Top 100 Quotes About Not What It Seems
#1. I know from my own experience that suicide is not what it seems. Too easy to try to piece together the fragmented life. The spirit torn in bits so that the body follows.
Jeanette Winterson
#2. You get quick money, it's beautiful, there's sunshine, but at the end of the day, you find out it's all a masquerade, baby. It's not what it seems.
Wyclef Jean
#3. If we agree that the world is not what it seems, then we have an important question: What shall we do about it?
Richard Bach
#4. War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
Smedley Butler
#6. [...] it seems you don't understand that words are the labels we stick on things, not the things themselves, you'll never know what the things are really like, nor even what their real names are, because the names you gave them are just that, the names you gave them [...]
Jose Saramago
#7. Things aren't always what they seem
You're only seeing part of me
There's more than you could ever know
Behind the scenes.
Francesca Battistelli
#8. The desert wears ... a veil of mystery. Motionless and silent it evokes in us an elusive hint of something unknown, unknowable, about to be revealed. Since the desert does not act it seems to be waiting
but waiting for what?
Edward Abbey
#9. When I say that consciousness is an illusion I do not mean that consciousness does not exist. I mean that consciousness is not what it appears to be. If it seems to be a continuous stream of rich and detailed experiences, happening one after the other to a conscious person, this is the illusion.
Susan Blackmore
#10. The road is a strange place. Shuffling along, I looked up and you were there walking across the grass toward my truck on an August day. In retrospect, it seems inevitable - it could not have been any other way
a case of what I call the high probability of the improbable
Robert James Waller
#11. The essence of a religious approach to the world, it seems to me, is to be found, not in the imposition of theological dogma, but in the recognition of what is actually there.
John Barton
#12. A man can make himself put down what comes, even if it seems nauseating nonsense; tomorrow some of it may not seem wholly nonsense at all.
F.L. Lucas
#13. Now you are deep in what seems to me a peculiarly selfless service. The spiritual training of children must be that. You work for the years you will not see. You work for the Invisible all the time, but you work for the Eternal. So it is all worthwhile.
Amy Carmichael
#14. Growing up in South London, we went to a school where there were not that many Jewish kids. I love being Jewish in L.A.; it feels really normal. The culture seems to be integrated into Hollywood. Everyone uses Yiddish words like 'schlep' and 'schmooze.' That's what I love about New York, too.
Hannah Ware
#15. It seems to me that Canadian sensibility has been profoundly disturbed, not so much by our famous problem of identity, important as that is, as by a series of paradoxes in what confronts that identity. It is less perplexed by the question "Who am I?" than by some such riddle as "Where is here?
Northrop Frye
#16. Recently we've been hearing a lot about women "having it all." Myself, I think that is not really an accurate description of female lives today. It seems to me that what we have been up to is DOING it all.
Sylvia Ann Hewlett
#17. What we've done, it seems to me, is allow women to get older, but not to age.
Caryl Rivers
#18. Forgiving other people who have wronged us or hurt us or embarrassed us is not easy. In fact, sometimes it seems impossible. But that is what God did for us and what He asks us to do for others.
Korie Robertson
#19. What seems like a flaw is merely our higher consciousness telling us we're not looking at it in the right light yet.
A.J. Darkholme
#20. For thence a paradox Which comforts while it mocks, - Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail: What I aspired to be, And was not, comforts me: A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.
Robert Browning
#21. The truth, in so far as a human being is able to attain such a thing, lies in a statement which it seems impossible to disprove. It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is.
Alain De Botton
#22. It seems no matter what I read I think this is not harry potter.
Hank Green
#23. It seems weird to me that here we are, alive, not knowing why we are alive, and just going about our business, sort of ignoring that fact. How are we all not looking at each other all the time just like, Yo, what the fuck?
Melissa Broder
#24. Then there is the curse of multi-tasking. Doing two things at once seems so clever, so efficient, so modern. And yet what it often means is doing two things not very well. Like many people, I read the paper while watching TV - and find that I get less out of both.
Carl Honore
#25. As so often in life, things are not always what it seems.
Paulo Coelho
#26. It seems to me that the secret of true happiness in life is to know what you are and then be content to be that, in style, head up and proud, and not yearn to be something else ...
Robert A. Heinlein
#27. What is it, the difference between ordinary people and those with genius? Not just ordinary people either. Intelligent people, sensitive ones, exceptionally talented ones. Even people like Sonja who give everything and then more, who work harder than seems possible on the thing they love.
Anna Smaill
#28. John the Baptist was supposed to point the way to the Christ. He was just the voice, not the Messiah. So everybody's calling has dignity to it and God seems to know better than we do what is in us that needs to be called forth.
James Green Somerville
#29. Do not worry, little heart. They are only feelings. So care a little less, the ride will be much more than what it seems.
Robert M. Drake
#30. And yet this same Deity says to me, resist not evil; pray for those that despitefully use you; love your enemies, but I will eternally damn mine. It seems to me that even gods should practice what they preach.
Robert Green Ingersoll
#31. It's not very fashionable, but I love life, and I believe that things disappear and reappear and nothing ever solidifies, no matter how middle-class, housebroken, staid, and solitary someone's life seems to be. That, I think, is what I'm writing about.
Colum McCann
#32. What has happened to us? It seems as if we have perverted our freedom, our rights into license, into being irresponsible. Perhaps we did not realise just how apartheid has damaged us so that we seem to have lost our sense of right and wrong.
Desmond Tutu
#33. The gods do not need sacrifices, so what might one do to please them? Acquire wisdom, it seems to me, and do all the good in one's power to those humans who deserve it.
Apollonius Of Tyana
#34. Man seems not so much wicked as frail, unable to face pain, trouble and growing old. A good woman knows that nature is her enemy. Look at what it does to her.
Fay Weldon
#35. Thank you sweetie, I didn't know how much I needed you.. Perhaps now you might provide me with something else."
"Oh? What if I'm not in the mood to provide anything else but food?"
"Since I'm the master and you're the sub, seems like you get to provide it anyway.
Cherise Sinclair
#36. Reading someone else's newspaper is like sleeping with someone else's wife. Nothing seems to be precisely in the right place, and when you find what you are looking for, it is not clear then how to respond to it.
Malcolm Bradbury
#37. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I'm online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.
Nicholas Carr
#38. There was only the sound of the July-flies, which seems to be inside your head like it is the grind and whirr of the springs and cogs which are you and which will not stop no matter what you say until they are good and ready.
Robert Penn Warren
#39. It seems harsh to many to think that God chooses some and rejects others, and does not consider men's worth, that by his own free will he chooses whom he pleases and moreover rejects others. But what is this scruple except a desire to call God to order and subject him to their judgment?
John Calvin
#40. It seems to me that the quality of a moment in time is not always a reflection of the moment in and of itself - what happens before and what happens after are often what give it its savor.
Michael J. Fox
#41. What is often being argued, it seems to me, in the idea of nature is the idea of man; and this not only generally, or in ultimate ways, but the idea of man in society, indeed the ideas of kinds of societies.
Raymond Williams
#42. Always being myself and my salve, which is life. I'm not lonely, if that's what it seems like. Always writing things down.
Chris Campanioni
#43. [I]t seems to be just as foolish to say, 'I imagine, in order to understand more clearly what I am,' as to say, 'I am now clearly awake and I see something true, but because I do not yet see it clearly enough I shall fall asleep so that my dreams will represent it to me more truly and clearly.
Rene Descartes
#44. I do not know what joins the parts of an atom, but it seems what
Andrew Sean Greer
#45. What I can't quite see at this stage is that the evidence, even to the president, seems to be that clear. And if it is that clear, I can't understand why we are not capable of convincing our closest allies that given that evidence, they ought to join us in this effort.
Lawrence Eagleburger
#46. The truth, it seems, is not just what you find when you open a door: it is itself a door, which the poet is always on the verge of going through.
Margaret Atwood
#47. No one would have known, from how he held my hand, [that] over the years of heartache he had hatched a plot to change my life forever. He held his grip and would not let me go. I do not know what joins the parts of an atom, but it seems what binds one human to another is pain.
Andrew Sean Greer
#48. It's just that it seems to me that what is a terrible hardship to one person may seem trivially small to another, but that does not necessarily make the hardship any the less hard to bear for the one who suffers it.
Anna Elliott
#49. Strange as it seems, we appear to be the only species who do not have an instinctive ability to know what food we should eat to stay healthy. All other animals do. We consider ourselves a superior species, yet we are destroying the only planet we have, endangering our very existence.
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
#50. May knowledge come to us! What is this secret our heart has understood and yet will not reveal to us, although it seems to beat as if it were endeavoring to tell it?
Ayn Rand
#51. In the past, if you did film, you couldn't do stage, and if you did film, you certainly didn't do television. You had to pick what you wanted to be. Now it seems like we can bounce around, not only between genres, but between mediums, and I like that. I like change and I like a good story.
Garret Dillahunt
#52. What you can see is not always interpreted as it seems, but behind it, there's always be a hidden answer.
Bella Irmenna
#53. To be knocked out doesn't mean what it seems. A boxer does not have to get up.
Joyce Carol Oates
#54. One of the many pleasures of 'Versailles' is the way in which it seems to emanate not only from the vexed inner being of Marie Antoinette but from the interstices between what we imagine of her and what she was.
Stacey D'Erasmo
#55. Be patient when it seems things are not going right and may never be right again. Accept that what is yours will come to you in the right way at just the right moment.
Iyanla Vanzant
#56. A lot of artists get famous overseas first. I don't know what it is here. I have a large underground following in the U.S., but I don't get the airplay as much as I do in, say, Australia. Over there, they can play whatever they like, it seems, but not so much here.
Wynter Gordon
#57. I know you've all got it in for me," says Bob. "You fitted me up for one crime, why not pin every child murder in the last twenty years on me?" His voice rises hysterically.
"That seems rather an extreme reaction," says Tim. "I just asked what you were doing yesterday afternoon.
Elly Griffiths
#58. ...what if everything that we see, everything that seems real - what if it was not real?...What if the stuff that was real was somehow hidden?... [56]
Walter Sorrells
#59. ...'Loving children is what teachers do for extra credit. It's not the main assignment.'
'Seems to me that the extra credit is more important than the main assignment,' observed Cordelia.
Esme Raji Codell
#60. Insect, pup, or rat. It certainly seems to me that you don't know what he is, so maybe you should leave him alone...
'Gracious, Lorelei, you should have kept your mouth shut! Why not just call him a smelly rhinoceros wart while you're at it?' (Lorelei)
Kinley MacGregor
#61. Running is not, as it so often seems, only about what you did in your last race or about how many miles you ran last week. It is, in a much more important way, about community, about appreciating all the miles run by other runners, too.
Richard O'Brien
#62. It seems that if our species ever eradicates itself through war, it will not be because it was written in the stars but because it was written in our books; it is what we do with words like 'God' and 'paradise' and 'sin' in the present that will determine our future.
Sam Harris
#63. Gold, unlike all other commodities, is a currency ... and the major thrust in the demand for gold is not for jewelry. It's not for anything other than an escape from what is perceived to be a fiat money system, paper money, that seems to be deteriorating.
Alan Greenspan
#64. God has gifted me in communication. He has given me a gift to be very open about myself, which seems to really help a lot of people. It's not even anything I do on purpose. It's just something I don't have a problem with. I don't care what you know about me if it will help you.
Joyce Meyer
#65. It just seems like the most successful, iconic love stories are not so easy or escapist. I think the ones that stay with us and resonate are full of conflict, discord and misunderstandings 'cause that's what makes drama happen or tension even if it's a comedy.
Claire Danes
#66. Protein, so far as we know, does not replicate itself all by itself, not on this planet anyway. Looked at this way, the [prion] seems the strangest thing in all biology, and, until someone in some laboratory figures out what it is, a candidate for Modern Wonder. (quote originally by Lewis Thomas)
D.T. Max
#67. When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. As far as I can tell so far, it seems to involve lots of foreign travel and not having to get up too early in the morning.
Neil Gaiman
#68. What worries me is that, because of the amount of media coverage of food, Britain seems to have become a foodie nation - but I'm not sure it actually has. I'm not sure there's been a huge change in the pantry at home or what we cook for supper.
Fergus Henderson
#69. Under the influence of music, it seems that I feel what I do not really feel, that I understand what I do not understand, that I do what I cannot do.
Leo Tolstoy
#70. O, that's what troubles me, papa. You want me to live so happy, and never to have any pain, - never suffer anything, - not even hear a sad story, when other poor creatures have nothing but pain and sorrow, all their lives, - it seems selfish. I ought to know such things, I ought to feel about them!
Harriet Beecher Stowe
#71. What distinguishes the "war on terror" is that it is a war against a concept, not a nation. And the enemy concept, it seems to me, is pluralism.
Mohsin Hamid
#72. Sometimes it seems as though each new step towards AI, rather than producing something which everyone agrees is real intelligence, merely reveals what real intelligence is not.
Douglas R. Hofstadter
#73. It is not enough for me to ask question; I want to know how to answer the one question that seems to encompass everything I face: What am I here for?
Abraham Joshua Heschel
#74. What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?'
'I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose
a god who simply is.
Stanislaw Lem
#75. Do you think it could be that those in charge of the guilds keep the system in operation after it has outlived its original purpose? It seems to me that the system works by suppression of knowledge. I don't see what that achieves. It has made me very discontented, and I'm sure I'm not alone.
Christopher Priest
#76. Nothin's what it seems, drow!" Bruenor declared. "Nothin'! Ye try to follow what ye know, ye know? But then ye find that ye know not what ye thought ye knowed! Thought a dog'd be tastin' good - looked good enough - but now me belly's cursing me every move!
R.A. Salvatore
#77. Second letter from Mom:
So! What if you colored the world? This still does not seem a great thing. In fact it seems very natural that you eventually got to paint the entire world. Those colors of yours were always strange; they didn't go away since you were born.
Elena D. Calin
#78. It always seems to me odd to call a place a wilderness when every wilderness area in the US bristles with rules and regulations as to how you can behave, what you're allowed to do, and is patrolled by armed rangers enforcing the small print. They're parks, of course, not wildernesses at all.
Jonathan Raban
#79. It seems to me that if you wish to apply laws to us, it were only reasonable to consult us on them, and from what you have read to me about Parliament, I do not think any dragons are invited to go there
Naomi Novik
#80. If God seems slow in responding, it is because He is preparing a better gift. He will not deny us. God withholds what you are not yet ready for. He wants you to have a lively desire for His greatest gifts. All of which is to say, pray always and do not lose heart.
Saint Augustine
#81. I'm not a big lingerie girl. I see it, and I love it, and I appreciate it, and sometimes I even buy it, and then it never gets worn. It just seems like kind of a wasted middle step. Either you're dressed or you're not. What is this in-between stuff?
Natalie Zea
#82. In a world growing increasingly banal and familiar, what seems enigmatic instantly draws attention. Never make it too clear what you are doing or about to do. Do not show all your cards. An air of mystery heightens your presence; it also creates anticipation - everyone
Robert Greene
#83. You don't need to give reasons for the things you do- you just have to do what you want. And sometimes the thing that seems messed up to everyone else is what's right for you. You have to do it and not be ashamed of it.
Kristen Stewart
#84. I like Damien Stark. He's not what I expected, but there's something compelling about him - and it's more than just the fact that he's hotter than sin and got me worked up into quite a lather. He seems perfectly comfortable in his own skin.
J. Kenner
#85. Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don't want it. What seems conceit, bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.
You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.
Miller Williams
#86. Everybody needs to know where they've been, it seems to me. Not just blackskins, but whiteskins, too. Seems to me if a person loses the past, he can't find the future either. Which is what this place is all about.
Robert McCammon
#87. Perhaps it was, what you don't realize, my dear (not having killed anyone) our judgement is distorted afterward and everything seems exaggerated.
Agatha Christie
#88. Dagny," he said, looking at the city as it moved past their taxi window, "think of the first man who thought of making a steel girder. He knew what he saw, what he thought and what he wanted. He did not say, 'It seems to me,' and he did not take orders from those who say, 'In my opinion.
Ayn Rand
#89. Doing two things at once seems so clever, so efficient, so modern. And yet what it often means is doing two things not very well.
Carl Honore
#90. And what never happened always seems beautiful. You are a deception that gives birth to discontent, a deception that I cannot and do not wish to drive away, since it disarms me and protects me from suffering with a quiet grief.
Mesa Selimovic
#91. Relationships, it seems to me, are timeless. What works between two people always works; what doesn't is always troublesome. Over time, people learn - or not - how to negotiate what's difficult, but that doesn't mean the misfit has gone away entirely.
Rafael Yglesias
#92. I'm certainly not a Robin Hood, I'm not that way. I don't want to come through, burn everybody for $200 a ticket and then they can't afford to come see me again. Plus, I just don't think it's right. I don't think we need that much money. I just do what seems like the logical thing to do.
Tom Petty
#93. I am sort of anti-hunting. I don't put down what anyone wants to do, but it seems to me that killing a creature for fun is not a progressive idea.
Clint Eastwood
#94. of how we live our lives must encompass ALL scripture, not just what sounds good or what we are familiar with, or what seems easiest. It is a collection of teachings, examples, instructions, and even the corrective nature of the great I AM.
Brandy Dillon
#95. When not much is happening and there seems to be nothing you can do to change that, you do wonder. But I am an actor, like it or not. I stuck with it and took what was offered.
Kathleen Quinlan
#96. And my chest swells with an emotion I'm not familiar with . . . happiness? Pride? I'm not sure what it is, but I suddenly feel compelled to do things that will make me feel this way all the time, which gives me pause, since that seems dangerous too.
Kelly Thompson
#97. Painfully to attain possession of what we do not want, and then painfully to waste our days in attempting to rid ourselves of it, seems to be a part of our discipline here below.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
#98. What is faith? If you believe something because you have evidence for it, or rational argument, that is not faith. So faith seems to be believing something despite the absence of evidence or rational argument for it.
Peter Singer
#99. It seems to me that unless you or someone very close to you has had a bad head injury, you really can't fathom it. You have no concept of what it is all about. It was so difficult for my whole family, not just me.
Barbara Mandrell
#100. To be frank, it sometimes seems that the American idea of freedom has more to do with my freedom to do what I want than your freedom to do what you want. I think that, in Europe, we're probably better at understanding how to balance those competing claims, though not a lot.
Douglas Adams
