Bad But Good Quotes & Sayings

I' ve won awards. And they didn't make me feel bad winning them. They made me feel pretty good. But it also did not make me feel bad NOT winning the Academy Award. — Al Pacino

Sounding hoarse, Dare whispered, "Tell me what you want."
The feel of his broad, strong hand against her left her quaking inside - in a good way. The tremble sounded in her tone as she tried to explain. "I want to be whole again. I want to be me, the person I was before I was taken to Tijuana."
Dare said nothing. Molly felt his hesitation, his indecision. God love the man, he didn't want to take advantage of her.
"I know what I want, Dare." She covered his hand with her own, pressed him closer. "I want to replace the bad memories with new ones. Better ones."
His hand curved around her, but he said nothing.
Watching his face, Molly whispered, "I want to do that now, with you. — Lori Foster

My chest tightens: seeing him so upset breaks my own heart. 'Don't you ever wish you could make that bit go away?" I say, feeling angry at the past. 'That you could erase those painful memories, forget they every happened, just remember the happy times you had together?'
'You must never say that,' he reprimands sternly.
'But why not?' I look at him in surprise.
'Because it's the bad memories that makes you appreciate the good ones. Don't ever wish them away. it's like your nan always used to say, "You need both the sun and the rain to make a rainbow". — Alexandra Potter

For me, dear reader, that place was purgatory incarnate; neither good nor bad, but a gateway to great rewards or even greater punishments. — Joss Sheldon

Never awake me when you have good news to announce, because with good news nothing presses; but when you have bad news, arouse me immediately, for then there is not an instant to be lost. — Napoleon Bonaparte

If they did it like they did it in '96 or whenever, just picking it from one meet, what if someone had the meet of their life but they're not usually a good competitor? That could be really bad for the team. So, I think this is the best way. — Carly Patterson

I would never have chosen that life for myself, I know. But God knew what he was doing. And everything I went through turned out to make songs like we write that touch people that have to go through the same kind of things. And if I hadn't gone through what I went through I wouldn't be right here right now. And I'm just talking about how God makes good out of bad, usually all the time, he can always do that. It's just that God works everything together for the good of those who love him. And I'm glad I've gone through what I did. — Lacey Sturm

Coming from bad results, you have more tension and you get more into the game, maybe. You never know which is best. I prefer to come from good results. You have more confidence and you believe you are doing things well. But in football everything can change very quickly. — Tito Vilanova

Warfare is ordained for you, though it is hateful unto you; but it may that ye hate a thing which is good for you, and it may happen that ye love a thing which is bad for you. — Qur'an

The passions seldom give good advice but to the interested and mercenary. Resentment generally suggests bad measures. Second thoughts and good nature will rarely, very rarely, approve the first hints of anger. — Horace Walpole

Don't be irritated at people's smell or bad breath. What's the point? With that mouth, with those armpits, they're going to produce that odor. - But they have a brain! Can't they figure it out? Can't they recognize the problem? So you have a brain as well. Good for you. Then use your logic to awaken his. Show him. Make him realize it. If he'll listen, then you'll have solved the problem. Without anger. — Marcus Aurelius

War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to "a war against" whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness of our life to Yes/No, On/Off. This is puerile, misleading, and degrading. In stories, it evades any solution but violence and offers the reader mere infantile reassurance. All too often the heroes of such fantasies behave exactly as the villains do, acting with mindless violence, but the hero is on the "right" side and therefore will win. Right makes might. — Ursula K. Le Guin

This had been a bad section of town before the Circus moved in and brought in money, which attracted other businesses. The area had been gentrified not because of some government interference, but by good old-fashioned capitalism, which was one of Jean-Claude's favorite things. — Laurell K. Hamilton

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader. I know people who read without hearing the sentence sounds and they were the fastest readers. Eye readers we call them. They get the meaning by glances. But they are bad readers because they miss the best part of what a good writer puts into his work. — Robert Frost

The truth is, Rosemary, that you are capable of anything. Good or bad. You always have been, and you always will be. Given the right push, you, too, could do horrible things. That darkness exists within all of us. You think every soldier who picked up a cutter gun was a bad person? No. She was just doing what the soldier next to her was doing, who was doing what the soldier next to her was doing, and so on and so on. And I bet most of them - not all, but most - who made it through the war spent a long time after trying to understand what they'd done. Wondering how they ever could have done it in the first place. Wondering when killing became so comfortable. — Becky Chambers

We all want more: more money, a bigger house, fancier clothes, faster cars - all the stuff the people on TV have and tell us we need to be happy. We keep moving forward in search of something, but that something already lives inside of us. And that something is, simply, gratitude. It's stopping in the middle of the cacophony of more and saying, "What I have is enough; I am enough; I am grateful for all that is in this moment, all that is me: the chances I have been given, the things I have done, the good, the bad, and the embarrassing. I am grateful for them because they have brought me to this place. They have been my guides and my teachers. — Paul Williams

Life is a mess, there is trouble around every corner. But Jesus gives us peace and rest in the good and the bad times. — Michelle Lynn Brown

I believe in Hell ... but it's here on earth." He shakes his head. "Good people and bad people. As if it were this easy. Everyone is both of these at once. — Jodi Picoult

That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself. Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought. It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, "Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?" The young sceptic says, "I have a right to think for myself." But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, "I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all." There — G.K. Chesterton

Every musician in the known universe has signed a bad piece of paper, myself included. But it's really very simple. You're the artist. It's your picture that's going on the CD cover, nobody else's. Protect yourself. Get a good lawyer. You'll kick yourself later if you don't. — Bun E. Carlos

I believe the way to write a good play is to convince yourself it is easy to do
then go ahead and do it with ease. Don't maul, don't suffer, don't groan till the first draft is finished. A play is a pheonix and it dies a thousand deaths. Usually at night. In the morning it springs up again from its ashes and crows like a happy rooster. It is never as bad as you think, it is never as good. It is somewhere in between, and success or failure depends on which end of your emotional gamut concerning its value it approaches more closely. But it is much more likely to be good if you think it is wonderful while you are writing the first draft. An artist must believe in himself. Your belief is contagious. Others may say he is vain, but they are affected. — Tennessee Williams

Freedom is what we all seek, but it's what we do with that freedom that ultimately defines our character. In the end, a man's character cements his fate, good or bad. — Sonny Barger

Reality television paints a simple black-and-white world of good characters and bad characters; people we want to root for and people we want to see ruined. There is none of the gray ambiguity that colors real life. I no longer watch a lot of reality television, but sometimes I can't look away from 'Honey Boo Boo.' I just can't. — Molly O'Keefe

The times are never so bad but that a good man can make shift to live in them. — Thomas More

He was a strange mixture of good and bad, of luxury and industry, courtesy and arrogance. In leisure he was self-indulgent, but full of vigour on service. His outward behaviour was praiseworthy, though ill was spoken of his private life. — Tacitus

There's some downsides to being famous, which are not even worth mentioning. But to combat the bad sides of being famous, you really should take advantage of the good sides. The good sides are, you can use that fame to get projects you might not normally get. — Chris Rock

By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better. — Ernest Hemingway,

Not all dogs are perfect dogs, but all dogs are inherently good. Like people, we are affected by environment and circumstance. Some breeds get a bad rap because sometimes humans breed them to be a certain way, like overly macho or protective. In our life on earth we are dependent on humans for everything, including our breeding. We can be bred for aggression or we can be bred for peace. — Kate McGahan

The music
the making of music and the performing of music
produced memories, many good, some bad, some difficult. But he knew for sure that he'd spent too much of that time living not in the present moment of creating or playing music but in the expectation or hope of some reward, some success. He had always been waiting for his life to start when that happened, when the recognition came. It had taken him twenty years to realize how utterly wrongheaded that was.
It was as if the twenty years didn't amount to much, that he hadn't actually been present for so much of his life. — Graham Joyce

Hope for the best, be prepared for the worse. Life is shocking, but you must never appear to be shocked. For no matter how bad it is it could be worse and no matter how good it is it could be better. — Maya Angelou

I've never been a bad person and always had quite good morals. There's always been a side of me that's been quite proper, but it's got distracted here and there. Now I'm the person I should be. — Boy George

Can a story be good only if it produces an effect? If the effect is a bad one, but intended, has the story done its job? Is it then a good story? If the story produces an effect other than the intended one, is it then a bad story? Can a story be said to produce an effect at all? Can a story actually do anything at all? — Brock Clarke

The three cardinal tenets of rum drinking in Newfoundland. The first of these is that as soon as a bottle is placed on a table it must be opened. This is done to "let the air get at it and carry off the black vapors." The second tenet is that a bottle, once opened, must never be restoppered, because of the belief that it will then go bad. No bottle of rum has ever gone bad in Newfoundland, but none has ever been restoppered, so there is no way of knowing whether this belief is reasonable. The final tenet is that an open bottle must be drunk as rapidly as possible "before all to-good goes out of it. — Farley Mowat

In Hollywood, for me, it's all about the movie stars and the singers. Baseball players don't draw too much attention; we're low key. I'm good with faces and sometimes bad with names, but I'll walk up to somebody if I know who they are ... show them some love. — Matt Kemp

No one is anything but a shade of grey. It's good people making bad choices. — Sara Bareilles

To think but nobly of my grandmother: Good wombs have borne bad sons. — William Shakespeare

Juggling work and parental responsibilities is no easy task, but I'm trying my best and just like everything else there are good days and there are bad days. — Ali Landry

If you want to do something but cannot, then before God, who knows our hearts, it is as if we have done it. This is true whether the intended action is good or bad. — St. Mark The Ascetic

I am not saying there will always be flowers and flowers in your life. No, there are thorns, but they too are good. And I am not saying that your life will always be sweet. It will many times be very bitter, but that's how life grows: through dialectics. I am not saying you will always be good. Sometimes you will be very bad, but one thing will be certain: when you are bad you will be authentically bad, and when you are good you will be authentically good. One can trust, one can rely upon you. When you are angry, one can rely on it that your anger is not false, not cold; it is hot and alive. And when you love, one can rely upon you that it is alive and warm. Remember, — Osho

It's not good or bad, but closers have changed things. I don't think you are going to win a World Series without one. Where would the Yankees be without Mariano Rivera? — Bruce Sutter

I love you, Ink, and I want you-only you. Being strong doesn't mean I don't want you too. You are the only person who knows every part of my life, every part of me in it, the good and the bad and the horrible, and you still love me. You are always with me, even when you're not there. And when you're not there, I can feel it, like an empty space where you ought to be, and I can hardly wait until you're back to fill it again. Neither world feels like it fits, but we belong. — Dawn Metcalf

I know. But maybe that's what growing up gets you. You get better. You stop waiting for the bad stuff to happen and maybe enjoy the good, you know? — Amy Lane

The brain is good at learning from bad experiences, but bad at learning from good ones. — Rick Hanson

Outside the gates of the finca, watching the passing rows of tin-roofed shacks which represented the residential section of San Francisco de Paula, I began to think about The Old Man and the Sea, and I realized it was Ernest's counterattack against those who had assaulted him for Across the River. It was an absolutely perfect counterattack and I envisioned a row of snickering carpies bearing the likenesses of Dwight Macdonald and Louis Kronenberger and E.B. White, who in the midst of cackling, "Through! Washed Up! Kaput!" suddenly grab their groins and keel over. It is a rather elementary military axiom that he who attacks must anticipate the counterattack, but the critics, poor boys, would never make General Staff. As Ernest once said, "One battle doesn't make a campaign but critics treat one book, good or bad, like a whole goddamn war. — A. E. Hotchner

Yet are you so certain, good mistress, you wish to be free of this mist? Is it not better some things remain hidden from our minds?"
"It may be for some, father, but not for us. Axl and I wish to have again the happy moments we shared together. To be robbed of them is as if a thief came in the night and took what's most precious from us."
"Yet the mist covers all memories, the bad as well as the good. Isn't that so, mistress?"
"We'll have the bad ones come back too, even if they make us weep or shake with anger. For isn't it the life we've shared? — Kazuo Ishiguro

But as you age, you lose other, even more important things, like friends-hopefully only bad friends, who maybe weren't as good for you as you once thought. With luck, you'll be able to hang on to your true friends, the ones who were always there for you ... even when you thought they weren't.
Because friends like that are more precious then all the tiaras in the world — Meg Cabot

Life Is Fair I am sure you have heard the question "Why do bad things happen to good people?", but bad things happen to both good people and bad people equally. Good things happen to happy people. — Vivian Amis

WE ALREADY HAVE everything we need. There is no need for self-improvement. All these trips that we lay on ourselves - the heavy-duty fearing that we're bad and hoping that we're good, the identities that we so dearly cling to, the rage, the jealousy and the addictions of all kinds - never touch our basic wealth. They are like clouds that temporarily block the sun. But all the time our warmth and brilliance are right here. This is who we really are. We are one blink of an eye away from being fully awake. — Pema Chodron

Little John, watching her standing next to her brother, half-glowering in the old Cecil manner and half-comforted by Robin's words, saw for a moment what it had been like for her as Will's litter sister. Some of what she was good at, and some of what she was bad at, as his pupil, came clear to him in that moment; and something else came clear to him too, but he set it aside so quickly that he allowed himself not to recognize it for what it was. — Robin McKinley

Evil denotes the lack of good. Not every absence of good is an evil, for absence may be taken either in a purely negative or in aprivative sense. Mere negation does not display the character of evil, otherwise nonexistents would be evil and moreover, a thing would be evil for not possessing the goodness of something else, which would mean that man is bad for not having the strength of a lion or the speed of a wild goat. But what is evil is privation; in this sense blindness means the privation of sight. — Thomas Aquinas

An eye for an eye, I say. If someone hits you you hit back, do you not? Why then should not the State, very severely hit by you brutal hooligans, not hit back also? But the new view is to say no. The new view is that we turn the bad into the good. All of which seems to me grossly unjust. — Anthony Burgess

I'm a bad woman, but I'm damn good company. — Fanny Brice

Especially on 'Taken,' 'Taken' was not a big success the day of its release. It was released in France first, and it didn't do bad, but not as good as it did in the U.S. — Olivier Megaton

I wish I could give you everything you wanted. But even a good gift is a bad gift if given at the wrong time. — Tiffany Reisz

By now I had drawn up as much magic as I could possibly hold, but I was afraid to start sending big bolts of it into the fray. The last thing I wanted was to hit Archer, who, I was beginning to realize, had definitely held back in Defense. I'd never seen anyone move like he did, his movements fast and sure. Too bad they weren't doing any good.
Finally,one of the ghouls got a grasp on his hair, and he winced as the thing jerked his head back. I think I might have cried out, but it was hard to hear anything between my heartbeat and the whirring of magic in my veins.
"Could we start with the necromancing now?" Archer shouted at me. — Rachel Hawkins

I may be good for nothing, but I'm never bad for nothing. — Sydney Biddle Barrows

You mean one human is good, but a hundred humans is bad?" "Exactly. One human is just a person. A hundred humans make a society. And societies have kings, and religions and priests, and all these other things serrin completely fail to understand — Joel Shepherd

I admire Ginsberg as a poet, despite the fact that he seems not to know when he is being good and when he is bad. But he will last, or at least those poems will last. — Leslie Fiedler

God does not send the problem; genetics, chance, and bad luck do that. And God cannot make the problem go away, no matter how many prayers and good deeds we offer. What God does is promise us, I will be with you; you will feel burdened but you will never feel abandoned. In — Harold S. Kushner

There is always a journey to take and there is always a final destination to reach. There is always an aim and there is always a focal point, good or bad. Because of where we want to get to, we mind not just our actions, but the reasons behind our actions also! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

The average detective story is probably no worse than the average novel, but you never see the average novel. It doesn't get published. The average
or only slightly above average
detective story does ... Whereas the good novel is not at all the same kind of book as the bad novel. It is about entirely different things. But the good detective story and the bad detective story are about exactly the same things, and they are about them in very much the same way. — Raymond Chandler

There are good people who do good things, there are bad people who do bad things, but to get a good person to do a bad thing takes religion. — Bill Maher

Up and down, good and bad, sacred and profane: these are all assumed. But inward and outward: this is the one context we are sure of, the one context we can work with. This is Adiyogi's most significant contribution to humankind and it is a profound and enduring one: "The only way out is in." Once — Sadhguru

Scripts are what matter. If you get the foundations right and then you get the right ingredients on top, you stand a shot ... but if you get those foundations wrong, then you absolutely don't stand a shot. It's very rare-almost never-that a good film gets made from a bad screenplay. — Tim Bevan

I love doing comedy, and I don't get a chance to much. I get to play lots of serious people, and killers, and people with a lot of ... sheriffs. Good people and bad people, but lots of drama, and to get a chance to be genuinely silly is a great treat for me. — William Sadler

Coming to terms with my feelings of worthlessness isn't always a bad time, but it's rarely a good one. — Dov Davidoff

Lastly, waging war against good people is bad for the soul. This may not seem important to you now, but it's the most important thing I've said. — Joshua

Identifying a potential threat feels curiously good. You're like a gazelle that smells a lion and can't relax until it sees where the lion is. Seeing a lion feels good when the alternative is worse. We seek evidence of threats to feel safe, and we get a dopamine boost when we find what we seek. You can also get a serotonin boost from the feeling of being right, and an oxytocin boost from bonding with those who sense the same threat. This is why people seem oddly pleased to find evidence of doom and gloom. But the pleasure doesn't last because the "do something" feeling commands your attention again. You can end up feeling bad a lot even if you're successful in your survival efforts. — Loretta Graziano Breuning

Men are always thinking that they are going to do something grandly wicked to their enemies; but when it comes to the point, really bad men are just as rare as really good ones. — George Bernard Shaw

There's a saying - "Write what you know." It's bad advice if you take it as an unbreakable rule, but good advice if you use it as a foundation. — Stephen King

I wouldn't know what to do with daughters,' he says. 'Exchange them for sons?'
'But then I could wind up with something like you.'
'I'm not so bad,' he says. 'I'm smart.'
'You're about a hundred miles away from the town of Smart, my friend.'
'You're mistaken, counselor,' he says. 'I'm smart, I can take care of myself. I'm an awesome tennis player, a keen observer of life around me. I'm a good cook. I always have weed.'
'I'm sure your parents are proud.'
'It's possible.' He looks at his knees and I wonder if I've offended him. — Kaui Hart Hemmings

I think you just have to take the bad with the good and you're going to get hurt more, but it's worth it. — Amy Ray

An ear for music is very different from a taste for music. I have no ear whatever; I could not sing an air to save my life; but I have the intensest delight in music, and can detect good from bad. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Something that is appealing is wars are terrible and ugly and hard and each conflict is different, but of every conflict I've ever gone to, I've also seen people being extraordinary in a good sense. It's not just a black and white extreme situation that pushes people to extremes and they do crazy bad stuff. You also see crazy brave stuff. You see humanity in a different light. — Shaul Schwarz

Under a bad leadership Serbs are capable of committing the most terrible atrocities; under good leaders we can do great deeds. It's like a field - if it's not cared for, the weeds will take over. But if you tend it, water and feed the seeds, you will read a bountiful harvest. Serbs are lazy, we lack discipline and have no capacity for self-criticism." With Their Backs to the World — Asne Seierstad

Good experiences give us happiness but bad experiences teach us good lessons — Michael Morpurgo

One battle doesn't make a campagin, but critics treat one book, good or bad, like a whole war. — Ernest Hemingway,

I need to give you one last bit of advice in the off chance this rather extraordinary and enviable situation in which you find yourself is actually true- that somehow you've fallen deep down into a Cordova story. I stared back at him. Be the good guy, he said. How do I know I'm the good guy? He pointed at me, nodding. A very wise question. You don't. Most bad guys think they're good. But there are a few signifiers. You'll be miserable. You'll be hated. You'll fumble around in the dark, alone and confused. You'll have little insight as to the true nature of things, not until the very last minute, and only if you have the stamina and the madness to go to the very, very end. But most importantly- and critically- you will act without regard for yourself. You'll be motivated by something that has nothing to do with the ego. You'll do it for justice. For grace. For love. Those large rather heroic qualities only the good have the strength to carry on their shoulders. And you'll listen. — Marisha Pessl

They don't go into what is the cause of goodness, so why of the other shop? If lewdies are good that's because they like it, and I wouldn't ever interfere with their pleasures, and so of the other shop. And I was patronizing the other shop. More, badness is of the self, the one, the you or me on our oddy knockies, and that self is made by old Bog or God and is his great pride and radosty. But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self. And is not our modern history, my brothers, the story of the brave malenky selves fighting these big machines? — Anthony Burgess

I disagree. You want to bring back someone that you've lost. You might want money. Maybe you want women. Or, you might want to protect the world. These are all common things people want. Things that their hearts desire. Greed may not be good, but it's not so bad, either. You humans think greed is just for money and power! But everyone wants something they don't have. — Hiromu Arakawa

I'm not good for you. I don't know why you make me want you so bad. I was angry with myself when I said all that earlier. I was mad because I wanted you in a way I'd never experienced before. Before you, I just wanted to excel in football and school. I wanted my parents to be proud of me. But now, I want other things too. You get to me in a way I don't understand — Abbi Glines

Nothing saves the day so much as a good word. And nothing has been misused as often. There is power in a word, whether we read it, speak it or hear it. And we command and are commanded by the word. We scatter, we call forth, and we comfort. Words are tools, weapons, both good and bad medicine-but very beautiful when used lovingly. The word, or ka ne tsv in Cherokee, is power to help heal, or make sick people sicker by negative talk around them. The word gives confidence when it builds rather than destroys. Relationships have been shattered beyond repair by a run-away mouth. Prosperity has been dissolved by talking lack. Until we listen to our own voices and how we talk, we would never guess how we use our words. — Joyce Sequichie Hifler

Each story, good and bad, short or long
from that trip to the mall when you saw Santa, to a long, bad illness
they are all a line or a paragraph in our own life manuscript. Two thirds of the way through, even, and it all won't necessarily make sense, but at the end there'll be a beautiful whole, where every sentence of every chapter fits. — Deb Caletti

Later that day, Kestrel sat with Arin in the music room. She played her tiles: a pair of wolves and three mice.
Arin turned his over with a resigned sigh. He didn't have a bad set, but it wasn't good enough, and beneath his usual level of skill. He stiffened in his chair as if physically bracing himself for her question.
Kestrel studied his tiles. She was certain he could have done better than a pair of wasps. She thought of the tiles he had shown earlier in the game, and the careless way in which he had discarded others. If she didn't know how little he liked to lose against her, she would have suspected him of throwing the game.
She said, "You seem distracted."
"Is that your question? Are you asking me why I am distracted?"
"So you admit that you are distracted."
"You are a fiend," he said, echoing Ronan's words during the match at Faris's garden party. Then, apparently annoyed at his own words, he said, "Ask your question. — Marie Rutkoski

Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad. — Baruch Spinoza

She was bad at love. There were people in the world who were good at love and people who were bad at it. She was bad. She used to think she was good at love, that it was intimacy she was bad at. But you had to have both. Love without intimacy, she knew, was an unsung tune. It was all in your head. You said, "Listen to this!" but what you found yourself singing was a tangle, a nothing, a heap. It reminded her of a dinner party she had gone to once, where dessert was served on plates printed with French songs. After dinner everyone had had to sing their plate, but hers had still had whipped cream on it, and when it came her turn, she had garbled the notes and words, frantically pushing the whipped cream around with a fork so she could see the next measure. Oh, she was bad, bad like that, at love. — Lorrie Moore

A Master Jedi feels emotions, but they do not allow them to influence their reasoning. Yoda told Luke that he would know the good from the bad when he was 'calm, at peace. — Stephen Richards

I do have a tendency to talk a lot at the poker table, which throws people off because they spend a lot of time trying to read me. But I talk a lot when I have a good hand and when I have a bad hand, too. Sometimes it annoys people so much they can't wait to get out of the tournament. And that can only be good for me. — Cheryl Hines

Frequent mobs, seditions, and at last civil wars, became common, while a few leading men on whom the masses were dependent, affected supreme power under the seemly pretence of seeking the good of senate and people; citizens were judged good or bad, without reference to their loyalty to the republic (for all were equally corrupt); but the wealthy and dangerously powerful were esteemed good citizens, because they maintained the existing state of things. — Sallust

Sometimes bad things happen to good people. We don't know the meaning of all things, but we know God loves His children! And because He loves us, He will never desert us. — John Bytheway

Most of them ... most of us never figure it out. Bad dream, they think, or good one. Funny rash, never really goes away, but Doc says it's fine, nothing to worry about. Why dwell on it? But some people, they just can't let it go ... Some people drink themselves out of school trying to find it again, trolling through bars where the shadows are so greasy they leave trails on the walls, just to find a way in, a way through. Some people forget too that you're supposed to stop sleeping, you're supposed to have a life in the sun. — Catherynne M Valente

The agreements of human society embrace not only protection against murder, but thousands of other things, and it is certainly true that in America - not to mention other continents - the whites have excluded the blacks from some of the benefits of those agreements. It is said that the exclusion has sometimes even extended to murder - that in parts of this country a white man may kill a black one, if not with impunity, at least with a good chance of escaping the penalty which the agreement imposes. That's bad. It's deplorable, and I don't blame black men for resenting it. But you are confronted with a fact, not a theory, and how do you propose to change it? — Rex Stout

Naomi and Turner, even Ronnie, they all see this is as black and white. Good guys verses bad guys. But I learned a long time ago that the world only functions in shades of gray. — C.M. Stunich

The image of God I was raised with was this: God is an angry bastard with a killer surveillance system who had to send his little boy (and he only had one) to suffer and die because I was bad. But the good news was that if I believed this story and then tried really hard to be good, when I died I would go to heaven, where I would live in a golden gated community with God and all the other people who believed and did the same things as I did ... this type of thinking portrays God as just as mean and selfish as we are, which feels like it has a lot more to do with our own greed and spite than it has to do with God. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

A particular train of thought persisted in, be it good or bad, cannot fail to produce its results on the character and circumstances. A man cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely, shape his circumstances. — James Allen

We chose younger and younger politicians to lead us because they looked good on television and were sharp. But really we should be looking for wisdom, and choosing people who had acquired it; and such people, in general, looked bad on television - gray, lined, thoughtful. — Alexander McCall Smith

The loss is transformative, in good ways and bad, a tangle of change that cannot be threaded into the usual narrative spools ... It's not an emergence from the cocoon, but a tree growing around an obstruction. — Meghan O'Rourke

In the life of the individual man, virtue is the sole good; such things as health, happiness, possessions, are of no account. Since virtue resides in the will, everything really good or bad in a man's life depends only upon himself. He may become poor, but what of it? He can still be virtuous. A tyrant may put him in prison, but he can still persevere in living in harmony with Nature. He may be sentenced to death, but he can die nobly, like Socrates. Therefore every man has perfect freedom, provided he emancipates himself from mundane desires. Stoicism — Piper Kerman

People always try to separate the good from the bad in Clinton and say that, if he had not done certain things, he would have been a great president. But you can't do that. Those were his major characteristics. — David Maraniss

Good decisions can have bad short-term outcomes but be great for the business long-term. — Gerry Schwartz