Important Quotes

“Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another?
We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
― Mark Twain

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
― A.W. Tozer

“No one will understand you. It is not, ultimately, that important. What is important is that you understand you.”
― Matt Haig, The Humans

“I think of you as a friend. I used to think "friend" was just another word... Nothing more, nothing less. But when I met you, I realized what was important was the word's meaning.”
― Masashi Kishimoto, Naruto, Band 11

“The life you have left is a gift. Cherish it. Enjoy it now, to the fullest. Do what matters, now.”
― Leo Babauta

“You can find something truly important in an ordinary minute.”
― Mitch Albom, For One More Day

“There is nothing more important than your eternal salvation.”
― Kirk Cameron

“The more you talk about them, the more important they will feel. The more you listen to them, the more important you will make them feel.”
― Roy T. Bennett

“Do more listening than talking; talk more about them than about you.”
― Roy T. Bennett

“You cannot be truly humble, unless you truly believe that life can and will go on without you.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“My mother always says people should be able to take care of themselves, even if they're rich and important.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“God Hold us to that which drew us first, when the Cross was the attraction, and we wanted nothing else.”
― Amy Carmichael, God's Missionary

“Because Margo knows the secret of leaving, the secret I have only just now learned; leaving feels good and pure only when you leave something important, something that mattered to you. Pulling life out by the roots. But you can't do that until your life has grown roots.”
― John Green, Paper Towns

“In any case, while it is all very well to talk of 'turning points', one can surely only recognise such moments in retrospect. Naturally, when one looks back to such instances today, they may indeed take the appearance of being crucial, precious moments in one's life; but of course, at the time, this was not the impression one had. Rather, it was as though one had available a never-ending number of days, months, years in which to sort out the vagaries of one's relationship with Miss Kenton; an infinite number of further opportunities in which to remedy the effect of this or that misunderstanding. There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

“Because sometimes when someone is telling you something really important, it’s best to just let there be silence, to really think about what they’re saying. A lot of times people think they have to say something all insightful or wise or something to try and make the person feel better. But really, sometimes silence is best.”
― Lauren Barnholdt, The Thing About the Truth

“We have a predator that came from the depths of the cosmos and took over the rule of our lives. Human beings are its prisoners. The Predator is our lord and master. It has rendered us docile, helpless. If we want to protest, it suppresses our protest. If we want to act independently, it demands that we don't do so... I have been beating around the bush all this time, insinuating to you that something is holding us prisoner. Indeed we are held prisoner! "This was an energetic fact for the sorcerers of ancient Mexico ... They took us over because we are food for them, and they squeeze us mercilessly because we are their sustenance. just as we rear chickens in chicken coops, the predators rear us in human coops, humaneros. Therefore, their food is always available to them." "No, no, no, no," [Carlos replies] "This is absurd don Juan. What you're saying is something monstrous. It simply can't be true, for sorcerers or for average men, or for anyone." "Why not?" don Juan asked calmly. "Why not? Because it infuriates you? ... You haven't heard all the claims yet. I want to appeal to your analytical mind. Think for a moment, and tell me how you would explain the contradictions between the intelligence of man the engineer and the stupidity of his systems of beliefs, or the stupidity of his contradictory behaviour. Sorcerers believe that the predators have given us our systems of belief, our ideas of good and evil, our social mores. They are the ones who set up our hopes and expectations and dreams of success or failure. They have given us covetousness, greed, and cowardice. It is the predators who make us complacent, routinary, and egomaniacal." "'But how can they do this, don Juan? [Carlos] asked, somehow angered further by what [don Juan] was saying. "'Do they whisper all that in our ears while we are asleep?" "'No, they don't do it that way. That's idiotic!" don Juan said, smiling. "They are infinitely more efficient and organized than that. In order to keep us obedient and meek and weak, the predators engaged themselves in a stupendous manoeuvre stupendous, of course, from the point of view of a fighting strategist. A horrendous manoeuvre from the point of view of those who suffer it. They gave us their mind! Do you hear me? The predators give us their mind, which becomes our mind. The predators' mind is baroque, contradictory, morose, filled with the fear of being discovered any minute now." "I know that even though you have never suffered hunger... you have food anxiety, which is none other than the anxiety of the predator who fears that any moment now its manoeuvre is going to be uncovered and food is going to be denied. Through the mind, which, after all, is their mind, the predators inject into the lives of human beings whatever is convenient for them. And they ensure, in this manner, a degree of security to act as a buffer against their fear." "The sorcerers of ancient Mexico were quite ill at ease with the idea of when [the predator] made its appearance on Earth. They reasoned that man must have been a complete being at one point, with stupendous insights, feats of awareness that are mythological legends nowadays. And then, everything seems to disappear, and we have now a sedated man. What I'm saying is that what we have against us is not a simple predator. It is very smart, and organized. It follows a methodical system to render us useless. Man, the magical being that he is destined to be, is no longer magical. He's an average piece of meat." "There are no more dreams for man but the dreams of an animal who is being raised to become a piece of meat: trite, conventional, imbecilic.”
― Carlos Castaneda, The Active Side of Infinity

“Dickens has not seen it all. The wretched of the earth do not decide to become extinct, they resolve, on the contrary, to multiply: life is their only weapon against life, life is all that they have. This is why the dispossessed and starving will never be convinced (though some may be coerced) by the population-control programs of the civilized. I have watched the dispossessed and starving laboring in the fields which others own, with their transistor radios at their ear, all day long: so they learn, for example, along with equally weighty matters, that the pope, one of the heads of the civilized world, forbids to the civilized that abortion which is being, literally, forced on them, the wretched. The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their ‘vital interests’ are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death: these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the ‘sanctity’ of human life, or the ‘conscience’ of the civilized world. There is a ‘sanctity’ involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it. Dreadful indeed it is to see a starving child, but the answer to that is not to prevent the child’s arrival but to restructure the world so that the child can live in it: so that the ‘vital interest’ of the world becomes nothing less than the life of the child. However—I could not have said any of this then, nor is so absurd a notion about to engulf the world now. But we were all starving children, after all, and none of our fathers, even at their most embittered and enraged, had ever suggested that we ‘die out.’ It was not we who were supposed to die out: this was, of all notions, the most forbidden, and we learned this from the cradle. Every trial, every beating, every drop of blood, every tear, were meant to be used by us for a day that was coming—for a day that was certainly coming, absolutely certainly, certainly coming: not for us, perhaps, but for our children. The children of the despised and rejected are menaced from the moment they stir in the womb, and are therefore sacred in a way that the children of the saved are not. And the children know it, which is how they manage to raise their children, and why they will not be persuaded—by their children’s murderers, after all—to cease having children.”
― James Baldwin, The Devil Finds Work: Essays

“Courage is more important than to be deceived by shallow victory waiting for a delayed defeat.”
― Dejan Stojanovic

“Have you ever felt like you could cry because you know you just heard the most important thing anybody in the world could have spoke at that second?”
― Kaye Gibbons, Ellen Foster

“The four things that matter in life: 1) love 2) honesty 3) faith 4) courage. ”
― Bill Butterworth, The Short List: In a Life Full of Choices, There Are Only Four That Matter

“Family is family,' sighed the gondolier. 'Family is everything,' declared Marta Gasperin, bending to kiss the old man on the cheek, at which he flushed. She added mischievously, 'Family and books, of course.”
― Michelle Lovric, The Undrowned Child

“People skills are useless with cats, because cats are immune to training, and do whatever they decide in any situation... And most importantly they aren’t human.”
― Will Advise, Nothing is here...

“In reality most human beings are not, to most human beings, more important than money.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Use and Misuse of Children

“I have everything I thought was important and nothing that really is.
-Lily Francone”
― Lorena Bathey, Beatrice Munson

“I stand on the battlefield to protect what's important to me. And if anyone's to stand in my way, I don't care if it's one of my kind, my brother or anyone else... I'll crush them all!”
― Sorachi Hideaki

“And at the end of the night, they realized how important those little stars were, which they ignored while adoring the beauty of the moon whole night.”
― Akshay Vasu, The Abandoned Paradise: Unraveling the beauty of untouched thoughts and dreams

“We stay the same as we've always been, keeping to the path we've walked our whole lives. Paths that carry so much importance and perceived stability that we are utterly convinced it is the only one to walk – that anyone not walking it with us is being misled.”
― A.J. Darkholme, Rise of the Morningstar

“While getting lost in all those little things that seem so important, don't forget the little things that matter...”
― Virginia Alison

“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things.
The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, to your community around you, to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie