No One Believed You Quotes & Sayings

No one we knew ever believed that there was anything between us but the sex and some virulent allure, my dirty dishwater circling the drain of you. Not a pretty comparison but maybe it's the best we'll ever deserve, either of us. — Caitlin R. Kiernan

He (Thomas Smith) believed with complete conviction that no animal was permanently ruined. Every horse could be improved. He lived by a single maxim: 'Learn your horse. Each one is an individual, and once you penetrate his mind and heart, you can often work wonders with an otherwise intractable beast. — Laura Hillenbrand

Right, and things were so great back when everyone was ugly. Or did you miss that day in school?" "Yeah, yeah, I know," Shay recited. "Everyone judged everyone else based on their appearance. People who were taller got better jobs, and people even voted for some politicians just because they weren't quite as ugly as everybody else. Blah, blah, blah." "Yeah, and people killed one another over stuff like having different skin color." Tally shook her head. No matter how many times they repeated it at school, she'd never really quite believed that one. "So what if people look more alike now? It's the only way to make people equal. — Scott Westerfeld

The course she was on was as fixed and unalterable as the trajectory of a bullet, but you could see she did not believe that. No one in the life ever believed it. They saw a dozen, a hundred, a thousand people precede them into the trap, saw how unvarying and pitiless the end was, and with all that fresh in their minds they did the same, of their own free will. — Miles Watson

when you got right down to the place where the cheese binds, there was no such thing as marriage, no such thing as union, that each soul stood alone and ultimately defied rationality. That was the mystery. And no matter how well you thought you knew your partner, you occasionally ran into blank walls or fell into pits. And sometimes (rarely, thank God) you ran into a full-fledged pocket of alien strangeness, something like the clear-air turbulence that can buffet an airliner for no reason at all. An attitude or belief which you had never suspected, one so peculiar (at least to you) that it seemed nearly psychotic. And then you trod lightly, if you valued your marriage and your peace of mind; you tried to remember that anger at such a discovery was the province of fools who really believed it was possible for one mind to know another. — Stephen King

So what do you do, then?" she demanded after about a block. "I'm the curator of e-manuscripts for the British Library, just outside of Yorkshire." When she stopped abruptly again, he braced himself for what he knew what to come. No one believed him when he talked about his work, and certainly no one believed that he, of all people, was a librarian. Too young, too thin, too...male. — Alexis D. Craig

Do you believe that you will die? Yes, man is mortal, I am a man, ergo ... No, that isn't what I mean. I know that you know that. What I'm asking is: Have you ever actually believed it, believe it completely, believe not with your mind but with your body, actually felt that one day the fingers now holding this very piece of paper will be yellow and icy ... ? — Yevgeny Zamyatin

My wife believes in it not one whit, but is scrupulous in its observance," said Charles Leiden, sipping from his glass. "A curious state of affairs, don't you think? We are kosher, Fermi probably attends synagogue, Albert believed in Spinoza's God and helped raise money for Israel, Teller may end up teaching in a Jewish parochial school one day, Szilard has the soul of a Jewish prophet. And we tinker with light and atomic bombs, with the energy of the universe. Do you wonder that the world doesn't know what to make of its Jews? No one is on more familiar terms with the heart of the insanity in the universe than is the Jew, and no one is more frenetic and untidy in the search for the an answer. — Chaim Potok

She was a widow, and he stripped himself naked while she went to fetch some of her husband's clothes. But before he could put them on, the police were hammering on the front door with their billy clubs. So the fugitive hid on top of a rafter. When the woman let in the police, though, his oversize testicles hung down in full view."
Trout paused again.
The police asked the woman where the guy was. The woman said she didn't know what guy they were talking about," said Trout. "One of the cops saw the testicles hanging down from a rafter and asked what they were. She said they were Chinese temple bells. He believed her. He said he 'd always wanted to hear Chinese temple bells. "He gave them a whack with his billy club, but there was no sound. So he hit them again, a lot harder, a whole lot harder. Do you know what the guy on the rafter shrieked?" Trout asked me. I said I didn't. "He shrieked, 'TING-A-LING, YOU SON OF A BITCH! — Kurt Vonnegut

I may be old-fashioned in my thinking but I have always believed that it is only when you get less than you are worth, that you can look for respect; if you are paid much more than you are worth you will get no respect. The one thing that I have never had a complaint about is the amount of love and respect which my dairy farmers showered upon me. — Verghese Kurien

Pain was as much a part of this life as the summer and the winter and the rain, and there was no greater asshole than the one who believed you can cure it. — Brian McGreevy

Say the very simplest and most obvious things, say them as often as possible, and put into the saying all the screaming passion which one human voice can carry -- that was Adolf Hitler's technique. No matter whether it was true or not -- for (Hitler) meant literally his maxim that the bigger the falsehood, the easier to get it believed; people would say you wouldn't dare make up a thing like that. Imagine the worst possible about your enemies and then swear that you knew it, you had seed it, it was God's truth and you were ready to stake your life upon it -- shout this, bellow this, over and over, day after day, night after night...when ten million join in it becomes history. — Upton Sinclair

The relation between the white and black races in Africa in many ways resembles the relation between the two sexes.
If the one of the two sexes were told that they did not play any greater part in the life of the other sex than this other sex plays within their own existence, they would be shocked and hurt.
[ ... ]
If they (white people) had been told that they played no more important part in the lives of the Natives than the Natives played in their own lives, they would have been highly indignant and ill at ease.
If you had told the Natives that they played no greater part in the life of the white people than the white people played in their lives, they would never have believed you, but would have laughed at you. Probably in Natives circles, stories are passing about, and being repeated, which prove the all-absorbing interest of the white people in the Kikuyu or Kavirondo, and their complete dependence upon them. — Karen Blixen

Rubashov had always believed that he knew himself rather well. Being without moral prejudices, he had no illusions about the phenomenon called the "first person singular" and had taken for granted, without particular emotion, that this phenomenon was endowed with certain impulses which people are generally reluctant to admit. Now, when he stood with his forehead against the window or suddenly stopped on the third black tile, he made unexpected discoveries. He found that those processes wrongly known as monologues are really dialogues of a special kind - dialogues in which one partner remains silent while the other, against all grammatical rules, addresses him as "I" instead of "you," in order to creep into his confidence and to fathom his intentions, but the silent partner just remains silent, shuns observation, and even refuses to be localized in time and space. — Arthur Koestler

You told me once you believed in God. The old man waved his hand. Maybe, he said. I got no reason to think he believes in me. Oh I'd like to see him for a minute if I could. What would you say to him? Well, I think I'd just tell him. I'd say: Wait a minute. Wait just one minute before you start in on me. Before you say anything, there's just one thing I'd like to know. And he'll say: What's that? And then I'm goin to ast him: What did you have me in that crapgame down there for anyway? I couldnt put any part of it together. Suttree smiled. What do you think he'll say? The ragpicker spat and wiped his mouth. I dont believe he can answer it, he said. I dont believe there is a answer. — Cormac McCarthy

Because who knows? Who knows anything? Who knows who's pulling the strings? Or what is? Or how? Who knows if destiny is just how you tell yourself the story of your life? Another son might not have heard his mother's last words as a prophecy but as drug-induced gibberish, forgotten soon after. Another girl might not have told herself a love story about a drawing her brother made. Who knows if Grandma really thought the first daffodils of spring were lucky or if she just wanted to go on walks with me through the woods? Who knows if she even believed in her bible at all or if she just preferred a world where hope and creativity and faith trump reason? who knows if there are ghosts (sorry, Grandma) or just the living, breathing memories of your loved ones, inside you, speaking to you, trying to get your attention by any means necessary? Who knows where the hell Ralph is? (Sorry, Oscar.) No one knows.
SO we grapple with the mysteries, each in our own way. — Jandy Nelson

There are as many Africas as there are books about Africa
and as many books about it as you could read in a leisurely lifetime. Whoever writes a new one can afford a certain complacency in the knowledge that his is a new picture agreeing with no one else's, but likely to be haugthily disagreed with by all those who believed in some other Africa ... Being thus all things to all authors, it follows, I suppose, that Africa must be all things to all readers.
Africa is mystic; it is wild; it is a sweltering inferno; it is a photographer's paradise, a hunter's Valhalla, an escapist's Utopia. It is what you will, and it withstands all interpretations. It is the last vestige of a dead world or the cradle of a shiny new one. To a lot of people, as to myself, it is just 'home. — Beryl Markham

One thing she did know was the greatest book on human psychology is the Bible. If you were lazy and did not wish to work, or if you had failed to make your way in society, you could always say, 'My kingdom is not of this world.' If you were a jet-set woman who believed in sleeping around, VD or no VD, you could always say Mary Magdalene had no husband, but didn't she wash the feet of Our Lord? Wasn't she the first person to see our risen saviour? If, in the other hand, you believed in the inferiority of the blacks, you could always say, 'Slaves, obey your masters.' It is a mysterious book, one of the greatest of all books, if not the greatest. Hasn't it got all the answers? — Buchi Emecheta

In these countries today no one believed in God anymore, or took account of him, or even remembered that they had once believed; and this had been achieved without difficulty, without conflict, without any kind of violence or protest, without even a real discussion, as easily as a heavy object, held back for some time by an external obstacle, returns as soon as you release it, to its position of equilibrium. Human spiritual beliefs were perhaps far from being the massive, solid irrefutable block we usually imagined; on the contrary, perhaps they were what was most fleeting and fragile in man, the thing most ready to be born and to die. — Michel Houellebecq

Brittany Ellis, I'm goin' to prove to you I'm the guy you believed in ten months ago, and I'm gonna be the successful man you dreamed I could be. My plan is to ask you to marry me four years from now, the day we graduate.'And I guarantee you a lifetime of fun, probably one with no lack of fightin', for you are one passionate mamacita ... but I definitely look forward to some great make-up sessions. Maybe one day we can even go back to Fairfield and help make it the place my dad always hoped it would be. You, me, and Shelley. And any other Fuentes or Ellis family member who wants to be a part of our lives. We'll be one big, crazy Mexican-American family. What do you think? Mujer, you own my soul. — Simone Elkeles

She'd prepared herself for any amount of awkwardness or anger, but no for a hug that was probably the longest she'd ever received from a boy, one of those hugs that made it clear how much the person hugging you was in need of a hug, or believed YOU to be in need of a hug. — Tommy Wallach

I just want to thank you," he says, his voice low. "A group of scientists told you that my genes were damaged, that there was something wrong with me - they showed you test results that proved it. And even I started to believe it." He touches my face, his thumb skimming my cheekbone, and his eyes are on mine, intense and insistent. "You never believed it," he says. "Not for a second. You always insisted that I was . . . I don't know, whole." I cover his hand with my own. "Well, you are." "No one has ever told me that before," he says softly. "It's what you deserve to hear," I say firmly, my eyes going cloudy with tears. "That you're whole, that you're worth loving, that you're the best person I've ever known." Just — Veronica Roth

Do you know," said Natasha in a whisper, moving closer to Nicholas and Sonya,"that when one goes on and on recalling memories, one at last begins to remember what happened before one was in the world ... "
"That is metempsychosis," said Sonya, who had always learned well, and remembered everything."The Egyptians believed that our souls have lived in animals, and will go back into animals again."
"No, I don't believe we ever were in animals," said Natasha, still in a whisper though the music had ceased."But I am certain that we were angels somewhere there, and have been here, and that is why we remember ... — Leo Tolstoy

Edward glanced at me, then back at Olaf. The Greeks believed that once there were no male and female, that all souls were one. Then the souls were torn apart, male and female. The Greeks thought that when you found the other half of your soul, your soul mate, that it would be your perfect lover. But I think if you find your other half, you would be too much alike to be lovers, but you would still be soul mates. — Laurell K. Hamilton

My whole life everyone always said 'it can't be done', 'you'll never do it', 'you will fail', 'no one has ever gone from Austria and become a Mr Universe, blah, blah, blah', or when I ran for governor people were sceptical. It was 'you're going to lose' and 'people don't take people from show-business seriously in politics'. So, I've heard all the 'it's impossible' thing but I didn't pay any attention because I believed that I could do it. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

When I was alive, I believed - as you do - that time was at least as real and solid as myself, and probably more so. I said 'one o'clock' as though I could see it, and 'Monday' as though I could find it on the map; and I let myself be hurried along from minute to minute, day to day, year to year, as though I were actually moving from one place to another. Like everyone else, I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year's Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door. Now I know that I could have walked through the walls. ( ... ) You can strike your own time, and start the count anywhere. When you understand that - then any time at all will be the right time for you. — Peter S. Beagle

Adoption is outside. You act out what it feels like to be the one who doesn't belong. And you act it out by trying to do to others what has been done to you. It is impossible to believe anyone loves you for yourself.

I never believed that my parents loved me. I tried to love them but it didn't work. It has taken me a long time to learn how to love - both the giving and the receiving. I have written about love obsessively, forensically, and I know/knew it as the highest value.

I loved God of course, in the early days, and God loved me. That was something. And I loved animals and nature. And poetry. People were the problem. How do you love another person? How do you trust another person to love you?

I had no idea.
I thought that love was loss.
Why is the measure of love loss? — Jeanette Winterson

He believed he understood, for the first time, why people say life is a dream: if you live long enough, the events of a lifetime, like the events of a dream, cannot be communicated, simply because they are of no interest to anyone.
Human beings themselves, after death, become figures in a dream to the survivors , they fade away and are forgotten, like dreams that were once convincing, but which no one cares to hear about. There are parents who find in their children a receptive audience, with the result that in the child's credulous imagination they find a last semblance of life, which quickly dims out as if they had never existed ... — Adolfo Bioy Casares

I recalled the hundreds of occasions when life had died within me only to be reborn. I remembered that I only lived during those times when I believed in God. Then, as now, I said to myself: I have only to believe in God in order to live. I have only to disbelieve in Him, or to forget Him, in order to die. What are these deaths and rebirths? It is clear that I do not live when I lose belief in God's existence, and I should have killed myself long ago, were it not for a dim hope of finding Him. What then is it you are seeking? a voice exclaimed inside me. There He is! He, without whom it is impossible to live. To know God and to live are one and the same thing. God is life.

'Live in search of God and there will be no life without God!' And more powerfully than ever before everything within and around me came to light, and the light has not deserted me since. — Leo Tolstoy

A man's life was five dogs long, Cortland believed. The first was the one that taught you. The second was the one you taught. The third and fourth were the ones you worked. The last was the one that outlived you. That was the winter dog. Cortland's winter dog had no name. He thought of it only as the scarecrow dog ... — Stephen King

Everything that we were, everything we based our lives upon, everything that we believed is gone. In my journal one time, I expressed the feeling of hurt that I carry around, so similar to the feeling of being betrayed, and I concluded that I had been betrayed, by Life itself, and that's pretty deep. So, the betrayed ones, like you and me, have to start all over again, from Absolute Zero, and construct some new version of "Life," one that we can "live with." No way we can hold onto what we used to believe, and no way we can forget what has actually happened in our lives, and in our worlds. We will never trust Life again. — Neil Peart

There were no judges and no prizes. The Trials weren't like that, as Petulia had said. The point was to show what you could do, to show what you'd become, so that people would go away thinking things like 'That Caramella Bottlethwaite, she's coming along nicely.' It wasn't a competition, honestly. No one won.

And if you believed that, you'd believe that the moon is pushed around the sky by a goblin called Wilberforce. — Terry Pratchett

Evie," she asked, "how do you know if you love someone?"
Evie considered the question as they passed a low circular boundary hedge containing an explosion of multi-colored primulas. "I'm sure this is when I'm s-supposed to say something wise and helpful," she said with a self-deprecating shrug. "But my situation was different from yours. St. Vincent and I didn't expect to fall in love. It caught us both unaware."
"Yes, but how did you know?"
"It was the moment I realized he was willing to die for me. I don't think anyone, including St. Vincent, believed he was capable of self-sacrifice. It taught me that you can assume you know a person quite well - but that person can s-surprise you. Everything seemed to change from one moment to the next - suddenly he became the most important thing in the world to me. No, not important ... necessary. — Lisa Kleypas

I have always believed I cd diagnose this state of being in love, which they regard as most particular, as inspired by item, one pair of black eyes or indifferent blue, item, one graceful attitude of body or mind, item, one female history of some twenty-two years from, shall we say, 1821-1844
I have always believed this in love to be something of the most abstract masking itself under the particular forms of both lover and beloved. And Poet, who assumes and informs both. I wd have told you
no, I do tell you
friendship is rarer, more idiosyncratic, more individual and in every way more durable than this Love. — A.S. Byatt

They don't believe in anything either. You and your like are trying to make a war with the help of people who just aren't interested."
"They don't want communism."
"They want enough rice," I said. "They don't want to be shot at. They want one day to be much the same as another. They don't want our white skins around telling them what they want."
"If Indochina goes
"
"I know that record. Siam goes. Malaya goes. Indonesia goes. What does 'go' mean? If I believed in your God and another life, I'd bet my future harp against your golden crown that in five hundred years there may be no New York or London, but they'll be growing paddy in these fields, they'll be carrying their produce to market on long poles, wearing their pointed hats. The small boys will be sitting on the buffaloes. I like the buffaloes, they don't like our smell, the smell of Europeans. — Graham Greene

When you're a little bit dumb and naive things get done that no one believed could be done. — John Peterman

He truly believed that no one could love him, and no matter who you are, that hurts. It made you insecure. It made you want to hide and build fences — Harlan Coben

I don't know where you'll find her, or what mindset she'll have, but I know one thing with unwavering certainty - that girl loves you like no woman has ever loved a man in the history of the world. She called you her heart. And I believed her. — Jewel E. Ann

Mom also believed that there is such a thing as a good secret. Maybe something kind you did for someone but didn't want that person to know, because you didn't want him to be embarrassed or feel as though he owed you anything. I thought back to a Harvard student of Mom's, an aspiring playwright who won an award to travel in Europe - but the award didn't exist. Mom had simply paid, anonymously, for him to have enough money to go on what turned out to be a life-changing trip. I write about this only because I was told that years later this fellow figured it all out, when he went to research who else had won this lucrative traveling fellowship and discovered that the answer was no one. As — Will Schwalbe

Vile, ruthless, amoral. Isn't that why you hired Kaz in the first place? Because he does the things that no one else dares? Go on, Van Eck. Break my legs and see what happens. Dare him."
Had she really believed a merch could outthink Kaz Brekker? Kaz would get her free and then they'd show this man exactly what whores and canals rats could do. — Leigh Bardugo

Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things.'
I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again! — Lewis Carroll

How was your day?" she whispered.
"It went as expected," he said. "Mostly. No one died. All of the sentinels went through to the next round, but then nobody believed anything different would occur. Graydon - " His gold eyes danced suddenly. "You know what a big motherfucker Graydon is. He turned into a gryphon, and then he just sat down and looked at his opponent, who forfeited. It was the fastest bout of the day. — Thea Harrison

One of the special beauties of America is that it is the only country in the world where you are not advised to learn the language before entering. Before I ever set out for the United States, I asked a friend if I should study American. His answer was unequivocal. "On no account," he said. "The more English you sound, the more likely you are to be believed." — Quentin Crisp

After your performed the exorcism, how did you know that demon wasn't still in there, hiding? How do you know it didn't go in a hibernation state, quieting down to come out later, years and years later when no one would be around to help? Hey, how do you know if the wrong spirit left? What if you expelled the person's real spirit and only the demon's spirit was there to take its place? If I believed in any of that stuff, I'd be afraid that was going to happen to me. — Paul Tremblay

In the end, He's the only reason that I made it. Sometimes that's the only thing we have. Whether you call it God, or hope, or faith -whatever word you use- the fact is, I couldn't have survived if I hadn't believed in something. It was the one part of me that neither Warren nor Allen could touch, and no matter what happens, as long as I have that, I've won. — Elissa Wall

My entire life has been one big, fat whopper of a lie, and my parents betrayed me in the worst possible way.
I don't care if they believed they were protecting me.
You don't lie to the people you profess to love, no matter how painful the truth is. — Siobhan Davis

Professor Landry was a prime example of someone who marched to the beat of her own drum, as evidenced by her policy that no one precede her name with Professor. She firmly believed that titles had been created to distinguish the upper class from the lower class, and she wanted no part in perpetuating socio-economic stereotypes. So she either went by Landry, Neve, or Hey, you. She didn't really care, so long as the word "professor" never echoed off the walls she was within. She — Nicole Williams

My point is this - you don't know. When I was first here, people looked at my hair, noticed apples on my tray, and thought 'hippie.' Then, from 'hippie' they thought 'druggie.' From there it went to 'will get me in trouble' and 'not worth my time,' and then they stopped thinking at all. No one bothered to find out if what they thought about me was true. No one wanted to hear what I thought. No one cared what I believed in. No one cared about talking to me or asking what my plans were for the day or night. And then came you. Don't let what you think you know make him into what I could have been. Don't become someone who doesn't think, just because you don't like him for some reason. Because, quite frankly, I like how you think. Except for now, of course. — Rebecca McKinsey

He had recorded a message to be played upon his death. He had told no one - except Teela, his shopping companion and health care worker, who delivered the tape to his family. It was brief. But in it, the Reb answered the two questions he had most been asked in his life of faith. One was whether he believed in God. He said he did. The other was whether there is life after death. On this he said, "My answer here, too, is yes, there is something. But friends, I'm sorry. Now that I know, I can't even tell you." The whole place broke up laughing. — Mitch Albom

If she possessed a genius - and a growing number of us think she did - it was a capacity for understanding and trusting the improvisational nature of her will. This might seem a contradictory state, and for most of us it would be. We have hopes and make plans, and if they are dashed or waylaid, we naturally rationalize and redraw the map to locate ourselves anew. Or else we brood and too firmly root. Very few can step forward again and again in what amounts to veritable leaps into the void, where there are no ready holds, where little is familiar, where you get constantly stuck in the thickets of your uncertainties and fears. Fan was different. As we have come to realize, she was not one to hold herself back. Or to be fettered. In this way she startles us, inspires us. She was someone who pursued her project as a genuine artist might, following with focus and intensity as well as an enduring innocence a goal she could not quite yet understand or see but wholly believed. — Chang-rae Lee

[I]t struck me how easy it is to bamboozle an uneducated audience if you have prepared beforehand a set of repartees with which to evade awkward questions."
...
"You can go on and on telling lies, and the most palpable lies at that, and even if they are not actually believed, there is no strong revulsion either. We are all drowning in filth. When I talk to anyone or read the writings of anyone who has an axe to grind, I feel that intellectual honesty and balanced judgment have simply disappeared from the face of the earth. Everyone's thought is forensic, everyone is simply putting a 'case' with deliberate suppression of his opponent's point of view, and, what is more, with complete insensitiveness to any sufferings except those of himself and his friends ... . But is there no one who has both firm opinions and a balanced outlook? Actually there are plenty, but they are powerless. All power is in the hands of paranoiacs. — George Orwell

If you accuse a man of murder, you might be believed, but if you accuse him of eating children for lunch and dinner like Gilles de Rais, no one will take you seriously. — Umberto Eco

He is not a tame lion," said Tirian. "How should we know what he would do? We, who are murderers. Jewel, I will go back. I will give up my sword and put myself in the hands of these Calormenes and ask that they bring me before Aslan. Let him do justice on me."
"You will go to your death, then," said Jewel.
"Do you think I care if Aslan dooms me to death?" said the King. "That would be nothing, nothing at all. Would it not be better to be dead than to have this horrible fear that Aslan has come and is not like the Aslan we have believed in and longed for? It is as if the sun rose one day and were a black sun."
"I know," said Jewel. "Or as if you drank water and it were dry water. You are in the right, Sire. This is the end of all things. Let us go and give ourselves up."
"There is no need for both of us to go."
"If ever we loved one another, let me go with you now," said the Unicorn. "If you are dead and if Aslan is not Aslan, what life is left for me? — C.S. Lewis

I'm not a prophet, but I always thought it was natural for dictatorships to fall. I remember in 1989, two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, had you said it was going to happen no one would have believed you. The system seemed powerful and unbreakable. Suddenly overnight it blew away like dust. — Salman Rushdie

Betsy Trotwood don't look a likely subject for the tender passion, but the time was, Trot, when she believed in that man most entirely. When she loved him, Trot, right well. When there was no proof of attachment and affection that she would not have given him. He was a fine-looking man when I married him", said my aunt, with an echo of her old pride and admiration in her tone. "I was a fool; and I am so far an incurable fool on that subject, that, for the sake of what I once believed him to be, I wouldn't have even this shadow of my idle fancy hardly dealt with. For I was in earnest, Trot, if ever a woman was. There, my dear. Now, you know the beginning, middle, and end, and all about it. We won't mention the subject to one another any more; neither, of course, will you mention it to anybody else. This is my grumpy, frumpy story, and we'll keep it to ourselves, Trot! — Charles Dickens

with Jewish families: they believed that education was an investment in the future, the only thing that no one can ever take away from your children, even if, heaven forbid, there's another war, another revolution, another migration, more discriminatory laws - your diploma you can always fold up quickly, hide it in the seams of your clothes, and run away to wherever Jews are allowed to live. — Amos Oz

No, I was never that kind of guy. I believed in true romance; one-night stands are always going to leave you feeling cold and empty. I was always looking for the real thing, romance, and all that. I love being married. I never liked the idea of going to bars and chasing girls. Some guys might enjoy that, but I always wanted to find that one special woman, which I did when I met Jenna. — Channing Tatum

It was hard to tell if he was lying, or really believed his own bullshit. "We're good for each other. You give me what I need. I give you what you need. No one needs to know what that is because it's a secret between us. So we put on our suit. That's the investment: us. — Dan Skinner

But the truly ambitious teams find relief in honesty when they've lost, because it's the diagnostic tool that leads to a solution - here's what we did wrong and let's fix it, so we don't ever have to feel this way again. Great teams explain their failure; they don't excuse it. Then they pay a visit to Charles Atlas and get stronger. When you explain a loss aloud, it's no longer a tormenting mystery. I believed in that brand of honesty my whole career, and I knew at least one other coach who believed in it too. — Pat Summitt

You had felt idle in this city through which you had paced only to kill time. But the emptiness that you believed yourself confronted with was an illusion: you had filled those moments with sensations all the more powerful in that nothing and no one had distracted you from them. — Edouard Leve

Imagine if you were the last Shadowhunter left on earth, imagine if all your family and friends were dead, imagine if there were no one left who even believed in what you were. Imagine if you were on the earth in a billion, billion years, after the sun had scorched away all the life, and you were crying out from inside yourself for just one single living creature to still draw breath alongside you, but there was nothing, only rivers of fire and ashes. Imagine being that lonely. and then imagine there was only one way to fix it. Then imagine what you would do to make that thing happen. — Cassandra Clare

You don't know me; you never knew my heart. No man knows my history. I cannot tell it: I shall never undertake it. I don't blame any one for not believing my history. If I had not experienced what I have, I would not have believed it myself. I never did harm any man since I was born in the world. My voice is always for peace. — Joseph Smith Jr.

(If God wills it) ... the number of angels ... may be infinite ... Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed. Once upon a time, atoms did not exist. There was no Dalton, no Rutherford. Albert Einstein was nothing more than a theorist, but you only have to look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki to know that things invisible exist and bear great power. The power to destroy. Or the power to create ... Atoms and angels, reason and faith ... One without the other is less than half as strong and can be a danger to our vitality. Reason is subject to the tests of logic and observable, demonstrable phenomena. Faith is tested by our desire and will. One cannot see faith, just as one cannot pour out hope or love from a beaker. Self-sacrifice and devotion escape the strongest microscope, but such qualities of spirit can be shown and known by us all ... And so with God's messengers, more believed than seen, more felt than touched, our angel's exist in open hearts, if we have but faith. — Keith Donohue

I drink because I don't stand a chance and I know it. I couldn't drive a truck and I couldn't get on the cops with my build. I got to sling beer and sing when I just want to sing. I drink because I got responsibilities that I can't handle ... I am not a happy man. I got a wife and children and I don't happen to be a hard-working man. I never wanted a family ... Yes, your mother works hard. I love my wife and I love my children. But shouldn't a man have a better life? Maybe someday it will be that the Unions will arrange for a man to work and to have time for himself too. But that won't be in my time. Now, it's work hard all the time or be a bum ... no in-between. When I die, nobody will remember me for long. No one will say, "He was a man who loved his family and believed in the Union." All they will say is," Too bad. But he was nothing but a drunk no matter which way you look at it." Yes they'll say that. — Betty Smith

He knows I have a soft spot for RLS and not just because he was sick or because we have the same initials but because there's something impossibly romantic about him and because before he started writing Treasure Island he first drew a map of an unknown island and because he believed in invisible places and was one of the last writers to know what the word adventure means. I could give you a hundred reasons why RLS is The Man. Look in his The Art of Writing (Book 683, Chatto & Windus, London) where he says that no living people have had the influence on him as strong for good as Hamlet or Rosalind. Or when he says his greatest friend is D'Artagnan from The Three Musketeers (Book 5, Regent Classics, London). RLS said: 'When I suffer in mind, stories are my refuge, I take them like opium.' And when you read Treasure Island you feel you are casting off. That's the thing. You are casting off and leaving behind the ordinary dullness of the world. — Niall Williams

I'm an old man, and I'm no warrior. But during my years watching the rise and fall of those in power, I've learned that great men do not wait for their greatness to be recognized. If you wish to have the respect that you yearn for, then you must grab it and fight anyone who would say otherwise. If you wish to be a duke, you act like a duke. If you wish to be commander-in-chief, then act like a commander-in-chief."
This was not the sort of speech that a younger Mata Zyndu, certain that each man had a proper place assigned to him in the chain of being, would have believed in. But he realized with a start that his thoughts had changed.
Didn't Kuni Garu become a duke simply by acting as one? Didn't Huno Krima become king simply by declaring that he was one? He, Mata Zyndu, heir of the proudest name in all the Islands, was a greater warrior then either of them, and yet here he sat, unhappy that people had not come to beg him to lead them. — Ken Liu

Is not the gospel its own sign and wonder? Is not this a miracle of miracles, that 'God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish'? Surely that precious word, 'Whosoever will, let him come and take the water of life freely' and that solemn promise, 'Him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out,' are better than signs and wonders! A truthful Saviour ought to be believed. He is truth itself. Why will you ask proof of the veracity of One who cannot lie? — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

If you made up a city like this, no one would have believed you. It seemed more like myth than reality- a whole metropolis built up around an industry that recorded dreams on giant screens, a city bordered by an ocean and a desert and snowcapped mountains. And right through the urban sprawl were canyons full of flowers, wild animals and secrets. — Francesca Lia Block

Barrons's hold tightened further. "Give me one good reason not to kill him. Ms. Lane," he growled roughly around thick, long black fangs. "Because I asked you not to, Barrons. That's good enough. You killed the other princes, and I was grateful. I wasn't ready then. I was still afraid of what I'd become. But this last prince is mine to kill or not to kill. And I say no. At the moment. And although Cruce is incapable of understanding that word, I know you know that a no from me means no. And you will honor it," I said in a voice that brooked no resistance. It was one of the defining differences between the two proud, dark, violent males. And if he didn't honor it, he wasn't the man I believed he was. — Karen Marie Moning

I would not have believed it, either. No human has ever come back from being made Pri-ya, and, although I am pleased that you have recovered from what was done to you, I am not pleased that I must now compete for you with no glamour, without the glory of my birthright. They were Unseelie, MacKayla, the foulest of the foul, the darkest of my race, the abominations. I am Seelie, and we are vastly different. I had hoped that one day, when you trusted me, you would let me share with you the ecstasy of being one like me. With no pain, MacKayla, and no price. Now that can never be. You have no idea how exquisite the experience might have been and now never will. — Karen Marie Moning

She was not unacquainted with these sudden shocking illuminations, but they were among those experiences which are ever-new - like love, orgasms, or barking your shin. You never really got used to them.

This one wasn't the light that cleaves the darkness, the one bright shining truth that slashes through the murk and banishes all doubt, the divine radiance that heals all wounds before plodding Father Time gets his boots on. She had no faith in those counterfeit notions, though it wasn't the thing itself that was false. It was the yearning for it - the yearning that must cleave to something (anything) because it was bright, not because it was true; that confused letting go with running away; that believed healing was the mere dead absence of pain. — Owen R. O'Neill

Many can only say of Jesus that they hope they love him; they trust they love him; but only a poor and shallow experience will be content to stay here. No one ought to give any rest to his spirit till he feels quite sure about a matter of such vital importance. We ought not to be satisfied with a superficial hope that Jesus loves us, and with a bare trust that we love him. The old saints did not generally speak with "buts," and "ifs," and "hopes," and "trusts," but they spoke positively and plainly. "I know whom I have believed," saith Paul. "I know that my Redeemer liveth," saith Job. Get positive knowledge of your love of Jesus, and be not satisfied till you can speak of your interest in him as a reality, which you have made sure by having received the witness of the Holy Spirit, and his seal upon your soul by faith. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Horza recalled that the Culture's attitude to somebody who believed in an omnipotent God was to pity them, and to take no more notice of the substance of their faith than one would take of the ramblings of somebody claiming to be Emperor of the Universe. The nature of the belief wasn't totally irrelevant - along with the person's background and upbringing, it might tell you something about what had gone wrong with them - but you didn't take their views seriously. — Iain Banks

And what happens then?
When?
After you're dead.
Dont nothing happen. You're dead.
You told me once you believed in God.
The old man waved his hand. Maybe, he said. I got no reason to think he believes in me. Oh I'd like to see him for a minute if I could.
What would you say to him?
Well, I think I'd just tell him. I'd say: Wait a minute. Wait just one minute before you start in on me. Before you say anything, there's just one thing I'd like to know. And he'll say: what's that? And then I'm goin to ast him: What did you have me in that crapgame down there for anyway? I couldnt put any part of it together.
Suttree smiled. What do you think he'll say?
The ragpicker spat and wiped his mouth. I dont believe he can answer it. I dont believe there is an answer. — Cormac McCarthy

I tell you why I like Chanel so much: when I started off, no one wanted to give me clothes to wear. Absolutely no one! All the labels said, 'Who is she?' But Chanel believed in me from the very beginning. — Freida Pinto

I don't know when love became elusive
what i know, is that no one i know has it
my fathers arms around my mothers neck
fruit too ripe to eat, a door half way open
when your name is a just a hand i can never hold
everything i have ever believed in, becomes magic.
i think of lovers as trees, growing to and
from one another searching for the same light,
my mothers laughter in a dark room,
a photograph greying under my touch,
this is all i know how to do, carry loss around until
i begin to resemble every bad memory,
every terrible fear,
every nightmare anyone has ever had.
i ask did you ever love me?
you say of course, of course so quickly
that you sound like someone else
i ask are you made of steel? are you made of iron?
you cry on the phone, my stomach hurts
i let you leave, i need someone who knows how to stay. — Warsan Shire

So the next time you doubt the strangeness of the future, remember how you were born in a hunter-gatherer tribe ten thousand years ago, when no one knew of Science at all. Remember how you were shocked, to the depths of your being, when Science explained the great and terrible sacred mysteries that you once revered so highly. Remember how you once believed that you could fly by eating the right mushrooms, and then you accepted with disappointment that you would never fly, and then you flew. Remember how you had always thought that slavery was right and proper, and then you changed your mind. Don't imagine how you could have predicted the change, for that is amnesia. Remember that, in fact, you did not guess. Remember how, century after century, the world changed in ways you did not guess.
Maybe then you will be less shocked by what happens next. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

Her husband once said that he believed some sort of mathematical equation could be applied to life - since the longer you lived, the greater its seeming velocity. She always attributed this to familiarity. If you kept the same habits - and if you lived in the same place, worked in the same place - then you no longer spent a lot of time noticing. Noticing things - and trying to make sense of them - is what makes time remarkable. Otherwise, life blurs by, as it does now, so that she has difficulty keeping track of time at all, one day evaporating into the next. — Benjamin Percy

Bear in mind, now, that most of this work was done by men who had no intention whatever, when they enlisted, of making war to end slavery. Slavery was killed by the act of war itself. It was the one human institution on all the earth which could not possibly be defended by force of arms, because that force, once called into play, was bound to destroy it. The Union armies which ended slavery were led by men like Grant and Sherman, who had profound sympathies with the South and who had never in their lives shown the slightest sympathies with the abolitionists. But they were also men who believed in the one great, fearful fact about modern war
that when you get into it, the guiding rule is that you have to win it. — Bruce Catton

I am not in the habit of explaining myself. I have made a concession to you in doing so. Choose now how you will proceed."
I refuse your claim on me, she answered in the only way he allowed her to communicate. I will take my refusal to our people and plead with them for the mercy you evidently don't have in you. I will not be tied to you!
He bent over her, a dark, imposing figure exuding power. His silver eyes glittered at her. "Hear me, Savannah. If you believe nothing else about me, believe this. You belong to me, with me. No one will ever attempt to take you from me and live.No one." His voice was low,beautiful,and all the more deadly for it.
Her violet gaze was held captive by his pale one.She believed him. And not even her father,the Prince of their people, had a chance of destroying him. — Christine Feehan

There are two kinds of patriotism
monarchical patriotism and republican patriotism. In the one case the government and the king may rightfully furnish you their notions of patriotism; in the other, neither the government nor the entire nation is privileged to dictate to any individual what the form of his patriotism shall be. The gospel of the monarchical patriotism is: "The King can do no wrong." We have adopted it with all its servility, with an unimportant change in the wording: "Our country, right or wrong!" We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had:
the individual's right to oppose both flag and country when he (just he, by himself) believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism. — Mark Twain

I believed ... No. I knew we had an attraction. Then you left and I realized you were taking what you felt for me and giving it to another woman. A woman you didn't even know. And I wanted - needed - " Anna threw up her hands in frustration. "I wanted to be the one you-you swived with. — Elizabeth Hoyt

No. I tell you, it is Holy Church which instructs Christians how to live, not the Bible. Christians could be pure in their faith even if the Bible had never been written. Doctrine has passed orally from one generation to the next, through Holy Mother Church, God's instrument on earth. 'Quod semper, quod ubique, quod omnibus.' 'What has been believed always, everywhere, and by all.' Tradition. Founded by the Apostles and continuing, unbroken, to the present day. Christ founded a church. He did not write a book! — Barbara Kyle

Rushing outside, she carries long, sharp scissors and snips at flower petals while screaming, "Off with your head!" When I realize what she's really after, a strange discomfort stirs inside. I've seen how the petals tatter beneath the blades. I don't want her to ruin my moth's pretty wings. I throw my hands over the scissors to stop her. The moth escapes unscathed. But I'm not so lucky ...
Coming out of the trance, I drop to the ground and clutch aching palms to my chest. The scars throb as if freshly cut. Morpheus bows over me, smoothing my hair. "I told you that you were special, Alyssa," he murmurs, the weight of his palm strangely comforting on the top of my head. "No one else has ever bled for me. The loyalty of one child for another is immeasurable. You believed in me, shared new experiences with me, grew with me. That has earned you my sincerest devotion." — A.G. Howard

Grimes believed in what he did, with no doubts. Though he was older than me by over a decade, I suddenly felt old. Some things mark your soul, not in years but in blood and pain and selling off parts of yourself to get the bad guys, until you finally look in the mirror and aren't sure which side you're on anymore. There comes a point when having a badge doesn't make you the good guy, it just makes you one of the guys. I needed to be one of the good guys, or what the hell was I doing? — Laurell K. Hamilton

Too much faith is the worst ally. When you believe in something literally, through your faith you'll turn it into something absurd. One who is a genuine adherent, if you like, of some political outlook, never takes its sophistries seriously, but only its practical aims, which are concealed beneath these sophistries. Political rhetoric and sophistries do not exist, after all, in order that they be believed; rather, they have to serve as a common and agreed upon alibi. Foolish people who take them in earnest sooner or later discover inconsistencies in them, begin to protest, and finish finally and infamously as heretics and apostates. No, too much faith never brings anything good ... — Milan Kundera

It was like discovering that your innermost fires and terrors, the things you believed no one else could fathom, were in fact the basis of a recognized philosophy. Some part of you felt intimately invaded, threatened; some other part fell to its knees and sobbed in gratitude that it was no longer alone. — Poppy Z. Brite