Quotes

Words worth keeping

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

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

— Anton Chekhov
Books & Writing

We’re all seeking that special person who is right for us. But if you’ve been through enough relationships, you begin to suspect there’s no right person, just different flavors of wrong. Why is this? Because you yourself are wrong in some way, and you seek out partners who are wrong in some complementary way. But it takes a lot of living to grow fully into your own wrongness. And it isn’t until you finally run up against your deepest demons, your unsolvable problems—the ones that make you truly who you are—that we’re ready to find a lifelong mate. Only then do you finally know what you’re looking for. You’re looking for the wrong person. But not just any wrong person: it's got to be the right wrong person—someone you lovingly gaze upon and think, “This is the problem I want to have.�I will find that special person who is wrong for me in just the right way.

— Andrew Boyd
Inspirational Love Relationships

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

— Stephen King
Books & Writing

It’s only after you’ve stepped outside your comfort zone that you begin to change, grow, and transform.

— Roy T. Bennett
Inspirational Life Change & Growth Positive Thinking

Wow," Thalia muttered. "Apollo is hot." "He's the sun god," I said."That's not what I meant.

— Rick Riordan
General

When he shall die,Take him and cut him out in little stars,And he will make the face of heaven so fineThat all the world will be in love with nightAnd pay no worship to the garish sun.

— William Shakespeare
Death & Loss

Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.

— Joan Crawford
Love

Fear doesn't shut you down; it wakes you up

— Veronica Roth
Fear

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?

— Haruki Murakami
Sadness & Pain Solitude

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.

— Stephen King
Books & Writing

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.

— Rick Riordan
Humor

You do not write your life with words...You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do.

— Patrick Ness
Philosophy Wisdom

Maybe 'okay' will be our 'always

— John Green
General

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.

— Mahatma Gandhi
Freedom

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 — 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.

— Roy T. Bennett
Self & Identity Inspirational Life Positive Thinking

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.