Quotes

Words worth keeping

2,684 quotes — from Indian and world voices, in English, Hindi and Urdu — while our publisher catalog grows.

being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.

— Charles Bukowski
Solitude

She seems so cool, so focused, so quiet, yet her eyes remain fixed upon the horizon. You think you know all there is to know about her immediately upon meeting her, but everything you think you know is wrong. Passion flows through her like a river of blood. She only looked away for a moment, and the mask slipped, and you fell. All your tomorrows start here.

— Neil Gaiman
Inspirational Books & Writing

You think my first instinct is to protect you. Because you're small, or a girl, or a Stiff. But you're wrong."He leans his face close to mine and wraps his fingers around my chin. His hand smells like metal. When was the last time he held a gun, or a knife? My skin tingles at the point of contact, like he's transmitting electricity through his skin. "My first instinct is to push you until you break, just to see how hard I have to press." he says, his fingers squeezing at the word break. My body tenses at the edge in his voice, so I am coiled as tight as a spring, and I forget to breathe.His dark eyes lifting to mine, he adds, "But I resist it." "Why..." I swallow hard. "Why is that your first instinct?""Fear doesn't shut you down; it wakes you up. I've seen it. It's fascinating." He releases me but doesn't pull away, his hand grazing my jaw, my neck. "Sometimes I just want to see it again. Want to see you awake.

— Veronica Roth
General

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

— Kurt Vonnegut
Life Love

If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?

— Lewis Carroll
General

It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.

— William Blake
General

I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think

— Socrates
Philosophy Education & Knowledge

It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.

— Haruki Murakami
Books & Writing Happiness

People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands - literally thousands - of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss.

— Nick Hornby
Sadness & Pain Art & Beauty

It is not that I'm so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.

— Albert Einstein
Education & Knowledge Wisdom

I am a cage, in search of a bird.

— Franz Kafka
General

And when her lips met mine, I knew that I could live to be a hundred and visit every country in the world, but nothing would ever compare to that single moment when I first kissed the girl of my dreams and knew that my love would last forever.

— Nicholas Sparks
Love

To say goodbye is to die a little.

— Raymond Chandler
Life Change & Growth

Welcome to the wonderful world of jealousy, he thought. For the price of admission, you get a splitting headache, a nearly irresistable urge to commit murder, and an inferiority complex. Yippee.

— J.R. Ward
Love Humor

Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.

— Walter Cronkite
Education & Knowledge

World quotes adapted from the Abirate/english_quotes dataset (CC BY 4.0). Indian-figure and Hindi/Urdu quotes are a curated compilation of widely-attributed public sayings.