Being Believed Quotes & Sayings

For whatever it is worth, I never believed Wickham's stories of maltreatment at your hands. Other than being a rather boring, disagreeable fellow, I did not think you so dishonorable that you would go against your father's wishes. — KaraLynne Mackrory

Long had he believed that a gentleman should turn to a mirror with a sense of distrust. For rather than being tools of self-discovery, mirrors tended to be tools of self-deceit. — Amor Towles

It is believed by experienced doctors that the heat which oozes out of the hand, on being applied to the sick, is highly salutary. It has often appeared, while I have been soothing my patients, as if there was a singular property in my hands to pull and draw away from the affected parts aches and diverse impurities, by laying my hand upon the place, and extending my fingers toward it. Thus it is known to some of the learned that health may be implanted in the sick by certain gestures, and by contact, as some diseases may be communicated from one to another. — Hippocrates

The cultural treasures of the past, believed to be dead, are being made to speak, in the course of which it turns out that they propose things altogether different than what had been thought. — Hannah Arendt

The reason why she had chosen journalism was because of those who had done so before her. Stalwart women and men who reported stories in the days before the Internet. Before it was fashionable to learn Mass Communication. A long time before being a TV reporter and calling up your family to see your face beamed to their homes was an in thing. They were those who had left their families behind as they pursued the truth, opting to go to jail when the government hounded them to reveal their sources. Men and women that would rather quit than write editorials the management wanted them to write. Journalists who never wrote a word they would have to disown. Journalists who took their last breath as they wrote an article was true to what they believed in. They would never sit down and take stock of the stories they had covered and written saying, So what if twenty of these are non-stories, I at least had five I believed in. — Shweta Ganesh Kumar

Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." Metaphysical truths in their deepest sense are never "visible" to the "soul-desire"; otherwise they would immediately perfect it. The soul- desire
the man who rejoices and suffers
must therefore "believe" the truths that are evident to the Intellect. In metaphysics faith is the assent of the whole being. — Frithjof Schuon

Women, I have long believed, are the more evolved of the species and have attained some higher level of being. — Paul Levine

I don't believe in being typecast. If I believed it, it probably would have happened to me. You attract what you make. — Carrie-Anne Moss

When first I saw Isidore, I believed he would help me to enjoy it I believed he would be content with my being a pretty girl; and that we should meet and part and flutter about like two butterflies, and be happy — Charlotte Bronte

My name is Zak Bagans. I've never believed in ghosts until I came face to face with one. So I set out on a quest to capture what I once saw onto video ... With no big camera crews following us around, I am joined only by my fellow investigator Nick Groff and our equipment tech Aaron Goodwin. The three of us will travel to the some of most highly active paranormal locations, where we will spend an entire night, being locked down from dusk until dawn ... Raw ... Extreme ... These are our Ghost Adventures. — Zak Bagans

When anaesthetics were invented they were thought to be wicked as being an attempt to thwart God's will. Insanity was thought to be due to diabolic possession, and it was believed that demons inhabiting a madman could be driven out by inflicting pain upon him, and so making them uncomfortable. In pursuit of this opinion, lunatics were treated for years on end with systematic and conscientious brutality. — Bertrand Russell

I Am Primate

I was once taught, that I am a soul in a body.
I once believed I was separate from the earth.
A stranger in a strange land,
a sinner in need of a Savior.
But, isn't this my home? This beautiful world?
Isn't this my form?
These hands, these eyes, this touch?
Am I to believe I have violated a rule,
just by being born?
Who claims this right to judge,
and on what authority do you stand?
The truth screams out from my cells.
I am not the imagination of a God,
I am a voice in the earth,
I am that which you deny!
The earth is my home and the stars my destiny.
I will touch the planets through
the hands of my children
. . . not the will of your ghost!
I am a voice in the evolutionary continuum
and I claim the right to be alive,
without your story.
For I Am Human, I Am Proud,
and I AM . . . PRIMATE! — Christopher Zzenn Loren

I get my exercise being a pallbearer for those of my friends who believed in regular running and calisthenics. — Winston Churchill

Hope unbelieved is always considered nonsense. But hope believed is history in the process of being changed.
— Jim Wallis

I've been driven all my life by a spirit of adventure and a criminal level of optimism. I believed in my dreams because they were my only option. The people who make it to the top are addicted to their calling. You have to honor the gift God has given you. The people who get the call are the ones who'd be doing whatever it is they love, even if they weren't being paid. — Quincy Jones

I've always believed that the desire must come from within, not as a result of being driven by coaches or parents. — Dawn Fraser

I've had very little negative pushback. I think people in the Senate know that I have believed, for a number of years, and have been outspoken that we need to listen to what the American people are telling us, and we need to focus more on the well-being of people who make lower wages, $50,000 and below. — Jeff Sessions

They were told what they wanted and they believed it. They can only keep their dream alive by being with others like themselves who will mirror their illusions. — Christopher Moore

You probably can't imagine there being a glory in your life, let alone one that the Enemy fears. But remember
things are not what they seem. We are not what we seem. You probably believed that your heart was bad too. I pray that fog of poison gas from the pit of hell is fading away in the wind of God's truth. And there is more. Not only does Christ say to you that your heart is good, he invites you now out of the shadows to unveil your glory. You have a role you never dreamed of having ... — John Eldredge

The relation between the white and black races in Africa in many ways resembles the relation between the two sexes.
If the one of the two sexes were told that they did not play any greater part in the life of the other sex than this other sex plays within their own existence, they would be shocked and hurt.
[ ... ]
If they (white people) had been told that they played no more important part in the lives of the Natives than the Natives played in their own lives, they would have been highly indignant and ill at ease.
If you had told the Natives that they played no greater part in the life of the white people than the white people played in their lives, they would never have believed you, but would have laughed at you. Probably in Natives circles, stories are passing about, and being repeated, which prove the all-absorbing interest of the white people in the Kikuyu or Kavirondo, and their complete dependence upon them. — Karen Blixen

We shouldn't expect popularity. What should we expect? Paul gave us the list: affliction, crushing, persecution, being knocked flat, and always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus. That doesn't describe some mystical asceticism; it simply means that He was always on the brink of death, always ready to die, always being pursued by some who were plotting death. He knew that every day He awakened could be the day He died. Death was working in Him as a daily experience, a constant anticipation. In His mind, He had to live daily through His own funeral because He could die any time. Yet this great truth never changed: "I believed and therefore I spoke." That's it, Christian. You believe, and you speak. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

The General belonged to the learned type of military men who believed that liberal and humane views can be reconciled with their profession. But being by nature a kind and intelligent man, he soon felt the impossibility of such a reconciliation. — Leo Tolstoy

Any nonsense can attain importance by virtue of being believed by millions of people," Einstein — Anne-Marie O'Connor

She had never been beautiful- she had known that from the start- but she would like to have been loved, above all things. She would have to settle for being liked, perhaps for being trusted, respected. Best of all would have been to have had the courage to stand up for herself and fight for what she believed in. — Anne Perry

I was casting everything I had done, everything I believed, everything I had chosen - everything I was - against the will of an ancient being of darkness, terror, and malice, a fundamental power of the world. And the bonds and the will of Mother Winter could not constrain me. — Jim Butcher

Whatever the children had become, whatever he had done to them, he had done to make them safe, to keep them from being run down by the world. He believed in his own decency with all his heart. — Joe Hill

I believed that I was being forced to sacrifice my family and my career in defense of the Communist Party, from which I had long been separated and which I had grown to dislike and distrust. — Edward Dmytryk

I've always believed it right for young people to drink. Not to be alcoholic of course, that is a passive state of being, not a positive action. But it is good to drink to excess. — Stephen Fry

When times are not so prosperous, we think at least our successful career will save us and our families from failure and despair. We are attracted, against our skepticism, to the idea that poverty will be alleviated by the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table ... Some of us often feel, and most of us sometimes feel, that we are only someone if we have made it: can look down on those who have not. The American dream is often a very private dream of being a star, the uniquely successful and admirable one, the one who stands out from the crowd of ordinary folk, who don't know how. And since we have believed in that dream for a long time and worked very hard to make it come true, it is hard for us to give it up, even though it contradicts another dream that we have - that of living in a society that would really be worth living in.3 — Chris Hedges

For some hippies, this vision could only be realised by rejecting scientific progress as a false God and returning to nature. Others, in contrast, believed that technological progress would inevitably turn their libertarian principles into social fact. Crucially, influenced by the theories of Marshall McLuhan, these technophiliacs thought that the convergence of media, computing and telecommunications would inevitably create the electronic agora - a virtual place where everyone would be able to express their opinions without fear of censorship. Despite being a middle-aged English professor, McLuhan preached the radical message that the power of big business and big government would be imminently overthrown by the intrinsically empowering effects of new technology on individuals. — Richard Barbrook

They believed that the most important thing in the world was to find out what one liked doing, and then to do it. Thus the people who liked being hunters, were hunters; those who liked fishing, fished; and anybody who did not like doing anything at all was supported by the others with the greatest care and commiseration, for they considered him to be the most unfortunate of mortals. — T.H. White

The candor was infectious. It spread back to the beginning of your life. You tried to tell her, as well as you could, what it was like being you. You described the feeling you'd always had of being misplaced, of always standing to one side of yourself, of watching yourself in the world even as you were being in the world, and wondering if this was how everyone felt. That you always believed that other people had a clearer idea of what they were doing, and didn't worry quite so much about why. — Jay McInerney

That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false. — Paul Valery

I was not afraid of the press or the militants. It was uncomfortable, but I was not afraid. With respect to the press, I knew I knew more than they knew about city matters. With respect to the militants, I understood it. I mean, everybody believed in those days that they were being screwed, you know, that somebody was getting ahead of them. — Ed Koch

She'd seen them on the news, compassionate Americans talking about how the United States should be more welcoming to people who came in peace. She believed these kindhearted people, like Natasha, would never betray them, and she wanted to tell Jende this, that the people of Judson Memorial Church loved immigrants, that their secret was safe with Natasha. But she also knew it would be futile reasoning with a raging man, so she decided to sit quietly with her head bowed as he unleashed a verbal lashing, as he called her a stupid idiot and a bloody fool. The man who had promised to always take care of her was standing above her vomiting a parade of insults, spewing out venom she never thought he had inside him. For the first time in a long love affair, she was afraid he would beat her. She was almost certain he would beat her. And if he had, she would have known that it was not her Jende who was beating her but a grotesque being created by the sufferings of an American immigrant life. — Imbolo Mbue

Because Japan had no defense industry, he knew, and not even an airplane industry, the best engineers of a generation were being funneled into other, seemingly more prosaic sectors, like automobiles, for example, and steel. These industries, which in America were having increasing difficulty competing for top engineers, were getting the absolute cream in Japan. This advantage in talent was already making a considerable difference, Hayashi believed, as Japan's heavy industries began to compete in the world's markets. — David Halberstam

In 2001 New York came under attack, and thousands of people simply evaporated, leaving behind only dust and bits of gold Rolex watches. We were told that we had nothing to worry about, that we should go shopping. I was eager to please my country, for shopping had long been an answer for me, but what I couldn't pay for, I stole. I started to accumulate stuff I felt would make me feel whole: I surrounded myself with symbols of status. I believed the TV commercials with all my heart. I felt that those material things I was being sold defined me. — Joe Pantoliano

They both possessed a victimhood that had been conferred because they'd both been guilty of being female in a world where some men believed they deserved never to feel powerless. — Val McDermid

In medicine as well as in romantic poetry, it is the heart that is the center and controlling mechanics of life. If the heart stops, life stops. The loss of sight doesn't not mean death. Yet for ages, the eyes was believed to contain a human being's vital essence - a not wholly irrational belief. — Henry Grunwald

That man was a particular kind of liar. The kind that lies to himself about being a liar. Who is so corrupt, and deluded, he believed his own lies. Lies are like scars on your soul. They destory you. — Ryan Murphy

I am a composer first and foremost, and have always believed that being able to write memorable melodies is what sets musicians apart. My songs bring images to the listener's mind. The object is to transport my listeners to another place, some place sacred and spiritual that will make them glad they took the ride. — Bradley Joseph

All other men, being born of woman, have a navel, by reason of the umbilical vessels inserted into it, which from the placenta carry nourishment to children in the womb of their mothers; but it could not be so with our first parents. It cannot be believed that God gave them navels which would have been altogether useless. — Richard Cumberland

My advantage as a woman and a human being has been in having a mother who believed strongly in women's education. She was an early undergraduate at Oxford, and her own mother was a doctor. — Antonia Fraser

I always believed in being myself. — Thelonious Monk

I had always believed that I left a bit of me wherever I went. I also believed that I took a bit of every place with me. I never felt that more than with this trip. It was as if the act of touching these places, walking these roads,and asking these questions had added another column to my being. And the only possible explanation I could find for that feeling was that a spirit existed in many of the places I visited, and a spirit existed in me and the two had somehow met in the course of my travels. It's as if the godliness of the land and the godliness of my being had fused. — Bruce Feiler

At some point, I figured that it would be more effective and far funnier to embrace the ugliest, most terrifying things in the world
the Holocaust, racism, rape, et cetera. But for the sake of comedy, and the comedian's personal sanity, this requires a certain emotional distance. It's akin to being a shrink or a social worker. you might think that the most sensitive, empathetic person would make the best social worker, but that person would end up being soup on the floor. It really takes someone strong
someone, dare I say, with a big fat wall up
to work in a pool of heartbreak all day and not want to fucking kill yourself. But adopting a persona at once ignorant and arrogant allowed me to say what I didn't mean, even preach the opposite of what I believed. For me, it was a funny way to be sincere. And like the jokes in a roast, the hope is that the genuine sentiment
maybe even a goodness underneath the joke (however brutal) transcends. — Sarah Silverman

And the looks on the faces of my countrymenpassive heads bent arms at their trousers everyone guilty of not being their best of not earning their daily bread the kind of docility I had never expected from Americans even after so many years of our decline. Here was the tiredness of failure imposed on a country that believed only in its opposite. Here was the end product of our deep moral exhaustion. — Gary Shteyngart

My mother and father were always pushing me away from secondhand answers - even the answers they themselves believed. I don't know that I have ever found any satisfactory answers of my own. But every time I ask it, the question is refined. That is the best of what the old heads meant when they spoke of being "politically conscious" - as much a series of actions as a state of being, a constant questioning, questioning as ritual, questioning as exploration rather than the search for certainty. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

That the machine of Heaven is not a hard and impervious body full of various real spheres, as up to now has been believed by most people. It will be proved that it extends everywhere, most fluid and simple, and nowhere presents obstacles as was formerly held, the circuits of the Planets being wholly free and without the labour and whirling round of any real spheres at all, being divinely governed under a given law. — Tycho Brahe

If some of my judgments were wrong
and some were wrong
they were made in what I believed at the time to be the best interest of the nation, — Richard M. Nixon

Mave believed that not being able to see your life clearly, to scrutinize it intelligently, meant that probably you were at the dead center of it, and that couldn't possibly be a bad thing. — Lorrie Moore

She believed in nothing. Only her scepticism kept her from being an atheist. — Jean-Paul Sartre

F. Scott Fitzgerald believed inserting exclamation points was the literary equivalent of an author laughing at his own jokes, but that's not the case in the modern age; now, the exclamation point signifies creative confusion. All it illustrates is that even the writer can't tell if what they're creating is supposed to be meaningful, frivolous, or cruel. It's an attempt to insert humor where none exists, on the off chance that a potential reader will only be pleased if they suspect they're being entertained. Of course, the reader isn't really sure, either. They just want to know when they're supposed to pretend to be amused. — Chuck Klosterman

Even without being believed, magic can change things. It moves invisibly through the air, dissolving the usual ways of seeing, allowing new ways to creep in, secretly, quietly, like a stray cat sliding thought the bushes. — Janet Taylor Lisle

Anyway, how can you say things like that? You don't know me at all. She wasn't really caught up in this game, but she was enjoying it, as she had enjoyed the dozens of declarations that had been made to her since she was eleven. Her earliest memories were of being told how beautiful she was. Something in her never believed the words, never felt satisfied. It wasn't modesty; it was a craving for more proof than anyone had ever yet given her. Her mind worked constantly at trying to understand for herself exactly what other people saw when they looked at her. She could never grasp it whole and living. Her deepest fantasy was to step outside of her skin and look at herself and find out just what people were thinking about. She spent her life experimenting with people to see how she could make them react, as if, in their response, she could discover herself. — Judith Krantz

Every human being, he believed, must do one of three basic things during his lifetime: leave something living, create something lovely, or make something better. — Renee Manfredi

For many years, it was believed that the pyramids were created on the sweat, blood and tears of slaves (with Hollywood often portraying this notion in films) but instead, we now know that they were built by a specialized team of around 5000 permanent employees and aided by up to 20,000 men on a temporary basis. These temporary employees would provide labor and other skills for around four months before being sent home. The — Roman Collins

She cursed Lovingdon for not taking her problem seriously, but then she supposed it wasn't truly a serious problem. No one would go hungry, be without shelter, or die because of her choice. And if she didn't choose, her parents weren't likely to disown her. She supposed she could live very happily without a husband, but it was the absence of love that was troubling. As far as she knew, no one had ever been madly, deeply, passionately in love with her. She believed that a woman should experience the mad rush of unbridled passion at least once in her lifetime. Was she being greedy to want it permanently? — Lorraine Heath

Being Lutheran, Mother believed that self-pity is a deadly sin and so is nostalgia, and she had no time for either — Garrison Keillor

Bear in mind, people with eating disorders tend to be both competitive and intelligent. We are incredibly perfectionistic. We often excel in school,athletics,artistic pursuits. We also tend to quit without warning. Refuse to go to school,drop out,quit jobs,leave lovers,move,lose all our money. We get sick of being impressive. Rather,we tire of having to seem impressive. As a rule,most of us never really believed we were any good in the first place. — Marya Hornbacher

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an athiest. — Jean-Paul Sartre

I loved her, Eric. So much. And she died. I only get the general sense of things and they pass so quickly, like childhood smells touching you and then being gone on the breeze. But. But but but. It feels strange to be writing this down - I think I believed I could change what happened, undo it, prevent it, save her life somehow after she was already gone. Of course I couldn't. Dead is dead is dead. — Steven Hall

And many years later, as an adult student of history, Knecht was to perceive more distinctly that history cannot come into being without the substance and the dynamism of this sinful world of egoism and instinctuality, and that even such sublime creations as the Order were born in this cloudy torrent and sooner or later will be swallowed up by it again ... Nor was this ever merely an intellectual problem for him. Rather, it engaged his innermost self more than any other problem, and he felt it as partly his responsibility. His was one of those natures which can sicken, languish, and die when they see an ideal they have believed in, or the country and community they love, afflicted with ills. — Hermann Hesse

Many times in the Old Testament, God refers to human beings as His beloved. But when God called Jesus His beloved, Jesus did something truly remarkable: He believed Him. And He lived every moment of His life fully convinced of His identity. — Jonathan Martin

Anxiety over persecution tends to take precedence over every other issue. Continually being on the lookout for Christian persecution distracts us from concern about hunger, abuse, poverty, and the issues about which Jesus told his followers to be concerned. Jesus had a lot to say about the way his followers treated others. He talked about their care for the hungry and helpless. Never once though did he tell his disciples to fight for religious freedom or to stand up for what they believed. — Jason Wiedel

What do I see when I look in the mirror? One handsome man. No, I see the same person I have seen for the last 27 years: the person I believed I could be when I was a child, the person I have inspired and dreamed to be all my life, and that's the person I have seen, from being that big to as big as the roof - the same guy. — Tyson Fury

Since the Greeks, Western man has believed that Being, all Being, is intelligible, that there is a reason for everythingand that the cosmos is, finally, intelligible. The Oriental, on the other hand, has accepted his existence within a universe that would appear to be meaningless, to the rational Western mind, and has lived with this meaninglessness. Hence the artistic form that seems natural to the Oriental is one that is just as formless or formal, as irrational, as life itself. — William Barrett

Imagine if you were the last Shadowhunter left on earth, imagine if all your family and friends were dead, imagine if there were no one left who even believed in what you were. Imagine if you were on the earth in a billion, billion years, after the sun had scorched away all the life, and you were crying out from inside yourself for just one single living creature to still draw breath alongside you, but there was nothing, only rivers of fire and ashes. Imagine being that lonely. and then imagine there was only one way to fix it. Then imagine what you would do to make that thing happen. — Cassandra Clare

I always believed in burning up the government's political capital, not being Mr Safe Guy, you know? — Paul Keating

The earth's warmth under me, as I stretch out at night, is astonishing. It is like the warmth of another body that has absorbed the sun all day and now gives out again its store of heat. It is softer, darker than I could ever have believed, and when I take a handful of it and smell its extraordinary odors, I know suddenly what it is I am composed of, as if the energy that is in this fistful of black soil had suddenly opened, between my body and it, as between it and the green stalks, some corridor along which our common being flowed. — David Malouf

I'm an old man, and I'm no warrior. But during my years watching the rise and fall of those in power, I've learned that great men do not wait for their greatness to be recognized. If you wish to have the respect that you yearn for, then you must grab it and fight anyone who would say otherwise. If you wish to be a duke, you act like a duke. If you wish to be commander-in-chief, then act like a commander-in-chief."
This was not the sort of speech that a younger Mata Zyndu, certain that each man had a proper place assigned to him in the chain of being, would have believed in. But he realized with a start that his thoughts had changed.
Didn't Kuni Garu become a duke simply by acting as one? Didn't Huno Krima become king simply by declaring that he was one? He, Mata Zyndu, heir of the proudest name in all the Islands, was a greater warrior then either of them, and yet here he sat, unhappy that people had not come to beg him to lead them. — Ken Liu

He believed that life gives us all a few moments of happiness. For some they last hours or days, for a few lucky ones they last for years. The memories from those moments stays with us forever and turns into a country of memory to which we try to go back for the rest of our lives without ever being able to — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Democritus believed that the soul was made up of special round, smooth 'soul atoms.' When a human being died, the soul atoms flew in all directions, and could then become part of a new soul formation. — Jostein Gaarder

I never wanted to be the one to break her heart, to disappoint her, to be late for dinner or to hog the bed. I never wanted to be the person to make her cry, or turn out to be a huge let-down. She meant to much to me for any of that. While I believed I could love her better than anyone in the world, I didn't really trust myself to be ... Well, good enough. — Jessica Thompson

[Tom] Wolfe's books offered a whole new world to step into, and whilst at times you could accuse him of being somewhat long-winded, he had an incredible quality of prose and a bravery of writing from the heart. He believed in being autobiographical at all times. — Jude Law

I thought she was the funniest woman, and I believed being a comedian was the most exciting thing you could be. — Maya Rudolph

James Thompson, a twenty-six-year-old cafeteria worker, eloquently articulated the Negro dilemma in a letter he wrote to the Pittsburgh Courier: "Being an American of dark complexion," wrote Thompson, "these questions flash through my mind: 'Should I sacrifice my life to live half American?' ... 'Will colored Americans suffer still the indignities that have been heaped upon them in the past?' These and other questions need answering; I want to know, and I believed every colored American, who is thinking, wants to know. — Margot Lee Shetterly

Abraham did not know where he was going immediately, but he knew where he was going ultimately. He did not know the Whither but he knew the Whom. He believed God, and, being sure of his destiny, he did not worry about his destination. — Vance Havner

Oh, how our good knight reveled in this speech, and more than ever when he came to think of the name that he should give his lady! As the story goes, there was a very good=looking farm girl who lived near by, with whom he had once been smitten, although it is generally believed that she never knew or suspected it. Her name was Aldonza Lorenzo, and it seemed to him that she was the one upon whom he should bestow the title of mistress of his thoughts. For her he wished a name that should not be incongruous with his own and that would convey the suggestion of a princess or a great lady; and, accordingly, he resolved to call her "Dulcinea del Toboso," she being a native of that place. A musical name to his ears, out of the ordinary and significant, like the others he had chosen for himself and his appurtenances. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

I actually believed if you work hard enough it was inevitable you'd succeed. Then I lived the 'Social Network' movie, but only the first half. The hardest part is the grueling work of constantly being wrong. — Eric Ries

Over the years she'd found that that was all it took, that lazy smile, and she could tell the truth without risk of being believed. — Laini Taylor

I knew German history well, and out of my experiences in the rest of the world I believed to know the German kind; therefore I never doubted that, although for the time being all indications were against it, one day a change would come. — Gustav Krupp

Being a woman is a fate Sabina did not choose. What we have not chosen we cannot consider either to our merit or our failure. Sabina believed that she had to assume to correct attitude to her unchosen faith. To rebel against being born a woman seemed as foolish to her as taking pride in it. — Milan Kundera

If I believed that the choice lay between a sacrifice of the completest order of biography and that of the inviolability of private epistolary correspondence, I could not hesitate for a moment. I would keep the old and precious privacy,-the inestimable right of every one who has a friend and can write to him, - I would keep our written confidence from being made biographical material, as anxiously as I would keep our spoken conversation from being noted down for the good of society. — Harriet Martineau

No one has yet believed in God and the kingdom of God, no one has yet heard about the realm of the resurrected, and not been homesick from that hour, waiting and looking forward joyfully to being released from bodily existence. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Jarret insists on being a throwback to some earlier, "simpler" time. Now does not suit him. Religious tolerance does not suit him. The current state of the country does not suit him. He wants to take us all back to some magical time when everyone believed in the same God, worshipped him in the same way, and understood that their safety in the universe depended on completing the same religious rituals and stomping anyone who was different. There was never such a time in this country. But these days when more than half the people in the country can't read at all, history is just one more vast unknown to them. Jarret — Octavia E. Butler

I thought that you would bring everything into my life. I thought you are my Jesus. You are my priest, my light. So I always believed you are my only home here. I feel so insecure because I am so scared of losing you. That's why I want to control you. I want you are in my view always and I want cut off your extension to the world and your extension to the others.
I think of those days when I travelled in Europe on my own. I met many people and finally I wasn't so afraid of being alone. Maybe I should let my life open, like a flower; maybe I should fly, like a lonely bird. I shouldn't be blocked by a tree, and I shouldn't be scared about losing one tree, instead of seeing a whole forest. — Xiaolu Guo

I did not worry about what a man or woman personally believed, but the nation's official religion should be outwardly practiced by all its citizens. A religion was a political statement. Being a Calvinist, a papist, a Presbyterian, an Anglican labeled a person's philosophy on education, taxes, poor relief, and other secular things. The nation needed an accepted position on such concerns. Hence the fines for not outwardly conforming to the national church. — Margaret George

No, I was never that kind of guy. I believed in true romance; one-night stands are always going to leave you feeling cold and empty. I was always looking for the real thing, romance, and all that. I love being married. I never liked the idea of going to bars and chasing girls. Some guys might enjoy that, but I always wanted to find that one special woman, which I did when I met Jenna. — Channing Tatum

When you allow yourself to remember that you truly are a multidimensional being, you will begin experiencing yourself in a much more expanded way. What previously was believed to be supernatural becomes natural. Then you come to a realisation that now you can see what has always been there yet it remained hidden to you who chose to see something else. — Raphael Zernoff

My mom believed that you make your own luck. Over the stove she had hung these old, maroon painted letters that spell out, "MANIFEST." The idea being if you thought and dreamed about the way you wanted your life to be
if you just envisioned it long enough, it would come into being.
But as hard as I had manifested Astrid Heyman with her hand in mine, her blue eyes gazing into mine, her lips whispering something wild and funny and outrageous in my ear, she had remained totally unaware of my existence. Truly, to even dream of dreaming about Astrid, for a guy like me, in my relatively low position on the social ladder of Cheyenne Mountain High, was idiotic. And with her a senior and me a junior? Forget it.
Astrid was just lit up with beauty: shining blonde ringlets, June sky blue eyes, slightly furrowed brow, always biting back a smile, champion diver on the swim team. Olympic level.
Hell, Astrid was Olympic level in every possible way. — Emmy Laybourne

In general, dividing literature into prose and poetry began with the appearance of prose, for only in prose could such a division be expressed. By its nature, by its essence, art is hierarchical, automatically, and in this hierarchy, poetry stands above prose. If only because poetry is older. Poetry really is a very strange thing, because it belongs to a troglodyte as well as to a snob. It can be produced in the Stone Age and in the most modern salon, whereas prose requires a developed society, a developed structure, certain established classes, if you like. Here you could start reasoning like a Marxist without even being wrong. The poet works from the voice, from the sound. For him, content is not as important as is ordinarily believed. For a poet, there is almost no difference between phonetics and semantics. Therefore, only very rarely does the poet give any thought to who in fact comprises his audience. That is, he does so much more rarely than the prose writer. — Joseph Brodsky

Exactly. There are all sorts of dream interpretations, Freud's being the most notorious, but I have always believed they served a simple eliminatory function, and not much more - that dreams are the psyche's way of taking a good dump every now and then. And that people who don't dream - or don't dream in a way they can often remember when they wake up - are mentally constipated in some way. After all, the only practical compensation for having a nightmare is waking up and realizing it was all just a dream. — Stephen King

This society believed it was looking towards a new future, yet we consistently find ourselves being dragged backwards. — David Ervine

no memory of sexual abuse is as horrifying as the conversations overheard in the Underground pertaining to implementing the New World Order. I learned that perpetrators believed that controlling the masses through propaganda mind manipulation did not guarantee there would be a world left to dominate due to environmental and overpopulation problems. The solution being debated was not pollution/population control, but mass genocide of "selected undesirables. — Cathy O'Brien

Mahmud's highly mobile army rarely fell below the force of 100,000 that he amassed to attack Balkh in 999.5 In recruiting and deploying his slave soldiers, Mahmud was blind to color, ethnicity, and religion. He did not hesitate, for example, to send Hindu forces against the Turkic, Persian, or Indian armies that were defending Muslim cities. Even his own household consisted mainly of slaves. Far from being constrained by his Muslim faith, Mahmud believed that the highest religious authority, the caliph, had validated his actions and confirmed all the dubious privileges he so freely exercised. — S. Frederick Starr

What being in the War and being in the Army had shown him was that people tend naturally toward light, toward its source, as sunflowers do in a field.
People lean, either in their dreams or in their actions, toward that place where they suspect their inner lights are coming from. Whether they call it God or conscience or the manual of Army protocol, people sublime toward where their inner fire burns, and given enough fuel for thought and a level playing field to dream on, anyone can leave a fingerprint on the blank of history. That's what
Fos believed. — Marianne Wiggins

They tried to believe in their classmates. They must have believed that if we could all get together, then we might end up being saved. We should commend them for that. We couldn't do that. — Koushun Takami

The Founding Fathers believed that faith in God was the key to our being a good people and America's becoming a great nation. — Ronald Reagan

I truly believed, in that moment, that having a psychological illness was just as bad as being physically ill, maybe worse. When you're physically ill, people can see what's wrong; they can help you fix it. When something's wrong inside the mind, all doctors can do is guess, and people can't tell if you're sick. They don't believe you a lot of times, until they see the outward signs of your sickness. Maybe you're walking aimlessly on the street talking to yourself, or you hurt someone you love. That type of sickness is harder to define, harder to fix, and scary, because in the end, the sickness is you. — Rachel Van Dyken