Top 100 What They Seem Quotes
#1. What are they going to do about it?"
"So far? Get drunk. Yell at each other or at us. Design theoretical judicial systems. Most of them seem to want the whole thing to just go away sot hey can get on with their research."
Murtry chuckled. "God bless the eggheads.
James S.A. Corey
#2. Religions are strange. They seem to be caught in some dream which they won't give up and trying to convince others of the truth of their dream, when in fact each person is having their own dream. Take what you need from the religions and just leave the rest, and be all right with that.
Art Hochberg
#3. Some of these rich folks seem to think that everything belongs to them and they'll even get to take it with them when they die. But you know what? You don't ever see a hearse pulling a U Haul.
Jim Hightower
#4. Anything that is within someone else's reach is also within yours. Set your goals no matter how impossible they may seem. Then focus on what is between you and that goal. And then, simply take out the obstacles as they come.
Liz Murray
#5. 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
#6. From where you sit, it may seem that certain people should know better. People are who they are and do what they do whether or not you like it or agree with them. We each have different lessons to learn. We each take a different path to our lessons.
Iyanla Vanzant
#7. I know people who prepare their roles in such a way that they technically look ahead and memorize their gestures, and then they stick to it. Those that are technically proficient enough can make it seem natural, but they do that and don't really take in what other people are doing.
Viggo Mortensen
#8. And what's so bad about your being deprived of that? ... All things seem unbearable to people who have become spoilt, who have become soft through a life of luxury, ailing more in the mind than they ever are in the body.
Seneca.
#9. Things are not quite what they seem always. Don't start me on class, otherwise you'll get a four-hour lecture.
Michael Caine
#10. Compared to their sense of smell, dogs seem to pay a lot less attention to their sense of taste. Apparently they believe that if something fits into their mouths, then it is food, no matter what it tastes like.
Stanley Coren
#11. I don't seem to have ever had a plan, but I have always been quite good at walking through doors when they are opened. I am never any good at anticipating what will happen next, but I always go for it when it does.
Julian Fellowes
#12. What I do is spend too much time thinking. Most of the time I just walk around annoyed. Would I describe myself as relatively happy, I suppose, but society gets to me. And the people that have mastered life seem to not care, and then they die, and then the grenade goes off.
Neill Blomkamp
#13. All children are beautiful: the thing they do with their eyes that seems so dazzling when they take you all in, or seem to take you all in; it's like being looked at by an alien, or a cat - who knows what they see?
Anne Enright
#14. The truth is, what you do matters. What you do today matters. What you do every day matters. Successful people just do the things that seem to make no difference in the act of doing them and they do them over and over and over until the compound effect kicks in.
Jeff Olson
#15. What is happening to the daughters of the yam? Seem like they just don't know how to draw up the powers from the deep like before. Not full sunned and sweet anymore.
Toni Cade Bambara
#16. This book is about physics and its about physics and its relationship with mathematics and how they seem to be intimately related and to what extent can you explore this relationship and trust it.
Roger Penrose
#17. Some people, well, most people just seem to show up on your life with no clear purpose. Have you noticed that? They're like dust mites. You know they're there, you just don't know what to do about them.
Polly Horvath
#18. My favorite animal in the park is the grizzly, icnonic, graceful, and with eyes that seem to know, and what they know is sad.
Danielle Rohr
#19. Sometimes," says a fellow depressive, "I wish I was in a full body cast, with every bone in my body broken. That's how I feel anyway. Then, maybe, people would stop minimising my illness because they can actually see what's wrong with me. They seem to need physical evidence.
Sally Brampton
#20. What's awful about being famous and being an actress is when people come up to you and touch you. That's scary, and they just seem to think it's okay to do it, like you're public property.
Winona Ryder
#21. It is little men know of women; their smiles and their tears alike are seldom what they seem.
Amelia Barr
#22. I want people to do what they want to do because when they feel comfortable it seems to translate better on screen. It is when you put people in a straitjacket that it doesn't seem to translate very well at all. The individuals I work with are usually people I know.
Steve McQueen
#23. If you don't recount your family history, it will be lost. Honor your own stories and tell them too. The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are.
Madeleine L'Engle
#24. Friends in the Midwest often ask me what it's like to raise a family in Los Angeles. I say it's just like where they are, but warmer and with more traffic. I also tell them people here seem a bit more tolerant of those who are different.
Steven Levitan
#25. Can't you see there's a determinism about the fate of nations? They all seem to get what they deserve in the long run.
Malcolm Lowry
#26. Movies are collaborative, and that's part of what makes it a great experience. They're different from a lot of other art forms, but also it makes it seem like when you see the final product, you go, 'I wouldn't have done that. I wouldn't have done this.'
Casey Affleck
#27. Who born so poor,
Of intellect so mean, as not to know
What seem'd the best; and knowing not to do?
As not to know what God and conscience bade,
And what they bade not able to obey?
Robert Pollok
#28. there might be some kind of moral force in the universe that eventually balances things out. It takes a while sometimes, but eventually people seem to get what they deserve.
Scott Pratt
#29. Things aren't always what they seem, are they?
N.E. Bode
#30. In my opinion a lot of people who may seem happy now would do what I did or similar things if they had the money and the time. I
John Fowles
#31. Few words in any language carry such a load of meaning as 'honor.' It is an old word, unchanged even in its spelling from classical Latin to modern English. Spoken or written, it does not seem to require much explanation; most people think they know what it means.
Edmund Morgan
#32. Thus 'tis with all; their chief and constant care Is to seem everything but what they are.
Oliver Goldsmith
#33. Children once settled and confident can mostly be left, it seems, to manage their difficulties without us. Only what we must do, always and unalterably, is hold their hand firmly in general goodwill, then they themselves seem to deal with their own particular troubles far better than we can.
Nan Fairbrother
#34. Rebellion can seem pointless to those whom have never had to fight for what they need, or would like. Privilege is not always kindly given.
Cheri Bauer
#35. Great performers in all fields seem immune to what outsiders think about them. Their sense of themselves never depends on the feedback-positive or negative-they get from the environment.
John Eliot
#36. I have a lot of Japanese fans, but in Korea they seem to go crazy for me. I don't know what it is, but they seem to like my style.
Shu Qi
#37. Well, man, you know what they say.
No, I don't. I don't know what they say.
I don't even know who they are.
Who is this they?
They seem pretty smug.
They seem to think they know shit.
Fuck them.
Bo Burnham
#38. What? Corpus. Body. Corpse. Good idea the Latin. Stupifies them first. Hospice for the dying. They don't seem to chew it; only swallow it down.
James Joyce
#39. The stories are not autobiographical, but they're personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I've learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.
Alice Munro
#40. Everyone had a dirty, little secret that is never spoken out loud to anyone. Which is another way of saying people are never what they seem.
Anonymous
#41. I started out writing when I was young; stuff about exposing the truth about how people are not what they appear, about how they are much more dysfunctional than they seem. Pulling back the curtain - that felt smart. But as I got older, exposing how frail people can be seems less and less deep.
Mike White
#42. I feel that the time is always right to do what is right. Where progress for the Negro in America is concerned, there is a tragic misconception of time among whites. They seem to cherish a strange, irrational notion that something in the very flow of time will cure all ills.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#43. I have a lot of what you might call creative self-loathing - I have pretty high expectations, and they seem to consistently be higher than what I'm able to accomplish.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#44. Also bear in mind, when you're choosing your words and stringing them together, how they sound. This may seem absurd: readers read with their eyes. But in fact they hear what they are reading far more than you realize.
William Zinsser
#45. Over time, I realized I wasn't necessarily seeing people or things at their best or worst; instead, I was simply seeing things as they were.
There didn't seem to be a moral high road to take in most situations, and "What's the right thing to do?" wasn't an easy question.
Dee Williams
#46. I refuse to be misled by any kind of a mirage about any alleged success of what I write. Those things are too easily exaggerated, and even when they are true, they always mean less than they seem to.
Thomas Merton
#47. It seems to me that smart people seem to know things and wise people know how to use what they know. Smart is a big help to a man; wise is a big help to lots of men.
Dan Groat
#48. In the U.S., ironically, people work longer hours in the U.S. than they do in Europe or in any other industrialized country. They seem utterly oblivious to May Day, don't really know what it is - our own history.
Eric Drooker
#49. Sometimes it looks as if, the better off they [nations] become, the bigger do they conceive the gap between what is actually their lot and what would be desirable, while in the poor countries large masses of people seem to be satisfied by merely surviving.
Gunnar Myrdal
#50. I wonder why some people seem to be born knowing what they want to do with their lives and others - mostly me - have no idea.
Kasie West
#51. People used to be funny about approaching me, but now they seem to think I'm as sane as anyone who's done what I've done in movies can be.
Philip Seymour Hoffman
#52. Women are never what they seem to be. There is the woman you see and there is the woman who is hidden. Buy the gift for the woman who is hidden.
Erma Bombeck
#53. I really don't know why the Muslims do what they are doing. Those terrorists don't seem to have a moral code.
Jack Higgins
#54. Part of the problem is voters know relatively little about Romney. And some of what they know about him complicates his task: Romney has a history of flip-flopping on issues, he's extraordinarily wealthy, and he can be tone-deaf about what moves voters. He just doesn't seem comfortable in his skin.
Ron Fournier
#55. Half of the time I don't know what they're talking about; their jokes seem to relate to a past that everyone but me has shared. I'm a foreigner in the world and I don't understand the language.
Jean Webster
#56. Reality rebounds, and things turn out the opposite of what they seem and what people expect. Strength becomes weakness; love becomes pornography; pleasure becomes boredom; and so on.
Os Guinness
#57. Well, certainly, even separate from what our culture is going through, kids have different personalities and different natural bents and skill sets that they seem to come pre-programmed with. One of my two sons is very athletic. The other one is into social skills and humor.
Alex Kendrick
#58. Things are not always what they seem; the first appearance deceives many; the intelligence of a few perceives what has been carefully hidden.
Phaedrus
#59. I'll say this, Arik: the old man's warning proved to be true - things are not always what they seem. She was no young lady -"
"If it's the demon you speak of," interjected Rith, as she stepped back into the ruin, Lyssa following after, "she was not even a toothless old hag.
Dennis L. McKiernan
#60. What is there," Owain wondered aloud, to the sky above him and the soil below, "persuades this man still that my words do not mean what they seem to mean in sane men's ears?
Edith Pargeter
#61. What is stronger in us - passion or habit? Or are all the violent impulses, all the whirl of our desires and turbulent passions, only the consequence of our ardent age, and is it only through youth that they seem deep and shattering?
Nikolai Gogol
#62. The seeming imperfections of Earth, the hazards and inequalities of life, the cruelty, harshness and apparent indifference to suffering and affliction are not what they seem; as it is Earth is perfect for its purpose. It is ignorance of that purpose which makes it appear imperfect.
Kolbrin BIble
#63. The soldiers don't know what they want, or what they hate, or what they like. They're used to acting in large bodies, and they seem to have to make demonstrations.
F Scott Fitzgerald
#64. In my fantasy world everyone has a happy ending. No one is told who they should be, how they should feel, who they are allowed to love, what they should believe and how they should look. Sadly, everyone in my world can't seem to get along with one another because everyone is so darn different.
Shannon L. Alder
#65. There is only one plot - things are not what they seem.
Jim Thompson
#66. My sangha, what I seem to attract, are people who have been practicing a long time, they're teaching, they're more serious about their spiritual journey.
Beryl Bender Birch
#67. Let the new faces play what tricks they will
In the old rooms; night can outbalance day,
Our shadows rove the garden gravel still,
The living seem more shadowy than they.
William Butler Yeats
#68. This is what I find encouraging about the writing trades: ... They allow lunatics to seem saner than sane.
Kurt Vonnegut
#69. Animals can seem more pure. Without complication, I mean, animals are selfless. What animals do for us, they do out of instinct.
Susan Orlean
#71. The American people thoroughly despise and hate their newspapers; yet they seem to have no idea what to do about it, and take it for granted that they must go on reading falsehoods for the balance of their days!
Upton Sinclair
#72. American houses ... ' she said, peering over her right shoulder and down the street. 'They always seem to believe that nobody ever loses anything, has lost anything. I find that very sad. Do you know what I mean?
Zadie Smith
#73. What wonderful minds we have, even though they don't seem to get us anywhere, or make us happy.
Tim Parks
#74. All these fine Christian-type people that seem to think they know what God wants for all of us, that's certainly more of a sin then anything they would claim about us. To judge people is one of the greatest sins.
Dolly Parton
#75. We all make assumptions
every day. Some more important than others. Some more damaging
than others. And things, very often, are not at all what they seem.
B.B. Shepherd
#76. Oh could I feel as I have felt,-or be what I have been,
Or weep as I could once have wept, o'er many a vanish'd scene;
As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish though they be,
So midst the wither'd waste of life, those tears would flow to me.
George Gordon Byron
#77. You've got your mission, whatever it is. To accomplish it, like the rest of us you're in the pinch between the way you wish things were and the way they actually are (which always seem to be a disaster). How far are you willing to go? What are you willing to do about it?
Ryan Holiday
#78. You always want to go out there with the best book possible, so I listen to what my editors say, and even if they don't know how to fix it, I always seem to find a way. 'Trust Your Eyes' is the best book I've written, and I don't know if I can do any better.
Linwood Barclay
#79. I don't know what it is, but even when I pretty much like a man, after I date him a while, he gets to seem kind of tiresome. I just can't be bothered to act interested anymore, and then I finally tell him I don't want to go out anymore. They always get upset. - Lillian
Charlaine Harris
#80. I can remember the day when all that a professor was supposed to do was to mark "C minus" on students' examination papers, then gohome to tea. Nowadays they seem to feel that they must know just how much we (outside the university) eat, what we do with our spare time, and how we like our eggs.
Robert Benchley
#81. They please, are pleas'd, they give to get esteem Till, seeming blest, they grow to what they seem.
Oliver Goldsmith
#82. Masks are what they seem to be; not so the faces beneath them.
Mason Cooley
#83. The stones here speak to me, and I know their mute language. Also, they seem deeply to feel what I think. So a broken column of the old Roman times, an old tower of Lombardy, a weather-beaten Gothic piece of a pillar understands me well. But I am a ruin myself, wandering among ruins.
Heinrich Heine
#84. There are some as are what they are. And there are some as aren't what they seem to be. And there are some as only seem to be what they seem to be.
Neil Gaiman
#85. An explanation of an old man's mistakes. For I see now that what I have done, and not done, with regard to you, bears all hallmarks of the failings of age. Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they what it was to be young ... and I seem to have forgotten lately ...
J.K. Rowling
#86. What young men will be, in all probability depends on what they are now, and they seem to forget this. Youth is the planting time of full age, the molding season in the little space of human life, the turning point in the history of man's mind.
J.C. Ryle
#87. I have a theory that those mutants retain some memory of what they were in life, and that draws them to where they used to live. That's probably bullshit, but since I seem to be the only man alive, my theories are the best in this part of the world.
Manel Loureiro
#88. Animals are ever so psychic. There are some people who just can't come in here. The cats particularly seem to know. You can fool everybody, but landy M deary-me, you can't fool a cat. They seem to know who's not right, if you know what I mean.
Dewitt Bodeen
#89. Most humans, they seem to prattle on about this and that, not even really seeming to care about what they are saying so long as someone is listening.
Shanon Mayer
#90. It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem.
Douglas Adams
#91. The characters that aren't what they seem to be or women who are stronger than people give them credit for or characters you underestimate, I always think are really interesting because there are so many possibilities with them.
Valorie Curry
#92. But one needs to bear in mind that things are not always what they seem and, contrary to the dead stillness of a photograph, reality is in a state of perpetual flux.
Audur Ava Olafsdottir
#93. In my run-ins with Christians ... I find that they really are good moral people. And we overlap on everything, and they don't seem to be the kind of people that are waiting to hear voices to tell them what to do.
Penn Jillette
#94. One thing we seem to be missing is that just as we no longer search for the news, the news finds us today (e.g. this article found me) we will no longer search for products and services, rather we will look to our social graph to what products and services they like and don't like.
Erik Qualman
#95. Fishing in rainy conditions may make fisherman seem crazy to the great mass of unimaginative people, but then few fishermen care what they think
John Gierach
#96. I know they're not actually talking but the books on my desk seem to whisper "Drop what you're doing! Set aside your poetry! Open us, read us! Read slowly while you're at it. Always read us - every day - before you play.
Ed Sanders
#97. Names are not always what they seem.
Mark Twain
#98. She was only saying what I already knew in my heart, but hearing the words spoken made it seem all the more true, all the more terrifying.
Words gave concepts power.
Once they were released, there was no choice but to understand them, no matter how painful they might be.
Mike A. Lancaster
#99. Names are not always what they seem. The common Welsh name Bzjxxllwcp is pronounced Jackson.
Mark Twain
#100. Who keeps on loving you when you've been lying, saying things that ain't what they seem? God does, but I don't. God will, but I won't.
Lyle Lovett
