Of People Quotes

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

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I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
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Maya Angelou
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To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
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Oscar Wilde
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The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
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Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #2))
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I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.
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Marilyn Monroe
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If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
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Mother Teresa
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Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. Just in what they are.
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Markus Zusak (I Am the Messenger)
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There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.
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Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)
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Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.
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Charles Bukowski
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Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
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Steve Jobs
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The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
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Terry Pratchett (Diggers (Bromeliad Trilogy, #2))
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β€²Classicβ€² - a book which people praise and don't read.
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Mark Twain
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I love mankind ... it's people I can't stand!!
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Charles M. Schulz
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Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.
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Mark Twain
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Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
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Ernest Hemingway (The Garden of Eden)
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You can't live your life for other people. You've got to do what's right for you, even if it hurts some people you love.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook (The Notebook, #1))
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Do you hate people?” β€œI don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.
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Charles Bukowski (Barfly)
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So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.
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John Green (Looking for Alaska)
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Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
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Mark Twain
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The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four people is suffering from a mental illness. Look at your 3 best friends. If they're ok, then it's you.
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Rita Mae Brown
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Sometimes you have to be apart from people you love, but that doesn't make you love them any less. Sometimes you love them more.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Last Song)
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Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary.
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Oscar Wilde
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Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
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Oscar Wilde (De Profundis)
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You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
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Ray Bradbury
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To the people who look at the stars and wish, Rhys." Rhys clinked his glass against mine. β€œTo the stars who listenβ€” and the dreams that are answered.
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Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
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You can love someone so much...But you can never love people as much as you can miss them.
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John Green
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Maybe our favorite quotations say more about us than about the stories and people we're quoting.
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John Green
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I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.
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Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
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I don't want to be a man," said Jace. "I want to be an angst-ridden teenager who can't confront his own inner demons and takes it out verbally on other people instead." "Well," said Luke, "you're doing a fantastic job.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments, #2))
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Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.
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Jodi Picoult (My Sister’s Keeper)
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Wicked people never have time for reading. It's one of the reasons for their wickedness.
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Lemony Snicket
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Death's got an Invisibility Cloak?" Harry interrupted again. "So he can sneak up on people," said Ron. "Sometimes he gets bored of running at them, flapping his arms and shrieking...
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J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
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When someone shows you who they are believe them the first time.
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Maya Angelou
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Love conquers all," Aphrodite promised. "Look at Helen and Paris. Did they let anything come between them?" "Didn't they start the Trojan War and get thousands of people killed?" "Pfft. That's not the point. Follow your heart.
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Rick Riordan (The Titan’s Curse (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #3))
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You're going to come across people in your life who will say all the right words at all the right times. But in the end, it's always their actions you should judge them by. It's actions, not words, that matter.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Rescue)
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I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.
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Jane Austen (Jane Austen's Letters)
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The planet is fine. The people are fucked.
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George Carlin
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Some people care too much. I think it's called love.
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A.A. Milne (Winnie-the-Pooh (Winnie-the-Pooh, #1))
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Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?
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Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)
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You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up.
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Pat Conroy (The Prince of Tides)
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That's always seemed so ridiculous to me, that people want to be around someone because they're pretty. It's like picking your breakfeast cereals based on color instead of taste.
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John Green (Paper Towns)
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It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.
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Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
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Be the reason someone smiles. Be the reason someone feels loved and believes in the goodness in people.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's beautiful.
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Milan Kundera
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The best index to a person's character is how he treats people who can't do him any good, and how he treats people who can't fight back.
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Abigail Van Buren
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I've never fooled anyone. I've let people fool themselves. They didn't bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn't argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn't.
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Marilyn Monroe
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Take responsibility of your own happiness, never put it in other people’s hands.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.
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Lemony Snicket (The Grim Grotto (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #11))
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Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
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Albert Camus
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Respect other people's feelings. It might mean nothing to you, but it could mean everything to them.
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Roy T. Bennett
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The Paradoxical Commandments People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway. If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway. The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds. Think big anyway. People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help people anyway. Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.
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Kent M. Keith (The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council)
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Life is too short to waste your time on people who don’t respect, appreciate, and value you.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen.
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John Steinbeck (The Winter of Our Discontent)
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There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.
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John Lennon
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Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.
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Jane Smiley (Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel)
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What happens when people open their hearts?" "They get better.
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Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)
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You have to die a few times before you can really live.
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Charles Bukowski (The People Look Like Flowers at Last)
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The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.
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Charles Bukowski
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Stupid people are dangerous.
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Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1))
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Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, but in truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom, most people find sin.
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John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
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It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.
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Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends and Influence People)
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I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me, 'I love you.' ... There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.
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Maya Angelou
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Angry people are not always wise.
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Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
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Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth.
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William Faulkner
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He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; Who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; Who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; Who has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty or failed to express it; Who has left the world better than he found it, Whether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; Who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; Whose life was an inspiration; Whose memory a benediction.
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Bessie Anderson Stanley (More Heart Throbs Volume Two in Prose and Verse Dear to the American People And by them contributed as a Supplement to the original $10,000 Prize Book HEART THROBS)
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I love people who make me laugh. I honestly think it's the thing I like most, to laugh. It cures a multitude of ills. It's probably the most important thing in a person.
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Audrey Hepburn
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Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.
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Bob Marley
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When you're struggling with something, look at all the people around you and realize that every single person you see is struggling with something, and to them, it's just as hard as what you're going through.
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Nicholas Sparks (Dear John)
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It's strange because sometimes, I read a book, and I think I am the people in the book.
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Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)
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People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.
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Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)
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Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.
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Friedrich Nietzsche
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It kills me sometimes, how people die.
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Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)
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Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.
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Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)
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You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.
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James Baldwin
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[...]the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes β€œAwww!
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Jack Kerouac (On the Road)
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People haven't always been there for me but music always has.
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Taylor Swift
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You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.
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Olin Miller
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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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I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won't tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn't change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have.
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Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)
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People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave. A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master...
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Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
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Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.
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Terry Pratchett (A Hat Full of Sky (Discworld, #32; Tiffany Aching, #2))
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But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked. "Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad." "How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice. "You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.
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Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)
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There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.
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Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
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Mr. Moony presents his compliments to Professor Snape, and begs him to keep his abnormally large nose out of other people's business. Mr. Prongs agrees with Mr. Moony, and would like to add that Professor Snape is an ugly git. Mr. Padfoot would like to register his astonishment that an idiot like that ever became a professor. Mr. Wormtail bids Professor Snape good day, and advises him to wash his hair, the slimeball.
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J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter, #3))
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Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that you’ve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you can’t wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful. There is never any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet calmness when they are around. You can be yourself and not worry about what they will think of you because they love you for who you are. The things that seem insignificant to most people such as a note, song or walk become invaluable treasures kept safe in your heart to cherish forever. Memories of your childhood come back and are so clear and vivid it’s like being young again. Colours seem brighter and more brilliant. Laughter seems part of daily life where before it was infrequent or didn’t exist at all. A phone call or two during the day helps to get you through a long day’s work and always brings a smile to your face. In their presence, there’s no need for continuous conversation, but you find you’re quite content in just having them nearby. Things that never interested you before become fascinating because you know they are important to this person who is so special to you. You think of this person on every occasion and in everything you do. Simple things bring them to mind like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or even a storm cloud on the horizon. You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.
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Bob Marley
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Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
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Marianne Williamson (A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles")
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Even if you cannot change all the people around you, you can change the people you choose to be around. Life is too short to waste your time on people who don’t respect, appreciate, and value you. Spend your life with people who make you smile, laugh, and feel loved.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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Love is always patient and kind. It is never jealous. Love is never boastful or conceited. It is never rude or selfish. It does not take offense and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people’s sins, but delights in the truth. It is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes.
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Anonymous (Holy Bible: New International Version)
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Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!
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J.R.R. Tolkien
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Everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world, I mean everybody β€” no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds... Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.
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Neil Gaiman (The Sandman, Vol. 5: A Game of You)
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I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane.
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John Green (Looking for Alaska)
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because nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff. Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can’t-control-yourself love it. Hank, when people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is β€˜you like stuff.’ Which is just not a good insult at all. Like, β€˜you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness’.
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John Green
β€œ
I've never been lonely. I've been in a room -- I've felt suicidal. I've been depressed. I've felt awful -- awful beyond all -- but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me...or that any number of people could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something I've never been bothered with because I've always had this terrible itch for solitude. It's being at a party, or at a stadium full of people cheering for something, that I might feel loneliness. I'll quote Ibsen, "The strongest men are the most alone." I've never thought, "Well, some beautiful blonde will come in here and give me a fuck-job, rub my balls, and I'll feel good." No, that won't help. You know the typical crowd, "Wow, it's Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there?" Well, yeah. Because there's nothing out there. It's stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves. I've never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. I hid in bars, because I didn't want to hide in factories. That's all. Sorry for all the millions, but I've never been lonely. I like myself. I'm the best form of entertainment I have. Let's drink more wine!
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Charles Bukowski
β€œ
For attractive lips, speak words of kindness. For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people. For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. For beautiful hair, let a child run his fingers through it once a day. For poise, walk with the knowledge you’ll never walk alone. ... We leave you a tradition with a future. The tender loving care of human beings will never become obsolete. People even more than things have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed and redeemed and redeemed and redeemed. Never throw out anybody. Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you’ll find one at the end of your arm. As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands: one for helping yourself, the other for helping others. Your β€œgood old days” are still ahead of you, may you have many of them.
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Sam Levenson (In One Era & Out the Other)
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Don't let the expectations and opinions of other people affect your decisions. It's your life, not theirs. Do what matters most to you; do what makes you feel alive and happy. Don't let the expectations and ideas of others limit who you are. If you let others tell you who you are, you are living their reality β€” not yours. There is more to life than pleasing people. There is much more to life than following others' prescribed path. There is so much more to life than what you experience right now. You need to decide who you are for yourself. Become a whole being. Adventure.
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Roy T. Bennett
β€œ
Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money!
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George Carlin
β€œ
People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.
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Jim Morrison
β€œ
The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.
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Stephen King
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You should date a girl who reads. Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve. Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn. She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book. Buy her another cup of coffee. Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice. It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does. She has to give it a shot somehow. Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world. Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two. Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series. If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are. You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype. You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots. Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads. Or better yet, date a girl who writes.
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Rosemarie Urquico
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The so-called β€˜psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote β€˜hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling β€˜Don’t!’ and β€˜Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.
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David Foster Wallace
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I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.
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Neil Gaiman (American Gods (American Gods, #1))