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Top 40 Jesse Ball Quotes (2025 Update)

Jesse Ball Quote: “I believe in discovering the love that exists and then trying to understand it. Not to invent a love and try to make it exist, but to find what does exist, and then to see what it is.”

1. “I believe in discovering the love that exists and then trying to understand it. Not to invent a love and try to make it exist, but to find what does exist, and then to see what it is.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “Sunday was always the best of days for being the self you had intended to be, but were not, for one reason or another.”

2. “Sunday was always the best of days for being the self you had intended to be, but were not, for one reason or another.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “It is at the heart of our human enterprise, that is to say, at the heart of society, to allow consensus a power it ought not to have.”

3. “It is at the heart of our human enterprise, that is to say, at the heart of society, to allow consensus a power it ought not to have.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “In searching for a way out of my own troubles, I had found my way into the troubles of others, some long gone, and now I was trying to find my way back out, through their troubles, as if we human beings can ever learn from one another.”

4. “In searching for a way out of my own troubles, I had found my way into the troubles of others, some long gone, and now I was trying to find my way back out, through their troubles, as if we human beings can ever learn from one another.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “My wife wrote me letters when we first met. We would meet every day, or nearly every day, but still she would write me letters. She thought the person she was in her letters was someone she herself did not know until the letter was written, and then it was like she was meeting herself.”

5. “My wife wrote me letters when we first met. We would meet every day, or nearly every day, but still she would write me letters. She thought the person she was in her letters was someone she herself did not know until the letter was written, and then it was like she was meeting herself.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “I was thinking about Lucia Stanton – this person who would basically disappear. What would I call myself next? What clothes would I wear? There is that part in the Bardo Thodol where the dead person goes into a womb to be born again into a new place, where the dead person actually chooses where she will be born – whether into an animal or a human, and into which land.”

6. “I was thinking about Lucia Stanton – this person who would basically disappear. What would I call myself next? What clothes would I wear? There is that part in the Bardo Thodol where the dead person goes into a womb to be born again into a new place, where the dead person actually chooses where she will be born – whether into an animal or a human, and into which land.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “This is what we bear, I thought, the nearness of other lives.”

7. “This is what we bear, I thought, the nearness of other lives.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “I have always despised people who join societies. In general, I feel that groups of any kind are for the weak. The need for consensus is the most disgusting and pathetic aspect of our human world. Is there none who can simply wander alone beneath a sort of cloth tent painted with dreams?”

8. “I have always despised people who join societies. In general, I feel that groups of any kind are for the weak. The need for consensus is the most disgusting and pathetic aspect of our human world. Is there none who can simply wander alone beneath a sort of cloth tent painted with dreams?”

Jesse Ball Quote: “The world isn’t the place we are told to live in. It is another place entirely. We have both more choice, and less, than we are supposed to have.”

9. “The world isn’t the place we are told to live in. It is another place entirely. We have both more choice, and less, than we are supposed to have.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “Much of the speech we do is largely meaningless and is just meant to communicate and validate small emotional contracts.”

10. “Much of the speech we do is largely meaningless and is just meant to communicate and validate small emotional contracts.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “We tire differently if we love or love not.”

11. “We tire differently if we love or love not.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “No one explains this to you, he thought. That there are so many things without solution.”

12. “No one explains this to you, he thought. That there are so many things without solution.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “It is an enduring satisfaction for our species to make little systems and tend to them.”

13. “It is an enduring satisfaction for our species to make little systems and tend to them.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “You aren’t the thing that needs to change. It’s that you are overcome by your situation, by the way the world has descended on you. There is much in you that is young and new – and not just in you. In any person, even the oldest conceivable person. That’s what it means to be living – to engage with the cacophony of objects.”

14. “You aren’t the thing that needs to change. It’s that you are overcome by your situation, by the way the world has descended on you. There is much in you that is young and new – and not just in you. In any person, even the oldest conceivable person. That’s what it means to be living – to engage with the cacophony of objects.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “Being old is being useless, and having things be useless to you. Because: the world is what is still to come. It isn’t what is or what was.”

15. “Being old is being useless, and having things be useless to you. Because: the world is what is still to come. It isn’t what is or what was.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “Somehow we are all seeking some appropriate burden. Until we find it we are horribly shackled, can in fact scarcely live.”

16. “Somehow we are all seeking some appropriate burden. Until we find it we are horribly shackled, can in fact scarcely live.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “I hate when I break my own rules. What’s the point of me being rational if I flail around like a clown?”

17. “I hate when I break my own rules. What’s the point of me being rational if I flail around like a clown?”

Jesse Ball Quote: “It is so easy for humans to be cruel, and they leap to it. They love to do it. It is an exercise of all their laughable powers.”

18. “It is so easy for humans to be cruel, and they leap to it. They love to do it. It is an exercise of all their laughable powers.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “In order to effect another person you must perform some action. Then you must be patient enough to wait for its effect. As you learn the signs of these effects, it may come to pass you do not need to wait as long. But as my wife often said, it can happen that you say or do a thing and the effect is felt years later perhaps in the reiteration of the scene in a dream. Who can say? Our actions echo.”

19. “In order to effect another person you must perform some action. Then you must be patient enough to wait for its effect. As you learn the signs of these effects, it may come to pass you do not need to wait as long. But as my wife often said, it can happen that you say or do a thing and the effect is felt years later perhaps in the reiteration of the scene in a dream. Who can say? Our actions echo.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “The trouble is, as you get older, the people you like die and are not replaced with others, so that it is easily possible to end up with no one at all to talk to, or at least, no one you would want to hear responding to whatever it is you might have ended up saying.”

20. “The trouble is, as you get older, the people you like die and are not replaced with others, so that it is easily possible to end up with no one at all to talk to, or at least, no one you would want to hear responding to whatever it is you might have ended up saying.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “However, out in the world I have come to see that he who looks too hard for any particular thing, though he may find it, will certainly miss the most wondrous and strange things he passes, though they stare him in the face.”

21. “However, out in the world I have come to see that he who looks too hard for any particular thing, though he may find it, will certainly miss the most wondrous and strange things he passes, though they stare him in the face.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “I asked him if he had bothered to have children. He said yes, he had children. I said why if this is the result. He said I beg your pardon. I said if it leads to this, where you’re a skin bag full of putrescent failing organs, and time passes quickly, it passes so quickly, and he knew that, then why have kids.”

22. “I asked him if he had bothered to have children. He said yes, he had children. I said why if this is the result. He said I beg your pardon. I said if it leads to this, where you’re a skin bag full of putrescent failing organs, and time passes quickly, it passes so quickly, and he knew that, then why have kids.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “I’m an elephant today. I will need to have lots of room and also a bowl of water on the floor.”

23. “I’m an elephant today. I will need to have lots of room and also a bowl of water on the floor.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “It never occurred to him to wonder how there could be so many people, so many shifting groups that he only saw once in so small a village. Not matter how many such scenes played out, he didn’t wonder – for Henry had become a very particular sort of person. He had been groomed to be a person who did not ask questions. He had not been told to be that way, but all the same he had been led to it, and now that he was there, he felt a great comfort.”

24. “It never occurred to him to wonder how there could be so many people, so many shifting groups that he only saw once in so small a village. Not matter how many such scenes played out, he didn’t wonder – for Henry had become a very particular sort of person. He had been groomed to be a person who did not ask questions. He had not been told to be that way, but all the same he had been led to it, and now that he was there, he felt a great comfort.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “That would be the death of anyone – to recognize false hopes with a certainty. One mustn’t know that. If it is offered, refuse!”

25. “That would be the death of anyone – to recognize false hopes with a certainty. One mustn’t know that. If it is offered, refuse!”

Jesse Ball Quote: “First thing I do when I get in a library is – I go to the stacks and nose around. The idea is – you don’t know what you’re interested in. That’s why it’s possible to be surprised. So, instead of looking for things in particular, you look for what you didn’t know you liked, and then when you find it you know that you liked it, and then you are a broader person than you were before.”

26. “First thing I do when I get in a library is – I go to the stacks and nose around. The idea is – you don’t know what you’re interested in. That’s why it’s possible to be surprised. So, instead of looking for things in particular, you look for what you didn’t know you liked, and then when you find it you know that you liked it, and then you are a broader person than you were before.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “The main thing was for him to feel that we were all together taking part in a joined project – the project of our life. To be a part of such a thing, he wanted nothing more than that. Indeed, it is what most of us want, is it not? Why should he be any different?”

27. “The main thing was for him to feel that we were all together taking part in a joined project – the project of our life. To be a part of such a thing, he wanted nothing more than that. Indeed, it is what most of us want, is it not? Why should he be any different?”

Jesse Ball Quote: “Of silence, I can say only what I have heard, that all things are known by that which they make or leave – and so speech isn’t itself, but its effect, and silence is the same.”

28. “Of silence, I can say only what I have heard, that all things are known by that which they make or leave – and so speech isn’t itself, but its effect, and silence is the same.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “Never fall into the mistake of believing, said the examiner, that things are everywhere the way they are here, wherever here is, wherever everywhere is.”

29. “Never fall into the mistake of believing, said the examiner, that things are everywhere the way they are here, wherever here is, wherever everywhere is.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “Forgetting is the precious balm that helps us to travel on, past the depredations of memory.”

30. “Forgetting is the precious balm that helps us to travel on, past the depredations of memory.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “Can you imagine? That you can say something, offhand, and it can matter, it can really matter to someone else? Can you imagine what it’s like to hear something like that? To hear someone say something and feel the world ripple around you?”

31. “Can you imagine? That you can say something, offhand, and it can matter, it can really matter to someone else? Can you imagine what it’s like to hear something like that? To hear someone say something and feel the world ripple around you?”

Jesse Ball Quote: “Sadness is a feeling of loss. There is something one wanted, and one doesn’t have it – or there is a way one wanted things to be, and things aren’t that way. That is sadness. Instead, you feel rootlessness.”

32. “Sadness is a feeling of loss. There is something one wanted, and one doesn’t have it – or there is a way one wanted things to be, and things aren’t that way. That is sadness. Instead, you feel rootlessness.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “The action of a thing is the same as the naming of it – is, in fact, the real name. The trees creak and they are saying, ‘trees creak through the long night.’ The long night – what is it? Trees creaking. There wasn’t anything that tied life’s moments together, except life. And when it was gone?”

33. “The action of a thing is the same as the naming of it – is, in fact, the real name. The trees creak and they are saying, ‘trees creak through the long night.’ The long night – what is it? Trees creaking. There wasn’t anything that tied life’s moments together, except life. And when it was gone?”

Jesse Ball Quote: “We are the wreck of what we have been, and the place of our own future demise.”

34. “We are the wreck of what we have been, and the place of our own future demise.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “Much of the deep depression that surrounds us in life has to do with this one thing – that we can’t even see the smallest plainest objects.”

35. “Much of the deep depression that surrounds us in life has to do with this one thing – that we can’t even see the smallest plainest objects.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “If he acts, if he doesn’t, it’s meaningless. The whole thing goes forward. No one is important. No one at all.”

36. “If he acts, if he doesn’t, it’s meaningless. The whole thing goes forward. No one is important. No one at all.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “Not that believing such things has anything to do with whether they are true. You see that, don’t you?”

37. “Not that believing such things has anything to do with whether they are true. You see that, don’t you?”

Jesse Ball Quote: “When I think about what my future holds, it is a bit like looking into the sun. I flinch away, or I don’t and my eyes get burned down a bit, like candles, and then I can’t see for a while.”

38. “When I think about what my future holds, it is a bit like looking into the sun. I flinch away, or I don’t and my eyes get burned down a bit, like candles, and then I can’t see for a while.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “The old man began to sing. His voice was very lovely and obviously a part of something that the world had disposed of in its haste, evidence of a grander, kinder past.”

39. “The old man began to sing. His voice was very lovely and obviously a part of something that the world had disposed of in its haste, evidence of a grander, kinder past.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “That’s the trouble with the hospital-they find all the things that have been killing you forever, and that you are okay with, you’re okay with those things slowly killing you, but then they find them and get rid of them, and then other things replace the things you were fine with, and you are not fine, not fine at all with the new things, and so you die, slowly, in utter misery, just the way you would have before, only before you were pretty okay with the manner of it, but now you’re not.”

40. “That’s the trouble with the hospital-they find all the things that have been killing you forever, and that you are okay with, you’re okay with those things slowly killing you, but then they find them and get rid of them, and then other things replace the things you were fine with, and you are not fine, not fine at all with the new things, and so you die, slowly, in utter misery, just the way you would have before, only before you were pretty okay with the manner of it, but now you’re not.”

$Jesse Ball Quote: “I mean that the book had better make life better better in at least six or seven definite ways immediately. Also, there had better be somewhere in it a method for handling fortune and chance so as to best provoke the most complicated, involved, and glorious refractions of what’s possible.”$

41. “I mean that the book had better make life better better in at least six or seven definite ways immediately. Also, there had better be somewhere in it a method for handling fortune and chance so as to best provoke the most complicated, involved, and glorious refractions of what’s possible.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “Three things are required of you: the wishes you made when you first knew the breadth of this life; the contract you signed when you decided your wishes were not true or possible; and the exacting of the punishment you agreed to when you knew you would break the contract of your life.”

42. “Three things are required of you: the wishes you made when you first knew the breadth of this life; the contract you signed when you decided your wishes were not true or possible; and the exacting of the punishment you agreed to when you knew you would break the contract of your life.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “Maybe you can see from this that I am quite familiar with being in detention. Matter of fact, I feel like I have always been in detention. I am an old veteran of detention, like one of Napoleon’s soldiers limping back from the battle of Moscow. No, not like them – they were chumps. More like – one of the girls who died in the Triangle Fire looking out the window and realizing it is too far to jump, then jumping.”

43. “Maybe you can see from this that I am quite familiar with being in detention. Matter of fact, I feel like I have always been in detention. I am an old veteran of detention, like one of Napoleon’s soldiers limping back from the battle of Moscow. No, not like them – they were chumps. More like – one of the girls who died in the Triangle Fire looking out the window and realizing it is too far to jump, then jumping.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “Are we not all the same? Do we not all strive to simply have enough?”

44. “Are we not all the same? Do we not all strive to simply have enough?”

Jesse Ball Quote: “We deceive ourselves into thinking life is long, but fire reminds us – it is a flickering. Life is a flickering – and then it is gone. So, we must make the most of it.”

45. “We deceive ourselves into thinking life is long, but fire reminds us – it is a flickering. Life is a flickering – and then it is gone. So, we must make the most of it.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “My aunt says that I am naturally curious. That means that I don’t need to be taught how to learn. Some people have a disadvantage at the beginning, and they are not curious. These people have trouble learning. It seems like not being curious is the worst thing of all. Curious people aren’t necessarily good at learning what you want them to learn, though. They are too busy learning about other things.”

46. “My aunt says that I am naturally curious. That means that I don’t need to be taught how to learn. Some people have a disadvantage at the beginning, and they are not curious. These people have trouble learning. It seems like not being curious is the worst thing of all. Curious people aren’t necessarily good at learning what you want them to learn, though. They are too busy learning about other things.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “That’s just how it is with history. You do things and later on when people see what you did, it looks bad.”

47. “That’s just how it is with history. You do things and later on when people see what you did, it looks bad.”

Jesse Ball Quote: “Just in case the letter doesn’t get all the way to you, I gave it some wings so it could fly the rest of the way.”

48. “Just in case the letter doesn’t get all the way to you, I gave it some wings so it could fly the rest of the way.”

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