Ambiguous Ending Quotes & Sayings

Not everything is funny or will make you laugh...but what a worthy goal to have. — Bobby Darnell

We always say, one day we will laugh at this. I always try to make sure that this one day is today ... — Jacob Aagaard

I've been a radio reporter for ten years, and if I learned anything from my time at 'This American Life,' it's how to craft a narrative so that even if the ending is ambiguous, it is somehow satisfying. — Sarah Koenig

The instinct of the people is right. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question — T. S. Eliot

If love is like driving a car, then I must be the worst driver in the world. I missed all the signs and ended up lost. — Brian MacLearn

When two plants, constantly different in one or several traits, are crossed, the traits they have in common are transmitted unchanged to the hybrids and their progeny, as numerous experiments have proven; a pair of differing traits, on the other hand, are united in the hybrid to form a new trait, which usually is subject to changes in the hybrids' progeny. — Gregor Mendel

There is no greater thrill in life than to find that you are not only useful, but that you can help, and that your help matters. — George Wier

It's interesting that so many books now are published as the first in a series. It never occurred to me. Although 'The Giver' does have an ambiguous ending. I've heard about that from readers over the years. — Lois Lowry

We know that there will never be a great Newark unless there is a great public school system for our city. — Cory Booker

L'Avventura,' Dad said, 'has the sort of ellipsis ending most American audiences would rather undergo a root canal than be left with, not only because they loathe anything left to the imagination-we're talking about the country that invented spandex-but also because they are a confident, self-assured nation. They know Family. They know Right from Wrong. They know God-many of them attest to daily chats with the man. And the idea that none of us can truly know anything at all-not the lives of our friends or family, not even ourselves-is a thought they'd rather be shot in the arm with their own semi-automatic rifle than face head-on. Personally, I think there's something terrific about not knowing, relinquishing man's feeble attempt to control. When you throw up your hands, say, "Who knows?" you can get on with the sheer gift of being alive. — Marisha Pessl

A whole spectrum of possible relationships comes to light, beginning at one pole with the pious and inert quotation that is isolated and set off like an icon, and ending at the other pole with the most ambiguous, disrespectful, parodic-travestying use of a quotation. The transitions between various nuances on this spectrum are to such an extent flexible, vacillating and ambiguous that it is often difficult to decide whether we are confronting a reverent use of a sacred word or more familiar, even parodic playing with it. — Mikhail Bakhtin

There is no ending, no neatness ... where water is concerned. It is wild, febrile, kind, ambiguous; it is dark and carries the mud, and it is clear and the cleanest thing. Too much of it kills us, and not enough kills us, and it is what makes us, mostly. Water is the cleverest substance, wily beyond the stretch of our mortal imaginations. And no matter where it is pent, no matter if it is air or liquid or solid, it will someday, inevitably, find its way out. — Lauren Groff

The beauty of Billie Holiday is that she gave every singer after her the license to interpret and perform music in ways that were unique to each of us. Her uniqueness was very much a part of the way she sang the songs, the story she wanted to tell through the songs. I didn't really have a full understanding of Billie until I left home
until I'd lived a little, shall we say. At different seasons of my life, when I'd sing her songs or listen to her albums, I'd hear things I didn't hear before. Wherever you are in life, you'll hear different things in her songs. — Dianne Reeves

The handwriting was a girl's. I mean, you can tell. That enchanted cursive. — David Levithan

It is preposterous to think that we are peaceful when every day we spend more money to built killing machine than to educate our children. — Debasish Mridha

He who has learned how to obey will know how to command. — Solon

She felt as if she had somehow failed him and herself by allowing his mother's behavior to upset her. She should be above it; she should shrug it off as the ranting of a village woman; she should not keep thinking of all the retorts she could have made instead of just standing mutely in that kitchen. But she was upset, and made even more so by Odenigbo's expression, as if he could not believe she was not quite as high-minded as he had thought. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I left the ending ambiguous, because that is the way life is. — Bernardo Bertolucci