83 Secrets Of Hidden Quotes

In a world oversaturated with information, the allure of hidden quotes captivates like whispered secrets in a crowded room. These gems, often tucked away in books, speeches, or letters, offer profound insights waiting to be unearthed. Our collection of the top 83 hidden quotes serves as both a treasure hunt and a journey through the thoughts of some of history’s most insightful figures. Whether you seek wisdom, inspiration, or a deeper understanding of the human spirit, these elusive phrases have been meticulously curated to resonate and inspire. As you delve into this exploration, prepare to uncover words that have the power to transform perspectives and ignite the imagination.

1. “Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants willing to be dethroned.” - James Joyce

2. “And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.” - Roald Dahl

3. “Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.” - Benjamin Franklin

4. “Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” - C.G. Jung

5. “I wonder which is preferable, to walk around all your life swollen up with your own secrets until you burst from the pressure of them, or to have them sucked out of you, every paragraph, every sentence, every word of them, so at the end you're depleted of all that was once as precious to you as hoarded gold, as close to you as your skin - everything that was of the deepest importance to you, everything that made you cringe and wish to conceal, everything that belonged to you alone - and must spend the rest of your days like an empty sack flapping in the wind, an empty sack branded with a bright fluorescent label so that everyone will know what sort of secrets used to be inside you?” - Margaret Atwood

6. “She said she never wanted to have secrets from me nor from herself, which is why she wanted to write down everything that otherwise would be hard to talk about. As I said, later I understood that someone who flees into honesty like that fears something, fears that her life will fill with something that can no longer be shared, a genuine secret, indescribable, unutterable.” - Sándor Márai

7. “Some secrets are like fossils and the stone has become too heavy to turn over.” - Delphine de Vigan

8. “Then he led her to sit by him on a fallen gum trunk, smooth and white, and he leaned to whisper in her ear. Transferred the secret he and her mother had kept for seventeen years. Waited for the flicker of recognition, the minute shift in expression as she registered what he was telling her. Watched as the bottom fell out of her world and the person she had been vanished in an instant.” - Kate Morton

9. “His words had tossed the book that was her life into the air and the pages had been blown into disarray, could never be put back together to tell the same story.” - Kate Morton

10. “The streetlight outside my house shines on tonight and I'm watching it like it could give me a vision. James ain't talked ever and he looks at that streetlight like it was a word and maybe like it was a verb. James wanted to streetlight me and make me bright and beautiful so all the moths and bats would circle me like I was the center of the world an held secrets.” - Sherman Alexie

11. “Secrets could never be rushed. They had to come of their own accord, on their own schedule. That way ,when they came , the offered themselves as a gift.” - Donna Jo Napoli

12. “Secrets...are the very root of cool.” - William Gibson

13. “A secret's worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept.” - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

14. “What you didn't tell someone was just as debilitating as what you did.” - Jodi Picoult

15. “Secrets. Funny how, when you're about to be given something precious, something you've wanted for a long time, you suddenly feel nervous over taking it.Everyone wants more than anything to be allowed into someone else's most secret self. Everyone wants to allow someone into their most secret self. Everyone feels so alone inside that their deepest wish is for someone to know their secret being, because then they are alone no longer. Don't we all long for this? Yet when it's offered it's frightening, because you might not live up to the desires of the one who bestows the gift. And frightening because you know that accepting such a gift means you'll want-perhaps be expected- to offer a similar gift in return. Which means giving your *self* away. And what's more frightening than that?” - Aidan Chambers

16. “People were crazy with pain and secrets.” - Anna Funder

17. “When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often then not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.” - Thomas Hardy

18. “He'd kept this silence because his own secrets were darker, more hidden, and because he believed that his secrets had created hers.” - Kim Edwards

19. “So he was queer, E.M. Forster. It wasn't his middle name (that would be 'Morgan'), but it was his orientation, his romping pleasure, his half-secret, his romantic passion. In the long-suppressed novel Maurice the title character blurts out his truth, 'I'm an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.' It must have felt that way when Forster came of sexual age in the last years of the 19th century: seriously risky and dangerously blurt-able. The public cry had caught Wilde, exposed and arrested him, broken him in prison. He was one face of anxiety to Forster; his mother was another. As long as she lived (and they lived together until she died, when he was 66), he couldn't let her know.” - Michael Levenson

20. “I was trying to unravel the complicated trigonometry of the radical thought that silence could make up the greatest lie ever told.” - Pat Conroy

21. “People, in my long experience, want to talk. They may believe they wish to keep secrets, and they may believe that they are capable of doing so. But the truth is that secrets exist to be revealed; and it is usually very easy to find the combination of words that will cause them to emerge.” - J. Robert Lennon

22. “But the aspect of secrets is they leak out. If they didn't leak, they wouldn't be interesting.” - Clamp

23. “There can be, if I forebode aright, no power, short of the Divine mercy, to disclose, whether by uttered words, or by type or emblem, the secrets that may be buried with a human heart. The heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them, until the day when all hidden things shall be revealed. Nor have I so read or interpreted the Holy Writ, as to understand that the disclosure of human thoughts and deeds, then to be made, is intended as part of the retribution. That, surely, were a shallow view of it. No; these revelations, unless I greatly error, are meant merely to promote the intellectual satisfaction of all intelligent beings, who will stand waiting, on that day, to see the dark problem of this life made plain. A knowledge of men's hearts will be needful to the completest solution of that problem. And I conceive, moreover, that the hearts holding such secrets as you speak of will yield them up, at that last day, not with reluctance, but with a joy unutterable.” - Nathaniel Hawthorne

24. “From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few. ” - John Updike

25. “For I did not want him to see, or to question me, for here contains already secrets, and my secrets are my fortune and my sanity.” - Sebastian Barry

26. “This is, in part, why there is less magic in the world today. Magic is secret and secrets are magic, after all, and years upon years of teaching and sharing magic and worse. Writing it down in fancy books that get all dusty with age has lessened it, removed its power bit by bit.” - Erin Morgenstern

27. “Sarah wonders if whatever secrets Grace is protecting feel the same as her own, sometimes just fuzzy and ticklish, like a littler of kittens trying to climb and paw their way out, and sometimes with claws bared, kittens grown to tigers, camouflaged but always ready to spring.” - Beth Neff

28. “Then Cassie told her story. The feeling was like gathering up everything she's ever done or felt or known up to that moment and tying it into a ball and pitching it with all her might as far away as she could, and then watching to see what would happen next, what would roll back to her, what would have gotten left behind.” - Beth Neff

29. “Telling Sam and Daneca feels like peeling off my own skin to expose everything underneath. It hurts.” - Holly Black

30. “A man’s spirit is free, but his pride binds him with chains of suffocation in a prison of his own insecurities” - Jeremy Aldana

31. “There is no quarrel between science and spirituality. I often hear people of science trying to use it to prove the nonexistence of the spiritual, but I simply can't see a chasm in between the two. What is spiritual produces what is scientific and when science is used to disprove the spiritual, it's always done with the intent to do so; a personal contempt. As a result, scientists today only prove their inferiority to the great founding fathers of the sciences who were practitioners of alchemy. Today's science is washed-out and scrubbed-down and robbed of everything mystical and spiritual, a knowledge born of contempt and discontent. Or perhaps, there are a few who wish to keep those secrets to themselves and serve everyone else up with a tasteless version of science and the idiots of today blindly follow their equally blind leaders.” - C. JoyBell C.

32. “He was afraid that the secrets she'd kept would always be here, inside him, an ugly malignant thing lodged near enough to his heart to upset its rhythm, and though it could be removed, cut out, there would always be scars; bits and pieces of it would remain in his blood, making it wrong somehow, so that if he accidentally sliced his skin open, his blood would--for one heartbeat--flow as black as India ink before it remembered that it should be red.” - Kristin Hannah

33. “Lying in bed, half-covered by the blankets, I would drowsily ask why he had come to my door that night long ago. It had become a ritual for us, as it does for all lovers: where, when, why? remember...I understand even old people rehearse their private religion of how they first loved, most guarded of secrets. And he would answer, sleep blurring his words, "Because I had to." The question and the answer were always the same. Why? Because I had to.” - Margaret George

34. “The story of my family. . .changes with the teller.” - Jennifer Haigh

35. “She was flushed and felt intoxicated with the sound of her own voice and the unaccustomed taste of candor. It muddled her like wine, or like a first breath of freedom.” - Kate Chopin

36. “Word spread because word will spread. Stories and secrets fight, stories win, shed new secrets, which new stories fight, and on.” - China Miéville

37. “Consider the coincidences that you do not see." - Fabian Snowstrom, A Vampire's Reckoning” - V.M.K. Fewings

38. “Ah well that I can't tell you." Diana ducked her head so that the brim of her bonnet covered her face. "Some things must remain a mystery and for now I think I'll keep my opinion of you and your compliments to myself.” - Anna Godbersen

39. “The Universe doesn't like secrets. It conspires to reveal the truth, to lead you to it.” - Lisa Unger

40. “[S]ecrets are like stars. They blaze inside the heart and ultimately could be explosive. But there are two types of secrets. Small secrets, like small stars, will eventually burn out. With time and space they lose their importance and simply vanish. No harm done. But big secrets, like massive stars, with time and constant fear grow stronger, creating a gravitational pull that eventually ... When they get so big, they become a black hole.” - Jennifer Jabaley

41. “If there's one thing I don't look for in a maid, it's discretion. Except with my own secrets, of course.” - Julian Fellowes

42. “Women are better at keeping secrets, but men are more comfortable with them” - Stephen King

43. “Secrets. Everyone has them. The light of day and truth reveal some secrets to be nagging obsessions or habits, while other secrets may be as incriminating as a literal decaying skeleton in one’s closet.” - Kenn Bivins

44. “I never lie," I said offhand. "At least not to those I don't love.” - Anne Rice

45. “Secrets and lies… Everyone in the world deals with these every day of their lives. To protect themselves. To protect someone else. It is all in the way that you look at the situation.” - Lacey Thorn

46. “Sir Henry fixed him with a keen eye.'Odd name, Tom Skatt - eh?''Thats right''You don't think we could be related?'Tom looked up at his great-great-great-uncle and smiled.'I don't think so''No,' grinned Sir Henry "no, of course not” - Henry Chancellor

47. “A secret spoken finds wings.” - Robert Jordan

48. “I guess when someone tells you something they they usually guard, you feel privileged, not because you know something no-one else knows, but because you feel chosen. You feel like that person wants her life to intersect with yours. I think that's what felt best about it.” - Markus Zusak

49. “And as for the vague something --- was it a sinister or a sorrowful, a designing or a desponding expression? --- that opened upon a careful observer, now and then, in his eye, and closed again before one could fathom the strange depth partially disclosed; that something which used to make me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering amongst volcanic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground quiver, and seen it gape: that something, I, at intervals, beheld still; and with throbbing heart, but not with palsied nerves. Instead of wishing to shun, I longed only to dare --- to divine it; and I thought Miss Ingram happy, because one day she might look into the abyss at her leisure, explore its secrets and analyse their nature.” - Charlotte Brontë

50. “You are trying to lure us into revealing information you're not entitled to? With chocolate and wine? Are you amateurs?” - Moira J. Moore

51. “Every woman needs secrets,' her mother said with a smile then, her eyes meeting Sally's in the rearview mirror. 'Remember that when you're old like me, pumpkin, because the world has a way of making a woman's life everyone else's business--you have to dig out a little place that's only yours.” - J. Courtney Sullivan

52. “It's not the substance of what you make known to me that's beautiful; it's the opening of your heart. It is the 'yes' in your heart to be mine. The fact that you are revealing the secrets and letting me peer into your heart--that is in itself the beautiful part.” - Dana Candler

53. “It is the one of the great secrets of life that those things are most worth doing,we do for others.” - Lewis Carroll

54. “The fact is we all know that there exists in the world an order different from that in which we pass our days. If we reveal its existence people think that we are crazy.” - Andrei Codrescu

55. “The man who can keep a secret may be wise, but he is not half as wise as the man with no secrets to keep” - Edgar Watson Howe

56. “The real secrets are not the ones I tell.” - Mason Cooley

57. “They didn't just live with secrets. Secrecy surrounded their entire lives.” - Anthony Horowitz

58. “Because, my dear Eric, I have tasted the secret knowledge. I know how much to say and when to pull back. I know what to see and not see. And now that I have become whole again, I can never go back. All these things he has given me. Better than my supposed mother and father ever could. For that, I owe him my life and allegiance.” - Melika Dannese Lux

59. “He had been driven hither by the impulse of that Remorse which dogged him everywhere, and whose own sister and closely linked companion was that Cowardice which invariably drew him back, with her tremulous gripe, just when the other impulse had hurried him to the verge of a disclosure.” - Nathaniel Hawthorne

60. “He confided his deepest secret to you; be always wary of his secret.” - Dejan Stojanovic

61. “If only Uncle Monty knew what we know," Violet said, "and Stephano knew that he knew what we know. But Uncle Monty doesn't know what we know, and Stephano knows that he doesn't know what we know.""I know," Klause said."I know you know," Violet said” - Lemony Snicket

62. “The Tanakh teaches that, “The diligent will rule, while the lazy will be put to forced labor”. Most Jews work for themselves and hire employees instead of being employees.” - H.W. Charles

63. “I hope to turn my reader into the quiet person in the corner who, even when no one is telling them anything, sees everything.” - damali ayo

64. “Keeping secrets isn't my specialty.” - Hannah Harrington

65. “I want something good to die for. . . to make it beautiful to live.” - Stacey T. Hunt

66. “It's in the anomalies that nature reveals its secrets.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

67. “I want you to remember what was good in me, not what was most awful. The people you love should be allowed to keep their worst to themselves.” - Joe Hill

68. “Real secrets mean more than hiding that card game from you daddy. Real secrets can be hurtful. Make people do bad things.” - Augusta Scattergood

69. “My name is Cammie!” I didn’t think about all the people I could have woken, all the alarms that might have gone off. I just snapped, “How did you know about Boston? Why are you working with Mr. Solomon now? Are you my friend or are you my enemy, Zach? Or, wait, let me guess, you can’t tell me.” - Ally Carter

70. “La madrugada es la mejor aliada de un secreto” - Alessandra Neymar

71. “That’s literally one of those things where if I tell you I have to kill you. A witch’s wand is a powerful tool and could be disastrous if it fell into the wrong hands.” - Amanda Kelly

72. “Some things in life are worth waiting for.” - danielle steel

73. “What someone’s lies reveal about them (aspirations to being an accomplished writer, fantasies of an exotic history and a cosmopolitan family) are always sadder than the fact of the lies themselves. These inventions illuminate the negative spaces of someone’s self-image, their vanity and insecurities and most childish wishes, as we can infer from warped starlight the presence of a far vaster mass of dark matter.” - Tim Kreider

74. “I guess that’s the way secrets are. They’re only heavy when you’re holding them. As soon as you let go, the significance of keeping those secrets hidden blows away and everything falls into place.” - Cassia Leo

75. “Throughout our times with Christopher [therapist] we were encouraged to work together at communicating on the inside. He pointed out that it would be good for us all to listen-in when an alter was telling his/her story - that it's now safe, no harm will come to us from telling or from knowing. There was once a time when it was very important that we didn't know what had happened; that knowing meant danger or being so overwhelmed with pain and grief that we wouldn't survive. But now it was different. We're safe and strong, and our goal now are to uncover the grisly truth of what's happened to us, so that it's no longer a powerful secret. We can look at it and face the past for what it is - old memories of old events. Today is now,and we can choose to live a different way and believe different things. We were once powerless and vulnerable, but now we were in a position to make choices. We had control over our life.” - Carolyn Bramhall

76. “Secret ceremonies in which malevolent men and women cloaked in hooded robes, hiding behind painted faces and chanting demonic incantations while inflicting sadistic wounds on innocent children lying on makeshift alters, or tied to inverted crosses, sounds like the stuff of which B-grade horror movies are made. Some think amoral religious cults only populate the world of Rosemary's Baby, but don't exist in real life. Or, do they? Ask Jenny Hill.” - Judy Byington

77. “He leaned toward me and said his name like he was sharing a secret and it made me think he probably kept a lot of secrets. His smile was sweet and his teeth the tiniest bit crooked.” - Laura Anderson Kurk

78. “Some abusers organise themselves in groups to abuse children and other adults in a more formally ritualised way. Men and women in these groups can be abusers with both sexes involved in all aspects of the abuse. Children are often forced to abuse other children. Pornography and prostitution are sometimes part of the abuse as is the use of drugs, hypnotism and mind control. Some groups use complex rituals to terrify, silence and convince victims of the tremendous power of the abusers. the purpose is to gain and maintain power over the child in order to exploit. Some groups are so highly organised that they also have links internationally through trade in child-pornography, drugs and arms.Some abusers organise themselves around a religion or faith and the teaching and training of the children within this faith, often takes the form of severe and sustained torture and abuse. Whether or not the adults within this type of group believe that what they are doing is, in some way 'right' is immaterial to the child on the receiving end of the 'teachings' and abuse.” - Laurie Matthew

79. “In a nutshell, the process they [abusers in a ritual abuse group] use on survivors is designed to:break the will and personality of the person until they become as nothing... with no will of their own...no identity...then they... rebuild the person & shape their will in order to...try and make the person one of them...thus gaining powerIf abusers hold all the power, becoming one of them can, for some, be the only means of survival. However, this doesn't always work, instead survivors often find ways of regaining their own power and fighting back.” - Laurie Matthew

80. “No matter how grave the secret, how imperative absolute silence, someone would always feel the urge to confess, and an unleashed secret is a terrible force.” - Téa Obreht

81. “Sometimes it's the smallest secrets that hold the most hope, the most fun, the most danger.” - Suzanne Palmieri

82. “Now writing is just working your way toward the border that the innermost secret draws around itself, and to cross that line would mean self-destruction. But writing is also an attempt to respect the borderline only for the truly innermost secret, and bit by bit to free the taboos around that core, difficult to admit as they are, from their prison of unspeakability. Not self-destruction but self-redemption. Not being afraid of unavoidable suffering.” - Christa Wolf

83. “What would you do if you saw something nobody else could see?”The tape gun fell out of Luke’s hand, and hit the tiled hearth. He knelt to pick it up, not looking at her. “You mean if I were the only witness to a crime, that sort of thing?”“No. I mean, if there were other people around, but you were the only one who could see something. As if it were invisible to everyone but you.”He hesitated, still kneeling, the dented tape gun gripped in his hand.“I know it sounds crazy,” Clary ventured nervously, “but…”He turned around. His eyes, very blue behind the glasses, rested on her with a look of firm affection. “Clary, you’re an artist, like your mother. That means you see the world in ways that other people don’t. It’s your gift, to see the beauty and the horror in ordinary things. It doesn’t make you crazy—just different. There’s nothing wrong with being different.” - Cassandra Clare