Something Better Quotes - Page 2

• Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.

  T. S. Eliot

  Stealing Things, Immature, Different

  1920 The Sacred Wood,'Philip Massinger'.

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• Tell you what," he said, noticing my stare. "I know you can't get a license, but I might be able to do something better." "What?" He smiled. "How would you like to come to school with me tomorrow and see a real, live locker?" I'm pretty sure I squealed.

  Kiersten White

  Real, School, Might

  4 Copy quote

• When the oldest Chatwin, melancholy Martin, opens the cabinet of the grandfather clock that stands in a dark, narrow back hallway in his aunt’s house and slip through into Fillory...it’s like he’s opening the covers of a book, but a book that did what books always promised to do and never ac tually quite did: get you out, really out, of where you were and into something better.

  Lev Grossman

  Book, Dark, Aunt

  4 Copy quote

• But young hearts mend easily, and hearts that own half of England have something better to do than to beat faster for love.

  Philippa Gregory

  Heart, Half, England

  Philippa Gregory (2008). “The Other Boleyn Girl (Movie Tie-In)”, p.147, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There was something better in life than this rub­bish, if only he could get to it—love—nobility—big spaces where passion clasped peace, spaces no science could reach, but they existed for ever, full of woods some of them, and arched with majestic sky and a friend. . .

  E. M. Forster

  Passion, Sky, Space

  4 Copy quote

• I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees. All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me, the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness. All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with a luminous doom. By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better.

  Mary Oliver

  Morning, Stars, Dark

  Mary Oliver (2017). “Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver”, p.368, Penguin

  30 Copy quote

  Show source

• Better not to start down a wrong path at all than head down it in the hope of making a detour when something better came along.

  Darren Shan

  Detours, Path, Wrong Path

  9 Copy quote

• I'm speaking of the character of human beings, not what they believe in. I'm speaking of those who won't accept a useless life just because they were born to it. I mean those who would be something better. They work, they sacrifice, they do things..." He was moved by this, and I was a little surprised that I'd said it. Yet I felt I'd had hurt him somehow. "There is blessedness in that." I said. "There's sanctity. And God or no God, there is goodness in it. I know this the way I know the mountains are out there, that the stars shine.

  Anne Rice

  Hurt, Stars, Believe

  Anne Rice (2013). “The Complete Vampire Chronicles 12-Book Bundle”, p.861, Ballantine Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Miracles do occur, and it's never too late to turn your life around and reach for something better.

  Alyson Noel

  Miracle, Too Late, Turns

  4 Copy quote

• He held my hand and told me a story about when he was six and threw a rock at a kid's head who was bullying his brother, and how after that no one had bothered either of them again. 'You have to stick up for yourself,' he told me. 'But it's bad to throw rocks,' I said. 'I know. You're smarter than me. You'll find something better than rocks.

  Nicole Krauss

  Bullying, Brother, Kids

  Nicole Krauss (2006). “The History of Love: A Novel”, p.94, W. W. Norton & Company

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I take a few quick sips. "This is really good." And I mean it. I have never tasted tea like this. It is smooth, pungent, and instantly addicting. "This is from Grand Auntie," my mother explains. "She told me 'If I buy the cheap tea, then I am saying that my whole life has not been worth something better.' A few years ago she bought it for herself. One hundred dollars a pound." "You're kidding." I take another sip. It tastes even better.

  Amy Tan

  Mother, Mean, Years

  Amy Tan (2006). “The Kitchen God's Wife”, p.45, Penguin

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• She has often felt that her outsides were too dull for her insides, that deep within her there was something better than what everyone else could see.

  Myla Goldberg

  Dull, Deep Within, Felt

  Myla Goldberg (2005). “Bee Season”, Anchor

  45 Copy quote

  Show source

• true weanedness from the world don't consist in being beat off from the world by the affliction of it, but a being drawn off by the sight of something better.

  Jonathan Edwards

  Sight, World, Affliction

  32 Copy quote

• Suddenly it wasn't only a personal thing to me. I could picture hundreds and hundreds of boys living on the wrong sides of cities, boys with black eyes who jumped at their own shadows. Hundreds of boys who maybe watched sunsets and looked at stars and ached for something better. I could see boys going down under street lights because they were mean and tough and hated the world, and it was too late to tell them that there was still good in it, and they wouldn't believe you if you did.

  S. E. Hinton

  Stars, Believe, Sunset

  S. E. Hinton (2012). “The Outsiders”, p.119, Penguin

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sometimes I think that's where most of us are. Fighting off the crazy as best we can. Trying to become something better than we were. It's that second bit that's important.

  Jim Butcher

  Crazy, Fighting, Thinking

  Jim Butcher (2012). “Cold Days: The Dresden Files, Book Fourteen”, p.87, Hachette UK

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Part of the American ethos is that you want to leave something better for your kids than you had and I know that my parents felt that way and I know that my grandparents felt that way and everybody worked hard so that their kids had a better chance. I just don't want to be the first generation that doesn't do that.

  Matt Damon

  Kids, Ethos, Grandparent

  12 Copy quote

• Grief is neither a disorder nor a healing process; it is a sign of health itself, a whole and natural gesture of love. Nor must we see grief as a step toward something better. No matter how much it hurts-and it may be the greatest pain in life-grief can be an end in itself, a pure expression of love.

  Gerald May

  Love, Hurt, Pain

  57 Copy quote

• You look back and you always think you can probably do something better.

  Tommy Haas

  Thinking, Looks

  8 Copy quote

• No man will be kept in hell loner than is necessary to bring him to a fitness for something better. When he reaches that stage the prison doors will open and there will be rejoicing among the hosts who welcome him into a better state.

  James E. Talmage

  Men, Doors, Loner

  11 Copy quote

• Art inspires, produces an unwillingness to settle for what we have and a desire for something better. It is the product and producer of creative activity, change; it is essential for continuous development.

  Russell L. Ackoff

  Art, Creative, Inspire

  47 Copy quote

• Everyone tries to create a world he can live in, and what he can't use he often can't see. But the real world is already created, and if your fabrication doesn't correspond, then even if you feel noble and insist on there being something better than what people call reality, that better something needn't try to exceed what, in its actuality, since we know it so little, may be very surprising. If a happy state of things, surprising; if miserable or tragic, no worse than what we invent.

  Saul Bellow

  Real, Often Can, People

  8 Copy quote

• In most cases we attach ourselves to in order to take revenge on life, to punish it, to signify we can do without it, that we have found something better, and we also attach ourselves to God in horror of men.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Revenge, Men, Order

  9 Copy quote

• Let's start with this statistic: You are delicious. Be brave, my sweet. I know you can get lonely. I know you can crave companionship and sex and love so badly that it physically hurts. But I truly believe that the only way you can find out that there's something better out there is to first believe there's something better out there. What other choice is there?

  Greg Behrendt

  Sweet, Lonely, Hurt

  7 Copy quote

• Man is always something worse or something better than an animal; and a mere argument from animal perfection never touches him at all. Thus, in sex no animal is either chivalrous or obscene. And thus no animal invented anything so bad as drunkeness - or so good as drink.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Sex, Animal, Men

  4 Copy quote

• ... anybody with the brains and energy to become a teacher ought to want to become something better.

  Florynce Kennedy

  Teacher, Ambition, Brain

  Florynce Kennedy (1976). “Color Me Flo: My Hard Life and Good Times”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source