Quotes & Sayings About Secrets

Pg 623 When they were young, they had only their secrets to give one another:
Confessions were currency, and divulgences were a form of intimacy. — Hanya Yanagihara

A real secret is something which only one person knows. — Idries Shah

These are open secrets, so to speak. Of the kind we dare not articulate, for fear of wounding those close to us. — Joyce Carol Oates

Like their modern counterparts, and unlike traditional warriors, Byzantine soldiers were normally trained to fight in different ways, according to specific tactics adapted to the terrain and the enemy at hand. In that simple disposition lay one of the secrets of Byzantine survival. While standards of proficiency obviously varied greatly, Byzantine soldiers went into battle with learned combat skills, which could be adapted by further training for particular circumstances. That made Byzantine soldiers, units, and armies much more versatile than their enemy counterparts, who only had the traditional fighting skills of their nation or tribe, learned from elders by imitation and difficult to change. In — Edward N. Luttwak

Secrets make life more interesting. You can be in a crowded room with someone and touch them without touching, just with a look, because they know a part of you no one else knows. And whenever you're with them, the two of you are alone, because the you they see no one else can see. — Mohsin Hamid

She talks. People talk easily to me. They think a bald albino hunchback can't hide anything. My worst is all out in the open. It makes it necessary for people to tell you about themselves. They begin out of simple courtesy. Just being visible is my biggest confession, so they try to set me at ease by revealing our equality, by dragging out their apparent deformities. That's how it starts. But I am like a stranger on the bus and they get hooked on having a listener. They go too far because I am one listener who is in no position to judge or find fault. They stretch out their dampest secrets because a creature like me has no values or morals. If I am "good" (and they assume that I am), it's obviously for lack of opportunity to be otherwise. And I listen. I listen eagerly, warmly, because I care. They tell me everything eventually. — Katherine Dunn

Our ex-wifes always harbour secrets about us that make them irresistable. Until, of course, we remember who we are and what we did and why we are not married anymore. — Richard Ford

Your death defines my life. I want to find the love we never had and explicate it in your name.
I want to take your secrets public. I want to burn down the distance between us.
I want to give you breath. — James Ellroy

Long past the moment when her neck begins to stiffen and ache, she continues to stare into the darkness, even though none of the human secrets she needs to know are to be found in the stars but rather closer to the earth her boots stand upon. — Larry Watson

He's in his circle, and I'm in mine, and we just go around and around. — Jen Calonita

Nowhere can a secret keep
Always secret, dark and deep,
Half so well as in the past,
Buried deep to last, to last.
Keep it in your own dark heart.
Otherwise the rumors start.
After many years have buried
Secrets over which you worried,
No confidant can then betray
All the words you didn't say.
Only you can then exhume
Secrets safe within the tomb
Of memory, of memory,
Within the tomb of memory.
-The Book of Counted Sorrows — Dean Koontz

The heir alone would be able to unseal the Chamber of Secrets, unleash the horror within, and use it to purge the school of all who were unworthy to study magic." There — J.K. Rowling

Time that never ends, that never passes, that remains in the present, where all of life's secrets lie. — Paulo Coelho

Did you see them? They're kids, Nathan. Children, who ended up being in the wrong place, at the wrong time." I blew out a frustrated breath, tracking one of the angry young teens in topic as he was dragged kicking and yelling from the room. "They won't even consider switching sides. Plumber has them so scared, all they can see if the numbers advantage he has over us."
"Numbers don't mean shit when you're fighters have the same level of skill as a two year old." He sniffed, shaking his head at the kid who was finally pulled from the room. "And that's insulting to two year olds. — Violet Cross

...Promises are more dangerous then secrets. — Aimee Friedman

People like to keep their little secrets to themselves. It's like growing mushrooms in the cellar and running down to take a look at them now and then. — Marjorie Kellogg

What about you?You stay by my side day and night and take the hardest hits of them all.Why,Will?Why have you stayed with me all these centuries?You watch me die again and again,yet you never leave. You keep trying to save me, even though you know I'm doomed. All because some angel told you to?Come on.No more secrets,you said.Tell me. — Courtney Allison Moulton

That which we cannot see rules us," she said. She stared into her drink. "I mean particles, electrons, electromagnetic forces. Secrets. Love. Time. Fear. DNA. What we cannot see controls our lives." She — Eric Bosse

Secrets create dark spaces within a relationship," she said. "When one person keeps secrets, the other person fills in the dark spaces with their fears and insecurities. — Lauren Rowe

To Your eyes a thousand years are like yesterday come and gone, no more than a watch in the night.
You sweep men away like a dream, like grass which springs up in the morning.
In the morning it springs up and flowers, by evening it withers and fades.
So we are destroyed in Your anger, struck with terror in Your fury.
Our guilt lies open before You; our secrets in the light of Your face.
All our days pass away in Your anger. Our life is over like a sigh.
Our span is seventy years or eighty for those who are strong. And most of these are emptiness and pain, they pass swiftly and we are gone. — Psalm 89

It is one of the secrets of Nature in its mood of mockery that fine weather lays heavier weight on the mind and hearts of the depressed and the inwardly tormented than does a really bad day with dark rain sniveling continuously and sympathetically from a dirty sky. — Muriel Spark

In our not-yet-acknowledged secret garden lie the seeds of some of our best not-yet-written stories — Sol Stein

The heart cherishes secrets not worth the telling — Stephen R. Donaldson

The theory is that if you spill all your secrets, you'll have no desire to lie about anything, ever again. Like the worst about you is already in the open, so why not just be honest? — Veronica Roth

But unlike Mama, I would not go to heaven. My secrets padlocked the gates. I'd be a torn kite stuck in the dead branches of a tree, unable to fly. — Ruta Sepetys

He'd kept this silence because his own secrets were darker, more hidden, and because he believed that his secrets had created hers. — Kim Edwards

ASTROLOGY PREDICTIVE FORE GLANCE KNOW-HOW LIGHT FLASH IS NEEDED TO ALL HUMANS IN THIS MODERN CENTURY TO UNVEIL THE SECRETS OF GOD UNIVERSE FUTURE DIVINE DRAFT.SO,RESEARCH IN ASTROLOGY HAS TO BE DEMANDED ON AROUND THE GLOBE TO HAVE GRIP ON SOUL FACING NEXT MICRO SECOND. — Various

hungry spirits so that cattle and crops would not be damaged. The nearness of the spirits meant that all sorts of secrets could be divined on Halloween Night. Young couples roasted nuts on a fire, for example, — Frank McNally

Disclosing one's "deep, dark secrets" makes them no less deep or dark or secret than any other petty flaw. — Alan De Jager

Time after time, I have seen secrets tear people apart. — Alys Arden

Do you know one reason my parents have stayed married so long?" I asked and Lark shook her head. "They're a team. If one has a problem, they both have a problem. No secrets, no holding back. They face everything together. — Bijou Hunter

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

I don't want to start the rest of my life having regrets. — Jen Calonita

I'm a parent, especially when you've had the intense parenting the way I had. It's all in the bank. It's all in the great experience bank. Those are your secrets. That's the stuff that makes your work rich, that's what you dip into. — Hector Elizondo

For it is said, you know, that a letter will always seek a reader; that sooner or later, like it or not, words have a way of finding the light, of making their secrets known. — Kate Morton

Secrets have power. And that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them. Writing them down is worse, because who can tell how many eyes might see them inscribed on paper, no matter how careful you might be with it. So it's really best to keep your secrets when you have them, for their own good, as well as yours. — Erin Morgenstern

Nothing is concealed from the wise and sensible, while the unbelieving and unworthy cannot learn the secrets. — Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa

I had fewer female clients. I don't know why. It was always the men who chose me. And the ones whose secrets I had to hold. I represented Sophia Loren. She was jailed in Caserta for 17 days. — Giovanna Cau

There's something about those secrets that only the deceased person can rightly understand. Something that can't be explained, no matter how hard you try. They're what the dead person has to take with him to his grave. Like a valuable piece of luggage. — Haruki Murakami

Recipe for friendship:
2 cups of TRUST, 1 dash of CARING, 2 cups of UNDERSTANDING, 2 spoonfuls of SHARED SECRETS, 1 cup of MUTUAL AFFECTION, 1 spoonful of CRAZY, and a whole bag of FUN — Karen Gibbs

As for her, I'd forgotten her for the moment. So I shall never understand why, suddenly, bewilderingly, I was certain that everything I had imagined to be truth was false. False. Only the magic and the dream are true - all the rest's a lie. Let it go. Here is the secret. Here. — Jean Rhys

Ah man. I remember the days of lying to my mother about a boy. Once I had a boy hidden in the closet and of course Mom wouldn't leave, so I finally had to pretend to get sick to my stomach just to get her out of the room long enough for him to climb out the window and down the tree. He fell, broke his leg. Ah, to be young again. — Amy Sherman-Palladino

No secret can remain hidden for ever. Silently and patiently, it waits in the dark. It lets you build your life, carefully stacking the bricks one by one, and then it appears. It deals its blow and everything crumbles. That's why it remains intact and incorruptible in time, waiting for its ultimate destiny to be revealed. — Stefanos Livos

What is a secret? It is much more than knowledge shared with only a few, or perhaps only one another. It is power. It is a bond. It is a sign of deep trust, or the darkest threat possible.
There is power in the keeping of a secret, and power in the revelation of a secret. Sometimes it takes a very wise man to discern which is the path to greater power.
All men desirous of power should become collectors of secrets. There is no secret too small to be valuable. All men value their own secrets far above those of others. A scullery maid may be willing to betray a prince before allowing the name of her secret lover to be told. — Robin Hobb

The man who can keep a secret may be wise, but he is not half as wise as the man with no secrets to keep — Edgar Watson Howe

I found myself whispering, "Do you think we'll ever discover all the secrets of the universe?"
I was surprised to hear Susie's voice answering my question. "That would be a beautiful thing, wouldn't it, Ari?"
"Yeah," I whispered. "Really beautiful."
"Do you think, Ari, that love has anything to do with the secrets of the universe? — Benjamin Alire Saenz

Nom de Plume uses the device of the pseudonym to unite the likes of Charlotte Bronte, Mark Twain, Fernando Pessoa, and Patricia Highsmith into a cohesive yet highly idiosyncratic literary history. Each page affords sparkling facts and valuable insights onto the manufacturing of books and reputations, the keeping and revealing of secrets, the vagaries of private life and public opinion, and the eternally mysterious, often tormented interface between life and literature. — Elif Batuman

I want you to remember what was good in me, not what was most awful. The people you love should be allowed to keep their worst to themselves. — Joe Hill

I used to think that sharing secrets always brought people closer. So I revealed secrets I did not want known in order to feel closer to someone. Oh, the loss I felt when I found out the secrets that I had held dear, that were so difficult to say out loud, that I had kept to myself, were being spread around the next day as if they were nothing! I think that was the moment I realized that pouring your heart out to someone might not bring you closer but in fact make you poorer instead. I even though maybe growing close to someone was better achieved by empathizing in silence. — Kyung-Sook Shin

Things will never go back to the way they were.
My chin tightens. You're right. Because we've both grown and changed. Because we understand each other on every level now. I've seen all your secrets. You've seen mine. We can live for today. Not think about forever. — A.G. Howard

My worst flaw is that I tell secrets, my own and everybody else's. — Isabel Allende

Everything in my room was old and faded, but I loved that about it. It felt like there might be secrets in the walls, in the four-poster bed, especially in that music box. — Jenny Han

But this is what I'm finding, in glimpses and flashes: this is it. This is it, in the best possible way. That thing I'm waiting for, for that adventure, that movie-score-worthy experience unfolding gracefully. This is it. Normal, daily life ticking by on our streets and sidewalks, in our houses and apartments, in our beds and at our dinner tables, in our dreams and prayers and fights and secrets - this pedestrian life is the most precious thing any of us will ever experience. — Shauna Niequist

Are we all living like this? Two lives, the ideal outer life and the inner imaginative life where we keep our secrets? — Jeanette Winterson

He is the Truth, and He wants us to deal in truth with ourselves and our loved ones. We want the truth about you and your family to flood into and overrun the secrets that keep you in bondage to dysfunctional behavior and relationships — Henry Cloud

In my head, at least, the business of spinning stories has no closing time. Twists in my characters' lives, glimpses of their secrets, obstacles to their dreams ... all arrive unbidden when I'm getting cash at the ATM, walking my son to camp, singing a hymn at a wedding. — Julia Glass

Bernstein has been disclosing musical secrets that have been well known for over 400 years. — Leonard Bernstein

GET IN he says, getting in on the driver side. I get in with no questions. Okay. This is a bad movie waiting to happen-I'm getting in a car with a guy I just met today who is keeping secrets from me. What the hell is wrong with me? I'm too scared to speak or ask or run away, though. So I just get in and put on my seat belt. I am so stupid. — Sara Daniell

After that, Marya Morevna understood that she belonged to her secret and it belonged to her. They had struck a bloody bargain between them. Keep me and obey me, the secret said to her, for I am your husband and I can destroy you. — Catherynne M Valente

The numerals of Pythagoras," says Porphyry, who lived about 300 A.D, "were hieroglyphic symbols, by means whereof he explained all ideas concerning the nature of things," and the same method of explaining the secrets of nature is once again being insisted upon in the new revelation of the "Secret Doctrine," by H. P. Blavatsky. — W. Wynn Westcott

Describe us as a sex," was her challenge.
"Sphinxes without secrets. — Oscar Wilde

Everyone agrees that a secret should be kept intact, but everyone does not agree as to the nature and importance of secrecy. Too often we consult ourselves as to what we should say, what we should leave unsaid. There are few permanent secrets, and the scruple against revealing them will not last forever. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Ironies were like secrets: unshared they died. — Glen Duncan

Nature, keeping only useless secrets, had placed within reach and in sight of human beings the things it was necessary for them to know. — Michel Foucault

It was a feminist act, revealing secrets in order to free herself and the women of her clan from the silence and obscurity to which a misogyny thousands of years old would have relegated them. — Mary Karr

DNA tells you all the secrets of life,' he used to say. Except for one - how to live it. — Jennifer Donnelly

Son, I hope your opinion of your mother hasn't lessened, knowing what you now know."
Gavin glanced up; incredulity skewed his eyebrows. His expression appeared both stunned and appalled. "Never, Father! I love her! It makes no difference to me where she came from."
The man nodded, a show of relief in his features. His large hand, soft in touch, went to brush a string of hair away from his wife's peaceful profile. "Your mother loves you too, son, more than anything in the world. She worries about you, day and night."
That sentiment stirred something profoundly pleasant inside the boy. He grinned at the internal warmth it created. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Everybody seems to know my secrets before I know them myself — Suzanne Collins

Each man deciphers from the ancient alphabets of nature only those secrets that his own deeps possess the power to endow with meaning. — Loren Eiseley

Secrets are a responsibility and a painfully taxing one at that. — Jonas Lee

So street-level FBI agents turned secrets into information, and senior FBI leaders brought that information to reporters, to prosecutors, to federal grand juries, and into the public realm. That was the beginning of the end of Richard Nixon's presidency. Without the FBI, the reporters would have been lost. — Tim Weiner

Not all who hesitate are lost. The psyche has many secrets in reserve. And these are not disclosed unless required. — Joseph Campbell

Whosoever does not believe in the existence of a sixth sense has clearly not regarded their own mother. How it is they know all they know about you, even those secrets you locked away so tightly in the most hidden compartments of your heart, remains one of the great mysteries of the world. And they don't just know - they know instantly. — Narissa Doumani

Secrets have an unfortunate way of spreading far beyond those they were intended for. — Haley Fisher

Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in fact, religious. — Michael Shermer

Among the responsibilities of any writer is that, no matter what else, they know what they mean. So, even if no one else knows what you're talking about, you do. The listener can sense that, even if they don't get the literal meaning. The faith that they place in the clues and the connections and the secrets of the lyrics is of the utmost importance. — Joanna Newsom

There are secrets everywhere. Answers nowhere. — Tahereh Mafi

The steep tiled roof had grown dark and mossy with age and rain. The triangular wooden frames fitted into the gables were intricately carved, the light that slanted through them and fell in patterns on the floor was full of secrets. Wolves. Flowers. Iguanas. Changing shape as the sun moved through the sky. Dying punctually at Dusk. — Arundhati Roy

Her laughter sounded like April showers, like whispered secrets, like glass wind-chimes. — Rebecca McNutt

If you read on and unlock the secrets of time travel, you could be responsible for the dissolution of every puppy that ever exists - past, present and future. And we'll tell everyone it was you. — Phil Hornshaw

I was alone in this discovery because it was my secret, my private exploration. — Paloma Beck

Nature hides her secrets because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse. — Albert Einstein

A cat's secrets run so deep that even the cat itself is often unaware. Their mysteries are as natural as whiskers. — Wendy Beck

There are few secrets in football. So execute. — Hank Stram

Zen is a study. It's a discipline. It involves the active use of will to make things happen or not happen. These are the secrets of power. — Frederick Lenz

We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens ... — Johannes Kepler

People were, essentially, the secrets they kept. — Penny Reid

Secrets.
We keep them to protect ourselves.
We keep them to protect others.
We keep them out of shame.
We keep them out of fear.
We keep them... wait... do we keep them for do they keep us? — Ellen Hopkins

Do you think you wear a mask?'

'I'm wearing one right now.' Valentino smiled softly. 'We both are.'

'It's a sad thought.'

'Yes,' he said. 'But sometimes I wonder about the alternative. Imagine if we had no secrets, no respite from the truth. What if everything was laid bare the moment we introduced ourselves? — Catherine Doyle

And these are the secrets Octava has strived for centuries to tell humankind. — Lucian Bane

I couldn't help but feel as if everyone had lied about everything. We all had secrets. We all had a dark side to our innocent cover. I wondered what we would be like, if we had been completely honest with each other in the first place. Maybe more people would be alive, but then again, more people could be dead. — Shannon A. Thompson

No state sorrier than that of the man who keeps up a continual round, and pries into "the secrets of the nether world," as saith the poet, and is curious in conjecture of what is in his
neighbour's heart. — Marcus Aurelius

Parisians were not easy to engage in conversation. Perhaps that was why the Resistance had been so successful. — Sara Sheridan

There is a need for aloneness, which I don't think most people realise for an actor. It's almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you'll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you're acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They'd all like sort of a chunk of you. — Marilyn Monroe

We have secrets, and we have the same secrets that criminals have. Sometimes the only difference between a criminal and a law-abiding citizen is that somebody found out the criminal's secret. — Jane Velez-Mitchell

Judgments and secrets are what make a good novel. — Tobias Hill

While I am usually in despair when a movie abandons its plot for a third act given over entirely to action, I have no problem with the way Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets ends, because it has been pointing toward this ending, hinting about it, preparing us for it, all the way through. What a glorious movie. — Roger Ebert

A man's work reveals him. In social intercourse he gives you the surface that he wishes the world to accept, and you can only gain a true knowledge of him by inferences from little actions, of which he is unconscious, and from fleeting expressions, which cross his face unknown to him. Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem. But in his book or his picture the real man delivers himself defenceless. His pretentiousness will only expose his vacuity. The lathe painted to look like iron is seen to be but a lathe. No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind. To the acute observer no one can produce the most casual work without disclosing the innermost secrets of the soul. — W. Somerset Maugham

Read over and over again the campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus, Turenne, Eugene and Frederic ... This is the only way to become a great general and master the secrets of the art of war. — Napoleon Bonaparte

In his heart he heard the voice talking, which was newly awaking, and it told him: Love this water! Stay near it! Learn from it! Oh yes, he wanted to learn from it, he wanted to listen to it. He who would understand this water and its secrets, so it seemed to him, would also understand many other things, many secrets, all secrets. — Hermann Hesse