We recently asked the BuzzFeed Community to tell us the best pieces of advice they've gotten from books. Here are some of their best responses.
2. "Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs."
—Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë"
Suggested by khlaw1993
3. "Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you."
—A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin
Suggested by Emma H., Facebook
4. "But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them."
—The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky
Suggested by rebeccab440d2ce80 and srmartinez523
5. "It’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you."
—To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Suggested by Hannah K., Facebook
7. "Being a hero doesn't mean you are invincible, it means you are brave enough to stand up and do what's needed."
—The Mark of Athena, Rick Riordan
Suggested by Eka G., Facebook
8. "Don't be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don't have to live forever, you just have to live."
—Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt
Suggested by jessicagraceq
9. "Go then if you must, but remember, no matter how foolish your deeds, those who love you will love you still."
—Antigone, Sophocles
Suggested by sufle
10. "Once you've decided that something's absolutely true, you've closed your mind on it, and a closed mind doesn't go anywhere. Question everything. That's what education's all about."
—Belgarath the Sorcerer, David Eddings
Suggested by KaliCalamity
12. "If you expect to find people who understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way."
—White Oleander, Janet Fitch
Suggested by Markie G., Facebook
13. "It’s impossible to go through life unscathed. Nor should you want to. By the hurts we accumulate, we measure both our follies and our accomplishments."
—Inheritance, Christopher Paolini
Suggested by johnnyd4f7d67cab
14. "The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails."
—The Book of Merlyn, T. H. White
Suggested by EstarSiendo
15. "The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. The most you can do is live inside that hope, running down its hallways, touching the walls on both sides."
—Animal Dreams, Barbara Kingsolver
Suggested by lisak40bc2d9b3
17. "People don't complete us. We complete ourselves. If we haven't the power to complete ourselves, the search for love becomes a search for self-annihilation; and then we try to convince ourselves that self-annihilation is love."
—Fear of Flying, Erica Jong
Suggested by charlottew43d01e778
18. "To look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory."
—A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
Suggested by meghanr4f4f26f82
19. "The more you expect from life, the more your expectations will be fulfilled. By laughing, you do not use up your laughter, but increase your store of it. The more you love, the more you will be loved. The more you give, the more you will receive. Life proves that truth every hour, every day. And life continues to surprise."
—Life Expectancy, Dean Koontz
Suggested by KaliCalamity
20. "We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be."
—Mansfield Park, Jane Austen
Suggested by Lucie D., Facebook
22. “Can't nothing heal without pain, you know.”
—Beloved, Toni Morrison
Suggested by lexiew40630e319
23. "When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. And you get to take yourself oh so very seriously. Your truly happy people, which is to say, your people who truly like themselves, they don't think about themselves very much. Your unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwellin' on himself and start payin' attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence."
—Jitterbug Perfume, Tom Robbins
Suggested by MrsH810
24. "Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving."
—A Hat Full of Sky, Terry Pratchett
Suggested by j46309e446
25. "Life does not have to go how you think it will. Not even when you are very sure what is going to happen."
–More Than This, Patrick Ness
Suggested by vitoriapolicarpo55
27. "You are bored. And I'm going to let you in on a little secret about life. You think it's boring now? Well, it only gets more boring. The sooner you learn it's on you to make life interesting, the better off you'll be."
—Where'd You Go, Bernadette, Maria Semple
Suggested by mitchellp4cee11b63
28. "Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from the inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves."
—The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom
Suggested by katiee41aec6ad3
29. "It wasn’t only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you."
—Atonement, Ian McEwan
Suggested by Anna G., Facebook
30. "That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt. That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do. That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness."
—Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
Suggested by Stephanie M., Facebook
32. "Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."
—The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Suggested by angelas63
33. "Live in the present, remember the past, and fear not the future, for it doesn't exist and never shall. There is only now."
—Eldest, Christopher Paolini
Suggested by casseyd
34. "People always think that happiness is a faraway thing, something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains – a cup of strong hot coffee when you’re blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you’re alone – just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness."
—A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
Suggested by meghanr4f4f26f82
37. "There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure."
—The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
Suggested by cathrynb2
38. "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
—Dune, Frank Herbert
Suggested by Lindsay K., Facebook
39. "That which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves."
—The Art of Racing in the Rain, Garth Stein
Suggested by LonrachLucy
40. "And maybe the black slug will always live inside of me. Maybe I'll always have bad days where the heaviness seems unbearable. But as cheesy as it sounds, maybe the good days will make it worth getting through the bad ones."
—My Heart and Other Black Holes, Jasmine Warga
Suggested by KC M., Facebook
42. "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."
—To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Suggested by April B., Facebook
43. "The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As longs as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles."
—The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank
Suggested by meghanr4f4f26f82
44. "Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing."
—The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
Suggested by laurar47d18ad04
45. "And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone or that's an evil one because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels."
—The Amber Spyglass, Phillip Pullman
Suggested by hannahs15
47. "I am practicing being kind over being right."
—The Silver Linings Playbook, Matthew Quick
Suggested by Libby M., Facebook
48. "The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."
—The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
Suggested by punx
49. "Do not by any means destroy yourself, for if you live you may yet have good fortune, but all the dead are dead like."
—The Horse and His Boy, C. S. Lewis
Suggested by chibikarik
50. "Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does."
—The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood
Suggested by mandyj3
51. "We did not ask for this room or this music. We were invited in. Therefore, because the dark surrounds us, let us turn our faces to the light. Let us endure hardship to be grateful for plenty. We have been given pain to be astounded by joy. We have been given life to deny death. We did not ask for this room or this music. But because we are here, let us dance."
—11/22/63, Stephen King
Suggested by julianatruej