Before Things Get Better Quotes & Sayings

I LOST MY OWN BOY, Treelore, right before I started waiting on Miss Leefolt. He was twenty-four years old. The best part of a person's life. It just wasn't enough time living in this world. He had him a little apartment over on Foley Street. Seeing a real nice girl name Frances and I spec they was gone get married, but he was slow bout things like that. Not cause he looking for something better, just cause he the thinking kind. Wore big glasses and reading all the time. He even start writing his own book, bout being a colored man living and working in Mississippi. — Kathryn Stockett

You will lose touch with people you thought you wouldn't, watch from a distance while these people get married, gain weight, lose weight, move across the country, and get new sets of friends you will never meet. But you will look at your pictures of them and remember the nights you drank too much rum with them and you will enjoy those moments immensely. You will know what it is like to experience true nostalgia - the feelings a Hot Pocket can elicit will be astounding. It will not be a bittersweet kind of thing, because you know that it's not as much growing apart as it is growing up.
There will be successes, and failures, and a lot of good and bad things. You will watch yourself and the people you choose to be with fall in love and get married, get jobs, get fired, get a terrible tattoo, have babies, get sick, get better, get worse, lose parents, grow older, grow smarter. Things will flash forward, pass before your eyes like the lights at a terrible nightclub. — Alida Nugent

It won't be that simple though, will it?' She sounded wise beyond her years. 'Things are going to get worse before they get better, aren't they? — Richelle Mead

I keep thinking, well, this'll settle down. It's bound to level off and settle down. But it doesn't. Even when things are just going smooth and we're just ... living, I can look at you, and I've got no breath left."
"Every minute with you, I'm alive. I never knew before there were pieces of me unborn, just waiting for you. I'm alive with you, Eve"
She sighted, touched his cheek. "We'd better get out of here. We're getting mush all over the pool. — J.D. Robb

That, my dear detective, was the other San Francisco. You've probably seen it before, just out of the corner of your eye. You've probably dismissed it all your life. Maybe you always told yourself you'd just had too much to drink." She paused, her gaze heavy on his face. MacMillian squirmed. "But I'm guessing you always knew better."
His head was throbbing. He shook it once, twice, but it didn't clear. "I don't get it, Miss ... "
"Alan," she supplied.
He nodded. "Ms. Alan. Why are you here?"
Her eyes darkened. "Because there are things that go bump in the night, Mr. MacMillian. It's my job to bump back. — Laura Oliva

We came to America, either ourselves or in the persons of our ancestors, to better the ideals of men, to make them see finer things than they had seen before, to get rid of the things that divide and to make sure of the things that unite. — Woodrow Wilson

Minn, I love you the way you're today, nonetheless before
I wanted fate to fare you better
Fate is faring me best with you by my side
I'm not perfect
So do I
I'm still adjusting with the new me
W'll get through it together
We've never had anything to do with each other before
We'll start from step one
We need time to work things out
We have forever — Hlovate

We sit in an awkward silence for a few minutes before she speaks. "You're right. There's more to it." I'm not sure if I should wait and let her speak, or if she's waiting for an acknowledgement. I slowly turn my head toward her and settle my eyes on hers. "I went through a rough time a few years ago. I wasn't sure things would get better for me. One day, Rick and Jo were able to knock some sense into me. When a Phoenix dies, it rises from its ashes to have a new life." Her eyes leave mine as she rolls to her back and stares at the stars. "The tattoo reminds me of that. One chapter of my life may end, but that doesn't mean a new chapter won't come from the ashes. It probably sounds silly to you. — Rein Scott

When you stop relying on aversive controls such as threats, intimidation, and punishment, and when you know how to use reinforcement to get not just the same but better results, your perception of the world undergoes a shift. You don't have to become a wimp. You don't have to give up being in charge. You lose nothing of yourself. You just see things you didn't see before. — Karen Pryor

Wrath positively glowered. "You're giving me a job to get rid of me." "As a bonded male, I know that you're going to want to take care of her. And I think, if she's nauseous, having those things in her belly might make her feel better." "I can call Fritz, you realize." "Yes, I know. Or you can do it yourself and provide for her." Wrath stood there, frowning and gritting his teeth. "You know something, Jane, you're spending too much time with Rhage." "Because I'm manipulating you?" The physician's smile got bigger. "Maybe. But if you leave right now, you can be back waaaaay before I'm finished. — J.R. Ward

The pain in my hip was just short of apocalyptic. And the first five hundred words were uniquely terrifying - it was as if I'd never written anything before them in my life. All my old tricks seemed to have deserted me. I stepped from one word to the next like a very old man finding his way across a stream on a zigzag line of wet stones. There was no inspiration that first afternoon, only a kind of stubborn determination and the hope that things would get better if I kept at it. — Stephen King

Although practice swings Can be helpful things, Twere better, indeed, not take any Than to fiddle and fret And before playing get Exhausted from taking too many. — Richard Armour

I wasn't around, and I guess if I had been, I would have been part of the oppressor class and think it was the way things should be. But I have been told that things are a lot better now. I won't say they're perfect. Things don't get perfect. But most of the women I know are happy. They don't think there's many battles left to fight." "You'd better stop there," Robin cautioned. "Most women have always been happy with the way things were, or at least they said so. That goes back to before peckish society allowed women to vote. Just because we of the Coven believe some things that I now know are overstated or incorrect, don't draw the conclusion that we are foolish about everything. We know that the majority is always willing to let things remain as they are until they are led to something better. A slave may not be happy with her lot, but most do nothing to improve it. Most do not believe it can be improved. — John Varley

Gary didn't get up until 11:30, but I managed to squeeze ten minutes alone with him in the kitchen before Chris drove me home. Asked him how things had gone with Samantha.
'Not entirely successful.'
'Told you so.'
'Might have been better if I hadn't spotted the open balcony door and decided to climb up and sneak in.'
'You idiot Gary. Bet Samantha freaked out.'
'Actually, no, she didn't. But the girl whose flat I broke into did. Those balconies all look the same you know.'
'Oh my God.'
'Yeah she made quite a fuss. Wouldn't let me explain- just ran out screaming and called the police. Thank God Samantha was next door and heard her. She managed to convince the girl I wasn't a vampire or pervert prowler but an upright citizen who'd made an honest mistake.'
'Idiot, you mean.'
Gary grinned. 'She may have used that term. — Liz Rettig

She saw that the world was evil and yet craved for happines in it, which she thought to get by being evil herself. And she had no more happiness than I have had -- who chose the other way. There was something that was the same in each of us: we were alike in that we hated the world, and yet saw that it could not have been otherwise. And we both tried to love in spite of this hate: perhaps she was more successful than I. Therefore do not talk lightly of a new start. Evil as the old things were, they were all that we had. And if you feel that they are gone now, be sorrowful -- for it will be a long time before new things come to replace them, and we cannot say how much better they will be. — Laura Riding Jackson

And we need this. It could save us a year. Without it all we got is a regular manhunt. For a guy already four months AWOL, with a brand-new foreign passport. Instead of that we could have a Saudi kid in a pink shirt and pointed shoes lead us directly to him. Right here and now. Who wouldn't take that deal? The future means nothing if we don't live to see it." "So you broke the law, but only because you thought you had a good reason. You and everyone else. There are lots of good reasons. Too many good reasons. Which is why we have a special structure, to decide between them, when they compete one against the other. That structure is called the National Security Council. We weigh things up and we judge priorities. You just blew a year's hard work, major. You should resign. Before the after-action report comes out. You'll get a better deal that way." "OK," Reacher said. "I will, if it turns out bad. — Lee Child

A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you'll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you'll have to change your way of doing things. Only you don't. You can't. Somehow it's already too late. And maybe it's even worse than that: maybe the thing you see coming from far away is not the real thing, the thing that scares you, but its aftermath. And what you've feared will happen has already taken place. This is similar in spirit to the realization that all the great new advances of medical science will have no benefit for us at all, thought we cheer them on, hope a vaccine might be ready in time, think things could still get better. Only it's too late there too. And in that very way our life gets over before we know it. We miss it. And like the poet said: The ways we miss our lives are life. — Richard Ford

Doesn't it feel great to have eight ideas you love written down and spread out on the table before you? I'll forgive you if you took a quick break from reading to do a little freestyle writing, but we really need to get back to business so you can discover your brand and move on to writing even bigger and better things. — Emlyn Chand

The emotional pattern seems to be something like, "[Karl] Polanyi, a person of the left like me, says many true things, beautifully. Therefore his tales about what happened in economic history must be true." Marx before him got similar treatment. Lately the more eloquent of the environmentalists, such as Wendell Berry, get it too. People want to believe that beauty is truth. A supporting emotional frame on the left arises from the very idea of historical progress: "We must be able to do so much better than this wretched capitalism." It is not true, but it motivates. — Deirdre N. McCloskey

We want different things. Men want to have sex with a woman. Then they want to have sex with another woman. And then another. Then they want to eat cornflakes and sleep for a while, and then they want to have sex with another woman, and another, until they die. Women,' and I thought I'd better pick my words carefully when describing a gender I didn't belong to, 'want a relationship. They may not get it, or they may sleep with a lot of men before they do get it, but ultimately that's what they want. That's the goal. Men do not have goals. Natural ones. So they invent them, and put them at either end of a football pitch. And then they invent football. Or they pick fights, or try and get rich, or start wars, or come up with any number of daft bloody things to make up for the fact that they have no real goals.'
'Bollocks,' said Ronnie.
'That, of course, is the other main difference. — Hugh Laurie

I've learned a lot this year.. I learned that things don't always turn our the way you planned, or the way you think they should. And I've learned that there are things that go wrong that don't always get fixed or get put back together the way they were before. I've learned that some broken things stay broken, and I've learned that you can get through bad times and keep looking for better ones, as long as you have people who love you. — Jennifer Weiner

When I begin to work on myself, sometimes things get worse before they get better. It is okay if this happens, because I know that it's the beginning of the process. It's untangling old threads. I just flow with it. It takes time and effort to learn what I need to learn. I don't demand instant change. — Louise Hay

It must have taken her a while to get ready before dropping the kids off at day care, then she spent the day e-mailing, on the phone, in various meetings, and once she got home, around nine, exhausted (Bruno was the one who picked the kids up, who made them dinner - he had the hours of a civil servant), she'd collapse, get into a sweatshirt and yoga pants, and that's how she'd greet her lord and master, and some part of him must have known - had to have known - that he was fucked, and some part of her must have known that she was fucked, and that things wouldn't get better over the years. The children would get bigger, the demands at work would increase, as if automatically, not to mention the sagging of the flesh. — Michel Houellebecq

Happy National Philanthropy Day! Do a good deed today and make the lives of others better.
Things you can do(if you can afford it):
a. Pay for a student to attend College or University
b. Make a donation to a bride and groom before they get married
c. Donate time to volunteer at a hospital or nursing home
d. Buy food and give it to a homeless individual
e. Volunteer at a soup kitchen — Kambiz Mostofizadeh

Things will get worse before they get better. — Lauren DeStefano

A robin perched on the branch of the apple tree, his feathers ruffled, his red chest blazing.
'No need to look so down in the mouth,' he chirruped. 'Things'll get worse before they get better.'
'I don't know what it is about that tree,' Geno grumbled, 'that makes everything that sits in it talk in proverbs.'
'It's easier than thinking,' the robin stated. — Felix Salten

Apathetic people sit back and wait for things to get better before they move. Radical people make things get better, by how they move. — Shannon L. Alder

He leaned forward and plucked something out of my hair. 'What - ?' He held the dead leaf before me.
'Must have gotten that rolling around with Alexi in the backyard.' I blinked and looked at him. 'That sounded so wrong.'
He nodded, eyebrow quirked. Waiting.
'I'm trying to learn a few things from your more experienced brother so I'm ready for our big event.'
His expression didn't change.
'Yee-ahhh. Not any better, huh?' I laughed. Our big event could mean two vastly different things to Pietr. 'Lemme just run through the other ways I could get this wrong: Alexi's teaching me some moves. He's trying to put the hurt on me. He was putting me into some positions I've never tried before ... I snorted. I couldn't help myself.
A muscle near Pietr's left eye twitched.
'He's teaching me to fight!' I laughed, grabbing his wrists. — Shannon Delany

Do that which consists in taking no action;
Pursue that which is not meddlesome;
Savor that which has no flavor.
Make the small big and the few many;
Do good to him who has done you an injury.
Lay plans for the accomplishment of the difficult before it becomes difficult;
Make something big by starting with it when small.
Difficult things in the word must needs have their beginnings in the easy;
Big things must needs have their beginnings in the small.
Therefore it is because the sage never attempts to be great that he succeeds in becoming great.
One who makes promises rashly rarely keeps good faith;
One who is in the habit of considering things easy meets with frequent difficulties.
Therefore even the sage treats some things as difficult.
That is why in the end no difficulties can get the better of him. — Lao-Tzu

Before you ever get the person you really want in your life, you will be tested with every person that was wrong for you. You will be tempted with what was easy, what was familiar, what was only physical, what was safe and what was simply a friend to pull you out of a difficult situation because you didn't want to be alone. When you finally meet the person you were meant to be with you won't have to guess, decide or choose. You will be drawn to them. They will seem to fit who you are, but at the same time have the missing pieces that makes you want to become a better person. There is no need to be guarded because this soul is like your own and talking to them about the deepest things in life are effortless. They won't be like any other you have met and you will find yourself looking for parts of them in everyone you meet. — Shannon L. Alder

But when you get down to it, it's all a lie. You sit here writing and writing, but no one can see it - that's arrogant, I told you so before. And you aren't even honest enough to let yourself be what you are - everything's divided off and split up. So what's the use of patronising me and saying: You're in a bad phase. If you're not in a bad phase, then it's because you can't be in a phase, you take care to divide yourself into compartments. If things are a chaos, then that's what they are. I don't think there's a pattern anywhere - you are just making patterns, out of cowardice. I think people aren't good at all, they are cannibals, and when you get down to it no one cares about anyone else. All the best people can be good to one other person or their families. But that's egotism, it isn't being good. We aren't any better than the animals, we just pretend to be. — Doris Lessing

Think of the last thing you prayed about - were you devoted to your desire or to God? Was your determination to get some gift of the Spirit for yourself or to get to God? "For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him" (Matthew 6:8). The reason for asking is so you may get to know God better. "Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart" (Psalm 37:4). We should keep praying to get a perfect understanding of God Himself. — Oswald Chambers

Things did get better after that, though never like they were before the small blue baby boy was put into the earth. Catherine's mother wasn't a girl anymore, singing at any chance like she used to. She was old with a young face, walking slowly and watching the trees when she could stop and lean on her broom. Catherine thought that her brother was always with her ma, never quite letting her go, and it made her ma tired to carry him, too. — Rachel Devenish Ford

History, practical experience, common sense and economic theory all agree: economic competition is probably one of the greatest ideas humans ever came up with. When people compete to achieve the same goal, great things seem to happen that otherwise would not. Things get done faster, cheaper, and better; new methods for lifting a weight or quenching a thirst are invented; the average guy ends up with more of the stuff he likes at a lower price than before. That is why, in the end, socialism collapsed like a rotten wall: it did not allow its people to compete and, as a result, it not only made their economic life miserable, but strangled their hearts and souls. — Michele Boldrin

Sometimes things have to get worse before they can get better — Susane Colasanti

The thing about second chances", Mom interrupted, laying a hand on my arm "is we always walk into them assuming we'll feel better, when nine times out of ten things get worse before the ever get better. — Rachel Van Dyken

Even though in principle we may "know better", we routinely succumb all the same to the incessant, often frantic and unexamined busyness of thinking we have to get somewhere else first before we can rest; thinking we need to get certain things done to feel we have accomplished something before we can be happy. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

And I know things have to get worse before they get better. — Stephen Chbosky

A strange cold fear gripped him as he looked down at that angelic face resting against his shoulder. Her thick dark lashes lay heavy against her perfect olive skin like two perfect dark crescent moons concealing those glorious starry green eyes burdened with anguish much too raw and intense for a teenager to bear. She was frail and tiny and much too beautiful, light as a feather in his arms, like a pure white dove. Things were only going to get worse before they were going to get better but that was okay because Logan was determined to be there for Sienna every step of the way. — Ali Harper

Things get worse before they get better, but this is a worse that feels too big. — Stephen Chbosky

Get your butt over there and start reading before I beat you with my Rod of Time. (Sin)
I can think of much better things to do with your rod than beat me, baby. (Kat)
Aww, gawd, we've degenerated into really bad punage. I yield. Save me before my IQ points are damaged. (Sin) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

What can I do but stand with my mouth open, no sound emerging? My lips move and I wave my arms making gestures from the other side of the glass, which I can't penetrate.
... people can speak out of anything, though the struggle takes years. The problem is, whatever I say about the present feels false-nothing contains it all, or catches the depth of things, or their terrible one-dimensionality.
What am I living on? Someone said the other day, "that old irrepressible-impossible- hope." And I thought no, this doesn't feel like hope. But maybe that's what hope is, no shining thing but a kind of sustenance, plain as bread, the ordinary thing that feeds us. How could we confuse this optimism, when it has nothing to do with expecting things to get better?
Hope has to do with continuing, that's all ... I can imagine now, where I couldn't before, this long erosion of faith, this steady drawing from one's strength, until what's left is tenuous, transparent. — Mark Doty

Things'll get worse before they get better. — Karen M. McManus

It's okay but you better fix this before things get ugly, because I refuse to remain second to you. — Ashley Williams

People are choosing to spend their money with companies that take the time to get to know them and whose actions resonate with their values - companies that thrive by doing the right thing and by making things customers love, instead of by trying to get customers to love their things. Their advantage isn't necessarily being faster or cheaper, bigger or better; it is that they take time to understand their customer before making what she wants. — Bernadette Jiwa

Sometimes things need to get really bad before they can ever get better. Really bad can become untenable if enough people get sick of it. That was a big thing about why I ended up taking part in that rally [against police brutality] and ended up voicing my opinion and declaring what side I was standing on. — Quentin Tarantino

Complexity theory shows that great changes can emerge
from small actions. Change involves a belief in the possible, even the "impossible."
Moreover, social innovators don't follow a
linear pathway of change; there are ups and
downs, roller-coaster rides along cascades
of dynamic interactions, unexpected and
unanticipated divergences, tipping points
and critical mass momentum shifts. Indeed,
things often get worse before they get better
as systems change creates resistance to and
pushback against the new.
Traditional evaluation approaches — Michael Quinn Patton

I guess that one of the most important things I've learned is that nothing is ever completely bad. Even cancer. It has made me a better person. It has given me courage and a sense of purpose I never had before. But you don't have to do like I did ... wait until you lose a leg or get some awful disease, before you take the time to find out what kind of stuff you're really made of. You can start now. Anybody can. — Terry Fox

Richard Felder is co-developer of the Index of Learning Styles. He suggests that there are eight different learning styles. Active learners absorb material best by applying it in some fashion or explaining it to others. Reflective learners prefer to consider the material before doing anything with it. Sensing learners like learning facts and tend to be good with details. Intuitive learners like to identify the relationships between things and are comfortable with abstract concepts. Visual learners remember best what they see, while verbal learners do better with written and spoken explanations. Sequential learners like to learn by following a process from one logical step to the next, while global learners tend to make cognitive leaps, continuously taking in information until they get it. — Ken Robinson

And Casey said, "We could go get a pizza and a beer, maybe? If you wanted to."
And this. This was on the list. Gus was prepared for this. And before he could think it through, Gus said, "Hey, bro, I have a better idea. Let's go try that heart-healthy vegan restaurant that just opened over on Main Street. I hear their crispy kale and tofu salad is the bomb."
Lottie dropped the smoothie she was making. It exploded as soon as it hit the ground, berry juice spraying all over her. "Sorry," she exclaimed. "So sorry! It just slipped!"
Gus didn't pay much attention because he was in the throes of realizing two things at once: first, no new heart-healthy vegan restaurant has opened in Abby, much less on Main Street. And two, being normal was a lot harder than it looked because what the hell had he just done? — T.J. Klune

Because, what does it mean, to say that things aren't going well? Compared to what? You can say: compared to how things were going a couple of hours ago, or a couple of years ago. But that's not the point. If two cars are speeding towards a brick wall with no brakes, and one car hits the wall moments before the other, you can't spend those moments saying that the second car is much better off than the first.
Death and disaster are at our shoulders every second of our lives, trying to get at us. Missing, a lot of the time. A lot of miles on the motorway without a front wheel blow-out. A lot of viruses that slither through our bodies without snagging. A lot of pianos that fall a minute after we've passed. Or a month, it makes no difference.
So unless we're going to get down on our knees and give thanks every time disaster misses, it makes no sense to moan when it strikes. Us, or anyone else. Because we're not comparing it with anything. — Hugh Laurie