19 Philosophical Quotes from Books I’ve Read in 2024
From a plethora of genres and titles, here are some of my favorite lines.
The quotes are not presented in chronological order — rather, their order is based on their content and meaning. (Quotation marks indicate pieces of dialogue.) The following are my own unobjective interpretations of the text, with heavy inspiration from the myriad of lessons I have learned from people like Stephen Covey, James Clear, and Beth Kempton, as well as from various university courses and clinical therapy sessions from my personal life.
“… you cannot change who you are, only what you do”
– Philip Pullman (Northern Lights)
You cannot change the person you are deep inside nor where your life has brought you. You can, however, conceivably change your actions and habits to fit a better picture of who you wish to be. If you want to make a difference, your efforts are best spent on the things you can control.
“I pretend I am a princess, so that I can try and behave like one”
– Frances Hodgson Burnett (A Little Princess)
As James Clear (Atomic Habits) wisely illustrates, what you tend to do stems from who you believe yourself to be. It is possible, therefore, to create a more ideal situation in life by fitting your behaviors to a corresponding, desired identity. For instance, if you view yourself as brave, cowardice no longer becomes a viable option to affect your behavior.
“… it has nothing to do with what you look like, or what you have. It has only to do with what you think of, and what you do.”
– Frances Hodgson Burnett (A Little Princess)
Your circumstances shape you, but they can never fully define you. It is your own responsibility, as Stephen Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) claims, to carve from yourself the person you want to be. Even the smallest kitchens can produce the most wonderful meals; and sometimes, the loneliest people are also the kindest.
“Our burdens are here, our road is before us, and the longing for goodness and happiness is the guide that leads us through many troubles and mistakes to … peace”
– Louisa May Alcott (Little Women)
We all have goals that show our path forward. We all have flaws and hurdles that block these paths from easy reach. It is the continued pursuit of improvement despite these challenges on the road that leads us to true betterment.
“You’ve got to go through it to get to the end of it”
– Suzanne Collins (Catching Fire)
Resilience is like a muscle. You have to train, train, and train it even more in order to see it bulge. Sometimes, troubles are solved by chance, and other times, they are solved by effort — either way, no issue (none that I can think of, anyway) is ever truly solved without something or someone getting to the root of the matter.
“For a human being, nothing comes naturally … We have to learn everything we do.”
– Philip Pullman (The Subtle Knife)
Practice is a necessary ingredient to skill. Talents are sometimes latent within us and thus strengthened upon use, but no sapling can become a tree without first being a seed. You have to shape and sharpen the slab of steel for it to become a blade.
“You’ll never grow if you only do what you’re good at … The most difficult things are often the most worthwhile.”
– Sue Lynn Tan (Daughter of the Moon Goddess)
Moments of comfort are precious, and it is important to cherish them and hold them close, especially after times of challenge. However, the prerequisite to personal growth is discomfort. Oftentimes, as the quote suggests, the harder something is to do, the more you will have gained by the end.
“… if we wrapped up against the cold, we wouldn’t feel other things, like the bright tingle of the stars, or the music of the Aurora, or best of all the silky feeling of moonlight on our skin. It’s worth being cold for that.”
– Philip Pullman (Northern Lights)
Comfort seldom comes without compromise. Discomfort is an unavoidable companion on our journeys to secure specific states or experiences. This does not take away from the journey itself: it only makes it more precious and worthwhile.
Acceptance doesn’t mean this is how it’s going to end. It’s an acknowledgement that this is where it begins. … You can play an active role in [your own] evolution, but first you need to recognize that it is happening.
– Beth Kempton (Wabi Sabi)
In order to move forward, you need to know where you are standing. Futures are always products of the present; how you choose to deal with the present influences what you might come to deal with in the future. It is by acknowledging your current circumstances that you may come to see where your best path forward lies.
“True courage is in facing danger when you are afraid”
– L. Frank Baum (The Wizard of Oz)
You cannot be courageous without first being afraid. Cowards, after all, are not weak by circumstance; they make themselves weak by choosing to be overpowered by their fear. No microphone is courageous for making a noise before an assembly; you, on the other hand, could be, if you decided to speak publicly despite your reservations.
Their unkindness only had as much power as I gave it …
– Sue Lynn Tan (Daughter of the Moon Goddess)
What someone says to you or does to you can hurt immensely. However, those actions lose their punch — both on you and for them — when you choose not to let their nastiness control you. It is a difficult thing to accept, for sure, but as I often say to myself (a line that has the same ring as Tan’s quote): “A situation is only embarrassing if you yourself see it as so.”
“… when you wear green spectacles, … everything you see looks green to you”
– L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz
Perspective affects what we see in all the directions we look. The preconceived mind can mainly spin assumptions, not facts. Keep this in mind, and you may become aware of the colorful nuances around you: perhaps if you wore different spectacles, things would have a softer shade?
Where people wish to attach, they shall always be ignorant
– Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)
One can always find some justification for one’s own points of view (as Agatha Christie exemplifies in her novel, The A.B.C. Murders) — and, therefore, any argument can be made on any given matter. It is not easy to admit fault or change your mind. However, it is necessary to be aware of your own biases, because if you only focus on the single nail that holds your frame fastened to the wall, the other three that are loose may quickly cause the picture to fall.
“How very little trouble it can give you to understand the motive of other people”
– Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)
Everyone has a reason for doing what they do, whether they are aware of it or not (again, Christie’s The A.B.C. Murders is a brilliant case study for this). As Covey writes in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, trying to understand a situation from another’s point of view is key to solving conflicts in a constructive manner. By doing so, you can approach any challenge that involves another person with a much more helpful gait.
“If something very pleasant should happen now, we should think it a delightful month,” said Beth, who always took a hopeful view of everything, even November
– Louisa May Alcott (Little Women)
You decide what facets of a situation has the power to affect you. Those who find themselves most consistently content in life, I think, are those who refuse to let their circumstances sway their moods. November may be warm or November may be cold; it does not change the fact that you can always put on or pull off your sweater.
“I am naturally indifferent to flowers.” “But now you love a hyacinth. So much the better. You have gained a new source of enjoyment, and it is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible.”
– Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)
Happiness can be found almost anywhere; this is seen by how different we all are in our preferences and pleasures. Your own opinion of something is not necessarily dictated by its inherent qualities, so if you want to, you can try to find beauty in the things you usually find unattractive. Again, it is your choice to let it influence you in any direction; so, all the better for choosing the most pleasurable alternative.
“I have no notion of loving people by halves”
– Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)
It is impossible to entirely like (or dislike) another person for who they are. However, it is possible to choose how you approach that other person based on your opinion of them. It is one thing to recognize a friend’s faults and be angry with them; it is another to badmouth, bully, and manipulate that person just because you only really love half of who they are.
“Wherever you are you should always be contented, but especially at home, because there you must spend most of your time”
– Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)
The ability to adapt is an important skill to foster if you wish to accommodate a situation to your desires. Therefore, it is even more important that you are content with your home base — that is, your lifestyle and habits. It is there, after tall, that you spend the most of your time.
Hearts, like flowers, cannot be rudely handled, but must open naturally
– Louisa May Alcott (Little Women)
Despite what our culture claims about sensitivity, we are all intensely emotional beings. It is unnecessary to force matters of the mind to suppress the heart, much like it is unnecessary to allow matters of the heart to cloud the mind. Like flowers hearts need careful tending; and it is by handling their sunshine, rain, and earth with mindful attention that they open in their due course of time.
I find that books reveal their best lessons in much the same way.
