At Your Convenience Quotes & Sayings

It is not rude to turn off your telephone by switching it on to an answering machine, which is cheaper and less disruptive than ripping it out of the wall. Those who are offended because they cannot always get through when they seek, at their own convenience, to barge in on people are suffering from a rude expectation. — Judith Martin

Write the following: "Private missive, from Lieutenant Master-Sergeant Field Quartermaster Pores, to Fist Kindly. Warmest salutations and congratulations on your promotion, sir. As one might observe from your advancement and, indeed, mine, cream doth rise, etc. In as much as I am ever delighted in corresponding with you, discussing all maner of subjects in all possible idioms, alas, this subject is rather more official in nature. In short, we are faced with a crisis of the highest order. Accordignly, I humbly seek your advice and would suggest we arrange a most private meeting at the earliest convenience. Yours affectionately, Pores." Got that, Himble?'
'Yes sir'
'Please read it back to me.'
'"Pores to Kindly meet in secret when?"'
'Excellent, Dispatch at once, Himble — Steven Erikson

After the oil spill, I had this strong feeling that if I ever were to be blessed in having children, I never wanted my kids to see me pumping gas at a gas station. I think it's our responsibility to make the changes that we need to take regardless of convenience. — Alyssa Milano

Men can have all manner of deeply held beliefs about the world in general that they find most inconvenient when called upon to apply to their own lives. Few people let morality get in the way of expediency. Or even convenience. A man who truly believes in a thing beyond the point where it costs him is a rare and dangerous thing. — Joe Abercrombie

If you would follow on to know the Lord, come at once to the open Bible expecting it to speak to you. Do not come with the notion that it is a thing which you may push around at your convenience. It is more than a thing, it is a voice, a word, the very Word of the living God. — A.W. Tozer

The production of antibody is not the only, nor I believe the most important, manifestation of immunity, but for reasons both historical and of experimental convenience, antibody is likely to remain the touchstone of immunological theory. — Frank Macfarlane Burnet

I do not fear death. I resent it. Everything must die, apparently, and I am no exception. But I want to be consulted. You know what I mean? Death is impatient and thoughtless. It barges into your room when you are right in the middle of something, and it doesn't bother to wipe its boots. I have a new passion, my darlings, a passion for being myself, and for being more than previously has been manifested for a single lifetime. I am determined to die at my own convenience. Therefore, I journey to the east, where, I have been told, there are men who have taught death some manners. — Tom Robbins

...a mini-hearse. It had the practicality of a mini-van and the handy carrying capacity of a hearse combined. If you get annoyed with your kids at soccer practice, you can always kill them on the way home and take them directly to the cemetery. — David David Katzman

If you walked into your local convenience store and bought a package of cigars, you would notice that it carries a label warning of the potential dangers of cigar smoke. Yet research suggests that cigar smoking poses a hazard only to moderate to heavy cigar smokers, who comprise less than 1 percent of the adult population. More than 97 percent of American adults, however, eat animal foods, and despite much research demonstrating the connection between the consumption of animal products and disease, we are not warned of these dangers. — Melanie Joy

When I entered the kitchen, the lid of the cookie jar flew off and a cookie flung itself at me. Luckily I caught the cookie in my hand and seconds later discovered that ghost-propelled chocolate chip cookies were still delicious. I wondered if we could find a way to implement and market ghost-propelled cookie jars. The convenience factor was off the charts. Want a cookie? "Ghost, cookie me!" A cookie would fly towards you, dripping with malice, and you could pluck it from the air to feed your face. — Dennis Liggio

Cooking is not about convenience and it's not about shortcuts. Our hunger for the twenty-minute gourmet meal, for one-pot ease and prewashed, precut ingredients has severed our lifeline to the satisfactions of cooking. Take your time. Take a long time. Move slowly and deliberately and with great attention. — Thomas Keller

All but a prophetic few must go about God's work in very quiet, very unspectacular ways. And as you labor to know Him, and to know that He knows you; as you invest your time
and your convenience
in quiet, unassuming service, you will indeed find that "He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up" (Matthew 4:6). — Jeffrey R. Holland

And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience. — C.S. Lewis

Gemma talking to Charley ...
"Got it. Have you seen my pants?"
"Speaking of which, how did you get home without them?"
"I borrowed a pair of you sweats. I ran into a convenience store with them on. I talked to neighbors out in their yard when I pulled up. And only after I got inside did I realize the had 'Exit Only' written across the back."
"You stole my favorite sweats?"
"I wanted to die."
"It's weird that sweats would make you suicidal. I'd analyze the crap out of that if I were you."
"Do you actually wear those in public?"
"Only when I go out in them — Darynda Jones

What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money ... but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth ... In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are "coins" for real things. — Alan W. Watts

Snorkel through our vibrant menagerie of fish and marine life, each one of which has been clearly tagged and labeled for your convenience. Do you think the jokers at Sandals would do that for you? We've stocked our ivory reef with disparate creatures from all over the world, creating a lavishly unbalanced ecosystem that you have to see to believe. Often the things that nature never intended are the most fun to look at. — Colin Nissan

I often read nonfiction with a pencil in hand. I love the feel, the smell, the design, the weight of a book, but I also enjoy the convenience of my Kindle - for travel and for procuring a book in seconds. — Drew Gilpin Faust

For instance, supposing that the planet earth were not a sphere but a gigantic coffee table,
how much difference in everyday life would that make? Granted, this is a pretty
farfetched example; you can't rearrange facts of life so freely. Still, picturing the planet
earth, for convenience sake, as a gigantic coffee table does in fact help clear away the
clutter - those practically pointless contingencies such as gravity and the international
dateline and the equator, those nagging details that arise from the spherical view. I mean,
for a guy leading a perfectly ordinary existence, how many times in the course of a
lifetime would the equator be a significant factor? — Haruki Murakami

Like children, we have dreamt, that what gratifies our desires, or contributes to our convenience to-day, will prove equally useful and satisfactory to-morrow, without reflecting on the growth of the body, the change of humours, the new objects, and the new situations, which every succeeding hour brings in its train. — Mary Hays

Does it matter if you read to your child from an ebook or a print book? Each type of book has its own merit. Ebooks are a huge convenience, easy to download and take on a trip. Dictionary features give children the ability to instantly discover the meanings of new words and concepts. Print books have a different type of physical presence and carry a different feeling, as children themselves have pointed out.SALE Inc. According to another, similar national survey, kids say they prefer ebooks when they're out and about and when they don't want their FOR Publ., friends to know what they're reading, but that print is better for sharNOT ing with friends and reading at bedtime.31 It strikes me as interesting that most children still prefer print books before going to sleep. — Anonymous

Destiny doesn't always come when it's convenient or when you think it should. It comes when you're ready, whether you know it or not. — Kelly Thompson

I don't think of myself as a critic or teacher either, but simply - and at the obvious risk of disingenuousness - as someone who teaches, writes drama criticism (and other things) and feels that the American compulsion to take your identity from your profession, with its corollary of only one trade to a practitioner, may be a convenience to society but is burdensome and constricting to yourself. — Richard Gilman

The manner in which the Americans are subdivided into sects also conflicts with any commendable desire that may exist to build glorious temples in honor of the Deity: and convenience is more consulted than taste, perhaps, in all that relates to ecclesiastical architecture. Nevertheless, — James Fenimore Cooper

The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men to each govern himself, and suffer any artificial positive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a consideration of convenience. — Edmund Burke

The internet might be a convenience, but it hasn't yet, for me, been a fundamental reordering. These things are supposed to be time-savers, so you have more time standing at your easel if you so choose. — Joe Bradley

This is a frame. I think Mason Verger is trying to capture Dr. Lecter himself for purposes of personal revenge. I think he just missed him in Florence. I think Mr. Krendler may be in collusion with Verger and wants the FBI's effort against Dr. Lecter to work for Verger. I think Paul Krendler of the Department of Justice is making money out of this and I think he is willing to destroy me to do it. Mr. Krendler has behaved toward me before in an inappropriate manner and is acting now out of spite as well as financial self-interest. Only this week he called me a 'cornpone country pussy.' I would challenge Mr. Krendler before this body to take a lie detector test with me on these matters. I'm at your convenience. We could do it now. — Thomas Harris

The natural progress of the works of men is from rudeness to convenience, from convenience to elegance, and from elegance to nicety. — Samuel Johnson

She left me the way people leave a hotel room. A hotel room is a place to be when you are doing something else. Of itself it is of no consequence to one's major scheme. A hotel room is convenient. But its convenience is limited to the time you need it while you are in that particular town on that particular business; you hope it is comfortable, but prefer, rather, that it be anoymous. It is not, after all, where you live. — Toni Morrison

L.A.'s large convenience stores are so big they can accommodate up to twenty armed robbers at one time. — Jay Leno

In fact, candy was at the top of the list of things she was supposed to avoid, especially holiday treats from strangers. But there were also dire warnings about public toilets, dogs (even on leashes), convenience stores (especially at night), unsupervised children and teens, electrical outlets (during storms), unlit rooms, steep staircases, carnival rides, banquet or buffet food, cocktails on a date, and all weather conditions. — Laird Barron

These unpleasant habits commonly include throwing of rubbish on the floor of the compartment, smoking at all hours and in all places, betel and tobacco chewing, converting of the whole carriage into a spittoon, shouting and yelling, and using foul language, regardless of the convenience or comfort of fellow-passengers. — Mahatma Gandhi

Fidelity is what cannot be bought or sold. It obeys a law and attaches itself to a necessity. Convenience can be calculated, but fides can only be established by the spontaneous act of a man who is capable of inner nobility. Fides means personality and hierarchy. — Julius Evola

Jaidee studies the general's desk. "I wasn't aware that the Environment Ministry only inspected cargo at others' convenience."
"I am trying to reason with you. My hands are full with tigers: blister rust, weevil, the coal war, Trade Ministry infiltrators, yellow cards, greenhouse quotas, fa' gan outbreaks ... And yet you choose to add another."
Jaidee looks up. "Who is it?"
"What do you mean?"
"Who is so angry that you're pissing your pants this way? Coming to ask me not to fight? It's Trade, yes? Someone in the Trade Ministry has you by the balls."
Pracha doesn't say anything for a moment. "I don't know who it is. Better that you don't know, either. What you do not know, you cannot fight." He slides a card across the desk. "This arrived today, under my door." His eyes lock on Jaidee so that Jaidee cannot look away. "Right here in the office. Inside the compound, you understand? We are completely infiltrated."
Jaidee turns over the card. — Paolo Bacigalupi

I often wonder whether real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these sanitized and easier screen dialogues, in much the same way as killing, skinning and butchering an animal to eat has been replaced by the convenience of packages of meat on the supermarket shelf ... Perhaps future generations will recoil with similar horror at the messiness, unpredictability and immediate personal involvement of a three-dimensional, real-time interaction. — Susan Greenfield, Baroness Greenfield

Full value for your soul wouldn't get you a cup of coffee at a convenience store. — Tim Pratt

Which we welcomed precisely because it happened to suit our convenience. — Simone De Beauvoir

If one is lucky, opportunity cost is all the price one pays. More often than not, there are other costs to gaining your freedom. Maybe it has to do with letting go of comfort and convenience, incurring a loss, or losing friends who are no longer aligned with your goals. Maybe it is a dramatic dislocation in the way you lead your life that renders you disoriented. Some of these experiences maybe painful. You may also find the pursuit of happiness is at times a lonely road. — K.J. Kilton

Favor read-time convenience to write-time convenience. Code — Steve McConnell

I've just concluded an interview with your daughter Lucy, and need to speak with you personally at your earliest convenience. — Grace Burrowes

[Books] will visit you at your convenience, whether you are lonesome or not, on rainy days or fair. They propose themselves as either transient acquaintances or permanent friends. They will stay as long as you like, departing or returning as you wish. Their friendship entails no obligation. Best of all, and not always true of our merely human friends, they have Cleopatra's infinite variety. — Clifton Fadiman

While I was up there, I happened across a couple of other interesting finds. One , curiously enough, is a portrait of your uncle. Did you put that up there?"
He scowled. "No. Foy and Starr must have done, since I ordered the damn thing burned. I'll tell Bell to toss it on the rubbish heap at his earlier convenience."
"Yes, well, much as I agree with the sentiments, and believe me I do, I suppose we ought to retain the painting in the interest of family history. I could scribble a note and paste it on the reverse saying what a vile man he is, just so future generations know."
He smirked. "Sidney would hate that. Yes, let's do it. — Tracy Anne Warren

The telephone is there for your convenience, not for the convenience of your callers. Yet, as soon as we hear the phone ring, we act as if we are firefighters rushing to a five-alarm fire. We run to pick it up as if our lives depended on the call being answered at once. I have seen people interrupt quiet family dinners, dedicated reading times and meditation periods to answer — Robin S. Sharma

I think motherhood is the noblest task of all, because you cannot do it at your convenience, or tailor it to suit your preferences. You have to be ready to give up everything when you take on this task: your time, restful nights, your hobbies, your pursuit of physical fitness, any beauty you may have had, and all of the private little pleasures you might have counted as a right, from late dinners and long soaks in the tub to weekend excursions and cycling trips ... I'm not saying you can't have any of these things, but you have to be ready to let them all go if you're going to have children and put them first. — Johann Christoph Arnold

So might I suggest at your earliest convenience that you pay a visit to the Okins Funeral Salon to make arrangements?"
"Why'd I wanna do that?" she says so damn snippy.
"Because on my return visit you can count on my beatin' the ever-lovin' shit outta you with a rusty shovel. Twice. — Lesley Kagen

I think maybe what happened was the convenience of technology overshadowed the experience of holding an album in your hands, and sitting on your bedroom floor, and staring at a picture of John Lennon or Gene Simmons or Johnny Rotten. That tangible experience can sometimes become an even more emotional experience, because it's really happening. — Dave Grohl

Seemed to me a phone was an impersonal instrument. If it felt like it, it let your personality go through its wires. If it didn't want to, it just drained your personality away until what slipped through at the other end was some cold fish of a voice, all steel, copper, plastic, no warmth, no reality. It's easy to say the wrong thing on telephones; the telephone changes your meaning on you. First thing you know, you've made an enemy. Then, of course, the telephone's such a convenient thing; it just sits there and demands you call someone who doesn't want to be called. Friends were always calling, calling, calling me. Hell, I hadn't any time of my own. — Ray Bradbury

Fourth, a telegram from brother Mycroft: 'Will visit at earliest possible convenience - great uproar in Whitehall. Mend quickly; your death would be most inconvenient at this time. — Lyndsay Faye

While the spoken word can travel faster, you can't take it home in your hand. Only the written word can be absorbed wholly at the convenience of the reader. — Kingman Brewster Jr.

Time limits are fictional. Losing all sense of time is actually the way to reality. We use clocks and calendars for convenience sake, not because that kind of time is real. — Leslie Marmon Silko

Never before had I believed or suspected that I had a soul but just then I knew I had. I knew also that my soul was friendly, was my senior in years and was solely concerned for my own welfare. For convenience I called him Joe. I felt a little reassured to know that I was not altogether alone. Joe was helping me. — Flann O'Brien

Don't pick up the phone every time it rings. It is there for your convenience, not the convenience of others. — Robin S. Sharma

Too many Christians have a commitment of convenience. They'll stay faithful as long as it's safe and doesn't involve risk, rejection, or criticism. Instead of standing alone in the face of challenge or temptation, they check to see which way their friends are going. — Charles Stanley

Go is an attempt to combine the safety and performance of statically typed languages with the convenience and fun of dynamically typed interpretative languages. — Rob Pike

May I just single out for salutations, on the 'anti-war' side: Pop Stars For Appeasement, Dancers Against Democracy, Actors For Apathy, Fashionistas For Fascism and Jugglers For Genocide. All of them united under that flaccid flag of convenience, Show-Offs For Saddam. — Julie Burchill

Motherhood is the second oldest profession in the world. It never questions age, height, religious preference, health, political affiliation, citizenship, morality, ethnic background, marital status, economic level, convenience, or previous experience. — Erma Bombeck

The state of convenience lies in the hands of proper planning. When you know this, you will become a good planner; and when you become a good planner, you save your life from stress! — Israelmore Ayivor

It's a double-headed coin, because technology is a convenience but it's stifled our attention spans. At one time, albums had songs that were like ten minutes long, with different variations and chord progressions and changes. — Cee Lo Green

Let there be children and old people but few whose occupation is neither hope nor memory. Let there have been immigration at some point: enough to fill the convenience stores, the foreign restaurants, but let it be forgotten. Let the children be all in school, a breath held in, released at 3 o'clock across the park. Let the town's rhythm be unquestioned. Let me be single: no children, no family. Let me not fit in. — Joanna Walsh

Choosing to do something significant in life usually requires us to sacrifice our personal convenience, but the results can be life changing for ourselves and those around us. — Jeff Shinabarger

After twenty-two years of marriage, we had outgrown the challenge of making something out of nothing. The nesting instincts just weren't there anymore. I no longer hyperventilated over a melon keeper that I bought at a Tupperware party. I now worshipped at the shrine of convenience and Sara Lee. Bill no longer rushed home to make bird houses in the basement. He wanted to sleep in his BarcaLounger so he wouldn't be so tired when he went to bed.
It was as if we were closing the door on the years of struggle. It wasn't fun anymore. — Erma Bombeck

Yet never once in his life had he experienced the unshakable certainty that he and he alone had arrived at a decision. He always had the sense that fate had forced him to decide things to suit its own convenience. On occasion, after the momentary satisfaction of having decided something of his own free will, he would see that things had been decided beforehand by an external power cleverly camouflaged as free will, mere bait thrown in his path to lure him into behaving as he was mean to. The only things that he had decided for himself with complete independence were the kind of trivial matters which, on closer inspection, revealed themselves to require no decision making at all. — Haruki Murakami

Thank goodness modern convenience is a thing of the remote future. — Walt Kelly

Lucy had no wish to entertain that gentleman. None at all. It was not that Lucy did not wish to marry Mr. Olson, for she had no doubt that marrying him was the most practical thing to do. Nevertheless, she would very much rather avoid the necessity of making conversation with him. — David Liss

Eroticism is mystique; that is, the aura of emotion and imagination around sex. It cannot be 'fixed' by codes of social or moral convenience, whether from the political left or right. For nature's fascism is greater than that of any society. There is a daemonic instability in sexual relations that we may have to accept. — Camille Paglia

Visualize yourself confronted with the task of killing, one after the other, a cabbage, a fly, a fish, a lizard, a guinea pig, a cat, a dog, a monkey and a baby chimpanzee. In the unlikely case that you should experience no greater inhibitions in killing the chimpanzee than in destroying the cabbage or the fly, my advice to you is to commit suicide at your earliest possible convenience, because you are a weird monstrosity and a public danger. — Konrad Lorenz

Pages must be done longhand. The computer is fast - too fast for our purposes. Writing by computer gets you speed but not depth. Writing by computer is like driving a car at 85 mph. Everything is a blur. "Oh, my God, was that my exit?" Writing by hand is like going 35 mph. "Oh, look, here comes my exit. And look, it has a Sonoco station and a convenience store. — Julia Cameron

At Revolution Health Group we will put consumers back at the center of the system by giving them more choice, control and convenience.. while building the first comprehensive, consumer-driven health care company. — Steve Case

There are few industries as defiantly opaque as shipping. Even offshore bankers have not developed a system as intricately elusive as the flag of convenience, under which ships can fly the flag of a state that has nothing to do with its owner, cargo, crew, or route. — Rose George

A sacrifice is not convenient. If it is something we can easily do, then it is not a sacrifice. — Bidemi Mark-Mordi

The chronology was for the convenience of the reader who may be unfamiliar with some of the names and events mentioned. My publisher persuaded me to cut it, on account of the wartime paper shortage. — William T. Vollmann

Perhaps the most powerful and appealing aspect of another's words, however, is simply their convenience. Whether distilled in the briefest apophthegm, or spread out across some voluminous tome, the thought is ready-made, the heavy lifting done. It's there to be used like a weapon or tool, and as time wanders on, seemingly leaving us fewer and fewer new things to say, it becomes ever more useful. As technology moves forward, as well, it also becomes much easier. Indeed, in this "information age" where so much is available to so many so quickly that enlightenment nearly verges on light pollution, it can sometimes appear that expression has been reduced to nothing more than a mad race to unearth and claim references. As such, the citation is also there to be donned, like some article of fashion from which we may reap the praise of discriminating taste without ever exerting ourself in the actual toil of manufacture. — Jasper Siegel Seneschal

So you're a fellow mercenary, then."
"Does this mean you'll afford me some professional courtesy?"
"Don't ask for that. All it means is that you might get to face the person who kills you ... But only if it's convenient. — Howard Tayler

It is dainty to be sick if you have leisure and convenience for it. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

One central characteristic of the Model T now generally forgotten is that it was the first car of consequence to put the driver's seat on the left-hand side. Previously, nearly all manufacturers placed the driver on the outer, curb-side of the car so that an alighting driver could step out onto a grassy verge or dry sidewalk rather than into the mud of an unpaved road. Ford reasoned that this convenience might be better appreciated by the lady of the house, and so arranged seating for her benefit. The arrangement also gave the driver a better view down the road, and made it easier for passing drivers to stop and have a conversation out facing windows. Ford was no great thinker, but he did understand human nature. Such, in any case, was the popularity of Ford's seating plan for the Model T that it soon became the standard adopted by all cars. — Bill Bryson

Separation of function is not to be despised, but neither should it be exalted. Separation is not an unbreakable law, but a convenience for overcoming inadequate human abilities, whether in science or engineering. As D'Arcy Thompson, one of the spiritual fathers of the general systems movement, said: As we analyze a thing into its parts or into its properties, we tend to magnify these, to exaggerate their apparent independence, and to hide from ourselves (at least for a time) the essential integrity and individuality of the composite whole. We divided the body into its organs, the skeleton into its bones, as in very much the same fashion we make a subjective analysis of the mind, according to the teaching of psychology, into component factors: but we know very well that judgement and knowledge, courage or gentleness, love or fear, have no separate existence, but are somehow mere manifestations, or imaginary coefficients, of a most complex integral.10 The — Gerald M. Weinberg

Touching without looking had been incredibly arousing. Looking without touching was unreasonable torture. — Ros Clarke

According to Becker's logic, if we're short on cash and happen to drive by a convenience store, we quickly estimate how much money is in the register, consider the likelihood that we might get caught, and imagine what punishment might be in store for us if we are caught (obviously deducting possible time off for good behavior). On the basis of this cost-benefit calculation, we then decide whether it is worth it to rob the place or not. The essence of Becker's theory is that decisions about honesty, like most other decisions, are based on a cost-benefit analysis. — Dan Ariely

I dont partake in assembly-line convenience. I dont say that killing things is bad while I hire people to kill things for me. — Ted Nugent

Men cannot be men - much less good or heroic men - unless their actions have meaningful consequences to people they truly care about. Strength requires an opposing force, courage requires risk, mastery requires hard work, honor requires accountability to other men. Without these things, we are little more than boys playing at being men, and there is no weekend retreat or mantra or half-assed rite of passage that can change that. A rite of passage must reflect a real change in status and responsibility for it to be anything more than theater. No reimagined manhood of convenience can hold its head high so long as the earth remains the tomb of our ancestors — Jack Donovan

How can she let herself love him, when she's signed a contract to let him go? — Ros Clarke

The man who has successfully solved the problem of his relations with the two worlds of data and symbols is a man who has no beliefs. With regard to the problems of practical life he entertains a series of working hypotheses, which serve his purposes, but are taken no more seriously than any other kind of tool or instrument. In other words, symbols should never be raised to the rank of dogmas, nor should any system be regarded as more than a provisional convenience. — Aldous Huxley

I find that a duck's opinion of me is influenced by whether or not I have bread. A duck loves bread, but he does not have the capability to buy a loaf. That's the biggest joke on the duck ever. If I worked at a convenience store, and a duck came in and stole a loaf of bread, I would let him go. I'd say, "Come back tomorrow, bring your friends!" When I think of a duck's friends, I think of other ducks. But he could have, say, a beaver in tow. — Mitch Hedberg