Terrible Things Quotes

I have had a lot of good things happen, but I've also had a lot of terrible things happen. ~ Ralph Lauren

Wouldn't it be much worse if life really were fair and all the terrible things that happen to us happen because we really deserve them? ~ J. Michael Straczynski

Flora reached out and grabbed hold of William Spiver's hand, and he held on to her. It was as if he were drowning and she were standing on solid ground. According to TERRIBLE THINGS! drowning people were desperate, out of their minds with fear. In their panic they could pull you, the rescuer, under, if you weren't careful. So Flora held on tightly to William Spiver. And he held on tightly back. ~ Kate DiCamillo

... I have dreams of you too, Mariam jo. I miss you. I miss the sound of your voice, your laughter. I miss reading to you, and all those times we fished together. Do you remember all those times we fished together? You were a good daughter, Mariam jo, and I cannot ever think of you without feeling shame and regret. Regret… When it comes to you, Mariam jo, I have oceans of it. I regret that I did not see you the day you came to Herat. I regret that I did not open the door and take you in. I regret that I did not make you a daughter to me, that I let you live in that place for all those years. And for what? Fear of losing face? Of staining my so-called good name? How little those things matter to me now after all the loss, all the terrible things I have seen in this cursed war. But now, of course, it is too late. Perhaps that is just punishment for those who have been heartless, to understand only when nothing can be undone. Now all I can do is say that you were a good daughter, Mariam jo, and that I never deserved you. Now all I can do is ask for your forgiveness. So forgive me, Mariam jo. Forgive me, forgive me. Forgive me... ~ Khaled Hosseini

He was a beautiful man with a beautiful soul. Something about the way he talked, the way he wrote, made me believe that he never quite felt like he'd belonged. Sure, he was rich and famous - he lived on a 60-acre horse ranch just outside of Lexington, for Christ's sake - but just knowing he existed, knowing that even someone as talented as him understood what it felt like to have a hungry heart, made me feel less lonely sometimes. And here he lay. Vulnerable. Bruised. Likely in more pain, even unconscious, than I could imagine. There are so many assholes in the world, I thought, not for the first time. Why do terrible things have to happen to people who try to shine a little light in the darkness? ~ Peter Styles

I really do believe that no one is too pious to fall or too far gone to be redeemed in some way. Jaime Lannister on 'Game of Thrones' did terrible things, and now I feel so bad for him because his sister won't kiss him. Isn't that weird? Does she not love him? He lost a hand! It kills me that I care. ~ Jeffrey Bell

It is easier to look the other way. But if you do, terrible things can happen. ~ Eve Bunting

Since becoming an alleged adult, I've always felt like I should exercise - or should at least want to exercise - and make a feeble attempt at health, thus staving off terrible things like the coronary heart disease and high cholesterol described to me in 1980s margarine commercials. ~ Ali Liebegott

We all look for meaning behind the tragedies that befall us. And sometimes the meaning is there. But sometimes, Master Bruce, terrible things just happen. No sinister plots. No secret societies. They just happen. ~ Batman Vs. Robin, Alfred

To outlive one's child is a terrible thing, but to do so because your child has taken his or her life is horrible. ~ Pierre Salinger

So many terrible things are done for love," Mab's voice said. "For love will men mutilate themselves and murder rivals. For love will even a peaceful man go to war. For love, man will destroy himself, and that right willingly. ~ Jim Butcher

The enemy wants us unable to forget the terrible things that occurred in the past and instead remember them as though they happened yesterday. God has healing for upsetting memories. ~ Stormie O'martian

I was not a particularly brave child, I think, because I had a narrative mind, because my mind automatically went to any terrible thing that could happen. ~ Daniel Handler

We do terrible things to the ones we love. We cheat and lie and betray them, for thirty pieces of silver or our own selfish hearts. The only way love endures is because of one simple gift. Forgiveness. ~ Vanessa Woods

People do terrible things to each other, but it's worse in the places where everybody is kept in the dark. ~ Tom Stoppard

People do terrible things. People do beautiful things. It's against the black backdrop of evil that the shining light of good shows the brightest. We can't just focus on the darkness of the night, or we'll miss out on the stars. ~ Wendy Mills

People talk of the pathos and failure of plain women; but it is a more terrible thing that a beautiful woman may succeed in everything but womanhood. ~ G.K. Chesterton

There were times, many, many times, when she just didn't get him. She'd heard on numerous occasions that men were bad, wicked creatures, who'd do terrible things at a moment's notice. You wore the wrong skirt or bent over at an inopportune time and BAM. They slipped their penises into you. ~ Charlotte Stein

But the main reason you should read this is that I don't see why I should have to know all these terrible, terrible things and you should get off scot free. ~ David Strorm

Peter?"
He couldn't look at her. Instead, he stared down at his
poisoned arm.
"I could do terrible things to you," he cautioned her
sadly. "I have to leave you. You won't be safe with me until
I learn to control myself."
"I'll wait for you."
Finally, when he felt the strength of his conviction, of
her conviction, he turned to her, allowing her in for just a
moment.
"I thought you'd say that. ~ Sarah Blakley-Cartwright

I've been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened, Mark Twain once said. ~ Sharon Salzberg

And this time, I can feel my hand. I can feel everything. And I want to keep feeling everything. Even the painful, awful, terrible things. Because feeling things is what lets us know that we're alive.
And I want to be alive. ~ Jasmine Warga

The world is full of terrible things. But there are beautiful things, too, and you're one of them. ~ Lauren Gilley

Some may say that such a girl is not ready for a relationship with a man, especially a man in his late sixties. But to that I say: We don't know anything. We don't know how to cure a cold or what dogs are thinking. We do terrible things, we make wars, we kill people out of greed. So who are we to say how to love. I wouldn't force her. I wouldn't have to. She would want me. We would be in love. What do you know. You don't know anything. Call me when you've cured AIDS, give me a ring then and I'll listen. ~ Miranda July

Hope is a terrible thing, she said. Is it? Yes, it keep you living in another place, a place which doesn't exist. For some people it's better than where they are. For many it's a relief. From life, she said. A relief from life? Is that living? Some people don't have a choice. No and that's awful for them. Hope is better than misery, he said. Or despair. Hope belongs in the same box as despair. Hope is not so bad, he said. At least despair has truth to it. ~ Susan Minot

Interest is a terrible thing to waste. ~ Roger Schank

Sometimes a King has to do terrible things in order to protect those he has sworn to look after. When the stakes are so high, dreadful decisions have to be taken. It is the responsibility of a King to take on that burden, that guilt. ~ Cressida Cowell

It's a terrible thing to be alone
yes it is
it is
but don't lower your mask until you have another mask prepared beneath
as terrible as you like
but a mask. ~ Katherine Mansfield

What I mean is, all the terrible things that happen in fairy tales seem real. Or not real, but genuine. Life is unfair, and the bad guys keep winning and good people die. But I like how that's not always the end of it ... Evil is real, but so is good. They always say fairy tales are simplistic, black and white, but I don't think so. I think they're complicated. That's what I love about them. ~ Polly Shulman

To be lost in spiritlessness is the most terrible thing of all. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

It is that love can make the most terrible things acceptable. ~ Jade Lee

I used to do some terrible things in the marshalling area to upset my rivals. ~ Dawn Fraser

How irresponsible of Him to allow terrible things to happen o those who didn't deserve it. Could God see and hear through prison walls and across cell bars? If He could not, He was not all-powerful. If He could, and still did nothing to help those in need, He was not merciful. Either way, He was not what He claimed to be. He was an impostor. ~ Elif Shafak

There will be a lot of young men returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan, who have seen terrible things, and who know all about the "loved and lost", and they will be acting out their grief with reckless behaviour. When I see broken hearted young men, abusing alcohol and angry and trying to make sense of the senseless, I know and understand from my own experiences, something of what they have gone through. ~ Peter B. Lockhart

know what it is to love someone and to say the most terrible things to them, in anger or anguish. ~ Paula Hawkins

What a terrible thing it would be to be the Pope! What unthinkable responsibilities to fall on your shoulders at an advanced age! No privacy. No seclusion. No sin. ~ Roger Ebert

I guess it means we don't understand everything, and we're not going to. Maybe the whys aren't answered here. Not because there aren't answers, but because we wouldn't understand the answers if we had them. Maybe there's a bigger purpose, a bigger picture that we only contribute a very small piece to. You know, like one of those thousand piece puzzles? There's no way you can tell by looking at one piece of the puzzle what the puzzle is going to look like in the end. And we don't have the picture on the outside of the puzzle box to guide us. Maybe everyone represents a piece of the puzzle. We all fit together to create this experience we call life. None of us can see the part we play or the way it all turns out. Maybe the miracles that we see are just the tip of the iceberg. And maybe we just don't recognize the blessings that come as a result of terrible things. ~ Amy Harmon

People don't believe in gods because they can't wrap their minds around the idea of someone allowing all the terrible things in the world to happen. ~ Kaitlin Bevis

You will do great and terrible things, Bethany Rudan. Just make sure you know the difference before you choose to act. And look to the boy, the tracker. He anchors you. ~ Meghan Ciana Doidge

There is a kind of crying I hope you have not experienced, and it is not just crying about something terrible that has happened, but a crying for all of the terrible things that have happened, not just to you but to everyone you know and to everyone you don't know and even the people you don't want to know, a crying that cannot be diluted by a brave deed or a kind word, but only by someone holding you as your shoulders shake and your tears run down your face. ~ Lemony Snicket

One of the most terrible things about the English education System in Ireland is its ruthlessness ... it is cold and mechanical, like the ruthlessness of an immensely powerful engine. A machine vast, complicated ... It grinds night and day; it obeys immutable and predetermined laws; it is as devoid of understanding, of sympathy, of imagination, as is any other piece of machinery that performs an appointed task. Into it is fed all raw human material in Ireland; it seizes upon it inexorably and rends and compresses and remoulds ... ~ Patrick Pearse

Last night I had the dream again. Except it's not a dream I know because when it comes for me, I'm still awake.
There's my desk. The map on the wall. The Stuffed animals I don't play with anymore but don't want to hurt Dad's feelings by sticking in the closet I might be in bed. I might be just standing there, looking foe a missing sock. Then i'm gone.
it doesn't just show me somthing this time, it takes me from here to THERE> standing on the bank of a river of fire. A thousand wasps in my head. Fighting and dying inside my skull, their bodies piling up against the backs of me eyes. Stinging and stinging.
Dad's voice. Somewhere across the river. Calling my name. I've never heard him sound like that before. He's so frightened he can't hide it, even though he tries (he ALWAYS tries).
The dead boy floats by.
Facedown. So I wait for his head to pop up, show the holes where his eye used to be, say somthing with his blue lips. One of the terrible things it might make him do. But he just passes like a chunk of wood. I've never been here before, but I know it's real. The river is the line between this place and the Other Place. And I'm on the wrong side. There's a dark forest behind me but that's not what it is. I try to get to where Dad is. My toes touch the river and it sings with pain. Then there's arms pulling me back. Dragging me into the trees. They feel like a man's arms but it's not a man that sticks its fingers into my mouth. Nails that scratch the ~ Andrew Pyper

What a terrible thing it is to lose one's mind ... ~ Dan Quayle

One of the few lessons I have learnt from studying people who do terrible things is that tehey are all too human. And that we are all capable of doung almost anything. ~ Ian McKellen

People say I'm a nice girl saying terrible things. I tend to say the opposite of what I think. You hope that the absolute power of that transcends, and reaches the audience. ~ Sarah Silverman

The terrible thing about the quest for truth is that you find it. ~ Remy De Gourmont

As you said, he had everything. That made him feel safe and powerful. People can do terrible things when they feel safe and powerful. ~ Becky Chambers

Or perhaps it was simply that things were happening inside her, terrible things, which no one else could even guess at, and thus it was impossible for her to engage with everyday life at the same time. ~ Han Kang

A proverb in the Old Testament states: 'He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city'.
It is when we become angry that we get into trouble. The road rage that affects our highways is a hateful expression of anger. I dare say that most of the inmates of our prisons are there because they did something when they were angry. In their wrath they swore, they lost control of themselves, and terrible things followed, even murder. There were moments of offense followed by years of regret ...
So many of us make a great fuss of matters of small consequence. We are so easily offended. Happy is the man who can brush aside the offending remarks of another and go on his way. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

She looks out at the woods through the screen of limbs. Watching in the same way he is, for the same terrible things he is, with the same expectation, with equally haunted, hollow eyes. She's still gripping the butcher's cleaver tightly and her knuckles show through the skin. He puts a hand gently on hers. I think we're good, he says to her. It's gone. We're good.

She doesn't say anything. She just stares awhile. Clutching that glinting meat hatchet in a tight, mudded fist. The whites of her teeth and eyes in the dark. There is no good, she tells him. Not for us. There's only being ready for the next bad thing coming. ~ Jonathan R. Miller

Every generation confronts the task of choosing its past. Inheritances are chosen as much as they are passed on. The past depends less on 'what happened then' than on the desires and discontents of the present. Strivings and failures shape the stories we tell. What we recall has as much to do with the terrible things we hope to avoid as with the good life for which we yearn. But when does one decide to stop looking to the past and instead conceive of a new order? When is it time to dream of another country or to embrace other strangers as allies or to make an opening, an overture, where there is none? When is it clear that the old life is over, a new one has begun, and there is no looking back? From the holding cell was it possible to see beyond the end of the world and to imagine living and breathing again? ~ Saidiya V. Hartman

If you cannot endure to be thought in the wrong, you will begin to do terrible things to make the wrong appear right. ~ Sydney J. Harris

Sometimes I say terrible things to him because I don't want him to know I'm sad; sometimes I fly off the handle to hide the fact that I don't know what I'm talking about. And other times
too often, maybe
I don't dare have an opinion in case it upsets anyone. ~ Helen Oyeyemi

You think terrible things happened on the battlefields, but terrible things happened in ordinary suburban homes. ~ Liane Moriarty

This diary holds memories of terrible things. Things that were covered up. Things that happened at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry ~ J.K. Rowling

It is a terrible thing for an author to have a lot of people running about his book without any invitation from him at all. ~ A.A. Milne

They are not sorrows, so much as terrible things. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Nothing happens for a reason. Everywhere is chaos...Terrible things just happen and you'd better get out of the way when they do.--Oliver ~ Nicholas Gannon

Human beings do terrible things to each other and the tragic thing about it all is the way the remembrance of past hurt can rob us of our future and become the narrative of our lives. ~ Richard Holloway

It appears that I am willing to put with many things for the sake of Jamie Watson . . . I can tell he's hiding a laugh when he curls his mouth in like he's eating a lemon. Sometimes I say terrible things just to see him do it . . . He flagellates himself rather a lot, as this narrative shows. He shouldn't. He is lovely and warm and quite brave and a bit heedless of his own safety and by any measure the best man I've ever known. I've discovered that I am very clever when it comes to caring about him, and so I will continue to do so.
Later today I will ask him to spend the rest of winter break at my family's home in Sussex . . . Watson will say yes, I'm sure of it. He always says yes to me. – Charlotte ~ Brittany Cavallaro

Good things might happen in your life or bad things might happen, sometimes terrible things, but no matter what happens, your soul is your own. And no one and nothing can stop you. ~ Andrew Klavan

People die, terrible things happen. I know this now. You can't pick up and leave everything behind because there is too much sadness in the world and not enough places to go. ~ Ann Patchett

There are terrible things going on in the world, but I am not going to force them down everyone's throats. ~ Sam Taylor-Johnson

Smoking is related to practically every terrible thing that can happen to you. ~ Loni Anderson

In the Empire, the Scholars are not allowed to read and, like so many bullies and power-seekers who hide behind ideologies to justify the terrible things they do, their oppressors wear masks. 'An Ember in the Ashes' suggests that such masks (literal or figurative) don't work. Not forever, anyway. Masks only cover faces. It's actions that show who we are. ~ Chelsey Philpot

For the purposes of the play, it was perfect to be able to use that and the stresses and strains that there were. At the end of the play, the mother realizes the terrible things she had done. ~ Fay Wray

The terrible thing about the Internet and Amazon is that they take the magic and happy chaos out of book shopping. The Internet might give you what you want, but it won't give you what you need. ~ Tom Hodgkinson

The most terrible things men do, they do in the name of love. - Madame Dorothea ~ Cassandra Clare

Her heart had been through the shredder too many times to count, and she still had a small bit of hope left in her. She didn't like to admit. She certainly didn't like to think about it. But Jack had been her everything. Even after all the terrible things that had happened between them, she still couldn't look past the tiny piece of hope she'd kept locked away. ~ K.A. Linde

It was a terrible thing, sure, but we live in a world that has no shortage of terrible things. You can't stop for all of them. ~ Courtney Summers

[After playing Indiana Jones and Han Solo] hero image concerns me a little, though not for my sake. All it means to me is that I have a responsibility not to get caught doing anything terrible and thereby jeopardise my credentials. Not that I do terrible things, like running over dogs or anything like that. It just makes you think twice before you say or do things in public. ~ Harrison Ford

My ancestors in this hemisphere were, by law, chattel slaves. In the U.S., they were chattel slaves for two and a half centuries - at least 10 generations. I used to think I knew what that meant. Now I realize that I can't begin to imagine the many terrible things that it must have done to them. How did they survive it all and keep their humanity? Certainly, they were never intended to keep it, just as we weren't. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Here is a list of terrible things,
The jaws of sharks, a vultures wings
The rabid bite of the dogs of war,
The voice of one who went before,
But most of all the mirror's gaze,
Which counts us out our numbered days. ~ Clive Barker

I never said it was an excuse...Simply that our pain breeds hate, and our hate makes us all do terrible things. ~ Sara Wolf

The terrible thing about love is that it takes away your safety net, your balancing pole. Even the tightrope you walk upon will disappear beneath you, yet love expects you to keep walking anyway, arms outstretched, one foot after the other, on nothing more than air. ~ Christopher Barzak

Othello is about many different kinds of love: it's about the light, beautiful side of love, and it's about the twisted, darker side of love, and it's about how, if you flip the emotional coin, love can make you do terrible things. (James Earl Jones) ~ Susannah Carson

Alec waited. He'd heard kids
say terrible things before now. Adults poured poison in their minds, and
then it came out of their mouths.
Lily laughed.
"He said," Lily reported with unholy joy, "'What is that cool man doing
with you? ~ Cassandra Clare

I live alone with my one dog and they say it like it's a sad, it's a terrible thing. This woman lives alone with her two cats. ~ Julie Bowen

Hope can make people do terrible things. ~ Tahereh Mafi

What it takes to build muscle in a mysterious, intriguing world. You weave the awful, the terrible things that happened to you as a child into a story. ~ Abigail George

O where does he stalk like a horse in pastures very far afield? I cannot hear him, and silence writes more terrible things than he can ever deny. Is there a suspicion the battle is lost?
Certainly he killed me fourteen nights in succession. To rise again from such slaughter Messiah must indeed become a woman. He said this absence was the mere mechanics of the thing. But It is not the same. ~ Elizabeth Smart

Self-confidence is a terrible, terrible thing; it's also the most attractive thing. ~ Guy Branum

If you can't joke about the most horrendous things in the world, what's the point of jokes? What's the point in having humor? Humor is to get us over terrible things. ~ Ricky Gervais

Art gives charm and beauty to terrible things. That is the power and its glory. It is hard for us to accept the truth that art is doom - a harsh doom for the artist who survives in his art but not as a living human. ~ Wallace Fowlie

The central aspect I wanted to explore was the path a person takes to get to the point where they can justify doing terrible things in the name of good. What motivations sway them? What stones laid in childhood become the foundation legacies are built on? ~ Kiersten White

Lies are terrible things. One could say that the greatest sins afflicting modern society are the proliferation of lies and silence. We lie through our teeth, then swallow our tongues. All the same, were we to speak only the truth all year round, then the truth might lose its value. ~ Haruki Murakami

Perhaps one of the most powerful things the contemporary church could do is to confess our sins to the world, the humbly get on our knees and repent for the terrible things we have done in the name of God. ~ Shane Claiborne

The multiverse is infinite. So, yeah, we go through some terrible things together, and I've seen versions of you who are darker, and damaged, and I don't care. I want you even when you're broken. I want you no matter what. ~ Claudia Gray

The terrible thing about being blacklisted as an actress was that even though, intellectually, you knew what was happening, you still always wondered whether you weren't being hired because you weren't any good. ~ Kim Hunter

To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace. Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true. At its core, perhaps, war is just another name for death, and yet any soldier will tell you, if he tells the truth, that proximity to death brings with it a corresponding proximity to life. After a firefight, there is always the immense pleasure of aliveness. The trees are alive. The grass, the soil - everything. All around you things are purely living, and you among them, and the aliveness makes you tremble. You feel an intense, out-of-the-skin awareness of your living self - your truest self, the human being you want to be and then become by the force of wanting it. In the midst of evil you want to be a good man. You want decency. You want justice and courtesy and human concord, things you never knew you wanted. There is a kind of largeness to it, a kind of godliness. Though it's odd, you're never more alive than when you're almost dead. You recognize what's valuable. Freshly, as if for the first time, you love what's best in yourself and in the world, all that might be lost. At the hour of dusk you sit at your foxhole and look out on a wide river turning pinkish red, and at the mountains beyond, and although in the morning you must cross the river and go into the mountains and do terrible things and maybe die, even so, you find yourself studying the fine colors on the river, you feel wonder and awe at the setting of the sun, and you are filled with a hard, aching lo ~ Tim O'Brien

Time is a terrible thing because it erases joys and pains at the same time. ~ Gosho Aoyama

I wanted to be cute. That's the terrible thing. I should have had more sense. ~ Dorothy Parker

Free time is a terrible thing to waste. Read a book. ~ E.A. Bucchianeri

So he knew terrible things- even the most terrible things-couldn't stop the world from turning. Life went on. And he made a promise to himself that, when he grew older, he'd try to be like his mother. Colourful, and happy and kind and full of joy. ~ Matt Haig

I think that the word bored does not get the attention it deserves. We speak of all sorts of terrible things that happen to people, but we rarely speak about one of the most terrible things of all : that is, being bored, being bored alone and, worse than that, being bored together. ~ Erich Fromm

My first tattoo is a full-on Sailor Jerry situation on my hip - it's a swallow with big spread wings. When I got it I was 20 on St. Mark's Place in New York; I just walked in in a frenzy. It's still there 17 years later and it's not a terrible thing to look at. ~ Maria Dahvana Headley

Why me, Bailey?" Ambrose shot back, his voice too loud for the sober setting. "Why not you, Ambrose?" Bailey bit back immediately, making Ambrose start as if Bailey had convicted him of a crime. "Why me? Why am I in a flipping wheelchair?" "And why Paulie and Grant? Why Jesse and Beans? Why do terrible things happen to such good people?" Ambrose asked. "Because terrible things happen to everyone, Brosey. We're all just so caught up in our own crap that we don't see the shit everyone else is wading through. ~ Amy Harmon

The terrible thing about sunlight is it shows the dirt. ~ Brigid Berlin

I know betrayal can unravel a man. I learned early on from watching my parents that men are capable of doing terrible things to women when they feel deceived. When the bubble of trust and honesty bursts, nothing is off-limits. ~ Sadeqa Johnson