Quotes & Sayings About Being Just One Person

One is not loved accidentally; one's own power to love produces love - just as being interested makes one interesting. People are concerned with the question of whether they are attractive while they forget that the essence of attractiveness is their own capacity to love. To love a person productively implies to care and to feel responsible for his life, not only for his physical existence but for the growth and development of all his human powers. To love productively is incompatible with being passive, with being an onlooker at the loved person's life; it implies labor and care and the responsibility for his growth. — Erich Fromm

It's not good to focus on one person or two persons about being your rivals. The important thing is just to train hard and be ready for the competition and to prepare for the races so that in case of anything that comes out, you are able to handle it. — David Rudisha

If I'm exhausted and I just don't feel like it, then I don't do it. I am a human being, after all. But I also know I'm the kind of person who, if I take one day off, well, it's very easy for me to take the next day off and then quit exercising. — Kelly Ripa

I love being with people and hate being disliked. It's a mass thing ... but I want a special kind of relationship with one person too.
I just can't seem to have both — Rae Earl

We are stronger for the people who leave us, you know? Being able to live without them just shows how much better we are. No one can hold us back but ourselves, and I, for one, am proud of the person I am. — Toni Aleo

Today we have to learn all over again that love for the sinner and love for the person who has been harmed are correctly balanced if I punish the sinner in the form that is possible and appropriate. In this respect there was in the past a change of mentality, in which the law and the need for punishment were obscured. Ultimately this also narrowed the concept of law, which in fact is not only just being nice or courteous, but is found in the truth. And another component of the truth is that I must punish the one who has sinned against real love — Pope Benedict XVI

Just to let you know I don't post my books and things on the net in hopes of being rich. The reason is. "I am a person with Bipolar Disorder" and they're are a lot of great minds on the "Famous Bipolar" list that died penniless. If I do the same it's no big deal but having a form of mental Illness I would love to get my name on the Bipolar list also one day. Preferably while I'm still living so I can make sure they spelled it right — Stanley Victor Paskavich

He chuckled. "Be focused. Direct all your thoughts to one point. Let the prayers take effect. Let them change you into a new person, Tamar. Just like Moses, after forty days of talking to God on Sinai, became a new being." The tabby crept past and squeezed between his legs. — Ruchama King Feuerman

Sometimes being lazy can get you in trouble. You ever not take a shower all weekend, just lounge around, then you're running late for work on Monday? There's always one person at work: "Something smells like smoke in here!" "Uh, I went to a barbeque on Friday night. Only had 48 hours to take a shower. Busy." — Jim Gaffigan

I want that, when I'm in my fifties and I look back to my first kiss, I think, Wow! I want to remember it as being amazing. That it's one of the most special moments of my life. I want to remember the person I share that with to be important to me. Not just someone who happened along at the right time. It's not just and act of the body. It's an act of the heart." (Ryan) — Dan Skinner

Hagrid's hint about the spiders was far easier to understand - the trouble was, there didn't seem to be a single spider left in the castle to follow. Harry looked everywhere he went, helped (rather reluctantly) by Ron. They were hampered, of course, by the fact that they weren't allowed to wander off on their own but had to move around the castle in a pack with the other Gryffindors. Most of their fellow students seemed glad that they were being shepherded from class to class by teachers, but Harry found it very irksome. One person, however, seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the atmosphere of terror and suspicion. Draco Malfoy was strutting around the school as though he had just been appointed Head Boy. Harry didn't realize what he was so pleased about until the Potions lesson about two weeks after Dumbledore and Hagrid had left, when, sitting right behind Malfoy, Harry overheard him gloating to Crabbe and Goyle. "I always thought Father might be the one who — J.K. Rowling

no one can know how another person 'senses' the world. We just have to respect the person as they are. Accept their unique way of being. Embrace them for who they are not what you think they should be. — Tina J. Richardson

In fact, they didn't even keep track of birth dates here. Instead, they used a traditional method of counting a person's age. Newborn babies were "one year old," and became one year older at the start of the new year. As for the reason it didn't start at zero... I was briefly afraid I'd discover they didn't yet have the concepts of zero or place-value notation. In fact, they had both. Newborn babies being "one" was just a holdover from previous times, before the numeral "zero" existed within their culture. Old — Kanata Yanagino

When you feel angry or frustrated at a brother for using a particular defense -- being controlling or whatever it is -- you are failing to forgive yourself for the very same attempt; you still believe that the defense has a reality. You are seeing it out there but when you start to pull it back to your mind, you start to see the control in yourself. The guilt from transferring it from one seeming person/body to another seeming person/body is enormous. Instead of blaming your brother, the blame gets turned onto your own seeming body, but it is still the same error. We have to see that I am mind; this identity that I took off of my brother but still saw in myself is also just a construct in my mind. Otherwise, what good is the transfer? — David Hoffmeister

Some hugs were awkward. One person's arm headed over the other's shoulder just as that person was mirroring the action. So it would almost look like a defensive karate move in slow motion.
Sometimes, a guy liked to hug around the waist and if the girl was shorter, he'd straighten a little and she'd end up on tip toe. This had always made her feel like a melon being weighed for juiciness. From the wrong man, from any man really, it was a creepy hug.
Other hugs were comfortable, a perfect synchronization of arms crisscrossing around one another's backs, a full, warm, brief embrace that said "I care about you" but didn't cross any weird lines. — Victoria Kahler

How did you...?"
"Stay together?"
I nodded.
"Persistence, I suppose, and pure dumb luck."
"Huh."
"And a little magic."
"I'm sorry?"
"The magic of being needed by just one person. — Jim Provenzano

There's something insupportable about being pissed with the one person on this planet that sends your adrenaline flowing to remind you that you're alive. It's almost like we're mad because we've been shocked out of our usual comatose state of being by feeling something for someone, for ourselves, for just a moment. — Ana Castillo

I'll give you some life advice," I said. "The first piece is: Listen and listen intently when you're being spoken to about something. The second: Take the high road. When presented with frustration or anger or discontentment with a situation or a person, don't reduce yourself to that level. Don't get into a conflict in that moment. You'll feel better about yourself for it." Well, to my surprise, this created a near frenzy in the room. The students were aghast. I was surprised by the reaction, so I said: "Tell me more about why that seems like bad advice to you." "I believe I should stand up for myself!" said one student. "I'm not saying you shouldn't stand up for yourself," I said. "I'm just saying, in the heat of the moment, walk away from it. — Tim Gunn

A couple of years ago, I read the findings of a study on the effects of divorced and separated parents talking negatively about their exes in the presence of their children. What I remember about the study most vividly is really just one thing: that it's devastating for a child to hear one parent speak ill of the other. In fact, so much so that the researchers found it was less psychologically damaging if a parent said directly to the child "You are a worthless piece of shit" than it was for a parent to say "Your mother/father is a worthless piece of shit."
I don't remember if they had any theories about why that was so, but it made sense to me. I think we all have something sturdier inside of us that rears up when we're being attacked that we simply can't call upon when someone we love is being attacked, especially if that someone is our parent, half of us-the primal other- and the person doing the attacking is the other half, the other primal other. — Cheryl Strayed

You are all talking a bit too much, said Armando, who had cautioned them from the beginning to stay out of popular culture and in their own interior worlds.
When you are caught up in the world that you did not design as support for your life and the life of earth and people, it is like being caught in someone else's dream or nightmare. Many people exist in their lives in this way. I say exist because it is not really living. It is akin to being suspended in a dream one is having at night, a dream over which one has no control. You are going here and there, seeing this and that person; you do not know or care about them usually, they are just there, on your interior screen. Humankind will not survive if we continue in this way, most of us living lives in which our own life is not the center. — Alice Walker

Rubashov had always believed that he knew himself rather well. Being without moral prejudices, he had no illusions about the phenomenon called the "first person singular" and had taken for granted, without particular emotion, that this phenomenon was endowed with certain impulses which people are generally reluctant to admit. Now, when he stood with his forehead against the window or suddenly stopped on the third black tile, he made unexpected discoveries. He found that those processes wrongly known as monologues are really dialogues of a special kind - dialogues in which one partner remains silent while the other, against all grammatical rules, addresses him as "I" instead of "you," in order to creep into his confidence and to fathom his intentions, but the silent partner just remains silent, shuns observation, and even refuses to be localized in time and space. — Arthur Koestler

She sees only what's gone, I see only what's stayed the same. Her hair is no longer halfway down her back or pulled up in a French pleat; nowadays it is cut close to her skull and the grey is allowed to show.
Those peasanty frocks she used to wear have given way to cardigans and well-cut trousers. Some of the freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots. But it's still the eyes we look at, isn't it? That's where we found the other person, and find them still. The same eyes that were in the same head when we first met, slept together, married, honeymooned, joint-mortgaged, shopped, cooked and holidayed, loved one another and had a child together. And were the same when we separated.
But it's not just the eyes. The bone structure stays the same, as do the instinctive gestures, the many ways of being herself. And her way, even after all this time and distance, of being with me. — Julian Barnes

I said you weren't inconsequential. No one is. We change at least one person's life just by being born. If you don't believe me, go ask your mother. The fellows who write history books may not think that's so special. I happen to disagree. Isabelle and her family may be long gone, but because they lived, regardless of how small their lives may have been, I believe they are worth remembering, even if only by strangers.
- BEFORE EVER AFTER — Samantha Sotto

There are two good reasons for being nice to the underdogs in this life. One, because if the underdog grows up to be the kind of person that starts shooting, you'll have a chance at survival. Two, because it's the right thing to do the third reason being that the wheel of fortune is always spinning, spinning. And just because you're at the top today doesn't mean it'll always be so. When you're at the bottom, you'll want someone to be there for you too. — Lauren Baratz-Logsted

I'd stayed away for two years. I had to. I knew I shouldn't even be at the summer house, because being there, being near her, I would just want what I couldn't have. It was dangerous. She was the one person I didn't trust myself around. The day she showed up with Jere, I called my friend Danny to see if I could crash on his couch for a while, and he'd said yes. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. I couldn't leave. — Jenny Han

Happiness, she would explain, was when a person felt good, light, creative, content, loving and loved, and free. An unhappy person felt as if there were barriers crushing her desires and the talents she had inside. A happy woman was one who could exercise all kinds of rights, from the right to move to the right to create, compete, and challenge, and at the same time could be loved for doing so. Part of happiness was to be loved by a man who enjoyed your strength and was proud of your talents. Happiness was also about the right to privacy, the right to retreat from the company of others and plunge into contemplative solitude. Or sit by yourself doing nothing for a whole day, and not give excuses or feel guilty about it either. Happiness was to be with loved ones, and yet still feel that you existed as a separate being, that ou were not just there to make them happy. Happiness was when there was a balance between what you gave and what you took. — Fatema Mernissi

Do you know what it's like to love someone so much, that you can't see yourself without picturing her? Or what it's like to touch someone, and feel like you've come home? What we had wasn't about sex, or about being with someone just to show off what you've got, the way it was for other kids our age. We were, well, meant to be together. Some people spend their whole lives looking for that one person. I was lucky enough to have her all along. — Jodi Picoult

Amazing how the most obvious things escape your notice. Maybe the truth is exactly the things you don't notice. Maybe the aim to see and tell the truth is inherently futile, a contradiction in terms, and it's exactly those things about oneself and the world that are invisible because they are woven into one's fabric that are the truth. Just like a person can't see his own eyes. You search and search and search, and the truth, by definition, is exactly that which you don't find. You don't see the truth, you are the truth. "Habits of attention are reflexes of the complete character of an individual." And how could you notice your own habits of attention? By writing. Well, at their most profound level? It doesn't make any difference. That is the point. It's like Zen. The truth is not straining for the truth, the truth is in effortlessness. The truth is in being, not trying. Aw hell, that doesn't leave much too chew on. — Richard Hell

Religions have found that if you behave in a certain way, if you sort of perform certain rituals that expand your mind and make you realize that will make you realize and help you to seguey into transcendence and perform certain acts, adopt a certain lifestyle, you develop new capacities of mind and heart, just like the dancer, or the athlete that make you into a whole human being and principle after one of these disciplines right across the board in all of the faiths is compassion, the ability to feel with the other person. — Karen Armstrong

I am not more gifted than the average human being. If you know anything about history, you would know that is so
what hard times I had in studying and the fact that I do not have a memory like some other people do ... I am just more curious than the average person and I will not give up on a problem until I have found the proper solution. This is one of my greatest satisfactions in life
solving problems
and the harder they are, the more satisfaction do I get out of them. Maybe you could consider me a bit more patient in continuing with my problem than is the average human being. Now, if you understand what I have just told you, you see that it is not a matter of being more gifted but a matter of being more curious and maybe more patient until you solve a problem. — Albert Einstein

I'm lucky that I get to jump around, do a big-budget comedy and then a smaller film. I don't even make a big distinction between them. No one believes this, but it's the same. I'm the same person, trying to make it work. I just love being on a movie set. I like making movies. — Richard Linklater

Are you one of those people who says on a first date, 'I'm really not in a hurry to meet somebody, I figure if it happens, it happens'? Because those are the most desperate people of all. I'm just saying this so that if you are this person, you aren't hiding it from anybody.
There is no shame in being hungry for another person. There is no shame in wanting very much to share your life with somebody. — Augusten Burroughs

Nature has given to each conscious being every power she possesses, and one of these abilities is this: just as Nature converts and alters every obstacle and opposition, and fits them into their predestined place, making them a part of herself, so too the rational person is able to finesse every obstacle into an opportunity, and to use it for whatever purpose it may suit. — Marcus Aurelius

When you experience discomfort in your body and a strong reaction to what's happening, and yet you choose not to express your emotions, you've probably convinced yourself of one of these myths to justify your choice: Myth 1: The other person can't handle it. (Yes she can. It's that you think you can't handle being in the presence of her emotional reaction.) Myth 2: It's not the "right" time to bring this up. (Ask yourself: Is the time really not right, or is it just that you feel uncomfortable?) Myth 3: It will make the situation worse. (Short term or long term? In the short term, some conflict may arise. In the long term, you'll move closer to honest conversations and feel empowered.) Myth 4: The other person might not like you anymore. (If she likes you because you don't speak your truth, it's not you she really likes.) Myth 5: If you ignore the issue, it will go away. (Left unaddressed, the conflict will likely grow in intensity.) — Neha Sangwan

It's okay if no one believes like you, all experience is unique, no one has the same synapses, can't think like you, for this be relieved, keeps things interesting, life's magic things in reach, and it doesn't mean you aren't connected, and the community is not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it. — Tanya Davis

I'd simplified and objectified our relationship into one of lust and boundaries, and while both were necessary for a good relationship, it took a lot more than that to make it an epic one. Things we had, like respect and trust, but also freely expressed desires and accountability to whatever degree it took to make both people happy. It took work, a willingness to fight passionately and fairly - out of bed, not just in it - commitment and honesty. It took waking up and saying each day, I hold this man sacred and always will. He's my sun, moon, and stars. It took letting the other person in; a thing I'd stopped doing. It took being unafraid to ask for what you wanted, to put yourself on the line, to risk it all for love. We — Karen Marie Moning

You'd know if you were [a cat person]. It's like being a Christian or a Muslim. You just KNOW when you are one. — Helen Brown

My mother did an incredible job - one, of just being a great mom, but two, of instilling a tremendous amount of empathy into me as a young man, as a young person. My mom was kind of this collector of people; throughout my childhood, it didn't matter who you were. She was a high school counselor and then a junior high counselor, and she didn't just counsel students, she counseled other teachers and administrators and coaches. — Morgan Spurlock

The Buddha said that there are three times that a person should consider the consequences of any action: before, during, and after. "One should reflect thus," he said. "'Is what I am about to do . . .' or 'Is what I am currently doing . . .' or 'Is what I just did . . . for my own well-being and for the benefit of all others? — Sylvia Boorstein

Do you want to be crazy, radical, insanely different than everybody else and do something few people have the courage to do? Then try being yourself and walk a mile or two in your own shoes. Stop trying to be something you are not. Stop trying to emulate someone else. Trust me ... they are probably just copying another person they think is cool. No one else will ever be able to duplicate how perfectly you personify yourself. Here is your chance to amaze the world with how different you can be. — H.L. Stephens

I've changed my music from time to time so I'm hoping that I can completely change my life from time to time, too. Like live in another land, in another place, and just get completely soaked up in another way of being. Could be in this country or another country, somewhere were you can be reborn a number of times not just creatively, but personally as well. I guess I want to go through life as more than one person. — David Byrne

Even thought she saw tattoos everywhere, they continued to fascinate her. How bizarre to be branded like a box of cereal. Didn't people mind being counted as just one more product on a shelf? There had to be more to a person than that. — Suzanne Weyn

Greta knows that for me there are no good parties. I'm okay with one or two people, but more than that and I turn into a naked mole rat. That's what being shy feels like. Like my skin is too thin, the light too bright. Like the best place I could possibly be is in a tunnel far under the cool, dark earth. Someone asks me a question and I stare at them, empty-faced, my brain jammed up with how hard I'm trying to find something interesting to say. And in the end, all I can do is nod or shrug, because the light of their eyes looking at me, waiting for me, is just too much to take. And then it's over and there's one more person in the world who thinks I'm a complete and total waste of space. — Carol Rifka Brunt

The biblical concept of agape love involves giving of yourself for the benefit of another, even at your own expense. Biblical love is defined by passionately and righteously seeking the well-being of another. Biblical love is an act of the will and not just a fuzzy feeling in the stomach. That's why God can command us to love one another. Love really has nothing to do with whether you feel loving at a particular moment. It has to do with the need of the person being loved, not the feelings of the one doing the loving. — Tony Evans

Yes, being gay is just one of a thousand traits that make up my character, no more remarkable than my love of M&M's or my ability to mess up a room in fifteen seconds flat or my failure to understand the appeal of Luke and Owen Wilson.
But I believe that the desire to love and be loved is the strongest force on earth. And in that way, being gay affects every interaction in which straight people take part. Every human motive is in the end a yearning for companionship, and every act of every person on this planet is an effort not to be alone. — Joel Derfner

It's probably not just by chance that I'm alone. It would be very hard for a man to live with me, unless he's terribly strong. And if he's stronger than I, I'm the one who can't live with him. ... I'm neither smart nor stupid, but I don't think I'm a run-of-the-mill person. I've been in business without being a businesswoman, I've loved without being a woman made only for love. The two men I've loved, I think, will remember me, on earth or in heaven, because men always remember a woman who caused them concern and uneasiness. I've done my best, in regard to people and to life, without precepts, but with a taste for justice. — Coco Chanel

A sudden thought struck him - maybe I really did die. When the four of them rejected me, perhaps this young man named Tsukuru Tazaki really did pass away. Only his exterior remained, but just barely, and then over the course of the next half year, even that shell was replaced, as his body and face underwent a drastic change. The feeling of the wind, the sound of rushing water, the sense of sunlight breaking through the clouds, the colors of flowers as the seasons changed - everything around him felt changed, as if they had all been recast. The person here now, the one he saw in the mirror, might at first glance resemble Tsukuru Tazaki, but it wasn't actually him. It was merely a container, was labeled with the same name - but its contents had been replaced. He was called by that name because there was, for the time being, no other name to call him. — Haruki Murakami

A sense of dislocation has been spreading through our societies like a bone cancer throughout the twentieth century. We all feel it: we have become richer, but less connected to one another. Countless studies prove this is more than a hunch, but here's just one: the average number of close friends a person has has been steadily falling. We are increasingly alone, so we are increasingly addicted. "We're talking about learning to live with the modern age," Bruce believes. The modern world has many incredible benefits, but it also brings with it a source of deep stress that is unique: dislocation. "Being atomized and fragmented and all on [your] own - that's no part of human evolution and it's no part of the evolution of any society," he told me. — Johann Hari

I had not the least idea of a gamekeeper's occupation being so dangerous - there had never been such a person employed on the Longbourn estate - and just as I had spent half the previous night wondering about Peter, I spent half the next one worrying about him. — Jennifer Paynter

But I guess that's just a reflection of how the educational system today, being so overcrowded and impersonal, makes it so hard for adolescents to break through the preconceived notions of one another, and get to know the real person underneath the label they're given, be it Princess, Brainiac, Drama Geek, Jock, Cheerleader, or Guy Who Hates It When They Put Corn in the Chili. — Meg Cabot

All his life he had wanted to be known by just one person. That's what love was, he decided. Love was being known. — Justin Cronin

Honestly? I think all of this would be easier if I could point to one thing, one moment, one person, and say this is why. I could explain it, then. Understand the why of it. Blame it on something other than myself. If I were a victim, maybe it would keep everyone from being so frustrated with me. On a few occasions, I've even considered making up something, just to see the sympathy that flashed in my mom's eyes a second ago, just to have her be patient with me for more than a minute at a time. But I'm not a liar, so instead I get the frustrated, calculating way she's glaring at me now. I've seen it so many times before. It's a look that makes my stomach ache. — Mila Ferrera

Desford said abruptly: "How old are you, my child? Sixteen? Seventeen?"
"Oh, no, I am much older than that!" she replied. "I'm as old as Lucasta - all but a few weeks!"
"Then why are you not downstairs dancing with the rest of them?" he demanded. "You must surely be out!"
"No, I'm not," she said. "I don't suppose I ever shall be, either. Unless my papa turns out not to be dead, and comes home to take care of me himself. But I don't think that at all likely, and even if he did come home it wouldn't be of the least use, because he seems never to have sixpence to scratch with. I am afraid he is not a very respectable person. My aunt says he was obliged to go abroad on account of being monstrously in debt." She sighed, and said wistfully: "I know that one ought not to criticize one's father, but I can't help feeling that it was just a little thoughtless of him to abandon me. — Georgette Heyer

How did you know? That she wasn't the one for him?" Now he's staring at his hands, slowing rubbing them together. "They just didn't have that ... natural magic. You know? It never seemed easy."
My voice grows tiny. "Do you think things have to be easy? For it to work?"
Cricket's head shoots up, his eyes bulging as they grasp my meaning. "NO. I mean, yes, but ... sometimes there are ... extenuating circumstances. That prevent it from being easy. For a while. But then people overcome those ... circumstances ... and ... "
"So you believe in second chances?" I bite my lip.
"Second, third, fourth. Whatever it takes. However long it takes. If the person is right," he adds.
If the person is ... Lola?"
This time, he holds my gaze. "Only if the other person is Cricket."
Chapter 27
Pg 273 — Stephanie Perkins

The anonymity of body parts facilitates the necessary dissociations of cadaveric research: This is not a person. This is just tissue. It has no feelings, and no one has feelings for it. It's okay to do things to it which, were it a sentient being, would constitute torture. — Mary Roach

I might be the only person on the face of the earth that knows you're the greatest woman on earth. I might be the only one who appreciates how amazing you are in every single thing that you do, and how you are with Spencer, "Spence," and in every single thought that you have, and how you say what you mean, and how you almost always mean something that's all about being straight and good. I think most people miss that about you, and I watch them, wondering how they can watch you bring their food, and clear their tables and never get that they just met the greatest woman alive. And the fact that I get it makes me feel good, about me. — Mark Andrus

Every being in this world makes an impact on at least one person they encounter during their lifetime. You can change the course of someone's life by just a kind word, a hateful one, or even by simply choosing not to say anything at all. Every choice you make has the potential to create a ripple effect, trickling into and affecting the lives of others. — L.B. Simmons

I do not mean that there is anything intellectually contemptible in being formally "godless"
that is, in rejecting all religious dogmas and in refusing to believe in the God those dogmas describe.
One might very well conclude, for instance, that the world contains far too much misery for the pious idea of a good, loving, and just God to be taken very seriously, and that any alleged creator of the universe in which children suffer and die hardly deserves our devotion.
It is an affective
not a strictly logical
position to hold, but it is an intelligible one, with a certain sublime moral purity to it; I myself find it deeply compelling; and it is entirely up to each person to judge whether he or she finds any particular religion's answer to the "problem of evil" either adequate or credible. — David Bentley Hart

You are not a one dimensional human being. You are not your social media etiquette, a picture, a few things said under stress or through misunderstanding. You are much more. You are a fearless and wonderful soul who loves greatly. The people that matter are the ones that see all the dimensions of your soul, not just the superficial. They will climb inside that box with you not because they are not sure if they will ever find your uniqueness in another person. They do so because they feel safe enough to share their uniqueness with you. They see your faults and know that they have them also. They feel the walls lowered and the freedom of being themselves. Honesty is never guarded or regretted. That is what makes that box home. — Shannon L. Alder

Reggie when I first met you, You didn't say two words to me, I didn't know who you were, But we instantly clicked, And you became one of my best friends man ... Words can't express how much I care about you, Your well-being, How you feeling, Not even just basketball man, But off the court, I always make sure you're alright. You're such a humble person man. You do everything for the team. You always put yourself last. And I learned a lot from you. Thank you man, thank you. — Kevin Durant

Believing that your company is not just about making money, that there is a meaning and a purpose to what you do, that your company has a mission, and that you want to be part of that mission - that is a big prerequisite for working at one of these places. How that differs from joining what might otherwise be called a cult is not entirely clear. What is the difference between a loyal employee and brainwashed cultist? At what point does a person go from being the former to the latter? — Dan Lyons

The thing about hearing loss is that no one can see it. Most people are so impatient; they just assume that the person with hearing loss is being rude, or slow-witted. — Marion Ross

What motivates Olympic athletes to train for years for one event - in some cases, for just seconds of actual competition? It's the same thing that kept my friend Pete nosing around old bookstores for years. It's the same thing that makes a person venture out of a comfortable job to start a new business. We see it in the artist who spends day after day in a studio chipping away at a block of stone. Look closely and you'll find it in the shopper who passes up the good deal in search of the best deal. It's one of the things that makes us most human. We consciously pursue what we value. It's not simply a matter of being driven by biology or genetics or environmental conditioning to satisfy instinctive cravings. Rather, we perceive something, prize it at a certain value, then pursue it according to that assigned value because we were created that way. This ability to perceive, prize, and pursue is part of our essential humanness, and it's the essence of ambition. — Dave Harvey

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

With a book, you're guaranteed the audience has a certain skill level and that the audience has to make an ongoing effort to consume this product and that the project is being consumed by just one person at a time. I really want to play to that strength because it's one of the few advantages books still have. — Chuck Palahniuk

His name was Paul Eluard, and he said this thing once: There is another world, but it is in this one ... It's like, you know, inside every stove there's a fire. Well, inside every grass blade there's a grass blade, that's just like burning up with being a grass blade. And inside every tree, there's a tree, and inside every person there's a person, and inside this world that seems so boring and ordinary, if you look hard enough, there's a totally magical beautiful world. And anything you would want to know, or anything you would want to happen, all the answers are right there where you are right now. In your life. — Paul Murray

My belief assumed a form that it commonly assumes among the educated people of our time. This belief was expressed by the word "progress." At the time it seemed to me that this word had meaning. Like any living individual, I was tormented by questions of how to live better. I still had not understood that in answering that one must live according to progress, I was talking just like a person being carried along in a boat by the waves and the wind; without really answering, such a person replies to the only important question-"Where are we to steer?"-by saying, "We are being carried somewhere. — Leo Tolstoy

One may have a right to be unconventional and even eccentric, so long as one is fully competent and a decent person; but one's ideal as a professor should be to conduct oneself as an admirable human being: just, kind, tolerant, competent, committed, and good-humored. — Robert Audi

I lay there with my mind running amuck, on the brink of madness. And somehow, gradually, early Sunday morning, I became calm. I can't think of any other word for it. I was thinking about the beach poem again, and I started to feel that I was being looked after, that everything was OK. It was strange: if there was ever a time in my life when I had the right to feel alone this was it. But I lost that sense of loneliness. I felt like there was a force in the room with me, not a person, but I had a sense that there was another world, another dimension, and it would be looking after me. It was like, This isn't the only world, this is just one aspect of the whole thing, don't imagine this is all there is. — John Marsden

Downers some people grind away making their unhappiness the ultimate factor of their existence until finally they are just automatically unhappy, their suspicious upset snarling selves grinding on and at and for and through their only relief being to meet another unhappy person or to create one. — Charles Bukowski

It's just such a big commitment," Brandy says, "being a girl, you know. Forever."
Taking the hormones. For the rest of her life. The pills, the patches, the injections, for the rest of her life. And what if there was
someone, just one person who would love her, who could make her life happy, just the way she was, without the hormones and make-up and the clothes and shoes and surgery? She has to at least look around the world a little. — Chuck Palahniuk

He gave her his phone number, in a peculiar reversal of dating procedure. She might have considered kissing him, even after the horrible first date, but he just didn't seem to know what to do. However, Jeremy does have one outstanding quality. He likes her. And this quality in a person makes them infinitely interesting to the person who is being liked. — Steve Martin

The main reason I like UFC is not just the martial arts aspect, but it's about one person against the other person. It's about being able to test yourself with the truth. — Donnie Yen

She played a great deal better than either of the Miss Musgroves; but having no voice, no knowledge of the harp, and no fond parents to sit by and fancy themselves delighted, her performance was little thought of, only out of civility, or to refresh the others, as she was well aware. She knew that when she played she was giving pleasure only to herself; but this was no new sensation: excepting one short period of her life, she had never, since the age of fourteen, never since the loss of her dear mother, know the happiness of being listened to, or encouraged by any just appreciation or real taste. In music she had been always used to feel alone in the world; and Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove's fond partiality for their own daughters' performance, and total indifference to any other person's, gave her much more pleasure for their sakes, than mortification for her own. — Jane Austen

Don't go on discussing what a good person should be. Just be one. — Marcus Aurelius

Forgiveness doesn't make one person better, or the other guy smaller. Forgiving is just letting go. It's turning back toward being what we really are. — Edward Fahey

People seem to believe that when you find your soul mate, the one person who completes you, that things will just be lollipops and sunshine. I hate to stomp on your tootsie rolls, but being the right person for your mate does not suddenly turn you into this giving, selfless, loving, gentle, and all that other crap person. You are still the person you were without them; the difference is now when you aren't any of those good things, you have someone who will love you anyway. — Quinn Loftis

One of the telltale signs of one who has completely embraced their authentic self is that they are, with great consistency, the same person in public as they are behind closed doors. Until you learn how to access your authentic voice, the uniqueness of who you truly are will never be fully realized. What makes you special (just like everyone else) is that you were placed here on this planet to express the one-of-a-kind being only you can be. — Dennis Merritt Jones

As women of the western world, we see our sisters in other lands being raped, maimed and even executed simply for trying to exercise the most basic freedoms, such as taking a bus alone or wearing a bright red sweater. And when we look at our own world, we see that it too still lacks equality for the sexes.
It's a terrible thing to go through one's entire lifetime not getting to do all the things we dream of doing just because others say we're not permitted to do them, and to know that they will hurt us if we try.
But far, far worse than that is when there's not a thing or a person outside that's stopping us from living exactly as we wish, but we stop ourselves; internally we do not give ourselves permission, simply because we're too scared of what will happen if we dare. — PatriciaV. Davis

Now that mine is almost over, I can say that the one thing that struck me most about life is the capacity for change. One day you're a person and the next day they tell you you're a dog. At first it's hard to bear, but after a while you learn not to look at it as a loss. There's even a moment when it becomes exhilarating to realize just how little needs to stay the same for you to continue the effort they call, for lack of a better word, being human. — Nicole Krauss

I want to say one last thing, and it's important. Though I am a generally happy person who feels comfortable in my skin, I do beat myself up because I am influenced by a societal pressure to be thin. All the time. I feel it the same way anybody who picks up a magazine and sees Keira Knightley's elegantly bony shoulder blades poking out of a backless dress does. I don't know if I've ever seen my shoulder blades once. Honestly, I'm dubious that any part of my body could be so sharp and firm as to be described as a "blade." I feel it when I wake up in the morning and try on every single pair of my jeans and everything looks bad and I just want to go back to sleep. But my secret is: even though I wish I could be thin, and that I could have the ease of lifestyle that I associate with being thin, I don't wish for it with all of my heart. Because my heart is reserved for way more important things. — Mindy Kaling

We change at least one person's life just by being born — Samantha Sotto

Two people can be work at the same job, side by side. One person is working just for a paycheck. Another is working to perfect their being. Some people think that the material world will make them happy. — Frederick Lenz

A child who is being abused on an ongoing basis needs to be able to function despite the trauma that dominates his or her daily life. That becomes the job of at least one ANP [alternate personality], whom the child creates to be unaware of the abuse and also of the multiplicity, and to "pass as normal" in the real world. The ANP is just an alter specialized for handling the adult world - in other words, the "front person" for the system. — Alison Miller

It's a rare gift to be appreciated by even one person. In life, the majority may not ever notice you. Know You're still relevant. You're always great. There will always be countless varieties of energies on earth. Not just anyone- Nor will everyone see or hear the other, so its not at all personal. Nor is it even necessary for the majority to see you. Find time to appreciate and see yourself. Inside you will find your strength. It's in there. Stay true, Stay encouraged! If one person can make it then so can you. Oneness is what you are. If one gets there we all do. Say it again and again! Let the words echo throughout your being. Stay true to your dreams. — Sereda Aleta Dailey

The bottom line is that sometimes the most responsible, loving, efficient, and sane thing we can do is let another person have their process. We can set boundaries if their process is making us insane, and we do not have to agree to enable behavior with which we do not agree. Finally, we can accept the ultimate boundary that their life is their own, and they deserve to find their way, knowing that when we intervene, sometimes we stand in the way of exactly the path that will be of greatest value to them. We can disengage to stay sane, trust them to find their way, and walk with them with a lot less anxiety, guilt, and frustration, and just enjoy being their daughter, son, loved one, rather than trying to play a role that isn't ours to play. — Carla Cheatham

The thing about being a watcher is this: You are never really a part of things, especially if the person you must watch is yourself, always, just to make sure no one ever really sees you. . — George Hodgman

Have you ever been surfing? Imagine you're on your surfboard now, waiting for the big one to come. Get ready to get carried with that energy. Now, here it comes. That's empathy. No words - just being with that energy. When I connect with what's alive in another person, I have feelings similar to when I'm surfing. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

When I was feeling more secure, I started to see his insecurities. Aren't relationships like that? It's like being on a seesaw. There are those precious moments when you're just even with each other, but you move through that, and then one person being down by definition means the other person is up. I knew he loved me, and I knew he was afraid. I discovered that, if you look, you can actually see everything. All you have to do is clear away your own fears. The things you think are so well hidden: we can all see them. That's the secret. Everyone can see everything. — Kate Morgenroth

My father for advice he'd tell you, "The secret to being a successful comedian is to never stop talking until you hear someone laugh." Meaning: Persevere. Meaning: Be determined. Make just one person laugh; then leverage that person and that joke into more laughter. As some people decide you're funny, increasing numbers of people will begin to agree. — Chuck Palahniuk

Humanity should be our Religion and every Human should be our God, This world should be our Temple and doing good to fellow Humans should be our Prayer.
Quran Bible and Bhagwad Geeta all have this message if not just read but also understood properly.
Share it, even if one misguided person reads and understands it and gets back to humanity you will for sure be blessed! — Honeya

Maybe that's what Hell is, in the end. All of your wrongful shit played out there in front of you while you're being pumped from behind by someone you've hurt. That you've screwed over in life. Or worse, worse still...some person who doesn't really love you anymore. No one to ever look at again, make contact with. Just you being fucked as your life splashes out across this big headboard in the Devil's bedroom. Maybe. Even if that's not it, even if Hell is all fire and sulfur and that sort of thing, it couldn't be much worse than that. — Neil LaBute

That's what being shy feels like. Like my skin is too thin, the light too bright. Like the best place I could possibly be is in a tunnel far under the cool, dark earth. Someone asks me a question and I stare at them, empty-faced, my brain jammed up with how hard I'm trying to find something interesting to say. And in the end, all I can do is nod or shrug, because the light of their eyes looking at me, waiting for me, is just too much to take. And then it's over and there's one more person in the world who thinks I'm a complete and total waste of space.
The worst thing is the stupid hopefulness. Every new party, every new bunch of people, and I start thinking that maybe this is my chance. That I'm going to be normal this time. A new leaf. A fresh start. But then I find myself at the party, thinking, Oh, yeah. This again.
So I stand on the edge of things, crossing my fingers, praying nobody will try to look me in the eye. And the good thing is, they usually don't. — Carol Rifka Brunt

Where a typical manager may set the deadline for the employee, Musk guides his engineers into taking ownership of their own delivery dates. "He doesn't say, 'You have to do this by Friday at two P.M.,'" Brogan said. "He says, 'I need the impossible done by Friday at two P.M. Can you do it?' Then, when you say yes, you are not working hard because he told you to. You're working hard for yourself. It's a distinction you can feel. You have signed up to do your own work." And by recruiting hundreds of bright, self-motivated people, SpaceX has maximized the power of the individual. One person putting in a sixteen-hour day ends up being much more effective than two people working eight-hour days together. The individual doesn't have to hold meetings, reach a consensus, or bring other people up to speed on a project. He just keeps working and working and working. The — Ashlee Vance

How could a person be clumsy, just standing? And yet she felt she was, as clumsy as one of those blocks of boxwood being seasoned there, unshaped, indelicate. — Margo Lanagan

Being a 'potential mate' was something rather different and much more complicated. It was when two people had the potential to become like one person, knowing each other's moods and feelings in a way no one else could. Being aware of their presence in a crowded room was just one example. If they were sad or angry, their mate would sense it to a point of feeling the emotion themselves. — A.Z. Green

It was really like waking up one morning and going, Wow, I enjoy being with this person more than anybody else in my life, and it just turned out to be mutual. — Brian Austin Green

If you can sit down quietly and listen compassionately to that person for one hour, you can relieve a lot of his suffering. Listen with only one purpose: to allow the other person to express himself and find relief from his suffering. Keep compassion alive during the whole time of listening. You have to be very concentrated while you listen. You have to focus on the practice of listening with all your attention, your whole being: your eyes, ears, body, and your mind. If you just pretend to listen, and do not listen with one hundred percent of yourself, the other person will know it and will not find relief from his suffering. If you know how to practice mindful breathing and can stay focused on the desire to help him find relief, then you will be able to sustain your compassion while listening. — Thich Nhat Hanh

According to Aristophanes in Plato's The Banquet, in the ancient world of legend there were three types of people.
In ancient times people weren't simply male or female, but one of three types : male/male, male/female or female/female. In other words, each person was made out of the components of two people. Everyone was happy with this arrangment and never really gave it much thought. But then God took a knife and cut everyone in half, right down the middle. So after that the world was divided just into male and female, the upshot being that people spend their time running around trying to locate their missing half. — Haruki Murakami

You can't live with the idea that someone might leave. So instead of being happy for me, like any normal person, you're pissed off because ooh, oh no, Hassan doesn't like me anymore. You're such a sitzpinkler. You're so goddamned scared of the idea that someone might dump you that your whole fugging life is built around not gettting left behind. Well, it doesn't work, kafir. I just - it's not just dumb, it's ineffective. Because then you're not being a good friend or a good boyfriend or whatever, because you're only thinking they-might-not-like-me-they-might-not-like-me, and guess what? When you act like that, no one likes you. There's your goddamned Theorem. — John Green