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The 33 Best, Most Important, and Most Inspiring Quotes From Bruce Lee

The 33 Best Bruce Lee Quotes Cover

Bruce Lee is the most influential martial artist of all time. Born in 1940 in San Francisco, he lived a short life of just 32 years before, somewhat peacefully, dying of cerebral edema, an excess of liquids in the brain, in 1973. By that time, however, he had become a world-renowned martial artist, a million-dollar Hollywood superstar defying stereotypes, and created his own martial arts philosophy, Jeet Kune Do (The Way of the Intercepting Fist), uniting East and West in both body and spirit. If you’re looking for the best Bruce Lee quotes from this legend of film, fighting, and philosophy, you’ve come to the right place!

As part of our organized list, we’ll compile his 10 most popular lines based on reader votes from Goodreads. We’ll also include Nik’s 23 favorite quotes from Striking Thoughts, a collection of over 800 notes, ideas, and aphorisms written down by Bruce Lee himself over the course of his life. In-between, we’ll explain a little bit more about Bruce Lee the thinker as opposed to the fighter and break down his most important quote (the speech about water). Finally, we’ll provide some premade, custom images for you to share your favorite Bruce Lee quotes to social media.

The easiest way to navigate this list is to jump to whichever section interests you the most using the table of contents below. You can share any quote by highlighting it and using the options that will appear. Or, just skip to the images section and pick your favorite.

Now, before we get started, here’s a first line from Bruce to remember: “Independent inquiry is needed in your search for truth, not dependence on anyone else’s view or a mere book.” Bruce believed that the only way to find truth is to find your truth. Therefore, we should never take anything at face value. So enjoy these quotes and lessons from Bruce, but reflect on them carefully, and only keep what serves you.

That said, let’s get into the best quotes from Bruce Lee, a true master of kung fu, zen, and life itself!

Table of Contents

The 10 Most Popular Quotes From Bruce Lee
My 23 Favorite Bruce Lee Quotes
The Most Important Bruce Lee Quote Explained
More Bruce Lee Quotes
The Best Bruce Lee Quotes for Sharing on Social Media
Who Was Bruce Lee? (The Philosopher vs. the Fighter)
Conclusion
Other Quote Lists

The 10 Most Popular Quotes From Bruce Lee

If you’re wondering which Bruce Lee quotes people like the most, I did some digging for you. First, his “Be Water” analogy is arguably the most popular. I’ll explain why in the section dedicated to that quote in particular.

Regarding his other sayings, the following top 10 have each received between 2,600 and 600 votes on Goodreads. To share any one of them, just highlight and pick your social media platform of choice, but remember: “A teacher is never a giver of truth—he is a guide, a pointer to the truth that each student must find for himself. A good teacher is merely a catalyst.”

1. “Empty your mind. Be formless. Shapeless. Like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

2. “I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.”

3. “Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.”

4. “Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”

5. “Don’t fear failure. Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.”

6. “Be happy, but never satisfied.”

7. “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

8. “A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.”

9. “Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.”

10. “If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.”

My 23 Favorite Bruce Lee Quotes

In 2018, I bought a copy of Striking Thoughts*, a compilation of Bruce Lee’s notes, sayings, and ideas, compiled by his student and editor John Little. Since I like to savor the quotes and reflect on them, I still haven’t gone through all 825 aphorisms, but I’ve already highlighted, even written about, plenty of them.

Here are 23 of my favorite ones, but, as Bruce would say: “Bear in mind I seek neither your approval nor to influence you. So do not make up your mind as to ‘this is this’ or ‘that is that.’ I will be more than satisfied if you begin to learn to investigate everything yourself from now on.”

11. “Life itself is your teacher, and you are in a state of constant learning.”

12. “It is the life of perfection which seems to be incomplete, and of fullness which seems to be empty.”

13. “To spend time is to pass it in a specified manner. To waste time is to expend it thoughtlessly or carelessly. We all have time to either spend or waste, and it is our decision what to do with it. But once passed, it is gone forever. If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.”

14. “You can never invite the wind, but you must leave the window open.”

15. “A fat belly cannot believe that such a thing as hunger exists.”

16. “Nothingness means “no thingness” — there is only process, happening. When we accept and enter this nothingness, the void, then the desert starts to bloom.”

17. “Like everyone else, you want to learn the way to win. But never to accept the way to lose. To accept defeat — to learn to die — is to be liberated from it. Once you accept, you are free to flow and to harmonize. Fluidity is the way to an empty mind. You must free your ambitious mind and learn the art of dying.”

18. “You know how I like to think of myself? As a human being.”

19. “We have more faith in what we imitate than in what we originate. We cannot derive a sense of absolute certitude from anything which has its root in us. The most poignant sense of insecurity comes from standing alone; we are not alone when we imitate.”

20. “When I look around, I always learn something, and that is to be always yourself. And to express yourself. To have faith in yourself. Do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it, which seems to me to be the prevalent thing happening in Hong Kong. Like they always copy mannerisms, but they’ll never start from the very root of his being, which is ‘how can I be me?’”

21. “Most people can talk without listening. Very few can listen without talking.”

22. “The superior man lets himself be guided; he does not go ahead blindly, but learns from the situation what is demanded of him and then follows.”

23. “An intelligent mind is one which is constantly learning, never concluding — styles and patterns have come to conclusion, therefore they [have] ceased to be intelligent.”

24. “There was a fine butcher who used the same knife year after year, yet it never lost its delicate, precise edge. After a lifetime of service, it was still as useful and effective as when it was new. When asked how he had preserved his knife’s fine edge, he said: ‘I follow the line of the hard bone. I do not attempt to cut it, nor to smash it, nor to contend with it in any way. That would only destroy my knife.’ In daily living, one must follow the course of the barrier. To try to assail it will only destroy the instrument. And no matter what some people will say, barriers are not the experience of any one person, or any one group of persons. They are the universal experience.”

25. “Oftentimes people come up to me and ask, ‘Bruce, are you really that good?’ I say, ‘Well, if I tell you I’m good, probably you will say I’m boasting; but if I tell you I’m no good, you’ll know I’m lying.’ I have the absolute confidence not to be number two, but then I have enough sense also to realize that there can be no number one.”

26. “To be humble to superiors is duty; to equals is courtesy; to inferiors is nobleness; and to all, safety!”

27. “The method for health promotion is based on water, as flowing water never grows stale. The idea is not to overdevelop or to overexert, but to normalize the function of the body.”

28. “A learned man once went to visit a Zen teacher to inquire about Zen. As the Zen teacher talked, the learned man frequently interrupted to express his own opinion about this or that. Finally, the Zen teacher stopped talking and began to serve tea to the learned man. He poured the cup full, then kept pouring until the cup overflowed. ‘Stop,’ said the learned man. ‘The cup is full, no more can be poured in.’ ‘Like this cup, you are full of your own opinions,’ replied the Zen teacher. ‘If you do not first empty your cup, how can you taste my cup of tea?’”

29. “If I say that ‘everyone under the sun is a member of a universal family,’ you may think that I am bluffing and idealistic. But if anyone still believes in racial differences, I think he is too backward and narrow. Perhaps he still does not understand man’s equality and love.”

30. “Who is there that can make muddy water clear? But if allowed to remain still, it will become clear of itself. Who is there that can secure a state of absolute repose? But keep calm and let time go on, and the state of repose will gradually arrest.”

31. “There is another bit of Chinese philosophy that has a bearing on problems common to all human kind. We say, ‘The oak tree is mighty, yet it will be destroyed by a mighty wind because it resists the elements; the bamboo bends with the wind, and by bending, survives.’”

32. “A goal is not always meant to be reached. It often serves simply as something to aim at.”

33. “I don’t know what is the meaning of death, but I am not afraid to die — and I go on, non-stop, going forward [with life]. Even though I, Bruce Lee, may die some day without fulfilling all of my ambitions, I will have no regrets. I did what I wanted to do and what I’ve done, I’ve done with sincerity and to the best of my ability. You can’t expect much more from life.”

The Most Important Bruce Lee Quote Explained

Bruce Lee’s most influential piece of advice is arguably his “Be Water” analogy, which he shared repeatedly and in a variety of forms. The quote takes the #2 spot on Goodreads, but in a Google Trends analysis, it outranks even the search volume for Bruce Lee himself. Since Bruce shared the metaphor in a rare talk show interview, it also gets millions of views across hundreds of Youtube videos and variations of the clip every year. Bruce’s daughter, Shannon, also confirmed it to be his most quoted line in a podcast. Therefore, this is the undisputed #1. But what does it mean?

First, the connection between martial arts and water goes back almost 400 years. In 1645, famed martial artist and swordsman Miyamoto Musashi wrote in The Book of Five Rings: “Taking water as the basic point of reference, one makes the mind fluid. Water conforms to the shape of the vessel, square or round; it can be a drop, and it can be an ocean.” It is highly likely both Bruce Lee and his master, Ip Man, were familiar with this text, since it has held cult status for centuries.

Second, while training under Ip Man from age 13 to 18, Lee’s teacher really tried to drive the point of fluidity home with his student. “More yin, less yang!” he would say. At one point, he refused to give Lee any further lessons until he grasped this principle, sending him away to think by himself for a week. Lee took a boat, drifted around in the Hong Kong harbor, and that’s when…

Third, Bruce Lee’s insight about water hit him as he hit the water surrounding his boat in frustration (pun intended). As his daughter recounts in a podcast, Lee punched the water, wondering why he couldn’t understand the master’s lesson. Suddenly, he realized: “The water just moved out of the way! I can’t hurt it. It is infinitely soft and will adapt to whatever enters it. At the same time, it can be a crushing force.” That’s when Bruce understood, and, after years of refinement, he shared this idea in various forms.

The first and most famous is the variant he shared on the Pierre Berton Show in 1971:

“Empty your mind. Be formless. Shapeless. Like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

Another version, which I can’t find the source of, but which I assume to be one of Lee’s many written notes and thoughts, goes as follows:

“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.”

Finally, in Striking Thoughts*, Bruce offers the most polished form of the idea:

“Be like water; water has form and yet it has no form. It is the softest element on earth, yet it penetrates the hardest rock. It has no shape of its own, yet it can take any shape in which it is placed. In a cup, it becomes the shape of the cup. In a vase, it takes the shape of the vase and curls about the stems of flowers. Put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Please observe the adaptability of water. If you squeeze it fast, the water will flow out quickly. If you squeeze it slowly, it will come out slowly. Water may seem to move in contradiction, even uphill, but it chooses any way open to it so that it may reach the sea. It may flow swiftly or it may flow slowly, but its purpose is inexorable, its destiny sure.”

Water is balance. Water judges slowly. It doesn’t look left or right. It is 100% focused on its destination, and it will flow through whichever path is available.

Thanks to its never-ending balancing act, water always finds its way home. Water always returns to a resting state. That’s why, when we act like water, we’ll better handle life’s challenges. We’ll be calmer, more adaptive, and persistent yet not stubborn.

When we are water, we are always exactly where we are meant to be, perfectly adapted to the present moment. That’s the balance we all need and desire, and that’s why Bruce Lee’s metaphor is still making waves (pun intended), more than half a century after his death.

If you’re looking for a slightly longer explanation, you can read my piece, “Be Water, My Friend.”

Fun fact: I recently rewatched Cowboy Bebop, a legendary anime, and the main character, Spike Spiegel, is based on Bruce Lee to a good extent. In one episode, he even shares a very familiar-sounding piece of advice: “It’s not about strength or power. You gotta be fluid. You have to be like water.”

More Bruce Lee Quotes

The single-best way to get more original Bruce Lee quotes, in my opinion, is to buy a copy of Striking Thoughts*. Here’s a short overview of the book, along with some links to our summary and an affiliate button to buy yourself a copy on Amazon, which will support us at no extra cost to you. Thank you!

Favorite Quote

“Independent inquiry is needed in your search for truth, not dependence on anyone else’s view or a mere book.” — Bruce Lee

The Book in One Sentence

Striking Thoughts* is a compendium of over 800 aphorisms, sayings, and private notes recorded by Bruce Lee throughout his life, detailing his perspectives on over 70 topics, including martial arts, philosophy, and life.

Why should you read it?

If you’re an aspiring martial arts student, athlete, actor, artist, or philosopher, this is a must read. For anyone else, it’s a treasure trove of daily advice and comfort, ready to offer the right line at the right time, no matter what you need in the present moment. Full of both clear insights and ambivalent ideas that’ll make you think, this book will stay with you for a long time.

Key Takeaways

You must find your own answers to life’s biggest questions.
The way to independent inquiry leads through an open mind.
Being like water is a special kind of balance that allows you to adapt to anything.

If you want to learn more, you can read our free four-minute summary or get a copy for yourself.

Read on Four Minute Books »

_____

Buy on Amazon* »

The Best Bruce Lee Quotes for Sharing on Social Media

Beyond the “highlight and share” feature you can use to post any quote on this page, we’ve also made some custom images for you to easily tap and share. Some are optimized for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, others follow Instagram’s classic square format or Pinterest’s more vertical layout.

Since Bruce was a real person, we thought we’d stick with real pictures instead of our usual, AI-generated backgrounds. One is taken from Wikipedia, the others courtesy of brucelee.com, the family’s official website. Happy sharing!

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Who Was Bruce Lee? (The Philosopher vs. the Fighter)

We’ve all heard of Bruce Lee the fighter, the martial artist performing dazzling moves in his TV shows, feature films, and even a few rare public demonstrations. Born as a dual citizen of Hong Kong and the US to somewhat famous parents, Lee became a child actor, acting in some 20 (non-fighting) movies by the time he was 18.

Due to his poor academic performance and continuous involvement in street fights in Hong Kong, however, his parents put him into martial arts training. Lee trained privately with martial arts legend Ip Man, and he won a boxing tournament by knocking out the previous champion. Lee refused to see any one martial art as superior, studying wing chun, tai chi, boxing, and any other fighting style from which he felt he could learn.

Besides his obvious physical talent, rigorous training, and ridiculous speed, it is this drawing from an eclectic mix of sources that led Lee to developing his own fighting style, Jeet Kune Do, or “The Way of the Intercepting Fist.” Jeet Kune Do is more than a martial art, however. It is also a philosophy — and that’s where the much lesser known Bruce Lee comes in.

Living in the US from 1959, he studied drama, psychology, and philosophy at the University of Washington for a while, and by the time he opened his own martial arts school and showed up at the 1964 Long Beach International Karate Championships demonstrating his skills, he was as much a philosopher as he was a martial arts master.

“Jeet Kune Do is just a name used, a boat to get one across, and once across it is to be discarded and not to be carried on one’s back.”

“I thought Bruce was a brilliant, fine philosopher about everyday living. He was very much into finding out who he was. His comment to people was ‘Know yourself,'” fellow movie legend Steve McQueen said about his teacher. And to do that, to know himself, Bruce studied Zen, Taoism, and Buddhism, but he also studied Western philosophers.

As such, Jeet Kune Do was “not an organized institution that one can be a member of,” Bruce said. “I hope to free my followers from clinging to styles, patterns, or molds.” He wished that, rather than creating yet another style people would subscribe to and then argue over, Jeet Kune Do would be “simply the direct expression of one’s feelings with the minimum of movements and energy.”

“Jeet Kune Do is just a name used, a boat to get one across, and once across it is to be discarded and not to be carried on one’s back,” Bruce said. He felt the same way about life, and that’s why he collected plenty of aphorisms on topics ranging from reality to marriage to the ego, from racism to faith to success.

Bruce realized that both life and martial arts are not questions with one definitive answer. That’s why he studied widely, collected ideas broadly, and only used what he felt was necessary and relevant at any given time. It is in this overarching, philosophical approach, that we find the true essence of Bruce Lee, and it is also where we can learn the most from him, even if we’re not training to be martial artists. We hope our list of quotes will help you do just that.

Conclusion

Aaaaaaand cut! That concludes our list of the 33 best and most important quotes from Bruce Lee. What do you think? Did we manage to capture his spirit? I hope we picked some quotes you didn’t yet know. Bruce Lee the fighter is fascinating, but Bruce Lee the philosopher is enlightening, and both are worth studying. If your favorite Bruce Lee quote is one we didn’t cover, tweet at us and let us know! And now, in the master’s own words:

“I have to leave now, my friend. You have a long journey ahead of you, and you must travel light. From now on drop all your burden of preconceived conclusions behind, and “open” yourself to everything and everyone ahead. Remember, my friend, the usefulness of a cup is in its emptiness.”

Other Quote Lists

Looking for more quotes from interesting people and lines from great books? Here are all quote lists we’ve hand-selected for you so far:

The Catcher in the Rye Quotes: The 44 Best & Most Important Quotes From J. D. Salinger’s Masterpiece

The Catcher in the Rye is a post-World War II coming-of-age story, first published in 1951 by J. D. Salinger. Dealing with important questions of morality, identity, meaning, and connection, the book has become a hallmark read for young adults and grown-ups alike. If you’re looking for the best quotes from this masterpiece, our organized list of The Catcher in the Rye quotes will be just the right place!

Based on the number of most votes on Goodreads, we’ve compiled the top 10 quotes from the book for you below. We’ll also share 34 more of Nik’s favorite highlights from reading the book, an explanation of its most important line, as well as some more information about the book. Finally, we made some pretty cool images with the best quotes for you to share on social media.

Want a summary of the book so you can better understand the quotes and their context? Download our free PDF, print it, and read along. Or save it for later and read it whenever you want!

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You can jump to any section that interests you by using the clickable table of contents below. If you want to share a quote, just highlight it, and sharing options for several social media platforms will appear, including a simple “copy to clipboard” option. Alternatively, you can also use the sharing images we already prepared for you.

Okay, here we go. Let’s get into the 44 best quotes from The Catcher in the Rye!

Table of Contents

The Most Important Quote From The Catcher in the Rye Explained
The 10 Most Popular Quotes From The Catcher in the Rye
My 34 Favorite The Catcher in the Rye Quotes
More The Catcher in the Rye Quotes
The Catcher in the Rye Quotes for Sharing on Social Media
Conclusion
Other Quote Lists

The Most Important Quote From The Catcher in the Rye Explained

Before you can understand the most important line from this book, there are two things you need. One is an idea of where it falls in the plot, the other is some context on when, by who, and why the book was written.

As for the latter, author J. D. Salinger fought in the Battle of Normandy in World War II. After he came home, the horrors of war had changed him forever. The period of economic prosperity that ensued felt hollow to him and other survivors. Like teenagers growing up, Salinger felt he had lost his innocence, and he must have grieved that loss greatly. The book became a cathartic experience for him and others, and that’s why it deals with the themes of loss of innocence, reluctance to grow up, being frustrated at the superficiality of the world, and being confused around morality, identity, and relationships.

With regards to the plot, the novel follows narrator and rebellious teenage boy Holden Caulfield’s adventures over a weekend alone in New York City. Despite having wealthy parents and everything he needs, Holden keeps getting expelled from his schools. This time, he decides to paint the town before his parents find out.

After meeting up with old friends and dates, almost losing his virginity to a prostitute, wandering around aimlessly, and spending most of his money, Holden sneaks back into his home. Talking to his little sister Phoebe, the only person he truly likes, envies, and wants to protect — all at the same time — he shares his dream of what he wants to be, a dream that is based on a line from a song, “if a body catch a body comin’ through the rye:”

“I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around — nobody big, I mean — except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.”

This is Holden desperately trying to hold on to his childhood and ideals — something that Phoebe still has but he is about to lose. At the same time, Phoebe is more mature and realistic than him, and when she tells him that he quoted the line wrong (and that it’s from a poem, not a song), Holden breaks down and cries.

The quote marks the breakthrough point in the story, the moment the hero loses the ground beneath his feet and must re-evaluate everything. For Holden, the bubble of childhood innocence is slowly fading away. Now confronted with the real world, he must admit he barely knows anything, and most of what he thought he knew has turned out to be false.

The question is will Holden be able to hold on to some of his youthful hope and optimism, or will he become a disillusioned, resigned adult, like so many of the people he meets throughout the course of the book? I’ll leave that for you to find out, but that’s my take on the defining quote from this book (which is also where the title comes from, by the way).

The 10 Most Popular Quotes From The Catcher in the Rye

Despite having already sold a staggering 65 million copies, The Catcher in the Rye continues to sell about a million units each year. One of the reasons is that the book is often assigned reading in high schools. Fun fact: It is also one of the most frequently banned books across the United States.

If you’re wondering what the most popular quotes from this classic of American literature are, here are the ten lines from the book with the highest number of votes on Goodreads. Each of these quotes has received between around 2,000 and 20,000 likes, with the number one quote outpacing number two by a factor of four (21,000+ likes vs. 4,800+). Then, votes slowly go down from there. To share any quote, just highlight and pick your medium of choice:

1. “What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.”

2. “Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them — if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.”

3. “I’m quite illiterate, but I read a lot.”

4. “Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around — nobody big, I mean — except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.”

5. “I am always saying ‘Glad to’ve met you’ to somebody I’m not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.”

6. “I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It’s nice.”

7. “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.”

8. “That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they’re not much to look at, or even if they’re sort of stupid, you fall in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.”

9. “Mothers are all slightly insane.”

10. “It’s funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to.”

My 34 Favorite The Catcher in the Rye Quotes

In 2022, I went to Portugal and visited the oldest bookstore in the world. Naturally, I had to buy some books. Among their English selection, they happened to have The Catcher in the Rye. What a great opportunity to finally read this masterpiece!

I read the entire book on the plane back home, and I made about 80 highlights. I’ll share the 20 most interesting ones below. Out of the top 10 above, I also highlighted eight. I’m not going to include those again. The rest is in order of when the lines appear in the book:

11. “What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I’ve left schools and places I didn’t even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don’t care if it’s a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t, you feel even worse.”

12. “‘Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.’ ‘Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it.’ Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it’s a game, all right — I’ll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren’t any hot-shots, then what’s a game about it? Nothing. No game.”

13. “I’m pretty sure he yelled ‘Good luck!’ at me. I hope to hell not. I’d never yell ‘Good luck!’ at anybody. It sounds terrible, when you think about it.”

14. “‘That’s just the trouble with all you morons. You never want to discuss anything. That’s the way you can always tell a moron. They never want to discuss anything intellig—’ Then he really let one go at me, and the next thing I knew I was on the goddam floor again.”

15. “All I did was, I got up and went over and looked out the window. I felt so lonesome, all of a sudden. I almost wished I was dead.”

16. “People always clap for the wrong things.”

17. “The thing is, most of the time when you’re coming pretty close to doing it with a girl — a girl that isn’t a prostitute or anything, I mean — she keeps telling you to stop. The trouble with me is, I stop. Most guys don’t. I can’t help it. You never know whether they really want you to stop, or whether they’re just scared as hell, or whether they’re just telling you to stop so that if you do go through with it, the blame’ll be on you, not them. Anyway, I keep stopping.”

18. “‘So long,’ I said. I didn’t thank her or anything. I’m glad I didn’t.”

19. “I used to think she was quite intelligent, in my stupidity. The reason I did was because she knew quite a lot about the theater and plays and literature and all that stuff. If somebody knows quite a lot about those things, it takes you quite a while to find out whether they’re really stupid or not.”

20. “The thing is, it’s really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs — if yours are really good ones and theirs aren’t. You think if they’re intelligent and all, the other person, and have a good sense of humor, that they don’t give a damn whose suitcases are better, but they do. They really do.”

21. “Catholics are always trying to find out if you’re a Catholic. […] He was enjoying the conversation about tennis and all, but you could tell he would’ve enjoyed it more if I was a Catholic and all.”

22. “The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you.”

23. “Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.”

24. “If you do something too good, then, after a while, if you don’t watch it, you start showing off. And then you’re not as good any more.”

25. “I have one of these very loud, stupid laughs. I mean if I ever sat behind myself in a movie or something, I’d probably lean over and tell myself to please shut up.”

26. “Every time you mention some guy that’s strictly a bastard — very mean, or very conceited and all — and when you mention it to the girl, she’ll tell you he has an inferiority complex. Maybe he has, but that still doesn’t keep him from being a bastard, in my opinion.”

27. “The trouble with girls is, if they like a boy, no matter how big a bastard he is, they’ll say he has an inferiority complex, and if they don’t like him, no matter how nice a guy he is, or how big an inferiority complex he has, they’ll say he’s conceited. Even smart girls do it.”

28. “The part that got me was, there was a lady sitting next to me that cried all through the goddam picture. The phonier it got, the more she cried. You’d have thought she did it because she was kindhearted as hell, but I was sitting right next to her, and she wasn’t. She had this little kid with her that was bored as hell and had to go to the bathroom, but she wouldn’t take him. She kept telling him to sit still and behave himself. She was about as kindhearted as a goddam wolf. You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phony stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they’re mean bastards at heart.”

29. “I really think he hated the Army worse than the war.”

30. “That’s the trouble with these intellectual guys. They never want to discuss anything serious unless they feel like it.”

31. “The thing he was afraid of, he was afraid somebody’d say something smarter than he had.”

32. “He said he would, but he probably didn’t even give her my message. People never give your message to anybody.”

33. “‘Hey. You gonna see that Valencia babe when you go back in the bar?’ I asked him. ‘It’s highly probable,’ he said. Witty bastard. All I ever meet is witty bastards.”

34. “Boy, when you’re dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you’re dead? Nobody.”

35. “PHOEBE WEATHERFIELD CAULFIELD, 4B-1. That killed me. Her middle name is Josephine, for God’s sake, not Weatherfield. She doesn’t like it, though. Every time I see her she’s got a new middle name for herself.”

36. “Just because somebody’s dead, you don’t just stop liking them, for God’s sake.”

37. “I figured if they caught me, they caught me. I almost wished they did, in a way.”

38. “But what I mean is, lots of time you don’t know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn’t interest you most. I mean you can’t help it sometimes. What I think is, you’re supposed to leave somebody alone if he’s at least being interesting and he’s getting all excited about something.”

39. “‘I don’t want to scare you,’ he said, ‘but I can very clearly see you dying nobly, one way or another, for some highly unworthy cause.’”

40. “‘I think that one of these days,’ he said, ‘you’re going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you’ve got to start going there. But immediately. You can’t afford to lose a minute. Not you.’”

41. “‘Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it’ll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it’ll fit and, maybe, what it won’t. After a while, you’ll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don’t suit you, aren’t becoming to you. You’ll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.’”

42. “Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddam curb, I had this feeling that I’d never get to the other side of the street.”

43. “I was the only one left in the tomb then. I sort of liked it, in a way. It was so nice and peaceful. Then, all of a sudden, you’d never guess what I saw on the wall. Another ‘Fuck you.’ It was written with a red crayon or something, right under the glass part of the wall, under the stones. That’s the whole trouble. You can’t ever find a place that’s nice and peaceful, because there isn’t any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you’re not looking, somebody’ll sneak up and write ‘Fuck you’ right under your nose.”

44. “The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off they fall off, but it’s bad if you say anything to them.”

The book definitely has a depressing feel to it, but there are lots of silver linings as well, as you can tell from these lines. Despite being immature and feeling lost, Holden makes a lot of strong points throughout the novel. All in all, he’s an endearing hero giving us a glimpse at our own psyche, and that makes this book worth reading.

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