are your friends and how in return, they would die for you. I didn't believe it then and I'm not believing it now. All of your friends have gone. The good people, YOUR people, that's what you would call them. It was hard to keep from laughing in your face when you talked like that. I always wondered if that's what you thought I was to you, if I was one of YOUR people. You're so full of shit and now it's even too deep for you to deal with. The truth is that you don't have any friends, not now, not ever. You think you're with someone and then you find that you're just alone in a room with a stranger. You spent so much time running away from yourself, fulfilling imaginary duties to your friends, that you don't even know who you are. When the shit comes down, you can't even count on yourself. Isn't that a shame. Get ready for one of the longest nights ever.
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Henry Rollins (Eye Scream)
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I have loved you in return, more than you will ever know.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
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A student once asked anthropologist Margaret Mead, β€œWhat is the earliest sign of civilization?” The student expected her to say a clay pot, a grinding stone, or maybe a weapon. Margaret Mead thought for a moment, then she said, β€œA healed femur.” A femur is the longest bone in the body, linking hip to knee. In societies without the benefits of modern medicine, it takes about six weeks of rest for a fractured femur to heal. A healed femur shows that someone cared for the injured person, did their hunting and gathering, stayed with them, and offered physical protection and human companionship until the injury could mend. Mead explained that where the law of the jungleβ€”the survival of the fittestβ€”rules, no healed femurs are found. The first sign of civilization is compassion, seen in a healed femur.
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Ira Byock
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I think that all women are witches, in the sense that a witch is a magical being. And a wizard, which is a male version of a witch, is kind of revered, and people respect wizards. But a witch, my god, we have to burn them. It’s the male chauvinistic society that we’re living in for the longest time, 3,000 years or whatever. And so I just wanted to point out the fact that men and women are magical beings. We are very blessed that way, so I’m just bringing that out. Don’t be scared of witches, because we are good witches, and you should appreciate our magical power.
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Yoko Ono
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You don’t measure love in time. You measure love in transformation. Sometimes the longest connections yield very little growth, while the briefest of encounters change everything. The heart doesn’t wear a watch - it’s timeless. It doesn’t care how long you know someone. It doesn’t care if you had a 40 year anniversary if there is no juice in the connection. What the heart cares about is resonance. Resonance that opens it, resonance that enlivens it, resonance that calls it home. And when it finds it, the transformation begins…
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Jeff Brown
β€œ
and then you stopped. And looked at me. And I knew then exactly what was going to happen. You kissed me, yes. But it was not just goodnight. Even then, I could feel the promise in it. The promise that you would kiss me just like that, forever.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
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Oh!" cried Anne eagerly, "I hope I do justice to all that is felt by you, and by those who resemble you. God forbid that I should undervalue the warm and faithful feelings of any of my fellow-creatures! I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachment and constancy were known only by woman. No, I believe you capable of everything great and good in your married lives. I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as--if I may be allowed the expression--so long as you have an object. I mean while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.
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Jane Austen (Persuasion)
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A shade of sorrow passed over Taliesin's face. 'There are those,' he said gently, 'who must first learn loss, despair, and grief. Of all paths to wisdom, this is the cruelest and longest. Are you one who must follow such a way? This even I cannot know. If you are, take heart nonetheless. Those who reach the end do more than gain wisdom. As rough wool becomes cloth, and crude clay a vessel, so do they change and fashion wisdom for others, and what they give back is greater than what they won.
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Lloyd Alexander (The High King (The Chronicles of Prydain, #5))
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[Greens] don't come through the back door the same as other groceries. They don't cower at the bottom of paper bags marked 'Liberty.' They wave over the top. They don't stop to be checked off the receipt. They spill out onto the counter. No going onto shelves with cans in orderly lines like school children waiting for recess. No waiting, sometimes for years beyond the blue sell by date, to be picked up and taken from the shelf. Greens don't stack or stand at attention. They aren't peas to be pushed around. Cans can't contain them. Boxed in they would burst free. Greens are wild. Plunging them into a pot took some doing. Only lobsters fight more. Either way, you have to use your hands. Then, retrieving them requires the longest of my mother's wooden spoons, the one with the burnt end. Swept onto a plate like the seaweed after a storm, greens sit tall, dark, and proud.
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Georgia Scott (American Girl: Memories That Made Me)
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I’ve got so much inside me I have no idea about. I’m like the mayor of a city I’ve never seen.” He smiles at my phrasing. β€œIf you knew the kind of little miracles happening every moment you breathe in, you wouldn’t be able to handle it. A valve could close and not open; an artery could split, you could die. At any moment. It’s nothing but miracles inside your tiny city.” He presses a kiss to my temple. β€œHoly shit.” I clutch at him. β€œYou wouldn’t believe the stats on people who go to bed one night and never wake up. Normal, healthy people who aren’t even old.” β€œWhy would you tell me this? Is this what you think about?” There’s the longest pause. β€œI used to. Not so much anymore.” β€œI think I preferred it when I thought I was full of white bones and red goo. Why am I now thinking about dying tonight?” β€œNow you see why I can’t do small talk.Β 
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Sally Thorne (The Hating Game)
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There's something to that in both directions," said Ekaterin mildly. "Nothing is more guaranteed to make one start acting like a child than to be treated like one. It's so infuriating. It took me the longest time to figure out how to stop falling into that trap." "Yes, exactly," said Kareen eagerly. "You understand! Soβ€”how did you make them stop?" "You can't make themβ€”whoever your particular them isβ€”do anything, really," said Ekaterin slowly. "Adulthood isn't an award they'll give you for being a good child. You can waste . . . years, trying to get someone to give that respect to you, as though it were a sort of promotion or raise in pay. If only you do enough, if only you are good enough. No. You have to just . . . take it. Give it to yourself, I suppose. Say, I'm sorry you feel like that, and walk away. But that's hard.
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Lois McMaster Bujold (A Civil Campaign (Vorkosigan Saga, #12))
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My name," I tell Wilbur in the most dignified voice I can find, "Was inspired by Harriet Quimby, the first female American pilot and the first woman ever to cross the Channel in an aeroplane. My mother chose it to represent freedom and bravery and independence, and she gave it to me just before she died." There's a short pause while Wilbur looks appropriately moved. Then Dad says, "Who told you that?" "Annabel did." "Well, it's not true at all. You were named after Harriet the tortoise, the second longest living tortoise in the world." There's a silence while I stare at Dad and Annabel puts her head in her hands so abruptly that the pen starts to leak into her collar. "Richard," she moans quietly. "A tortoise?" I repeat in dismay. "I'm named after a tortoise? What the hell is a tortoise supposed to represent?" "Longevity?
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Holly Smale (Geek Girl (Geek Girl, #1))
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It's ridiculous. Here I sit in my little room, I, Brigge, who have got to be twenty-eight years old and about whom no one knows. I sit here and am nothing. And yet this nothing begins to think and thinks, up five flights of stairs, these thoughts on a gray Paris afternoon: Is it possible, this nothing thinks, that one has not yet seen, recognized, and said anything real and important? Is it possible that one has had thousands of years of time to look, reflect, and write down, and that one has let the millennia pass away like a school recess in which one eats one's sandwich and an apple? Yes, it is possible. ...Is it possible that in spite of inventions and progress, in spite of culture, religion, and worldly wisdom, that one has remained on the surface of life? Is it possible that one has even covered this surface, which would at least have been something, with an incredibly dull slipcover, so that it looks like living-room furniture during the summer vacation? Yes, it is possible. Is it possible that the whole history of the world has been misunderstood? Is it possible that the past is false because one has always spoken of its masses, as if one was telling about a coming together of many people, instead of telling about the one person they were standing around, because he was alien and died? Yes, it is possible. Is it possible that one believed one has to make up for everything that happened before one was born? Is it possible one would have to remind every single person that he arose from all earlier people so that he would know it, and not let himself be talked out of it by the others, who see it differently? Yes, it is possible. Is it possible that all these people know very precisely a past that never was? Is it possible that everything real is nothing to them; that their life takes its course, connected to nothing, like a clock in an empty room? Yes, it is possible. Is it possible that one knows nothing about girls, who are nevertheless alive? Is it possible that one says "the women", "the children", "the boys", and doesn't suspect (in spite of all one's education doesn't suspect) that for the longest time these words have no longer had a plural, but only innumerable singulars? Yes, it is possible. Is it possible that there are people who say "God" and think it is something they have in common? Just look at two schoolboys: one buys himself a knife, and the same day his neighbor buys one just like it. And after a week they show each other their knives and it turns out that they bear only the remotest resemblance to each other-so differently have they developed in different hands (Well, the mother of one of them says, if you boys always have to wear everything out right away). Ah, so: is it possible to believe that one could have a God without using him? Yes, it is possible. But, if all this is possible, has even an appearance of possibility-then for heaven's sake something has to happen. The first person who comes along, the one who has had this disquieting thought, must begin to accomplish some of what has been missed; even if he is just anyone, not the most suitable person: there is simply no one else there. This young, irrelevant foreigner, Brigge, will have to sit himself down five flights up and write, day and night, he will just have to write, and that will be that.
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Rainer Maria Rilke (The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge)