Quotes & Sayings About Almost Getting What You Want

A tramp, therefore, is a celibate from the moment when he takes to the road. He is absolutely without hope of getting a wife, a mistress, or any kind of woman except - very rarely, when he can raise a few shillings - a prostitute.
It is obvious what the results of this must be: homosexuality, for instance, and occasional rape cases. But deeper than these there is the degradation worked in a man who knows that he is not even considered fit for marriage. The sexual impulse, not to put it any higher, is a fundamental impulse, and starvation of it can be almost as demoralizing as physical hunger. The evil of poverty is not so much that it makes a man suffer as that it rots him physically and spiritually. And there can be no doubt that sexual starvation contributes to this rotting process. Cut off from the whole race of women, a tramp feels himself degraded to the rank of a cripple or a lunatic. No humiliation could do more damage to a man's self-respect. — George Orwell

Good planning is the foundation of success for almost any project. Start by getting clear on your goal. — Jude Bijou

The terms that Sforza Cesarini offered Rossini, 400 Roman Scudi, were not ungenerous, though it must have been galling for Rossini to see the Figaro, Luigi Zamboni, getting almost twice as much, and the Almaviva, Manuel Garcia, being offered three times the amount. Of the first-night cast, only the 'altro buffo', Bartolomeo Botticelli, who played Bartolo, and the 'seconda donna', Elisabetta Lowselet, who played Berta, were paid less than the composer. — Richard Osborne

The first and most practical step in getting what one wants in this world is wanting it. One would think that the next step would be expressing what one wants. But it almost never is. It generally consists in wanting it still harder. — Gerald Stanley Lee

Getting in his car he let it warm up, feeling the heated seats grow warm under him. On a bitterly cold winter day it was almost as good as sex. Then — Louise Penny

My grin tipped up on one side. "I'm sorry. Who asked about the television screens in my truck?"
Her lush lips thinned. "And how long did it take you to pick out the watermelon? Thirty minutes?"
"Twenty-nine," I shot back. "And it's the best fucking watermelon I've ever had. Worth every minute."
A single brow quirked. "You want a medal?"
I leaned over the counter and she met my stare. I wasn't sure what was happening, but it seemed like the air cracked with electricity, heating my skin, quickening my pulse. This couldn't be normal. Maybe I was getting sick. I'd overheated in all of the seventy-eight degrees outside. Yeah, that had to be it.
"I'd love one."
It was so fast, I almost missed it. Her gaze dipped to my mouth before dropping to the island again. "There isn't any more room on your shelf for one more medal."
"I'll just put up another shelf."
"I'm sure you would. — Ashlan Thomas

I was feeling miserable physically, in a lot of pain to the point where it was almost crippling me, especially creatively. I decided to take that and use it as an inspiration for getting out of bed and making something again. — Frank Iero

Then, almost as an afterthought, she turned and locked the bathroom door. If he thought he was going to seduce her, make her stupid enough to believe his lies by getting her into bed, he'd better think again. She stepped into the water. Besides, women didn't lose brain cells at the thought of sex. Only men did. — Maggie Shayne

This kind of compartmentalizing - separating one's livelihood from one's social aspirations - is part of the reason David Koch, the hidden hand behind a lot of ultraconservatives and, reportedly, the Tea Party movement in the United States, transforms himself into a respected arts patron by funding a theater at Lincoln Center, or why at Swiss bank that helps U.S. depositors avoid paying taxes generously supports symphony halls and the ballet. It's almost as if there are moral scales, and by tossing some loot on one side, you can balance out the precarious situation your reputation might be getting into on the other. — David Byrne

I can't emphasize this idea enough. Getting involved with your collaborator's problems almost always distracts you from your own. That can be tempting. That can be a relief. But it usually leads to disaster. — Twyla Tharp

People are mostly sane enough, of course, in the affairs of common life: the getting of food, shelter, and so on. But the moment they attempt any depth or generality of thought, they go mad almost infallibly. The vast majority, of course, adopt the local religious madness, as naturally as they adopt the local dress. But the more powerful minds will, equally infallibly, fall into the worship of some intelligent and dangerous lunatic, such as Plato, or Augustine, or Comte, or Hegel, or Marx. — David Stove

One time, when we'd been discussing martial arts, Murphy told me that eventually, no-one can teach you anything more about them. Once you reach that state of knowledge, the only way to keep learning and increasing your own skill is to teach what you know to others. That's why she teaches a children's class and a rape-defence course every spring and fall at one of her neighbourhood's community centres.
It sounded kind of flaky-Zen to me at the time, but Hell's bells, she'd been right. Once upon a time, it would have taken me an hour, if not more, to attain the proper frame of mind. In the course of teaching Molly to meditate, though, I had found myself going over the basics again for the first time in years, and understanding them with a deeper and richer perspective than I'd had when I was her age. I'd been getting almost as much insight and new understanding of my knowledge from teaching Molly as she'd been learning from me. — Jim Butcher

I mean, we're only here for a short while. And I think it's such a lucky accident, having been born, that we're almost obliged to pay attention. In some ways, this is getting far afield. I mean, we are - as far as we know - the only part of the universe that's self-conscious. We could even be the universe's form of consciousness. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Every woman has known the torment of getting up to speak. Her heart racing, at times entirely lost for words, ground and language slipping away - that's how daring a feat, how great a transgression it is for a woman to speak - even just open her mouth - in public. A double distress, for even if she transgresses, her words fall almost always upon the deaf male ear, which hears in language only that which speaks in the masculine. — Helene Cixous

My heart pounded annoyingly in my ears, and it was getting harder to stay focused. I'd almost gotten trapped in here, and now I'd come back. Sometimes I did have truly terrible ideas. — Gwenda Bond

Communication is such a two-edged sword for guys. On the one hand, they almost always mean what they say. Refreshing, I know. On the other hand, getting them to actually say it can be like coaxing a corpse to tap-dance. Not that it can't be done. But it's so freaking exhausting. Not to mention the cost in heavyweight fishing line and Savion Glover videos. — Jennifer Rardin

I could not forbear getting up to the top of a little mountain, and looking out to sea, in hopes of seeing a ship : then fancy that, at a vast distance, I spied a sail, please myself with the hopes of it, and, after looking steadily, till I was almost blind, lose it quite, and sit down and weep like a child, and thus increase my misery by my folly. — Daniel Defoe

But it's hard to explain, Mitch. Now that I'm suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer than I ever did before. The other night, on TV, I saw people in Bosnia running across the street, getting fired upon, killed, innocent victims ... and I just started to cry. I feel their anguish as if it were my own. I don't know any of these people. But
how can I put this?
I'm almost ... drawn to them. — Mitch Albom

Then, as she turned to walk away, Fred dropped the guillotine."So we're making Ev CEO," he said, his fork clenched in his hand. "You're going to get a passive chairman role and a silent board seat. We have some paperwork for you and a recommendation for a lawyer."Jack felt like he had just been hit in the face with a baseball bat. "Say that again," he stuttered to Fred, thinking he had heard incorrectly.Fred repeated himself almost verbatim: We're making Ev CEO. You're getting a passive chairman role. You will have a silent board seat. Here's the paperwork. Call a lawyer. — Nick Bilton

In real markets, agents make bad choices. They are often ignorant, misinformed, and irrational. Yet, markets tend to punish agents for making bad choices, and they tend to learn from their mistakes. For instance, if you fail to pay your bills, your credit rating declines and you have a harder time getting loans. If you fail to do research and buy an unreliable car, you suffer from repair bills. In contrast, when people in government make bad choices, the political process almost never punishes them. Studies show that voters are terrible at retrospective voting - they do not know whom to blame for bad government - and so politicians are not punished for making bad choices. — Jason Brennan

Is it possible that
we 'hate' politics because we have forgotten its specifi c and limited
nature, its overwhelming value, and also its innate fragility? Could it be
that our expectations are so high that politics appears almost destined
to disappoint? Democratic politics cannot make 'every sad heart glad',
as Crick argued, nor did it ever promise to do so. But not always
getting what you want, an awareness that public governance is often
slow and bureaucratic, a frustration that some decisions are hard to
understand or have to be made in secret, disbelief and anger at the selfinterested
behaviour of a small number of politicians, and an acceptance
that some people will always take out more from the system than
they put in - these are the prices you pay for living in a democracy. — Matthew Flinders

Sometimes, almost getting what you want is worse than never coming close. — Jennifer R. Hubbard

It's not that I don't like children; I just don't comprehend them. What's their purpose? Why can't they just say what they want? Why are they always touching things and knocking things over and whining?"

She dumped a basket of socks on the floor and began to sort and match. "Here's the thing: Given your profession, you should have that skill of observing people and getting inside them and understanding them, blah blah blah. Why can't you just do that with children? I mean, you were a child once."

"I hatched from an egg at age twenty-three."

"I almost believe you." She squinted at him. "What were you like younger?"

"Same but smaller, with slightly less facial hair. — Shannon Hale

Ronan: I miss your taste. Come over.
Her reply was almost immediate.
Annie: I'm working. You'll see me tonight.
Oh, no way was she getting off that easily. I went into full-on sext mode.
Ronan: I want to make you come with my mouth.
Annie: Ronan! I'm at the office and Gerta is RIGHT BESIDE ME!
Ronan: Gotta say, that kinda makes it hotter. — L. H. Cosway

The happiness of the South was very formidable. It was an almost invincible happiness. It defied you to call it anything else. Everyone was in fact happy. The women were beautiful and charming. The men were healthy and successful and funny; they knew how to tell stories. They had everything the North had and more. They had a history, they had a place redolent with memories, they had good conversation, they believed in God and defended the Constitution, and they were getting rich in the bargain. They had the best of victory and defeat. Their happiness was aggressive and irresistible. — Walker Percy

I slowly started to drift back into music again. I finally got the call from John ... about getting the band back together again. It was so out of the blue. I almost thought that the moment had passed. — Roger Andrew Taylor

But until then, and right now, the sun is bright, the air is cool, my head is clear, there's a whole day ahead of us, we're almost to the mountains, it's a good day to be alive. It's this thinner air that does it. You always feel like this when you start getting into higher altitudes. — Robert M. Pirsig

He put his hand on his forehead and scoured the French department of his memory for a word. He knew it was in there. He'd put it in almost fifty years before and hadn't had cause to remove it. But for the life of him he couldn't find it. — Colin Cotterill

Remember those dogs I was talking about? The cues? While I was watching TV, I missed a few. Take a look:
Steven is smiling, almost laughing. After all the punishment he's received from my sister over the years, he's developed quite the sadistic streak when it comes to other people getting their asses handed to them.
Then there's Matthew. God only knows what kind of sick and depraved penalties Delores has inflicted on that poor bastard, because he just looks scared.
Kate, on the other hand, is staring at my hand like it's a cockroach. That she wants to squash. And then she gets an idea - a wonderful, awful idea. If you look hard enough, you can see the light bulb go on above her head. She smiles and leaves the room.
I missed all this the first time. — Emma Chase

When I began to read as an adult, I read almost exclusively novelists of a generation back. I did the Russians, then I started getting more up to date. When you become published and become a reviewer, piles of books come along and you are pushed by fashion and what you are commissioned to do. — Hilary Mantel

I won't share you, Dylan. I mean that. If you think for one second now that we're married, you can try and pull some kind of shit over on me, you'd better think again. I can take whatever you can dish out when it comes to pain, embarrassment and humiliation, and whatever else you have going on in that wicked mind of yours, but I'll be damned if I'll share you with another woman. Or man."
What the fuck? I almost laugh at her, but she's so serious she would probably slap the shit out of me. "Calm the hell down. I'm not trying to pull anything over on you, okay? And seriously, a man?"
"Well, I don't know. Maybe one of your secrets is that you like getting pegged in the ass or something."
This time I laugh out loud at her and she narrows her eyes at me.
"Don't ask me to peg you either, because it's never going to happen."
I laugh even louder. Good God this woman is funny. "I promise you that I don't want to be pegged, Isa. — Ella Dominguez

It amazed Chess how he'd really believed, almost all along, that there was nothing he'd miss, leaving this world. Only the whole of it, you ass-stupid fool.

Every bit, the living and the dead, and then some; hot sun on his back, the wind and the rain, full-out galloping into battle, feel of his guns in hand, a good hard fuck. Getting drunk - on absinthe, anger, blood. Stomping twice on some enemy's face for good measure, and laughing while he did it; the sound of Asher Rook's voice preaching, or Yancey's, singing. Ed's heartbeat under his cheek. — Gemma Files

Obviously, success breeds more confidence. And it's pretty easy to be confident if you're getting a hit almost every time at bat. — Troy Glaus

But, it's much easier to do that than produce the movies from scratch. It excites the same thing in me, whether we build it from the ground up, or whether we come on when the movie is done or almost done. The idea of supporting the underdog and getting a smaller movie out there in a big way is equally exciting. — Jason Blum

If I can give a young author any advice, whatsoever, never let anyone announce the film sale of your first novel. Film rights are sold to almost every novel, but it shouldn't be the lead story in your first engagement with the press. Then you end up getting reviews like "a novel made for the screen" and things like that. — William Monahan

DOCTOR AIN WAS recognized on the Omaha-Chicago flight. A biologist colleague from Pasadena came out of the toilet and saw Ain in an aisle seat. Five years before, this man had been jealous of Ain's huge grants. Now he nodded coldly and was surprised at the intensity of Ain's response. He almost turned back to speak, but he felt too tired; like nearly everyone, he was fighting the flu.

The stewardess handing out coats after they landed remembered Ain too: A tall thin nondescript man with rusty hair. He held up the line staring at her; since he already had his raincoat with him she decided it was some kooky kind of pass and waved him on.

She saw Ain shamble off into the airport smog, apparently alone. Despite the big Civil Defense signs, O'Hare was late getting underground. No one noticed the woman.

- 'The Last Flight of Doctor Ain — James Tiptree Jr.

The will to win is not nearly as important as the will to prepare to win.Everyone wants to win but not everyone wants to prepare to win. preparing to win is where the determination that you will win, is made. Once the game or test or project is underway, it is too late to prepare to win. The actual game, test or projetc is just the end of a long process of getting ready, in which the outcome was really determined. So if you want to win, you must want to prepare to win. Once you prepare to win, winning is almost anti climatic." - Bobby Knight — Bobby Knight

How do you know? You've done nothing, been nowhere. How do you have the faintest idea what kind of person you are?" How could someone like him have the slightest clue what it felt like to be me? I felt almost cross with him for willfully not getting it. "Go on. Open — Jojo Moyes

The mere mention of a witch was almost enough to frighten us out of our wits. This was natural enough, because of late years there were more kinds of witches than there used to be; in old times it had been only old women, but of late years they were of all ages - even children of eight and nine; it was getting so that anybody might turn out to be a familiar of the Devil - age and sex hadn't anything to do with it. In our little region we had tried to extirpate the witches, but the more of them we burned the more of the breed rose up in their places. — Mark Twain

My dad abandoned me when I was about two years old. So, he wasn't around to protect me the way I needed to be protected. I started getting sexually abused from the time I was about five years old to the time I was ten. It really messed with my sense of self worth and my sense of all that was good with the world, almost. — Pattie Mallette