47 Important Quotes

In a world teeming with information, it's easy to get lost in the noise. Sometimes, all it takes is a few words to reignite our passion, reshape our perspectives, and remind us of what truly matters. This handpicked collection of 47 important quotes does just that. These timeless nuggets of wisdom span across various themes and eras, offering insights from some of history's most profound thinkers, leaders, and writers. Whether you're seeking motivation, clarity, or simply a moment of reflection, these quotes promise to leave a lasting impact on your mind and heart. Dive in and let the words of the wise guide you on your journey.

1. “Kiss me, and you will see how important I am.” - Sylvia Plath

2. “Our great mistake in education is, as it seems to me, the worship of book-learning–the confusion of instruction and education. We strain the memory instead of cultivating the mind. The children in our elementary schools are wearied by the mechanical act of writing, and the interminable intricacies of spelling; they are oppressed by columns of dates, by lists of kings and places, which convey no definite idea to their minds, and have no near relation to their daily wants and occupations; while in our public schools the same unfortunate results are produced by the weary monotony of Latin and Greek grammar. We ought to follow exactly the opposite course with children–to give them a wholesome variety of mental food, and endeavor to cultivate their tastes, rather than to fill their minds with dry facts. The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn. What does it matter if the pupil know a little more or a little less? A boy who leaves school knowing much, but hating his lessons, will soon have forgotten almost all he ever learned; while another who had acquired a thirst for knowledge, even if he had learned little, would soon teach himself more than the first ever knew.” - John Lubbock

3. “It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.” - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

4. “There are only two worlds - your world, which is the real world, and other worlds, the fantasy. Worlds like this are worlds of the human imagination: their reality, or lack of reality, is not important. What is important is that they are there. these worlds provide an alternative. Provide an escape. Provide a threat. Provide a dream, and power; provide refuge, and pain. They give your world meaning. They do not exist; and thus they are all that matters. ” - Neil Gaiman

5. “One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.” - Bertrand Russell

6. “A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.” - Samuel Johnson

7. “What an odd thing a diary is: the things you omit are more important than those you put in.” - Simone de Beauvoir

8. “It's not much of a tail, but I'm sort of attached to it.” - A.A. Milne

9. “I'd rather make a show 100 people need to see, than a show that 1000 people want to see.” - Joss Whedon

10. “Whenever you look back and say "if" you know you're in trouble. There is no such thing as "if". The only thing that matters is what really happened.” - D.J. MacHale

11. “In London it had seemed impossible to travel without the proper evening clothes. One could see an invitation arriving for an Embassy ball or something. But on the other side of Europe with the first faint tinges of faraway places becoming apparent and exciting, to say nothing of vanishing roads and extra weight, Embassy balls held less significance.” - Robert Edison Fulton Jr.

12. “Anything worth having is worth fighting for.” - Susan Elizabeth Phillips

13. “We all matter - maybe less then a lot but always more than none.” - John Green

14. “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” - A.W. Tozer

15. “The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.” - Sun Tzu

16. “Valentine went back to class without answering. That night Demosthenes published a scathing denunciation of the population limitation laws. People should be allowed to have as many children as they like, and the surplus population should be sent to other worlds, to spread mankind so far across the galaxy that no danger, no invasion could ever threaten the human race with annihilation. "The most noble title any child can have," Demosthenes wrote, "is Third.” - Orson Scott Card

17. “If woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance (...); as great as a man, some think even greater. But this is woman in fiction. In fact, as Professor Trevelyan points out [in his History of England], she was locked up, beaten and flung about the room.” - Virginia Woolf

18. “For millions of years flowers have been producing thorns. For millions of years sheep have been eating them all the same. And it's not serious, trying to understand why flowers go to such trouble to produce thorns that are good for nothing? It's not important, the war between the sheep and the flowers? It's no more serious and more important than the numbers that fat red gentleman is adding up? Suppose I happen to know a unique flower, one that exists nowhere in the world except on my planet, one that a little sheep can wipe out in a single bite one morning, just like that, without even realizing what he'd doing - that isn't important? If someone loves a flower of which just one example exists among all the millions and millions of stars, that's enough to make him happy when he looks at the stars. He tells himself 'My flower's up there somewhere...' But if the sheep eats the flower, then for him it's as if, suddenly, all the stars went out. And that isn't important?” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

19. “Many besides Angel have learnt that the magnitude of lives is not as to their external displacements but as to their subjective experiences.” - Thomas Hardy

20. “. . . at this season, the blossom is out in full now, there in the west early. It's a plum tree, it looks like apple blossom but it's white, and looking at it, instead of saying "Oh that's nice blossom" ... last week looking at it through the window when I'm writing, I see it is the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be, and I can see it. Things are both more trivial than they ever were, and more important than they ever were, and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn't seem to matter. But the nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous, and if people could see that, you know. There's no way of telling you; you have to experience it, but the glory of it, if you like, the comfort of it, the reassurance ... not that I'm interested in reassuring people - bugger that. The fact is, if you see the present tense, boy do you see it! And boy can you celebrate it.” - Dennis Potter

21. “London has the trick of making its past, its long indelible past, always a part of its present. And for that reason it will always have meaning for the future, because of all it can teach about disaster, survival, and redemption. It is all there in the streets. It is all there in the books.” - Anna Quindlen

22. “Not at all," said Dorothea, with the most open kindness. "I like you very much."Will was not quite contented, thinking that he would apparently have been of more importance if he had been disliked. He said nothing, but looked dull, not to say sulky.” - George Eliot

23. “In all my experience along the dirtiest ways of this dirty little world, I have never met with such a thing as a trifle yet.” - Wilkie Collins

24. “When you buy a jacket, it’s important the pockets are big enough for a paperback!” - Daniel Pennac

25. “Noi fummo i Gattopardi, i Leoni; quelli che ci sostituiranno saranno gli sciacalletti, le iene; e tutti quanti gattopardi, sciacalli e pecore, continueremo a crederci il sale della terra."("We were the Leopards, the Lions; those who'll take our place will be little jackals, hyenas; and the whole lot of us, Leopards, jackals, and sheep, we'll all go on thinking ourselves the salt of the earth.")” - Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

26. “Peter! Were you looking for a horse-shoe?""No; I was expecting the horse, but the shoe is a piece of pure, gorgeous luck.""And observation. I found it.""You did. And I could kiss you for it. You need not shrink and tremble. I am not going to do it. When I kiss you, it will be an important event -- one of those things which stand out among their surroundings like the first time you tasted li-chee. It will not be an unimportant sideshow attached to a detective investigation.” - Dorothy L. Sayers

27. “The issues Miss Quested had raised were so much more important than she was herself that people inevitably forgot her.” - E.M. Forster

28. “Sometimes you suffer for the things that are important to you.” - Marta Acosta

29. “Dates are important in history because what is done on those dates is of importance” - Amit Abraham

30. “The affair seems absurdly trifling, and yet I dare call nothing trivial when I reflect that some of my most classic cases have had the least promising commencement. You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth which the parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day.” - Arthur Conan Doyle

31. “While parchment may burn and gold may be stained or melted down, the things that are truly important to us will never lose their value.” - Evan Meekins

32. “If you want to strengthen an enemy and make him exult - hate him.” - Idries Shah

33. “One realized all sorts of things. The value of an illusion, for instance, and that the shadow can be more important than the substance. All sorts of things.” - Jean Rhys

34. “Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.” - George Washington

35. “In the end, what you do isn't going to be nearly as interesting or important as who you do it with.” - John Green

36. “Someday you're going to have to learn to separate what seems to be important from what really is important.” - George Lucas

37. “People have this dream of being unreachable. They build a name for themselves and then finally fulfill their dream of "being more important." Which just shows they were born from down below. Because when you're born from up above, your dreams have nowhere to go but downwards! And you dream of doing things in order to meet people, to know them, to understand the smallest importances!” - C. JoyBell C.

38. “In an unfathomable expanse of universe supporting galaxies of star systems with orbiting planets innumerable, I am nothing.  And yet to the few bodies encircling my tiny little spot in the world, I am essential.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

39. “A great writer picks up on those things that matter. It’s almost like their radar is attuned to the most significant moments.” - Alain De Botton

40. “Pain only matters when it happens to someone important.” - john barnes

41. “Everyone just wasting time because they have so much of it to waste, minutes slipping by on who's with who and did you hear.” - Lauren Oliver

42. “No one is useless in this world, who lightens the burden of it for any one else.” - Jennifer E. Smith

43. “As time passed and he grew to know people better, he began to think of himself as an extraordinary man, one set apart from his fellows. He wanted terribly to make his life a thing of great importance, and as he looked about at his fellow men and saw how like clods they lived it seemed to him that he could not bear to become also such a clod.” - Sherwood Anderson

44. “What's important is to remain human.” - Katerina Gogou

45. “The essential respect is the one in your own heart for yourself.” - Bryant McGill

46. “History is the nothing people write about a nothing.” - William Golding

47. “I'm keenly aware of the Principle of Priority, which states (a) you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important, and (b) you must do what's important first.” - Steven Pressfield