Top 100 The Familiar Quotes
#1. I don't know what kind of life you had, what sorts of joys and sorrows you experienced. But even if there was something that left you unfulfilled, you can't go around seeking it at other people's doors. Even if it is at the place you're most familiar with, and the sort of act that is your forte.
Haruki Murakami
#2. And only the enlightened can recall their former lives; for the rest of us, the memories of past existences are but glints of light, twinges of longing, passing shadows, disturbingly familiar, that are gone before they can be grasped, like the passage of that silver bird on Dhaulagiri.
Peter Matthiessen
#3. Habits of literary composition are perfectly familiar to me. One of the rarest of all the intellectual accomplishments that a man can possess is the grand faculty of arranging his ideas. Immense privilege! I possess it. Do you?
Wilkie Collins
#4. The goal of our lives should be nothing less that becoming so familiar with the "mind of Christ" that we could write Jesus' speeches.
Clare De Graaf
#5. I couldn't help grinning at the sight of her. Megan, in turn, raised a nine-millimeter square at my chest.
Well, that was familiar, at least.
Brandon Sanderson
#6. Use your imagination until your big dream feels so familiar that its manifestation is the next logical step.
Esther Hicks
#7. I would say if you are familiar with our history and the history of our art and literature that you see a clear cut pattern of people wanting to contribute, not only artistically, but in some practical purpose, for the benefits of the community.
Gil Scott-Heron
#8. Even when other powers have been lost and people may not even be able to understand language, they will nearly always recognize and respond to familiar tunes. And not only that. The tunes may carry them back and may give them memory of scenes and emotions otherwise unavailable for them.
Oliver Sacks
#9. But it wasn't long before the old familiar discontent started creeping up on me. I suppose it was always there, somewhere in the background. All I've done, my whole life, is keep it temporarily at bay.
Sara Gruen
#10. I like to let the story flesh itself out, and usually, the characters make their own decisions as things get under way. Dialogue especially seems to write itself once I'm familiar with the characters and their backgrounds.
Victoria Aveyard
#11. One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then
Henry David Thoreau
#12. The sublimity connected with vastness, is familiar to every eye.
James F. Cooper
#13. A mistake in drawing becomes difficult to detect when the eye is familiar with it.
Walter J. Phillips
#15. You're talking to someone who has been married to various people for the last 40 years of her life. Dating is not really something familiar. I've never really been a dater.
Stockard Channing
#16. This particular book felt familiar, like an old friend. The characters drew me into their world, and I blocked out mine for the rest of the afternoon.
Rebecca Raisin
#17. There's nothing I like better than talking to kids, just sharing the music with them. To relate to them, you need to play songs they're familiar with.
Jake Shimabukuro
#18. I love the Victorian era, and I always have, but I had a leg up on the writing because I was familiar with a lot of the science from the Victorian era. And that led to a massive interest in the science of this time of history.
Gail Carriger
#19. There is not a single true chess-player in the world whose heart does not beat faster at the mere sound of such long beloved and familiar words as 'gambit games'.
David Bronstein
#20. We become so used to the familiar that we begin to doubt the unfamiliar, until our eyes are opened and we see.
Ted Dekker
#21. More times than I can remember I look around and I ask why the hole I'm in looks so strangely familiar. Probably because it looks a whole lot like all the other ones I dug before I got around to digging this one.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#22. He swallows a soothing mouthful of Jim Beam and rubs at his face, trying to rub away the familiar regret, that he can't take back words that are already history, that have found their mark and already done their damage.
Caitlin R. Kiernan
#23. Having been familiar with "drunk" once or twice myself, that lick just came to me - and yeah, it sounded very drunk, so I presented it to Alice [Cooper]. It felt like he wrote the lyrics in about a minute.
Johnny Depp
#24. Collage has been one of the most relevant forms of art making. It's resonant because it is made of the stuff that we see every day. It's familiar. It reflects our reality.
Elliott Hundley
#25. PALM, n. A species of tree ... of which the familiar "itching palm" ("Palma hominis") is most widely distributed ... This noble vegetable exudes a kind of invisible gum, which may be detected by applying to the bark a piece of gold or silver.
Ambrose Bierce
#26. All things are the same, familiar in enterprise, momentary in endurance, coarse in substance. All things now are as they were in the day of those whom we have buried.
Marcus Aurelius
#27. The change, she knew, was only in herself; she was relieved of deception, and her mind was free to work on its familiar paths. She recognized for the first time that lies worked damage in two directions.
Rosemary Kirstein
#28. The familiar was usually invisible; how many people really noticed everything they saw?
Ilsa J. Bick
#29. Thought breeds thought; children familiar with great thoughts take as naturally to thinking for themselves as the well-nourished body takes to growing; and we must bear in mind that growth, physical, intellectual, moral, spiritual, is the sole end of education.
Charlotte M. Mason
#30. Anybody who is familiar with the historical data from the IRS knows that raising income tax rates will likely actually reduce federal revenues.
Mike Pence
#31. It was as if a different person put the key in the ignition and drove away from everything that was familiar. There was no going back now. There was no going forward either. He was going in sideways, sort of, and as frightening as that was, there was the thrill ...
Jeff VanderMeer
#32. The world is: fun, and familiar, and healthful, and unbelievably refreshing, and lovely. And it is the theater of the spiritual; it is the multiform utterly obedient to a mystery.
Mary Oliver
#33. The notion of getting under the hood and explaining how something works, that's fairly familiar territory to me.
Scott McCloud
#34. And sometimes, God asks us to wrestle with the unfamiliar until it becomes our new familiar. Until we can breathe freely in that new place.
Lisa Tawn Bergren
#35. The story unfolded quickly as I typed, in a way I was becoming familiar with. There was something about putting the truth on paper, bringing facts into the light of day where everyone could look at them, that made my fingers move faster -- it was becoming one of my favorite sensations on earth.
Gwenda Bond
#36. The ideal three stories a day are one favorite, one familiar, and one new, but the same book three times is also fine.
Mem Fox
#37. I wonder if gratefulness is the bridge from sorrow to joy, spanning the chasm of our anxious striving. Freed from the burden of unbridled desires, we can enjoy what we have, celebrate what we've attained, and appreciate the familiar. For if we can't be happy now, we'll likely not be happy when.
Philip Gulley
#38. As Luke would have it, what ends with crucifixion does not merely reappear restored. Resurrection declares and presents the unrecognizably new, even as traces of the familiar remain.
Jay Emerson Johnson
#39. How quickly the new and strange becomes old and familiar.
Garon Whited
#40. The primary purpose of meditation is to become conscious of, and familiar with, our inner life. The ultimate purpose is to reach the source of life and consciousness.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
#41. I'm getting those familiar feelings, and I'm just going to enjoy the process of getting to know someone again.
Kevin Costner
#42. Like the thick quilt I'd played under as a child, the dark felt familiar and protecting.
Stephenie Meyer
#43. The thing about love is one can never define it exactly. And as much of a mystery as that is and as familiar it is when we acknowledge it, words just aren't enough. So we find ourselves scratching the walls while our hair is falling out. Then we can't live without it. We become addicts.
Kevin Fuller
#44. I know who we are, and how we got that way. We are writers. We danced with the words, as children, in what became familiar patterns. The words became our friends and our companions, and without even saying it aloud, a thought danced with them: I can do this. This is who I am.
Anna Quindlen
#45. What new thoughts are suggested by seeing a face of country quite familiar, in the rapid movement of the rail-road car!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#46. I think that the idea of people wanting to steal your genome remains a little bit in the world of science fiction. It's a new technology, and it's new science that people are becoming familiar with. It's critical for us to do everything we can to enable the privacy level that people want.
Anne Wojcicki
#47. Give me the old familiar world, post-office and all, with this ever new self, with this infinite expectation and faith, which does not know when it is beaten.
Henry David Thoreau
#48. None of us, she thought, wants the world we know to come to an end; we do not want familiar things to be taken from us.
Alexander McCall Smith
#49. Experience has taught me that the only cruelties people condemn are those with which they do not happen to be familiar.
Ellen Glasgow
#50. Of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder's welcome.
Charles Mackay
#51. We have won freedom, he brooded, but if we abuse it, or vote for cheap personal advantage, it won't be worth having. We are familiar with the abuses of kings, but because what we now attempt is new, we can't foresee its abuses. They'll come.
James A. Michener
#52. It is not merely the feeling that something is familiar. It is one step beyond that. It is something new, challenging, or surprising that opens a door into a feeling of comfort, meaning, or familiarity. It is called an aesthetic aha.
Derek Thompson
#53. The planet Mars
crimson and bright, filling our telescopes with vague intimations of almost-familiar landforms
has long formed a celestial tabula rasa on which we have inscribed our planeto-logical theories, utopian fantasies, and fears of alien invasion or ecological ruin.
David Grinspoon
#54. The mark of highest originality lies in the ability to develop a familiar idea so fruitfully that it would seem no one else would ever have discovered so much to be hidden in it.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#55. Not quite understanding how, he knew what he needed to do. He didn't get it. The feeling - the epiphany - was a strange one, foreign and familiar at the same time. But it felt ... right.
James Dashner
#56. Schiller writes in a letter [to Goethe, 17 December 1795] of a 'poetic mood'. I think I know what he means, I think I am familiar with it myself. It is the mood of receptivity to nature and one in which one's thoughts seem as vivid as nature itself.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
#57. The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected; the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition.
W. H. Auden
#58. The project workers are the ones most familiar with the territory of the project. If a given direction doesn't make sense to them, it doesn't make any sense at all.
Tom DeMarco
#59. Vor stared for a moment at his own reflection in the familiar mirrored face, remembering some of the stupid jokes his friend had told and the innovative military games they had played together. Seurat had never harmed him in any way.
Brian Herbert
#60. Some memorizers arbitrarily associate each playing card with a familiar person or object, so that the king of clubs is represented by, say, Tony Danza. The grand masters associate each card with a person, an action, or an object so that every group of three cards can be converted into a sentence.
Joshua Foer
#61. The Buddha taught that flexibility and openness bring strength and that running from groundlessness weakens us and brings pain. But do we understand that becoming familiar with the running away is the key? Openness doesn't come from resisting our fears but from getting to know them well
Pema Chodron
#62. People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#63. He therefore proceeded to build a bridge a little above the place where he had crossed before. As the method of construction was familiar to the soldiers from the previous occasion, they were able by energetic efforts to complete the task in a few days.
Gaius Iulius Caesar
#64. Jumping genes are fundamental because they're agents of change. Everybody knows that organisms evolve. What makes them evolve is that their genes are dynamic and in motion. A familiar example is the stripe-y corn - called Indian corn - that you buy in the fall.
Nina Fedoroff
#65. Writers are always alone, even in a room bursting with noises of the familiar.
Rachel Thompson
#66. A plasma is the "fourth state of matter." Solids, liquids, and gases make up the three familiar states of matter, but the most common form of matter in the universe is plasma, a gas of ionized atoms.
Michio Kaku
#67. They are trying to hold on to a world that no longer exists. They are blind and terrified because they feel it slipping away from them. They are gripping thin air but they keep trying desperately to hold on to it - hoping the air will turn into something familiar and solid.
Lillian E. Smith
#68. The world is now changing, reviving fears that were familiar in Hitler's time, and to which Hitler responded. The history of the Holocaust is not over. Its precedent is eternal, and its lessons have not yet been learned.
Timothy Snyder
#69. I'm waiting for you," he murmured, smiling a slow, familiar grin that seemed to hint at a secret
between them.
And for the first time, Michele and the mirror reflection were in sync as they both whispered, "Me
too.
Alexandra Monir
#70. I have never doubted that religious phenomena are only to be understood on the pattern of the individual neurotic symptoms familiar to us.
Sigmund Freud
#71. He looked into the crowd for approval, saw his mother and father. He waved and they waved back. Smiles and Indian teeth. They were both drunk. Everything familiar and welcome. Everything beautiful.
Sherman Alexie
#72. The world of the everyday suddenly seemed nothing but an inverted magic act, lulling its audience into believing in the usual, familiar conceptions of space and time, while the astonishing truth of quantum reality lay carefully guarded by nature's sleights of hand.
Brian Greene
#73. I think the movie business is in trouble. It's all movies that you've seen before. Everything's a remake; they want things that are familiar rather than things that surprise you.
Graydon Carter
#74. A man was leaning idly against an elm ... The man, who towered over the poet even at his slanting angle, too old for a student and too worn for a faculty member, stared at him with the familiar, insatiable gleam of the literary admirer.
Matthew Pearl
#75. No, the truth must be something we understand at once, without an introduction or explanation, but so common and familiar that we don't always realize it's around us.
Saul Bellow
#76. I hate the bigotry you believe in. But I'll try not to hate you."
"Why?" he asked. His voice was cold, as she remembered it.
"Hate eats the hater," she quoted from a familiar text of the Telling.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#77. He starts to hum, a haunting melody. No words ride the music, only the familiar notes of a forgotten song.
A.G. Howard
#78. Love. It was the only kind of torture I wasn't familiar with.
T.M. Frazier
#79. The nature of a protective immune response to HIV is still unclear. Because in a very, very unique manner, unlike virtually any other microbe with which we're familiar, the HIV virus has evolved in a way that the immune system finds it very difficult, if not impossible, to deal with the virus.
Anthony Fauci
#80. In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.
W. Somerset Maugham
#81. Aren't you going to get up?"
He put a hand on the curve of her hip, a possessive gesture that had already become
familiar.
"No. Let's have more sex.
Nalini Singh
#82. When cleaning I do it the way people go to church - not so much to discover anything new, although I'm alert for new things, but mainly to reacquaint myself with the familiar. It's nice to go over familiar paths.
Robert M. Pirsig
#83. I think the challenges should be familiar. They should have some relationship to the feelings.
Steven Conrad
#85. You know the Everneath?"
"Uh, yeah, I think I'm familiar with it."
"Good. Because I'm going to destroy it. I'm taking the whole. Damn. Thing. Down. Are you with me?
"Always. Forever.
Brodi Ashton
#86. If your broker or investment advisor is not familiar with the concept of standard deviation of returns, get a new one.
William J. Bernstein
#87. I think Alice Miller's Drama of the Gifted Child is one of the books read by nearly every therapist. Everyone's jaw drops when they read Miller's dead-on description of why we became therapists. (...) I wish more people were familiar with her work.
Ryan Howes
#88. It's easy to assume that because what we are doing is familiar, we are the least valuable part of the church. But God doesn't see it that way. And we need to remember the sacredness of what we are doing as we mother.
Erin Davis
#89. Beauty soon grows familiar to the lover, Fades in his eye, and palls upon the sense.
Joseph Addison
#90. Anyone who watches even the slightest amount of TV is familiar with the scene: An agent knocks on the door of some seemingly ordinary home or office. The door opens, and the person holding the knob is asked to identify himself. The agent then says, I'm going to ask you to come with me.
David Sedaris
#91. Turn on the faucet. Wash yourself with the emotion. It won't hurt you. It will only help. If you let the fear inside, if you pull it on like a familiar shirt, then you can say to yourself, "All right, it's just fear, I don't have to let it control me. I see it for what it is".
Mitch Albom
#93. Then, there he was, and the moment I first laid eyes on him he looked familiar. Hey, you're the guy from the sonogram!
BikeSnobNYC
#94. A jury of inquest was impaneled, and after due deliberation and inquiry they returned the inevitable American verdict which has been so familiar to our ears all the days of our lives - "NOBODY TO BLAME.
Mark Twain
#95. Fred!" the nurse said, though they had never met. "How are we today?" Reading the nurse's name tag, Mr. Bennet replied with fake enthusiasm, "Bernard! We're mourning the death of manners and the rise of overly familiar discourse. How are you?
Curtis Sittenfeld
#96. There are, in truth, no specialties in medicine, since to know fully many of the most important diseases a man must be familiar with their manifestations in many organs.
William Osler
#97. A strong plan of action will yield you quantum results and will ensure that you don't fall into the familiar patterns of your past.
Debbie Ford
#98. I was a supporting character in other people's lives, which seemed right and familiar to me. I was also an outsider: English in the U.S., American in England, dogged yet comforted by that familiar feeling of alien-ness, which occupied that space where my sense of self should have been.
Allegra Huston
#99. Americans are so often thrown by Japan. It looks familiar but, an inch below the surface, it isn't anything like the West at all.
Cathy Davidson
#100. Chronic negative thinking and the emotions it invokes is, like many destructive behaviors, a form of addiction ... it may not be very pleasant, but it's familiar.
Lauren Mackler
