Being Often Quotes & Sayings

When he prayed he touched his parents, who could not otherwise be touched, and he touched a feeling that we are all children who lose our parents, all of us, every man and woman and boy and girl, and we too will all be lost by those who come after us and love us, and this loss unites humanity, unites every human being, the temporary nature of our being-ness, and our shared sorrow, the heartache we each carry and yet too often refuse to acknowledge in one another, and out of this Saeed felt it might be possible, in the face of death, to believe in humanity's potential for building a better world, and so he prayed as a lament, as a consolation, and as a hope. — Mohsin Hamid

I have often expressed my sentiments, that every man, conducting himself as a good citizen, and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience. — George Washington

One of the many advantages of being a loner is that often there's time to think, ponder, brood, meditate deeply, and figure things out to one's satisfaction. — Andrea Seigel

Some women's love of being loved is insatiable; and so, often, is their love of loving; and in the last case they may find that they can't give it continuously to the chamber-officer appointed by the bishop's license to receive it. — Thomas Hardy

My solo travels in Paris have brought many perfect hours of being alone but not a moment of loneliness. People who depend on other people are often in hiding from themselves. Two and a quarter million people live in the City of Light: you will see many of them and you will pass them in the street, but when you see Notre Dame after dark and walk home and perhaps stop to have a drink in the Marais, you can feel that the only thing that is missing from your experience is the common dependence on someone to distract your attention. You are living without it: you are on vacation. — Andrew O'Hagan

As a guy I never liked being told to call, which my wife really never does, and that's why I call her as often as I do. — Greg Behrendt

The world is an old woman, and mistakes any gilt farthing for a gold coin; whereby being often cheated, she will thenceforth trust nothing but the common copper. — Thomas Carlyle

This was my world: a world of truly irrational behavior. We spend our way into the poorhouse. We buy giant TVs and iPads. Our children wear nice clothes thanks to high-interest credit cards and payday loans. We purchase homes we don't need, refinance them for more spending money, and declare bankruptcy, often leaving them full of garbage in our wake. Thrift is inimical to our being. We spend to pretend that we're upper class. And when the dust clears - when bankruptcy hits or a family member bails us out of our stupidity - there's nothing left over. Nothing for the kids' college tuition, no investment to grow our wealth, no rainy-day fund if someone loses her job. We know we shouldn't spend like this. Sometimes we beat ourselves up over it, but we do it anyway. — J.D. Vance

Don't let it worry you, not being able to speak,'Dustfinger had often told her. 'People tend not to listen anyway, right? — Cornelia Funke

You see, it's about empathy. It's not about you. It's about empathy. It's not even about caring or being kind. It's about empathy. Do you think that all people who can empathize with other people (and rocks and trees), are desirous of being kind, at all times? Of course not! Empathy often hurts, and is often difficult. But we experience this difficulty, because we are human beings, because human beings are designed to connect with other living and non-living things! — C. JoyBell C.

The trouble with improv is that it is often about being funny in the moment without any real consideration for the bigger picture. — Simon Pegg

I often would think about how we have built our society, and when you describe it out loud, it sounds rather insane. The idea of being funnelled through a conventional life progression of education, work, career, marriage, kids, divorce, retirement and then death doesn't seem that inspiring to me.
Then we're told we have to struggle to make a living, sacrifice enjoyment to have a family, delay our happiness until we're retired, fight the next person for a job, climb the ladder of success to get an even more stressful job,
spend more money than we earn, go into debt, live in fear of being blown up by some terrorist and then have TV passed off as the only way to escape it all. And when all of this gets too much and you can't keep up, you get prescribed antidepressants and made to feel like you've failed. — Josh Langley

Twenty somethings who aren't at least a little scared about their relationships are often the ones who are being the least thoughtful. — Meg Jay

In the absence of the great majority of guests, all manner of rumors came into the Shalimar Bagh, hooded and cloaked to shield themselves against the elements, and filled the empty places around the dastarkhans: cheap rumors from the gutter as well as fancy rumors claiming aristocratic parentage - an entire social hierarchy of rumor lounged against the bolsters, created by the mystery that enveloped everything like the blizzard. The rumors were veiled, shadowy, unclear, argumentative, often malicious. They seemed like a new species of living thing, and evolved according to the laws laid down by Darwin, mutating randomly and being subjected to the amoral winnowing processes of natural selection. The — Salman Rushdie

Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser - in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough. — Abraham Lincoln

Idleness and timidity often despair without being overcome, and forbear attempts for fear of being defeated; and we may promote the invigoration of faint endeavors, by showing what has already been performed. — Samuel Johnson

Because I was more often happy for other people, I got to spend more time being happy. And as I saw more light in everybody else, I seemed to have more myself. (250) — Victoria Moran

They believe one becomes selfless in love because one desires the advantage of another human being, often against one's own advantage. But in return for that they want to possess the other person. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Love is beautiful. However, being in a relationship isn't always a walk in the park. I think people often get love confused with perfection. — Alexandra Elle

However long, it's definitely the presence of other people that brings out the weirdness - that collision of your own way of being with the everyday lives of others, the abrupt awareness - always a surprise no matter how often it's happened - that their lives are very different from your own. — Lynn Coady

The difference between being a victim and a survivor is often a low level of situational awareness. You can't be a super-spy, watchful and paranoid every day. But I am more watchful than the average American. — Barry Eisler

Most adult children of toxic parents grow up feeling tremendous confusion about what love means and how it's supposed to feel. Their parents did extremely unloving things to them in the name of love. They came to understand love as something chaotic, dramatic, confusing, and often painful - something they had to give up their own dreams and desires for. Obviously, that's not what love is all about. Loving behaviour doesn't grind you down, keep you off balance, or create feelings of self-hatred. Love doesn't hurt, it feels good. Loving behaviour nourishes your emotional well-being. When someone is being loving to you, you feel accepted, cared for, valued, and respected. Genuine love creates feelings of warmth, pleasure, safety, stability, and inner peace. — Susan Forward

We often add to our pain and suffering by being overly sensitive, over-reacting to minor things, and sometimes taking things too personally. — Dalai Lama

Sentience is not an end in itself. It is a means to the end of staying alive. Sentient beings use sensations of pain and suffering to escape situations that threaten their lives and sensations of pleasure to pursue situations that enhance their lives. Just as humans will often endure excruciating pain in order to remain alive, animals will often not only endure but inflict on themselves excruciating pain - as when gnawing off a paw caught in a trap - in order to live. Sentience is what evolution has produced in order to ensure the survival of certain complex organisms. To claim that a being who has evolved to develop a consciousness of pain and pleasure has no interest in remaining alive is to say that conscious beings have no interest in remaining conscious, a most peculiar position to take. — Gary L. Francione

Men do not rest content with parrying the attacks of a superior, but often strike the first blow to prevent the attack being made. And we cannot fix the exact point at which our empire shall stop; we have reached a position in which we must not be content with retaining but must scheme to extend it, for, if we cease to rule others, we are in danger of being ruled ourselves. Nor can you look at inaction from the same point of view as others, unless you are prepared to change your habits and make them like theirs. — Alcibiades

The following is a phrase we don't hear enough but that I sincerely mean (and our culture needs to hear more often): I love being married. — Mark Hart

Genesis supplements "created in God's image" with the affirmation that God thus made humanity "male and female." Women and men together comprise this image. The statement is an extraordinary one in this opening chapter of Genesis, written in a patriarchal culture. One might wonder whether the author of Genesis saw the implications of this declaration. Certainly generation after generation of Christians have not seen it. We have often talked and behaved as if the male was the normal and full form of a human being, with the female a deviant and slightly inferior form. But both male and female belong to the image. You have the image of God represented in humanity only when you have both men and women there. When women are not present and involved in God's work in the world (and in the church), the image of God is not present. — John E. Goldingay

The expression 'quiet as mice' is a puzzling one, because mice can often be very noisy, so people who are being quite as mice may in fact be squeaking and scrambling around. The expression 'quiet as mimes' is more appropriate, because mimes are people who perform theatrical routines without making a sound. Mimes are annoying and embarrassing, but they are much quieter than mice, so 'quiet as mimes' is a more proper way to describe how Violet and Sunny got up from their bunk, tiptoed across the dormitory, and walked out into the night. — Lemony Snicket

Talking of being eaten by dogs, there's a dachshund at Brinkley who when you first meet him will give you the impression that he plans to convert you into a light snack between his regular meals. Pay no attention. It's all eyewash. His belligerent attitude is simply - "
Sound and fury signifying nothing, sir?"
That's it. Pure swank. A few civil words, and he will be grappling you ... What's the expression I've heard you use?"
Grappling me to his soul with hoops of steel, sir?"
In the first two minutes. He wouldn't hurt a fly, but he has to put up a front because his name's Poppet. One can readily appreciate that when a dog hears himself addressed day in and day out as Poppet, he feels he must throw his weight about. Is self-respect demands it."
Precisely, sir."
You'll like Poppet. Nice dog. Wears his ears inside out. Why do dachshunds wear their ears inside out?"
I could not say, sir."
Nor me. I've often wondered. — P.G. Wodehouse

Being young and trying to catch a glimpse of the depths, of the true self, of the soul, or whatever human beings have called it over the centuries, we often find ourselves surrounded by bossy, hectoring voices trying to short-circuit our personal experience by super-imposing their own disappointments. Much of this bossiness masquerades as an education. — David Whyte

When I was teaching basketball, I urged my players to try their hardest to improve on that very day, to make that practice a masterpiece.
Too often we get distracted by what is outside our control. You can't do anything about yesterday. The door to the past has been shut and the key thrown away. You can do nothing about tomorrow. It is yet to come. However, tomorrow is in large part determined by what you do today. So make today a masterpiece. You have control over that.
This rule is even more important in life than basketball. You have to apply yourself each day to become a little better. By applying yourself to the task of becoming a little better each and every day over a period of time, you will become a lot better. Only then will you will be able to approach being the best you can be. It begins by trying to make each day count and knowing you can never make up for a lost day. — John Wooden

A woman is never so happy as when she is being wooed. Then she is mistress of all she surveys, the cynosure of all eyes, until that day of days when she sails down the aisle, a vision in white, lovely as the stefanotis she carries, borne translucent on her father's manly arm to be handed over to her new father-surrogate. If she is clever, and if her husband has the time and the resources, she will insist on being wooed all her life; more likely she will discover that marriage is not romantic, that husbands forget birthdays and aniversaries and seldom pay compliments, are often perfunctory. — Germaine Greer

When I was a child, my behavior was far from being what most people would label 'intelligent.' It was often limited, repetitive and anti-social. I could not do many of the things that most people take for granted, such as looking someone in the eye or deciphering a person's body language, and only acquired these skills with much effort over time. — Daniel Tammet

Being in a foreign place, preferably for the first time, having seen many things and collected new impressions, and returning to an empty hotel room with an hour or so to blow. That mix often yields fine results. — Stefan Sagmeister

Writers are often given the gift of being spectacularly unhappy, so that they can record the full depth of feeling. — Grace Bridges

You are correct in saying that desires often come from things we cannot easily gain - mine, being that of your love. By all accounts, I do wish I could steal it. But I am not that sort of man. I will wait. Forever and a day ... I will wait. — Renee Vincent

Procrastinators often follow exactly the wrong tack. They try to minimize their commitments, assuming that if they have only a few things to do, they will quit procrastinating and get them done. But this goes contrary to the basic nature of the procrastinator and destroys his most important source of motivation. The few tasks on his list will be, by definition, the most important, and the only way to avoid doing them will be to do nothing. This is a way to become a couch potato, not an effective human being. — John Perry

Finally, I would like to assure my many Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim friends that I am sincerely happy that the religion which Chance has given you has contributed to your peace of mind (and often, as Western medical science now reluctantly admits, to your physical well-being). Perhaps it is better to be un-sane and happy, than sane and un-happy. But it is best of all to be sane and happy. — Arthur C. Clarke

Recognizing that God has called you to function as his agent defines your task as a parent. Our culture has reduced parenting to providing care. Parents often see the task in these narrow terms. The child must have food, clothes, a bed, and some quality time.
In sharp contrast to such a weak view, God has called you to a more profound task than being only a care-provider. You shepherd your child in God's behalf. The task God has given you is not one that can be conveniently scheduled. It is a pervasive task. Training and shepherding are going on whenever you are with your children. Whether waking, walking, talking or resting, you must be involved in helping your child to understand life, himself, and his needs from a biblical perspective (Deuteronomy 6:6-7). — Tedd Tripp

We commonly confuse love with the strong emotions most often associated with it, such as joy, attachment, lust, infatuation, pleasure, pain, fear, and hope, to name a few. But, love is not a feeling; love itself is an action. There are countless emotions and beliefs that can cause us to love. Love is the willing giving of self to another living being. Love is giving the life, time, energy, and resources that we would normally give or use for our self to someone else. Love is an action that enhances the well-being of another living being. — C W Newman

We don't often talk about men being imprisoned by gender stereotypes but I can see that that they are and that when they are free, things will change for women as a natural consequence. — Emma Watson

No matter how wild reality was obviously often being, it was an absolutely secure place, as a tone and intelligence, and a thing happening. — Robert Creeley

He'll be coming and going" he had said. "One day you'll see him and another you won't. He doesn't like being tied down
and of course he has other countries to attend to. It's quite all right. He'll often drop in. Only you mustn't press him. He's wild, you know. Not like a tame lion. — C.S. Lewis

This is the thing, I think often, that never occurs to you when you consider what it would be like to lose someone you love. That you would miss not just the flowers and kisses, but the totality of the experience. You miss the failures and little evils with as much desperation as you miss being held in the middle of the night. I wish he were here now, and I was kissing him. I wish he were here now, and I was betraying him. Either would be fine, so fine, as long as he was here. — Cody McFadyen

To say it for those who know how to explain a thing: women have the intelligence, men the heart and passion. This is not contradicted by the fact that men actually get so much farther with their intelligence: they have the deeper, more powerful drives; these take their intelligence, which is in itself something passive, forward. Women are often privately amazed at the great honor men pay to their hearts. When men look especially for a profound, warm-hearted being, in choosing their spouse, and women for a clever, alert, and brilliant being, one sees very clearly how a man is looking for an idealized man, and a woman for an idealized woman--that is, not for a complement, but for the perfection of their own merits. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Max had often heard Laundromats were a good place to meet women. He wasn't sure why, since he wasn't one to speak to strangers while folding his underwear, so he didn't imagine women would be any more comfortable doing so. But he'd tried it anyway, using a comforter that didn't fit in his washing machine as an excuse to spend time in the town's only Laundromat.
After spending ninety minutes listening to the life story of a man who was newly divorced, Max had decided the rumor of Laundromats being a good place to meet women was probably started by a Laundromat owner. — Shannon Stacey

Strangely enough, for many many years I didn't talk about my childhood and then when I did I got a ton of mail - literally within a year I got a couple of thousand letters from people who'd had a worse childhood, a similar childhood, a less-bad childhood, and the question that was most often posed to me in those letters was: how did you get past the trauma of being raised by a violent alcoholic? — Dean Koontz

Good journalism is being criminalized or otherwise rendered perilous to its best practitioners. Attack a government agency like the CIA, or a Fortune 500 member ... , or the conduct of the military in Southeast Asia and you find yourself in deep trouble, naked and often alone. — Daniel Schorr

Over a third of the Newenhan population was under eighteen,which didn't make his job any easier, the hormonally challenged being terminally and all too often fatally prone to acts of stupidity. — Dana Stabenow

Depressions and melancholy are often a cover for tremendous greed.
At the beginning of an analysis there is often a depressed state of resignation-life has no meaning, there is no feeling of being in life. An exaggerated state can develop into complete lameness. Quite young people give the impression of having the resignation of a bitter old man or woman. When you dig into such a black mood you find that behind it there is overwhelming greed-for being loved, for being very rich, for having the right partner, for being the top dog, etc.
Behind such a melancholic resignation you will often discover in the darkness a recurring theme which makes things very difficult, namely if you give such people one bit of hope, the lion opens its mouth and you have to withdraw, and then they put the lid on again, and so it goes on, back and forth. — Marie-Louise Von Franz

It is my growing conviction that my life belongs to others just as much as it belongs to myself and that what is experienced as most unique often proves to be most solidly embedded in the common condition of being human. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Often autism is portrayed in the media as a very negative condition, as something that prevents somebody from communicating or from socializing or from being able to have any kind of normal, happy life. — Daniel Tammet

From the point of view of pure logic or philosophy, there will often be a dialectical tension between two concepts.
For example ...
If I reflect on the concept of 'being,' I will be obliged to introduce the opposite concept, that of 'nothing.' You can't reflect on your existence without immediately realizing that you won't always exist. The tension between 'being' and 'nothing' becomes resolved in the concept of 'becoming.' Because if something is in the process of becoming, it both is and is not. — Jostein Gaarder

I only have one story now.
The story was heroin. It was made out of sensation, not words; it was invisible and murderous and unstoppable. Sam disappeared from her slowly, like a snowman melting, until all Blanca had left of him was a pool of freezing-cold blue water, arctic cold, sorrow colored, evaporating with every year. She did her best to hold onto him, but it was impossible, like carrying ice into the desert or making time stand still. After the final fight when Sam moved out, Blanca saw him less and less often. He no longer had a presence; he was like the outline of a person, an absence rather than a full-fledged human being. — Alice Hoffman

we are all children who lose our parents, all of us, every man and woman and boy and girl, and we too will all be lost by those who come after us and love us, and this loss unites humanity, unites every human being, the temporary nature of our being-ness, and our shared sorrow, the heartache we each carry and yet too often refuse to acknowledge in one another, — Mohsin Hamid

But Hazael only said, "I brought you a present."
Liraz took the flower, looked at it, and then a Hazael, expressionless. And then she ate it. She chewed the flower and swallowed it.
"Hmm," said Hazael. "Not the usual response."
"Oh, do you give flowers often?"
"Yes," he said. He probably did. Hazael had a way of enjoying life in spite of the many restrictions they lived under, being soldiers, and worse, being Misbegotten. "I hope it wasn't poisonous," he said lightly.
Liraz just shrugged. "There are worse ways to die. — Laini Taylor

It is in a way a mystery that, instead of demanding that their governments give primary attention to their own needs and aspirations, most of the citizens of big counties-those, that is, that have the status of being "powers" in the world-far from being self-centered or materialistic as they are commonly credited with being, the ordinary citizen and his elected representative all too often turn out to be romantics, ready and eager to sacrifice programs of health, education and welfare for the power and pride of the nation ... — J. William Fulbright

Allowances can always be made for your friends to disagree with you. Disagreement, vehement disagreement, is healthy. Debate is impossible without it. Evil does not question itself, only hope questions itself. Even the incorruptible are corruptible if they cannot accept the possibility of being mistaken. Infallibility is a sin in any man. All laws can be broken and are. Often. Like when a bumblebee flies or an ancient regime is toppled. — Craig Ferguson

Someone once referred to modeling as being like winning the lottery gene pool. It's such an odd way to put things, but what is different about modelling is that the industry often picks you. — Erin O'Connor

Life is often compared to a marathon, but I think it is more like being a sprinter; long stretches of hard work punctuated by brief moments in which we are given the opportunity to perform at our best. — Michael Johnson

Marketing yourself to a new person often involves being charismatic, clever and quick-but most jobs and most relationships are about being consistent, persistent and brave. — Seth Godin

When the truth would be unbearable the mind often just blanks it out. But some ghost of an event may stay in your head. Then, like the smudge of a bad word quickly wiped off a school blackboard, this ghost can call undue attention to itself by its very vagueness. You keep studying the dim shape of it, as if the original form will magically emerge. This blank spot in my past, then, spoke most loudly to me by being blank. It was a hole in my life that I both feared and kept coming back to because I couldn't quite fill it in. — Mary Karr

In human affairs of danger and delicacy successful conclusion is sharply limited by hurry. So often men trip by being in a rush. If one were properly to perform a difficult and subtle act, he should first inspect the end to be achieved and then, once he had accepted the end as desirable, he should forget it completely and concentrate solely on the means. By this method he would not be moved to false action by anxiety or hurry or fear. Very few people learn this. — John Steinbeck

Freedom from stress, freedom from anxiety, freedom from depression; freedom is autonomy from all that stagnates growth in this ever complex and noisy world. By the fear of being in the unknown, we often overlook and forget the serene view of being on the raft: the glowing virgin stars, the gentle ways that the waves moves, and the endless possibilities that exist under the sun. The fundamental principle of freedom is to be lost and our state of mind never differs too far from this analogy of being stranded in the middle of the ocean. — Forrest Curran

Then he would ask for songs and I would pluck them out for him on a lute I borrowed from my father's wagon. He would even sing from time to time. He had a bright, reckless tenor that was always wandering off, looking for notes in the wrong places. More often than not he stopped and laughed at himself when it happened. He was a good man, and there was no conceit in him. Not long after he joined our troupe, I asked Abenthy what it was like being an arcanist. He gave me a thoughtful look. Have you ever known an arcanist? — Patrick Rothfuss

The Esbat differed from the Sabbat by being primarily for business...very often the Esbat was for sheer enjoyment only. — Margaret Alice Murray

Humility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a morecalculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

As an actor, you're constantly searching for that great character. Also, being a history buff and learning about people in our past and amazing things that they've done, I came across a book about Howard Hughes and he was set up as basically, the most multi-dimensional character I could ever come across. Often, people have tried to define him in biographies, but no one seems to be able to categorize him. — Leonardo DiCaprio

Your opponent will often be blind to your design, being consumed with his own. Do not subconsciously seek accolades of your ingenuity and thus call attention - be sated by your own approval. Be confident you will win. — Shannon Kirk

For the bee, honey is the ultimate reality. It represents the fulfillment of her life mission, the triumph over her enemies, the continuity of the hive, the justification for working herself to death. Honey is to bees what money in the bank is to people - a measure of prosperity and well-being. But there is nothing abstract or symbolic about honey, as there is about money, which has no intrinsic value. There is more real wealth in a pound of honey, or a load of manure for that matter, than all the currency in the world. We often destroy the world's real wealth to create an illusion of wealth, confusing symbol and substance. - William Longgood, The Queen Must Die — Susan Wiggs

Very often we see coaches who have not been successful being recycled, instead of looking to a new face or a new name who has demonstrated the ability to handle the job. — Lynn Swann

All too often we say of a man doing a good job that he is indispensable. A flattering canard, as so many disillusioned and retired and fired have discovered when the world seems to keep on turning without them. In business, a man can come nearest to indispensability by being dispensable in his current job. How can a man move up to new responsibilities if he is the only one able to handle his present tasks? It matters not how small or large the job you now have, if you have trained no one to do it as well, you're not available; you've made your promotion difficult if not impossible. — Malcolm Forbes

Parents have two tasks associated with no. First, they need to help their child feel safe enough to say no, thereby encouraging his or her own boundaries. Though they certainly can't make all the choices they'd like, young children should be able to have a no that is listened to. Informed parents won't be insulted or enraged by their child's resistance. They will help the child feel that his no is just as loveable as his yes. They won't withdraw emotionally from the child who says no, but will stay connected. One parent must often support another who is being worn down by their baby's no. This process takes work! — Henry Cloud

We Catholics have not only to do our best to keep down our own warring passions and live decent lives, which will often be hard enough in this odd world we have been born into. We have to bear witness to moral principles which the world owned yesterday and has begun to turn its back on today. We have to disapprove of some of the things our neighbors do, without being stuffy about it; we have to be charitable towards our neighbors and make great allowances for them, without falling into the mistake of condoning their low standards and so encouraging them to sin. Two of the most difficult and delicate tasks a man can undertake; and it happens, nowadays, not only to priests, to whom it comes as part of their professional duty, but to ordinary lay people...So we must know what are the unalterable principles we hold, and why we hold them; we must see straight in a world that is full of moral fog. — Ronald Knox

She'd known that being a victim was often a choice people made. — Dean Koontz

Something else emerges from this discussion about us as human individuals: we're not fixed, stable intellects riding along peering at the world through the lenses of our eyes like the pilots of people-shaped spacecraft. We are affected constantly by what's going on around us. Whether our flexibility is based in neuroplasticity or in less dramatic aspects of the brain, we have to start acknowledging that we are mutable, persuadable and vulnerable to clever distortions, and that very often what we want to be is a matter of constant effort rather than attaining a given state and then forgetting about it. Being human isn't like hanging your hat on a hook and leaving it there, it's like walking in a high wind: you have to keep paying attention. You have to be engaged with the world. — Nick Harkaway

I had great femme mentors, I had good role models of gentle men, I found ways to be a butch that did not require being an ass in public, ways of masculinity that were not misogyny - which is what I see more often than I used to these days, this way of butches distancing themselves from any and all things feminine by embodying the worst excesses of men, from relatively harmless ones like spitting on the street and wearing too much cheap cologne to behaving as though women were an entirely separate species of second-class citizen, the objects of jokes and derision. — S. Bear Bergman

My friend Wicker once said to be careful what and how you say what you're really thinking to a woman. After much screwing up in that department with Emma, I've learned it's not what you should hide, but what you say that makes her react the way she does. If I am unable to make myself clear, as I so often do, it's more likely going to go to pot if I try to explain how I really feel. Instead, I rework in my brain what she needs to hear. I don't always nail it, but I'm getting better at it. And it's always the truth even if it isn't how I see it.
Is it deceiving? No. It's being considerate and aware that she is an emotional creature, and that for some crazy reason, craves my attention. I love to make her happy. My jumbled up mess of a mind isn't important in the long run if it just confuses her. So I chose words carefully. When something goes right, I use it over and over again. -Ames — Cyndi Goodgame

I don't feel that I was often compartmentalized as an African-American actor, yet I am fully aware of the plight that actors, directors and producers of color face in our industry. I choose to focus on being proactive in creating opportunities for myself and others while acknowledging that we are not playing on a level playing field. — Kim Fields

The recruit who reports for active duty at the beginning of the war can in some instances be afraid of death, but more often he is 'afraid of being afraid'; that is, he is filled with anguish before himself. — Jean-Paul Sartre

One of the paradoxes of our time is that the War on Terror has served mainly to reinforce a collective belief that maintaining the right amount of fear and suspicion will earn one safety. Fear is promoted by the government as a kind of policy. Fear is accepted, even among the best-educated people in this country, even among the professors with whom I work, as a kind of intelligence. And inspiring fear in others is often seen as neighborly and kindly, instead of being regarded as what my cousin recognized it for - a violence. — Eula Biss

I discovered that being someone you are not is often easier than living with the person you are. — Richard Wagamese

Being hated and hunted and blamed for your own suffering makes people kind of testy, nervous, and on edge, and often fundamentalist and extreme. Bombs get thrown only when people cannot honestly talk together. — Roseanne Barr

Instead I just stand there, tears running down my cheeks in nameless emotion that tastes of joy and of grief. Joy for the being of the shimmering world and grief for what we have lost. The grasses remember the nights they were consumed by fire, lighting the way back with a conflagration of love between species. Who today even knows what that means? I drop to my knees in the grass and I can hear the sadness, as if the land itself was crying for its people: Come home. Come home.
There are often other walkers here. I suppose that's what it means when they put down the camera and stand on the headland, straining to hear above the wind with that wistful look, the gaze out to sea. They look like they're trying to remember what it would be like to love the world. — Robin Wall Kimmerer

You are valued more than you know, by more people than you think. It might be good to get in touch today with your true worth. It is much higher than you often give it credit for being
and now is a perfect time to know, and to gently assert, that fact. This is not about arrogance and it is not about over confidence. It is about a simple, dignified Knowing. — Neale Donald Walsch

Often, one can be in love with who they think someone is, while being blinded by their own desires. And just as often, instead of being in love with a lover, one is in love with love. — Mercedes Lackey

Overwhelmed? Delegate. For perfectionists of the world, this is often a challenge. While you may think only you can do it best, you are denying someone else an opportunity to learn when you do everything yourself. Being the bottleneck serves no one, including you. — Lisa A. Mininni

I got into trouble a lot in school. They say you're a disturbance in class. You're a distraction, they're moving you around. You never really get rewarded in class for being funny. You're a disturbance. But the funny kid is often witty and clever and quick ... they finally get a chance to express themselves when they get out of school. — Godfrey

Americans love to pick up, move on, start over. But instead of being somebody fresh and new, they become somebody lonely and lost, or, far too often these days, they become nobody at all, a machine for satisfying hunger, without loyalty or honor or duty. — Orson Scott Card

In our current distorted reality, land is often held speculatively without being put to productive use. Because people are able to profit from land and use it inefficiently, sprawl is an issue and farmland is constantly at risk of rezoning, thus forcing up the cost of all farmland.

Land contributions would remove the profit from land speculation and inefficient use, releasing more farmland and also ensuring existing farmland wasn't constantly under the shadow of rezoning. Labour and capital taxes would reduce and thus also farming costs. Overall, farming costs would reduce and farmland would be sustainably available for agriculture. — Martin Adams

Life on the planet is being homogenized by the expanding human population and the frequent and rapid movement of people and goods, which carry invasive organisms with them. These invasives often flourish in their new ecosystems because, like the woolly adelgid, they have escaped their predators. — Richard Preston

No doubt other writers have often put a thing more brilliantly, more subtly than even a very cunning artist in words can hope to emulate, a supreme phrase being a bit of luck that only happens now and then. And inasmuch as the condiments and secret travail of human nature are always the same, and that certain psychological moments must ever and ever recur, what more tempting than to pin down such a moment with the blow of a borrowed hammer? — Ethel Smyth

Wealthy people are often criticized for being obsessed with money, but the truth is, it's the poor, working, and middle class that spend the most time thinking about it. — Steve Siebold

The peculiar idea that bigger is better has been around for at least as long as I have, and it's always bothered me. There is within it the implication that it is more difficult for God to care about a gnat than about a galaxy. Creation is just as visible in a grain of sand as in a skyful of stars.
The church is not immune from the bigger-is-better heresy. One woman told of going to a meeting where only a handful of people turned out, and these faithful few were scolded by the visiting preacher for the sparseness of the congregation. And she said indignantly, 'Our Lord said *feed* my sheep, not count them!' I often feel that I'm being counted, rather than fed, and so I am hungry. — Madeleine L'Engle

Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often. — Erich Fromm

I learned a lot about systems of oppression and how they can be blind to one another by talking to black men. I was once talking about gender and a man said to me, "Why does it have to be you as a woman? Why not you as a human being?" This type of question is a way of silencing a person's specific experiences. Of course I am a human being, but there are particular things that happen to me in the world because I am a woman. This same man, by the way, would often talk about his experience as a black man. (To which I should probably have responded, "Why not your experiences as a man or as a human being? Why a black man?") — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

emptying out of my mother's belly
was my first act of disappearance
learning to shrink for a family
who likes their daughters invisible
was the second
the art of being empty
is simple
believe them when they say
you are nothing
repeat it to yourself
like a wish
i am nothing
i am nothing
i am nothing
so often
the only reason you know
you're still alive is from the
heaving of your chest — Rupi Kaur

Autistic children often show no real fears of danger despite obvious risks of harm. This may be easy to spot in a young child who bolts for the street at a moment's notice, or plunges into water with no fear of its depth without being able to swim. But what does it look like in an older child, one on the cusp of adolescence? — Jeannie Davide-Rivera

A 'Bummel', I explained, I should describe as a journey, long or
short, without an end; the only thing regulating it being the necessity
of getting back within a given time to the point from which one started.
Sometimes it is through busy streets, and sometimes through the fields
and lanes; sometimes we can be spared for a few hours, and sometimes for
a few days. But long or short, but here or there, our thoughts are ever
on the running of the sand. We nod and smile to many as we pass; with
some we stop and talk awhile; and with a few we walk a little way. We
have been much interested, and often a little tired. But on the whole we
have had a pleasant time, and are sorry when 'tis over. — Jerome K. Jerome