Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning —
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby
No man was ever more than about nine meals away from crime or suicide.
—Eric Sevareid
I never want to love someone like that, so much that there would be no room left for myself, so much that I wouldn’t be able to survive if he left me.
—Jean Kwok in Girl in Translation
There's an African proverb: "When death finds you, may it find you alive." Alive means living your own damn life, not the life that your parents wanted, or the life some cultural group or political party wanted, but the life that your own soul wants to live.
—Michael Meade
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
—Bertrand Russell
Simplicity doesn't mean to live in misery and poverty. You have what you need, and you don't want to have what you don't need.
—Charan Singh
Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.
—Dale Carnegie
If you have to boast about what you do for a living to attract attention, attraction or approval, then you're seeking the wrong kind of people, for it has nothing to do with who you are and everything to do with what you do. Is that the kind of people you want? The ones who are more attracted to your status than you?
—Donna Lynn Hope
I think I can live without you, but it won't be any kind of life.
—Rainbow Rowell in Landline
I want a new past, new memories, a new first handshake with love. I want to start over in every possible way.
—Isaac Marion in Warm Bodies
You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need.
—Vernon Howard
The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular one and its indifference to substitutes is one of life's major mysteries.
—Iris Murdoch
I don't know if she loves me. I don't know if I love her. All I can say is, she's the one I think about. All the time. Shes the voice I want to hear. She's the face I hope to see.
—Sophie Kinsella in I've Got Your Number
No one has ever loved anyone the way everyone wants to be loved.
—Mignon McLaughlin
When we pray to God we must be seeking nothing — nothing.
—Francis of Assisi