Becoming Useful Quotes & Sayings

True, I used to see a lot of hope. I saw men tear down the veils behind which the truth had been hidden. But then the same men, when they have power in their hands at last, began to find the veils useful. They made many more. Life has not changed. Only some people have been growing, becoming different, that is all. After a youth spent fighting the white man, why should not the president discover as he grows older that his real desire has been to be like the white governor himself, to live above all the blackness in the big old slave castle? — Ayi Kwei Armah

But we had no intention of becoming shopkeepers or merely earning money. We needed work that would at the same time procure us satisfaction. And more than anything, we desired to make ourselves useful — Heinrich Harrer

Set an intention to heal any unexpressed anger that may be present in your life. Go to a quiet place with pen and paper. Take a few deep breaths. Ask your anger to speak to you. Write down the thoughts and feelings. When you are finished, forgive yourself for holding on to the anger for so long. — Iyanla Vanzant

What would it mean in practice to eliminate all the 'negative people' from one's life? It might be a good move to separate from a chronically carping spouse, but it is not so easy to abandon the whiny toddler, the colicky infant, or the sullen teenager. And at the workplace, while it's probably advisable to detect and terminate those who show signs of becoming mass killers, there are other annoying people who might actually have something useful to say: the financial officer who keeps worrying about the bank's subprime mortgage exposure or the auto executive who questions the company's overinvestment in SUVs and trucks. Purge everyone who 'brings you down,' and you risk being very lonely, or, what is worse, cut off from reality. — Barbara Ehrenreich

Becoming unremarkable, invisible, compliant--these were useful tricks for a black man in a white neighborhood. Survival techniques. — Victor LaValle

I thought being faithful was about becoming someone other than who I was ... it wasn't until I failed that I began to wonder if my human wholeness might be more useful to God than my exhausting goodness. — Barbara Brown Taylor

If you are becoming more easeful, peaceful & useful then you know you are growing. — Swami Satchidananda

Behavior is mutable. It changes from place to place. It's like accents, dialect - it varies from one area to another. But there are universal truths about what it means to be a human being. All the other stuff is like applique. Learning that was interesting to me and probably useful for becoming an actor. — Julianne Moore

I am true to my own race. I wish to see all done that can be done for their encouragement, to assist them in acquiring property, in becoming intelligent, enlightened, useful, valuable citizens. — Hiram Rhodes Revels

Hugh Lynn Cayce, Edgar Cayce's son, is quoted as saying, The best interpretation of a dream is one you apply. — Henry Reed

Things in which we do not take joy are either a burden upon our minds to be got rid of at any cost; or they are useful, and therefore in temporary and partial relation to us, becoming burdensome when their utility is lost; or they are like wandering vagabonds, loitering for a moment on the outskirts of our recognition, and then passing on. A thing is only completely our own when it is a thing of joy to us. — Rabindranath Tagore

Whenever there is negativity in you, if you can be aware in that moment that there is something in you that takes pleasure in it or believes it has a useful purpose, you are becoming aware of the ego directly. The moment this happens your identity has shifted from ego to awareness. This means the ego is shrinking and awareness is growing. — Eckhart Tolle

Lucius shrugged. "Perhaps in time you will find it useful."
"Sure. I'll keep it on my shelf right next to The Idiot's Guide to Becoming a Mythical Creature.'
Lucius actually laughed. "Very funny. I didn't know you made jokes."
"I'm a funny person," I defended myself. "And by the way - I don't snore."
"You do snore. And you mumble, too."
My blood froze. The dream ... "What? What did you hear?"
"Nothing too intelligible. But it must have been a rather pleasant dream. You sounded ecstatic. — Beth Fantaskey

In becoming an icon, it is useful to die young. — John Updike

Rhiss looked narrowly at her, suspicion becoming certainty in his mind as he spoke. "Did you put them to sleep?"
She looked coy. "Now, I ask you, would I do that?"
"In a moment, if it suited your purposes," Rhiss retorted. "I thought as much. What was it? Did you doctor their drinks?"
She looked scandalized. "Rhissan! I'd not do a thing like that, not to friends, at any rate. They were fair worn out, poor lambs, from all that talking and thinking. I... merely encouraged their inclination to sleep. It's a useful ability with hurt animals, you know, and it works just as well on stubborn people. They can have their afternoon nap in peace, we can have our walk, and everyone will be the happier for it."
Rhiss looked at her a moment, her lovely eyes opened wide in innocence, then burst out laughing. "Very well, Mistress Lowri. Lead on. But don't you be trying any of your trickery on me. — D.R. Ranshaw

The competition between human beings destroys with cold and diabolic brutality ... Under the pressure of this competitive fury we have not only forgotten what is useful to humanity as a whole, but even that which is good and advantageous to the individual. [ ... ] One asks, which is more damaging to modern humanity: the thirst for money or consuming haste ... in either case, fear plays a very important role: the fear of being overtaken by one's competitors, the fear of becoming poor, the fear of making wrong decisions or the fear of not being up to snuff ... — Konrad Lorenz

Oliver, success is usually a feeling of mere relief, where failure is pain. Happiness, you see, lies in neither, but in sticking to a daily ritual and becoming absorbed in something useful. When the war is over, even the greatest warriors do not exult. They go back to their garden or kitchen or library
or school
and resume life.
(as said by Mrs. Pearson) — Adam Gopnik

It can also be useful to politics, enabling that science to discover how much of it is no more than verbal construction, myth, literary tops. Politics, like literature, must above all know itself and distrust itself. As a final observation, I should like to add that it is impossible today for anyone to feel innocent, if in whatever we do or say we can discover a hidden motive - that of a white man, or a male, or the possessor of a certain income, or a member of a given economic system, or a sufferer from a certain neurosis - this should not induce in us either a universal sense of guilt or an attitude of universal accusation. When we become aware of our disease or of our hidden motives, we have already begun to get the better of them. What matters is the way in which we accept our motives and live through the ensuing crisis. This is the only chance we have of becoming different from the way we are - that is, the only way of starting to invent a new way of being. — Italo Calvino

Maybe happiness is like a virus. Maybe it's one of those bugs that sits for a long time, so we don't even know that we are infected. — Richard Powers

When someone died in the wilderness of frontier America, that person's physical remains were buried and the handcarts continued west, but the mourning survivors had hope for their loved one's eternal soul. However, when someone dies spiritually in the wilderness of sin, hope may be replaced by dread and fear for the loved one's eternal welfare. — James E. Faust

Reality is a flux, an endless becoming that is beyond words and language - all language is metaphor, useful to us but ultimately detached from reality. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I would have to work on the song and figure out how they wanted the song done, because they're such high-intensity songs. We figure that out first, then I go back and listen to it and go over and rehearse stuff with it and try to get a feel for the words. — Tom Araya

Bodies are not only biological phenomena but also complex social creations onto which meanings have been variously composed and imposed according to time and space. — Katrina Karkazis