Human Universe: Wisdom of Life in Book Quotes

No such thing as too many book quotes, every reader will tell. Catching them, remembering them, writing them down, hearing them, and mentioning them in talks, we seem to build a universe of wisdom around us, just like the little drops build the powerful sea. Adding my two cents, today I’ve collected another set of quotes to share with you, this time about different facets of life, love, and wisdom packed in ideas that various authors captured for us and saved in their books through time. Welcome to think and get inspired together!

***

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

***

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.

(Andre Gide)

***

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

(George Bernard Shaw)

***

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

(George Bernard Shaw)

***

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

(Anne Frank)

***

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

(Isaac Asimov)

***

Just when you think it can’t get any worse, it can. And just when you think it can’t get any better, it can.

(Nicholas Sparks)

***

Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.

(Stephen King)

***

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.

(Dale Carnegie)

***

Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind.

(Jeffrey Eugenides)

***

If cats looked like frogs we’d realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That’s what people remember.

(Terry Pratchett)

***

The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.

(G.K. Chesterton)

***

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.

(Robert Louis Stevenson)

***

Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.

(Dr. Seuss)

***

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.

(Lemony Snicket)

***

A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.

(Kurt Vonnegut)

***

He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.

(Gabriel García Márquez)

***

All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.

(J.M. Barrie)

***

Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That’s part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads – at least that’s where I imagine it – there’s a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you’ll live forever in your own private library.

(Haruki Murakami)