Top 100 Not What You Thought Quotes
#1. One of the things that's fascinating about making movies is a movie when it's done and you start showing it to people, it reveals its impact, which is often times not what you thought.
Peter Berg
#2. You're taught that you can keep going in the military. Your point of collapse is not what you thought it was. Your body is built to survive, and when you think you're going to collapse, you still have so much more left in you.
Kiesza
#3. Love what you do. Even if it's not what you thought you'd be doing when you were a kid, love what you do. Eventually, it's going to kill you, and it would be a real pity if you died doing something you hate. - Evelyn Baker
Seanan McGuire
#4. She hadn't learned, no one had taught her ... that the things you want, you never get them. And if you do, they're not what you thought they'd be. But you'd still do anything to keep them. Because you'd wanted them for so long.
Megan Abbott
#5. The
trick is that you can't find the hidden treasure until you start
digging. Often enough, if you take the leap and do something, something
will happen. Probably not what you thought, but something.
Debbi Fields
#6. What the fuck happened to you? [...] You look like you lost a fight with a lamprey. Hickey, hickey...bruise, bruise, bruise...bite. I thought that thing on your neck the other day was just a fluke. I guess not--looks like you get off on picking up a few souvenirs when you...get off. ~Crash
Jordan Castillo Price
#7. You want to take me to a movie?" I asked.
"Well, not really," he said. "What I really want is for you to be my girlfriend. But I thought saying that might scare you off.
Sarah Dessen
#8. What I thought as a young adult is you act like you have it together whether or not you do because that is what church people do. That is not what God has called us to do.
Beth Moore
#9. I really thought I couldn't be a mum. We had tried several times with IVF,, and it hadn't worked and we'd given up in a way. We both thought, 'You know what, that's that. It's not going to happen - let's move on.'
Gurinder Chadha
#10. But thats not love, he thought, thats not what she wants, nor what any of them want, they do not want you to find yourself in them, they want instead that you should lose yourself in them. And yet, he thought, they are always trying to find themselves in you.
James Jones
#11. I'm not sure what kind of love you mean, baby, but if you mean do I want you to be with me forever, that I can't bear the thought of being without you as my lover, my best friend, my whole world....one day my wife, and my baby mama, then yes, I Love you, Love you!
S.E. Hall
#12. When you understand this - and you should because "what hast thou that thou didst not receive?" - you will not flatter yourself on the one hand and on the other hand you will not carry yourself with the thought of resigning from the ministry when you are insulted, reproached, or persecuted.
Martin Luther
#13. China was not at all what I expected it to be. I had an image of China as a very quaint and mysterious and peaceful place. Well, it's quaint and mysterious in some respects, but not in the ways I had thought. The people are mysterious. They don't often tell you what they feel.
Rosemary Mahoney
#14. What she means? Sure, whatever. It's not like I thought that this is the carving, the flying, the healing of my wounds. Sometimes you don't know when you're
Ann Voskamp
#15. I always wanted praise, and I always wanted attention; I won't lie to you. I was a jazz critic, and that wasn't good enough for me. I wanted people to write about me, not me about them. So I thought, 'What could I do? I can't sing, I can't dance, I can't act or anything like that. OK, I can write.'
Harvey Pekar
#16. I allowed social media to define what I thought of my body. And now I realize that no matter how thin you are, someone will call you fat. No matter how beautiful you are, someone will call you ugly. But you can't spend your time worrying about that. You're just not going to please the world.
Demi Lovato
#17. I know you think you believe you understand what you thought I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is exactly what I meant.
Richard M. Nixon
#18. You pronounced your words as if you don't acknowledge the shadows, or the evil either. Would you be so kind as to give a little thought to the question of what your good would be doing if evil did not exist, and how the earth would look if the shadows were to disappear from it?
Mikhail Bulgakov
#19. It makes you feel better," my father said. "Hmmm?" I asked, lost in what passed for thought. "Forgiveness." I found I could not refute it.
Gary Amdahl
#20. You have discovered so much kindness and good will to those you thought were oppressed, and had no helper, that I am sure you will not despise what I have wrote, if you judge it will be of any service to them.
Jupiter Hammon
#21. I'd like to ask you a question, if I may."
"What?"
"All these poems you've written and hidden - so many poems. Why?"
While she thought, morning broke and the birds sang in the garden. "Because I could not stop.
Jeffrey Ford
#22. We're not mindless golems, designed to think exactly the same thing. To try to suppress those thoughts is no better than slavery, and being free to say what you want, write what you want or draw what you want, as long as it doesn't offend anyone... That's no freedom at all.
T.J. Dixon
#23. A good history covers not only what was done, but the thought that went into the action. You can read the history of a country through its actions.
Benjamin Hooks
#24. You are innocent in your heart," she had said to him. "That is the most important thing." And he had thought about that for a few moments before shaking his head and saying, "I would like that to be true, Mma, but it is not. It is what other people think. That is the most important thing.
Alexander McCall Smith
#25. Happiness is a decision, not an experience. You can decide to be happy without what you thought you needed in order to be happy, and you will be. Your experience is the result of your decision, not the cause of it.
Neale Donald Walsch
#26. If you did not care at all what anyone else thought about you, what would you do differently or change in your life?
Brian Tracy
#27. It's just a feeling I have. What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real. My enemy is, among other things, the me inside me.
Haruki Murakami
#28. Had I known you had pure, or what you thought were pure intentions, in that silly mind of yours, I wouldn't have tried to kill you."
Philip let out a bark of laughter. "Well, as far as apologies go, that wasn't half bad. Not every day a man comes in and apologises for wishing you dead.
Rachel Van Dyken
#29. And then I opened the door to my room and saw you standing there in the parking lot, in the rain, and I just thought, 'This. This is what the perfect time feels like. It's not about the milestones; its about the person.
Dahlia Adler
#30. Hasn't anyone thought to look at outcomes as a logical way to figure out what really works? Not until recently. That tells you how far out of the picture the patient has been.
Marni Jackson
#31. And then there came into my heart a very great love for my father and I thought it was very much braver to spend a life doing what you really do not want rather than selfishly following forever your own dreams and inclinations.
Alistair MacLeod
#32. When failure imprisons you for not doing what you should have done, you have no option than to bail yourself on the promise of trying again! Try again!
Israelmore Ayivor
#33. I heard what you told him," he said. "That you thought it would be easy to fall in love with him. You meant it, too." "So?" It was the only thing I could think of to say. "I was jealous - of that. That I'm not ... that sort of person.
Sarah J. Maas
#34. I'm fine, she said. But her smile was bleak, without light or warmth. And for the first time I thought of what it must be like to know that you were going to die, that the trees would bud, flower, leaf, dry, die, and you would not be there to see any of it.
Anna Quindlen
#35. They might be kind, I thought. They might be sensible and good. They will not be like you.
But I did not say it. I knew it would mean nothing to her. I said something - something ordinary and mild, I cannot think what. And after a time she came and kissed my cheek, and then she left me.
Sarah Waters
#36. Give more, don't expect not to be repaid. Give more thanks for what you haven't expected but received!
Israelmore Ayivor
#37. Our souls are transitory; one single life is fleeting. Based on some children's accounts, not all souls are immediately reincarnated. Sometimes the consciousness can choose rebirth. What a lovely thought to look upon your child and realize that he entrusted you to raise him. What a gift.
Shelbi Wescott
#38. I had been to the South many times and I thought I knew what the South was, but not until you live with people and live through their lives do you know what it's really about.
Genevieve Gorder
#39. Sometimes you want something so badly, you get caught up; you lose yourself in that hunger. But then, once it is gone, you have a chance to reassess -to decide what it is you're truly after. Half of the time, it's not what you originally thought it would be.
Jenna Moreci
#40. Leaders are not worried about what they can't do; they know themselves very well and focus on what they can do. Think this way if you are willing to lead!
Israelmore Ayivor
#41. We are learning to perceive existence in separate phases. One phase is to see that we are not our thoughts. As you sit, try and feel what is beyond thought - sense that you are separate from thought.
Frederick Lenz
#42. I used to love people for what they could be. I thought love was how hard you tried and how much you sacrificed and suffered. That is not love. Acceptance is.
Michael Learned
#43. One of the drawbacks of sleeping with whores, he thought lazily. You got what you paid for, and not a goddamn thing more.
Kristin Hannah
#44. Freedom of speech is not only the right to say as you please, it is also the right to have what you say contested, and where it does not accord with reason - refuted, or with sense - ridiculed.
David Joseph Cribbin
#45. He thought: Because when you tell a lie it must be to keep from saying a worse thing. Then lying is not a Sin and God will not punish you. (But what if God is one of them?)
Davis Grubb
#46. I'm not setting 'Jericho' up to be anything other than what it is, which is, you know, a piece of good, well thought-out, well put-together TV and entertainment.
Lennie James
#47. You know what I mean. I'm telling you I was stupid over it. I thought it was about trying so hard to survive that you didn't have the time to be a good parent. Obviously, that's not it. Because you and I, we're both ... wealthy in love.
Maggie Stiefvater
#48. The simplicity we are looking for is not found in thought. It knows what you have to listen to in every moment and knows it can never make a mistake. It is the infinite working in the infinite. It projects into this world because we are here to do that.
Robert Young
#49. I suddenly became aware over the last couple of years that I'm in my sixties. I never thought about it. I thought I'd better start acting my age or find roles that are going to be interesting to me in the sexagenarian repertoire, because it's not what you do in your forties or fifties.
Geoffrey Rush
#50. I thought I lost you again. You couldn't know what those four years were like. To not know where you were, who you were with, or if you were being treated well? I wasn't sure for a long time if you were even alive. I don't ever want to go through that again. Vance ... The Elder Effect
D.L. Given
#51. Everything has boundaries. The same holds true with thought. You shouldn't fear boundaries, but you should not be afraid of destroying them. That's what is most important if you want to be free: respect for and exasperation with boundaries.
Haruki Murakami
#52. Grass is greener at other people's feet because they watered it. You need not to let your environment control you; you have what it takes to make it look beautiful!
Israelmore Ayivor
#53. I'm living the dream because its so much more than I ever thought I'd have.
You can't be happy with more, if you're not happy with what you have.
Rebecca Rose
#54. I wish I knew at 14 not to put much thought into what other people my age said to me, cause we were all looking for the answers. So I wish I knew that other people really don't know any more than you do!
Will Estes
#55. I realized that I hated politics. I mean that is you know ... I realized being in the jungle that what I had thought I could do, I mean changing the way politics were being done in Colombia, was not possible the way I wanted to do it - by confronting, by denouncing.
Ingrid Betancourt
#56. So many people appreciate what you've done, the doors you've opened, but some people realise they're not going to be able to make as much money as they thought possible when you first started.
Nelly
#57. I've always thought of acting as more of an exercise in empathy, which is not to be confused with sympathy. You're trying to get inside a certain emotional reality or motivational reality and try to figure out what that's about so you can represent it.
Edward Norton
#58. It is a strange thing," he thought, "to be an old god. They worship you, and yet they mistreat you. If you do not want to do what they wish, they make you. It is not fair.
George R. Stewart
#59. At sunset, on the river ban, Krishna
Loved her for the last time and left ...
That night in her husband's arms, Radha felt
So dead that he asked, What is wrong,
Do you mind my kisses, love? And she said,
Not not at all, but thought, What is
It to the corpse if the maggots nip?
Kamala Suraiyya Das
#60. I did not know I loved you until I heard myself telling so, for one instance I thought, "Good God, what have I said?" and then I knew it was true.
Bertrand Russell
#61. What's really important here," I whispered loudly to myself,"is not the big things other people have thought up, but the small things you, yourself have
Haruki Murakami
#62. Jill would kill me if she thought anyone fancied me," he said with charming anxiety.
"No, she wouldn't", Natalie reassured him. "We like our men to be fancied. What we do not like is for them to fancy others. That is when you risk wandering into the realm of sudden and violent death.
Rowan Coleman
#63. Well, because you mysteriously came all this way and obviously are not the man I thought you were, why the heck not. So, Phet, if that's even your real name, tell
me, how do I defeat Lokesh?"
"It's simple. Do to him what I did to you."
"What? Talk to him in broken English?
Colleen Houck
#64. The point about positive thinking, and later cognitive behavioural therapy, was that you could choose how you thought about life, and that how you thought about it changed not only your interpretation of what happened, but also the actual course of events.
Jenny Alexander
#65. Every successful piece of nonfiction should leave the reader with one provocative thought that he or she didn't have before. Not two thoughts, or five - just one. So decide what single point you want to leave in the reader's mind.
William Zinsser
#66. One day, a musician asked me what I did. When I told him I was to be a businessman, he laughed and said, 'You are not a businessman.' Sometimes all it takes is one person to put an important thought in your head, and he did.
Alexander Hanson
#67. You been shopping? no i been shopping. well what'd you buy? i bought a piston engine. well how you going to cook it? you don't cook it it's a piston engine! well your not going to eat it raw are you? oh, i never thought of that ...
Graham Chapman
#68. Look, I don't mean to be rude, but you could never have a normal life, even if that's what you thought you wanted. You and me, we're not 'normal.
Christina Baker Kline
#69. I keep forgetting were Pono's girls. Maybe we're not suppose to be happy.'
'Then we'll pretend to be,' Rachel said. ' We'll make it a habit, no matter what.'
That's all we can do, Jess thought. Live in readiness for whatever comes.
Kiana Davenport
#70. What you usually refer to when you say "I" is not who you are. By a monstrous act of reductionism, the infinite depth of who you are is confused with a sound produced by the vocal cords or the thought of "I" in your mind and whatever the "I" has identified with.
Eckhart Tolle
#71. That which you do not bring to consciousness comes to you as your Fate, that which you do bring to consciousness, whether it was what you thought you wanted or not, is your destiny.
Carl Jung
#72. I wondered what it would be like to not give a damn about what people thought of you.
Jodi Picoult
#73. Looking at them now, thought Jim, you'd never believe they weren't in love with each other, and not with a hopeless, doomed obsession like poor Isabel Meredith. This was what love ought to be like: playful and passionate and teasing, and dangerous, too, with sharp intelligence in it.
Philip Pullman
#74. I thought of Pericles' speech to the families of the Athenian war dead, in which he said, What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.
Eric Greitens
#75. You see, with you, the thing that scares me isn't the thought of losing you. What scares me is not having you in my life in the first place.
Melissa Collins
#76. You do not take from this universe, he thought. It grants what it will.
Frank Herbert
#77. He said, You know what Oscar Wilde said - women are meant to be loved, not understood. Applies to both of them, darling. And I nodded, although it seemed to me that I was going to be a woman too and I would like it if someone thought they should understand me.
Amy Bloom
#78. Do not reveal what you have thought upon doing, but by wise council keep it secret being determined to carry it into execution.
Chanakya
#79. All right Arthur?" said the wizard, nodding at Mr Weasley. "What've you got there, Bob?" asked Mr Weasley, looking that the box.
"We're not sure," said the wizard seriously. "We thought it was a bog standard chicken until it started breathing fire.
J.K. Rowling
#80. I thought Genevieve was someone I would know forever. Those people in your life that you just always know, no matter what. But it's not that way. Here we are, three years later, and we're worse than strangers.
Jenny Han
#81. Sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think about what you shall write.
William Cobbett
#82. What that song? I ast. Sound low down dirty to me. Like what the preacher tells you its sin to hear. Not to mention sing.
She hum a little more. Something come to me, she say. Something I made up. Something you help scratch out my head.
Alice Walker
#83. One thing you have to realize from now on is that it doesn't matter if this is a dream or not. Survival depends on what you do, not what you think.
Rebecca McKinsey
#84. Dostoevski does not tell you what to think about his legend, but he requires that you think about it. The novelist was a deeply religious man and he always thought many readers missed that point about him.
Suzanne Fields
#85. Do not be afraid of undertaking too much of what you can do without coming and going; but fear only the thought of doing more than you are doing and more than God is giving you the means to do.
Vincent De Paul
#86. I used to be bound by people who placed limits on what they thought I could do. Through that, I learned that if you want something, you have to be the one to go out and do it If you don't ask for something, you're not going to get it.
Ashley Graham
#87. I remember my oldest son, Steve, saying to me once, 'I don't ever remember seeing you with an apron on.' And I thought, that's right, honey, you did not. That was his concept of what a mother should be.
Lauren Bacall
#89. Develop a can-do-spirit and be sure you are not suppressed by the naysayers whose daily actions are meant to discourage you from achieving what you believe.
Israelmore Ayivor
#90. This morning I suddenly catch myself: I'm not there, I'm so lost in thought, I don't know what's going on around me. Can you think yourself to death?
Anna Kamienska
#91. I thought being an adult meant knowing what you believe, but that has not been my experience.
John Green
#92. I open the driving range and I close it. I thought you ought to know that I work hard. I like practising. I enjoy it. If I did not enjoy it I would not do it. What is the point of going back to the hotel, having a drink and talking a load of bull?
Vijay Singh
#93. Have you no respect for the past? For what was thought and believed by your foremothers?"
"Why, no," she said. "Why should we? They are all gone. They knew less than we do. If we are not beyond them, we are unworthy of them - and unworthy of the children who must go beyond us.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
#94. It did not do to give your heart to a man so entirely, she thought. Men did not value what they came by easily. Once you loved, you laid yourself open to pain.
Alison Weir
#95. The thing is not to follow a pattern. Follow your own pattern of feeling and thought. The thing is to accept your own life and not try to live someone else's life. Look, the thumbprint is not like any other, and the thumbprint is what you must go by.
Katherine Anne Porter
#96. Dr. Barney stared at me, his lips puckered. What was he so serious about? Who hasn't thought about killing themselves, as a kid? How can you grow up in this world and not think about it?
Ned Vizzini
#97. In a promise, what you thought, and not what you said, is always to be considered.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
#98. Growing up, it was always, 'If you buy kosher meat, they're killed humanely.' But I've seen so many horrible videos. What we thought was humane 100 years ago is not humane anymore. The ways animals suffer, I just couldn't be a part of it anymore.
Carol Leifer
#99. Do not allow another person to set you back. Continue moving forward not backwards. When someone pulls you back, be like the arrow to a bow and spring forth greater than ever. And, what they thought would be your disadvantage, you turn it into your advantage.
Amaka Imani Nkosazana
#100. On Twitter, if you want to quote someone else, you say, 'RT, re-tweet, that person's name, and then what they said before.' And it's a way of essentially saying, 'I'm not saying this, but my friend said this and I thought this was interesting.'
Ethan Zuckerman
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
