Rejection quotes
539 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside rejection — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"But when the group is literally capable of changing our perceptions, and when to stand alone is to activate primitive, powerful, and unconscious feelings of rejection, then the health of these institutions seems far more vulnerable than we think."
"You took a poison arrow and you aimed it at my heart. It's heavy and it's bitter, and it's tearing me apart."
"There's no greater power than the power of good-bye."
"Authors by the hundreds can tell you stories by the thousands of those rejection slips before they found a publisher who was willing to 'gamble' on an unknown."
"I'm free to give my love, but you're not the one I'm thinking of."
"You are making an inopportune rejection of what Nature has given you today, if all your mind is set on what men will say of you tomorrow."
"I don't want to be like you. I look for the pure of heart, and the ones that have made a start."
"There's very little dislike of Americans in the world, shown by repeated polls, and the dissatisfaction - that is, the hatred and the anger - they come from acceptance of American values, not a rejection of them, and recognition that they're rejected by the U.S. government and by U.S. elites, which does lead to hatred and anger."
"You do it a day at a time. You just put your rejection slips in a shoebox and tell yourself one day you're going to autograph them and sell them at auction."
"Break from self rejection, try some introspection."
"The act of leaning in to kiss someone, or asking them, is fraught with the possibility of rejection, so the person least likely to get rejected should do the leaning in or the asking."
"But whereas a puppy will cringe away or roll on its back, groveling, a little boy may cover his shyness with nonchalance, with bravado, or with secrecy. And once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even where it does not exist-or, worse, will draw it forth from people simply by expecting it."
"I am the history of the rejection of who I am"
"I've been flushed from the bathroom of your heart."
"When I finished the book [The Dissemblers], I sent it to one billion agents, and got one billion rejections."
"Finally, I found a wonderful agent who wanted to work with me, and she sent it to one billion publishers and received one billion rejections, until I was fortunate enough to be matched up with the Permanent Press."
