Quotes & Sayings About Being Used To Something

We should not have a tin cup out for something as important as the arts in this country, the richest in the world. Creative artists are always begging, but always being used when it's time to show us at our best. — Leontyne Price

Just see the difference - in the ancient days, people used to "fall in love." Now people "make love." You see the difference? Falling in love is being overwhelmed by love; it is passive. Making love is almost profane, almost destroying its beauty. It is active, as if you are doing something; you are manipulating and controlling. Now people have changed the language - rather than using "falling in love" they use "making love. — Osho

I don't think you're listening to me," he said. And then he said something else but I didn't hear it because I was too busy being mad about his accusations. I mean, can you believe this guy? And then I realized that he'd stopped talking and was waiting for a response and I assumed he must've apologized so I said, "I forgive you. But don't let it happen again." Then he yelled some more, probably because he wasn't used to someone being that gracious. — Jenny Lawson

...[M]an and generally any rational being exists as an end in himself, not merely as a means to be arbitrarily used by this or that will, but in all his actions, whether they concern himself or other rational beings, must always be regarded at the same time as an end... [R]ational beings... are called persons, because their very nature points them out as ends in themselves, that is, as something which must not be used merely as means, and so far therefore restricts freedom of action (and is an object of respect). — Immanuel Kant

Hey," he says.
I feel foolish for being out of breath and standing over him. The moonlight cuts a line down my chest. "Hey," I say.
"Checking on me?"
"I couldn't sleep. Scottie. She's in the bathroom." I stop talking.
"Yeah?" he says and sits up.
"She's playacting." I don't know how to say it. I don't need to say it. "She's kissing the mirror."
"Oh," he says. "I used to do some messed-up things as a kid. Still do."
I feel wide awake, which always makes me angry in the middle of the night. I'm useless without sleep. I can't get myself to go back to my own room. I sit on the end of the bed by his feet. "I'm worried about my daughters," I say. "I'm worried there's something wrong with them."
Sid rubs his eyes.
"Forget it," I say. "Sorry for waking you up."
"It's going to get worse," he says. "After your wife dies." He holds the blanket up to his chin. — Kaui Hart Hemmings

The quick ticket to ecstasy is to catch yourself feeling in a very low state of mind
depressed, stupid, hateful
and to love yourself for feeling that way. When you do that you can experience a rocket ride right to the top. Love does not take time; it's possible to transform depression into ecstasy in a flash. But please do not accept my word for it. Try it as an experiment next time you are feeling low.
Something else to consider is that we will always be in the process of remembering how to love ourselves, then forgetting, then remembering again. It does not seem to be our destiny to be any one way all the time. So let's get used to being pendulums and enjoy the ride. — Gay Hendricks

Consider also the special word they used: survivor. Something new. As long as they didn't have to say human being. It used to be refugee, but by now there was no such creature, no more refugees, only survivors. A name like a number
counted apart from the ordinary swarm. Blue digits on the arm, what difference? They don't call you a woman anyhow. Survivor. Even when your bones get melted into the grains of the earth, still they'll forget human being. Survivor and survivor and survivor; always and always. Who made up these words, parasites on the throat of suffering! — Cynthia Ozick

Nothing in the entire universe ever perishes, believe me, but things vary, and adopt a new form. The phrase being born is used for beginning to be something different from what one was before, while dying means ceasing to be the same. Though this thing may pass into that, and that into this, yet the sums of things remains unchanged. — Ovid

I guess nobody assumes anybody is a libertarian. It's a more complex political discussion than most people are used to, to explain why you think the way you do about public education or drug laws, and why it's not as simple as being for or against something. — Dave Barry

Fame was never something I was seeking in my artistic journey. It's to be used as a tool for an artist to break open doors and keep creating. That's how I enjoyed fame in '74; it was not just for the emptiness of being famous. — Philippe Petit

I used to think that the worst form of discrimination for women was being hit on or hearing something disparaging. What's even more challenging for young women is a very senior male who will take an interest in you, who see themselves as father figures or mentors. — Leila Janah

Homes should mean something to us humans. They are a basic instinct. A home, with a life that centers only on food and sleep, is not really a home, it's a house. Beauty and graciousness, joy of living, being used in every part, these are the things that make a house a home. (chapter header quote from Popular Home Decorations, 1940) — Ellen Baker

In general we are reminded that the word heimlich is not unambiguous, but belongs to two sets of ideas, which, without being contradictory, are yet very different: on the one hand it means what is familiar and agreeable, and on the other, what is concealed and kept out of sight. Unheimlich is customarily used, we are told, as the contrary only of the first signification of heimlich, and not of the second. [...] On the other hand, we notice that Schelling says something which throws quite a new light on the concept of the Unheimlich, for which we were certainly not prepared. According to him, everything is unheimlich that ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light. — Sigmund Freud

Codfish aristocracy' is what they call us. Men who've made a fortune in business, but are common-born."
"Why codfish?"
"It used to refer to the rich merchants who settled the American colonies and made their money in the cod trade. Now it means any successful businessman."
"Nouveau riche is another term," Helen added. "It's never used as a compliment, of course. But it should be. Being self-made is something to be admired." As she felt his soundless chuckle, she insisted, "It is."
Rhys turned his head to kiss her. "You've no need to flatter my vanity."
"I'm not flattering you. I think you're remarkable. — Lisa Kleypas

My dad used to draw these great cartoon figures. His dream was being a cartoonist, but he never achieved it, and it kind of broke my heart. I think part of my interest in art had to do with his yearning for something he could never have. — Kathryn Bigelow

Self-respect is not the same as self-confidence or self-esteem. Self-respect is not based on IQ or any of the mental or physical gifts that help get you into a competitive college. It is not comparative. It is not earned by being better than other people at something. It is earned by being better than you used to be, by being dependable in times of testing, straight in times of temptation. It emerges in one who is morally dependable. Self-respect is produced by inner triumphs, not external ones. — David Brooks

She eyes him warily. Exactly the same way she did when he came into her office
years ago.
It comes into his mind to wonder why she is always so alert in his presence. In
college, he used to think that she was afraid of his intellect, but he's known
for years that this is the last of her worries. At Black Sun Systems, he
figured that it was just typical female guardedness -- Juanita was afraid he was
trying to get her into the sack. But this, too, is pretty much out of the
question.
At this late date in his romantic career, he is just canny enough to come up
with a new theory: She's being careful because she likes him. She likes him in
spite of herself. He is exactly the kind of tempting but utterly wrong romantic
choice that a smart girl like Juanita must learn to avoid.
That's definitely it. There's something to be said for getting older. — Neal Stephenson

I think there is something about being described and having your abilities described as something definable. I was diagnosed at about six, when a teacher couldn't understand how I could be a bright girl and yet couldn't read yet. I did that whole backwards letters thing. I used to sit in the same place when I did homework because I remembered that B's went towards the window and D's went away from it. — Lucy Corin

I knew there was evil in the world. Death and taxes were all necessary evils.
So was shopping.
"I hate shopping," I muttered.
"Of course you do," Phaelan said. "You're a Benares, [the daughter of a long line of professional thieves]. We're not used to paying for anything." Phaelan was my cousin; he called himself a seafaring businessman. Law enforcement in every major city called him "that damned pirate," or less flattering epithets, none of them repeatable here.
...
"Have you considered something in scarlet leather?" Phaelan mused from beside me.
"Have you considered just painting a bull's eye on my back?" I retorted.
My cousin wasn't with me because he liked shopping. He was by my side because being within five feet of me was a guarantee of getting into trouble of the worst kind. Phaelan hadn't plundered or pillaged anything in weeks. He was bored. So this morning, he was a cocky, swaggering invitation for Trouble to bring it on and do her worst. — Lisa Shearin

I feel like the live record thing is something that I've been getting used to as the years go by and with this being my second one, I'm continuing to learn what works and what doesn't work. A live record is an example of that authenticity and that realness that you find in imperfection and you can hear that in this record. — Josh Turner

People, he had said, were always being looked at as points, and they ought to be looked at as lines. There weren't any points, it was false to assume that a person ever was anything. He was always becoming something, always changing, always continuous and moving, like the wiggly line on a machine used to measure earthquake shocks. He was always what he was in the beginning, but never quite exactly what he was; he moved along a line dictated by his heritage and his environment, but he was subject to every sort of variation within the narrow limits of his capabilities.
...
She shut her mind on that too. There was danger in looking at people as lines. The past spread backward and you saw things in perspective that you hadn't seen then, and that made the future ominous, more ominous than if you just looked at the point, at the moment. There might be truth in what Bruce said, but there was not much comfort. — Wallace Stegner

For me the poem and the poetry open mic isn't about competition and it never will be. Honestly? It's wrong. The open mic is about 1 poet, one fellow human being up on a stage or behind a podium sharing their work regardless of what form or style they bring to it. In other words? The guy with the low slam score is more than likely a far better poet-writer than the guy who actually won. But who are you? I ? Or really anyone else to judge them? The Poetry Slam has become an overgrown, over used monopoly on American literature and poetry and is now over utilized by the academic & public school establishments. And over the years has sadly become the "McDonalds Of Poetry". We can only hope that the same old stale atmosphere of it all eventually becomes or evolves into something new that translates to and from the written page and that gives new poets with different styles & authentic voices a chance to share their work too. — R.M. Engelhardt

Fredkin believes that the universe is very literally a computer and that it is being used by someone, or something, to solve a problem. It sounds like a good-news/bad-news joke: the good news is that our lives have purpose; the bad news is that their purpose is to help some remote hacker estimate pi to nine jillion decimal places. — Ray Kurzweil

Death's just something that inspires me, not something that pulls me down. I used to get called morbid at school. I have always loved horror films; I like being frightened. — Damien Hirst

Duke is in extremely competitive environment. In my high school, I think I got one B my whole four years. I was used to being the smartest kid in every class I was in, and then I went to Duke and suddenly I was the dumbest kid in every class. Everybody there is up to something. — Mike Posner

Having her in my arms feels like coming home. I am not one to believe in all that love at first sight bullshit, but even as cynical as I am, I can recognize something bigger than lust at work. My body wants her; that is no secret, but the level of want is borderline craving. I need her. Needing someone is not something I am used to. No, I am used to being needed ... something this woman clearly doesn't want. — Harper Sloan

You think I'm shallow?" Millie patted his arm again. "You're a gentleman of society, Everett. You're bound to be a little . . . Well, I wouldn't say you're shallow, not exactly, but you are a bit of a snob, something I do think I've pointed out before. Having said that, Lucetta and I both know you're not used to being seen in public with ladies like . . . us." Tightening his grip on their arms, Everett prodded them forward. "There's nothing wrong with either one of you, and just so you know . . . I've recently come to the conclusion that I might very well be a snob, but I'm trying to work on that." Not giving the ladies an opportunity to balk, Everett increased his pace, practically dragging them beside him as he moved through the door and into the entranceway. — Jen Turano

I'm used to being part of 'Game of Thrones' and going into something where you're a small part of something else. You don't want to hold anything up because they've got such a well-oiled machine going. — Maisie Williams

I've always had a loud mouth, and for that I've gotten a lot of attention. I did falter in some big competitions in my career, but being counted out and not being seen as a threat is something I'm used to. — Johnny Weir

There's a saying that goes something like: 'We are all one drink or pill away from addiction,' and I know this is meant to destigmatize what addicts go through, but I feel like I've been seeing variations on this 'common knowledge' more and more lately being used (on social media) as a cudgel to remind patients to not overdo it," Anna says, speaking to the dual-edged sword of awareness. A motto designed to humanize the experience of addiction has been turned into a weapon that targets people who rely on opioids for pain management, and that translates to real-world stigma. — S. E. Smith

For she was really too lovely
too formidably lovely. I was used by now to mere unadjectived loveliness, the kind that youth and spirits hang like a rosy veil over commonplace features, an average outline and a pointless merriment. But this was something calculated, accomplished, finished
and just a little worn. It frightened me with my first glimpse of the infinity of beauty and the multiplicity of her pit-falls. What! There were women who need not fear crow's-feet, were more beautiful for being pale, could let a silver hair or two show among the dark, and their eyes brood inwardly while they smiled and chatted? but then no young man was safe for a moment! But then the world I had hitherto known had been only a warm pink nursery, while this new one was a place of darkness, perils and enchantments ... — Edith Wharton

The ducks in St James's Park are so used to being fed bread by secret agents meeting clandestinely that they have developed their own Pavlovian reaction. Put a St James's Park duck in a laboratory cage and show it a picture of two men
one usually wearing a coat with a fur collar, the other something sombre with a scarf
and it'll look up expectantly. — Neil Gaiman

And she didn't once say anything about this being a sin. It used to be I got the word sin slapped in my face every time I did something wrong, but come on, when you live in a sin-free family with sin-free parents and a sin-free sister, well, you can't help but sin a little extra on their behalf. — Han Nolan

Some writers might tell you that writing is like a piece of magic - a process of creating something out of nothing, and I guess I used to think about it that way too a long long time ago. But as I've lived my life and loved and lost friends and family, and seen dreams smashed and resurrected, and marveled at the pettiness, drear ambition and ignorance of the herd of which I am a part, I can no longer say that a poem or a story or a script comes from nothing. If it's any good, if it has any power, any potent emotional body, then it's something that a writer has paid for, not only in time, but in all the anxiety that accompanies living and those small fret-filled acts of becoming present that make it possible for us to see beyond our little patch of immediacy. It's not just a reaching out, but a reaching in, into the depths of our being from whence we've sprung. — Billy Marshall Stoneking

Things change so quickly. Just when you get used to something, zap! It
changes. Just when you begin to understand someone, zap! They grow up. The
same is happening with Katie. She changes every day; her face just becomes so
much more grown-up every time I look at her. Sometimes I have to stop pretending
I'm interested in what she's saying in order to realize that I actually am
interested. We go shopping for clothes together and I take her advice, we eat
out for lunch and giggle over silly things. I just can't cast my mind back to the
time when my child stopped being a child and became a person. — Cecelia Ahern

There are drawbacks in being famous too, but you can live with those. They're not life-threatening. If the paparazzi are outside your restaurant or your house - and actors make such a big thing of it and scurry into cars and drape things - you think they're going to be crucified or something. It's not a big deal. You can get used to that. It's not so terrible. — Woody Allen

I used to think that pain was my body's way of telling me something was wrong. Now I think that while that is sometimes true, more often pain is some little bit of my body bitching about being asked to do something it doesn't want to, but once it figures out that I'm serious, it shuts up and delivers. My new rule of thumb is that if something hurts, unless it's debilitating, I give it five kilometers to go away. It usually does. — Paul Klipp

Others collected round the coach, and gave vent to various surmises; some held that she had fallen asleep; some, that she had burnt herself to death; some, that she had got drunk; and one very fat man that she had seen something to eat which had frightened her so much (not being used to it) that she had fallen into a fit. — Charles Dickens

I used to be focused on being the dopest rapper in the game, and then once that became what I was, I wanted something different, and I wanted to become the best businessman in the game. I wanted to learn how to master the business like I mastered the rap. — Snoop Dogg

I'm behind what is happening to you. I'm doing it. It's both of us. But without me, nothing would be changing in you. I'm . . . taking something from you. And giving something in return. It's the way it used to work, though I can't remember how or when. I just know that it was. I'm willing to stop it, if you want. But I would go back to being as I was before. That scares me. Floating on the wind, never remembering anything for longer than a few minutes. It's because of this tie between us that I can think again, that I can remember what and who I am. If we end it, I lose that. — Brandon Sanderson

I used to think there was something dirty about being paid for something which is a sacred thing to do. I can't disconnect the act of writing music from the act of prayer. If anyone tries to stop me working, it feels like someone is trying to stop me from taking communion. — John Tavener

You're gonna die. You're gonna die. And nobody's gonna care which version of the iPhone you used to make something on Twitter, or to go and post about your bowel movement on Facebook. And I'm not even talking about legacy; I'm talking about the fact that I personally feel most alive when I'm making something, and I feel least alive when I'm being led around by some obnoxious use of my attention that I wasn't aware of. To me, that's the thing. You can buy the jogging shoes and you can buy the Runner's World, but until you put them on and walk out the door every day, you're just a fat man. — Merlin Mann

You should really go inside now," he said.

Her glazed, unfocused stare was starting to clear, and the cranky look he was used to being levelled at him started to take shape. "And if I don't?"

"You want to fuck me on your doorstep?" he asked, his voice low and gravelly. "Call me tomorrow when you're sober. I'll be right over."

She jutted her chin defiantly - clearly pissed at him for trying to be the responsible one. "I won't need you after I've spent all night with a couple of multi-speed toyfriends and a box of batteries."

Linc shoved his hands on his hips, pushing back unhelpful images of her naked and pleasuring herself with a hot pink cock. "Go inside," he growled.

Before he did something crazy like offering to watch. — Amy Andrews

I think one possibility [in the future] might be chemotherapy. And I'm always hesitant to say that because it makes it sound like I'm against chemotherapy. Right now, chemotherapy is the best cancer treatment therapy we have. But let's say we find some way where we can almost genetically engineer the DNA of our being and fight cancer that way. Then, the idea that we used to pump poison into people to fight off cancer will almost seem like the use of leeches or something. — Chuck Klosterman

I've seen it all in Nevada, Kansas before that, and the War of Northern Aggression before that. People do all sorts of nasty things. And while I used to believe that there was something profoundly wrong about the human condition - sin passed on from the first man and that only the grace of God in Jesus Christ could make everything right, the standard explanation in churches Mormon to Methodist - it didn't take me long to learn that Christians and non-Christians, women and men, young and old were all capable of doing the worse things a human being might imagine, and then some.

From my upcoming novel, BATHHOUSE ROW, (available this fall). — Gregg Edwards Townsley

Something seems wrong to most people engaged in struggle when they see more people hurt on their own side than on the other side. They are used to reading this as an indication of defeat, and a complete mental readjustment is required of them. Within the new terms of struggle, victory has nothing to do with their being able to give more punishment than they take (quite the reverse); victory has nothing to do with their being able to punish the other at all; it has to do simply with being able, finally, to make the other move ... Vengeance is not the point; change is. — Barbara Deming

Escape is a good novel, a gripping movie, a holiday - not something I can imagine being forced into. I am used to thinking of travel as an escape from security and predictability and stability, not a journey in search of these things. I am used to thinking of home as something that gets left behind at the start of a journey, not something you might be travelling perilously towards. — Adele Dumont

I'm used to being a supporting player in the background. All I ever wanted, at the very most, was to have a small part in something where people were like, 'Oh, right, that one guy, whoever he is, was pretty good in that.' That's all I ever really strived for or expected. — Robin Lord Taylor

Can't quite believe it after being so used to being musically invisible for so long. It makes me feel very warm to know that people who are the same age as I was when I wrote those songs understand them for what they were and find something in them. — Vashti Bunyan

He pulled back, barely a fraction, but I knew he was hurt. Why was it so easy to do that these days? For both of us. He wouldn't want to talk about something, and I'de be hurt. Or I wouldn't want to talk about something, and he'd be hurt. Or he'd invite me along with the guys, and I'd analyze every nuance of his voice and expression, worrying that he really didn't want me along, was only being polite. Or, like the other night, I'd want to comfort him, but would be worried about how he might misinterpret that.
It never used to be like this. Maybe that's just part of having a close friend of the opposite sex. As a kid, you don't think anything about it. Then you're a teenager, and you can't help but think about it. — Kelley Armstrong

It used to be that being crazy meant something. Now everybody is crazy. — Charles Manson

I was so unsuccessful for so long. I was used to the word no. I was used to you're not good enough or not quite there or you need to fix this about you. So I am honestly walking in faith every single day that I am going to be able to handle whatever God has for me. I am not used to being in a place where people appreciate my work and understand my work and want to be a part of my work and getting something out of my work because for so long it was so misunderstood. The success part for me is the hardest part and everyday I'm still battling. — Tamar Braxton

When I think about little girls in the moment of turning into big girls (it is no slow timid development but something strangely sudden), I always have to imagine an ocean behind them, or a grave eternal plain, or something else you don't actually see with your eyes but can only sense, and that only in the deep and silent hours. Then I see the big girls as being exactly as big as I was used to the little childlike girls being small
and Heaven above knows why, that's just how I want to see them. There is a reason for everything. But the best things that happen, after all, are the ones which hide their deeper reason with both hands, whether out of modesty or because they don't want to be betrayed. — Rainer Maria Rilke

I really embrace things that I think people who like music can relate to, they grew up with the same stuff and know the same references so when they hear it being used as a metaphor to something else they'll be like that's unique, or funny or something that's relatable to me. — Hoodie Allen

You forget about it, after awhile. You forget that you even have it on. It becomes part of you. You get used to it, even the teeth and the contacts, which bothered the hell out of me. It ends up being something that is part of the role, and part of the thing that you're doing. After awhile, it just feels pretty damn awesome. — Michael Rooker

To most of society being crazy is like a virus. If we're out and about in public people think they can catch the craziness from us or something. It's much easier for them to separate us and forget we ever existed. Almost like being quarantined. I used to see a psychiatrist before I was brought here. I remember the way my mother's friends used to gossip about it. They wouldn't let me play with their children. It's kind of like women who are divorced nowadays. Other women don't talk to them. They're usually shunned."
A dull ache throbs in my side and I clench my fists.
"It's like we're tossed out trash." Aurora smiles. "That's a great analogy, Adelaide. — Lauren Hammond

We did not go about this bride thing right. I do not think women are still used to being stolen as they once were."
"Some adjustment is to be expected."
"It is more than that. She keeps asking for things that I do not have - her Earth clothes and something called a cheeseburger, which I recall from the mini shows as being a giant food that women enjoy eating half naked very slowly." Kyran thought of Eve's beautiful legs. He would very much enjoy getting her a cheeseburger — Michelle M. Pillow

There's something magical about the experience of taking a blank sheet of paper and being able to make it take flight with just a few careful, strategic folds. The art of paper plane making has been used for generations, not just to prototype big ideas and lofty innovations - without the humble paper plane, there might have been no Wright brothers' first flight - but also to teach children about engineering, physics, possibility and small miracles. With one or two simple folds, a child learns that her actions can affect her results and that the way she builds something matters. — Bernadette Jiwa

I can say, I am terribly frightened and fear is terrible and awful and it makes me uncomfortable, so I won't do that because it makes me uncomfortable. Or I could say get used to being uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable doing something that's risky. But so what? Do you want to stagnate and just be comfortable? — Barbra Streisand

One of the weaknesses of much abstract painting is the attempt to substitute the inventions of the intellect for a pristine imaginative conception. The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm and does not concern itself alone with stimulating arrangements of color, form and design. The term 'life' as used in art is something not to be held in contempt, for it applies all of its existence, and the province of art is to react to it and not to shun it. Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again be great. — Edward Hopper

You know what I remember most vividly from that hospital? There were creases in the pillowcase.
"I was in pain when they brought me in. They'd bandaged me up before transporting me, but they hand't had anything to deaden that kind of pain. So I wasn't clear in my head. I don't remember who was holding the stretcher, anything like that.
"But when they lifted me up, and I looked at the cot I'd be transferred to, even as they tipped me onto it, I noticed the creases in the pillowcase, and it was everything I could do not to cry. You get used to things being dusty and gritty and oily, you really do, but then, when there's something clean, something that's been folded carefully, and unfolded carefully and it's there for your head, it's like your heart, it's like I don't know, I can't describe it. — Alison Jean Lester

In consequence of this perversion of the word Being, philosophers looking about for something to supply its place, laid their hands upon the word Entity, a piece of barbarous Latin, invented by the schoolmen to be used as an abstract name, in which class its grammatical form would seem to place it: but being seized by logicians in distress to stop a leak in their terminology, it has ever since been used as a concrete name. — John Stuart Mill

The discrepancy is that the ethical self should be found immanently in the despair, that the individual won himself by persisting in the despair. True, he has used something within the category of freedom, choosing himself, which seem to remove the difficulty, one that presumably has not struck many, since philosophically doubting everything and then finding the true beginning goes one, two, three. But that does not help. In despairing, I use myself to despair, and therefore I can indeed despair of everything by myself. But if I do this, I cannot come back by myself. It is in this moment of decision that the individual needs divine assistance, whereas it is quite correct that in order to be at this point one must first have understood the existence-relation between the aesthetic and the ethical; that is to say, by being there in passion and inwardness, one surely becomes aware of the religious - and of the leap. — Soren Kierkegaard

If you're traveling for five years or something like that, you're going somewhere. But five years are being used up, and you don't have to do anything. You just sit on the plane. That might make time go really fast. — Andy Warhol

Being creative is having something to sell, or knowing how to sell something, or having sold something. It has taken over what we used to mean by being "wised up" knowing the tricks, the shortcuts. — Pauline Kael

Philosophers get attention only when they appear to be doing something sinister
corrupting the youth, undermining the foundations of civilization, sneering at all we hold dear. The rest of the time everybody assumes that they are hard at work somewhere down in the sub-basement, keeping those foundations in good repair. Nobody much cares what brand of intellectual duct tape is being used. — Richard M. Rorty

Doing research in mathematics is frustrating and if being frustrated is something you cannot get used to, then mathematics may not be an ideal occupation for you. — Peter Sarnak

Because 98 percent of our ideas are not great ideas, or everyone would be a billionaire. So yeah. That's something people have had a lot of experience in: being told our idea is bad or our performance is bad. I think that's the one common thread between all working actors is that they have a pretty thick skin - or you'd like to hope. You're used to rejection, that's for sure. — Dax Shepard

This is the truth: We are a nation accustomed to being afraid. If I'm being honest, not just with you but with myself, it's not just the nation, and it's not just something we've grown used to. It's the world, and it's an addiction. People crave fear. Fear justifies everything. Fear makes it okay to have surrendered freedom after freedom, until our every move is tracked and recorded in a dozen databases the average man will never have access to. Fear creates, defines, and shapes our world, and without it, most of us would have no idea what to do with ourselves. Our ancestors dreamed of a world without boundaries, while we dream new boundaries to put around our homes, our children, and ourselves. We limit our potential day after day in the name of a safety that we refuse to ever achieve. We took a world that was huge with possibility, and we made it as small as we could. — Mira Grant

The word "geek" today does not mean what it used to mean. A geek isn't the skinny kid with a pocket protector and acne. There can be computer geeks, video game geeks, car geeks, military geeks, and sports geeks. Being a geek just means that you're passionate about something. — Olivia Munn

People wanna say that they're part Native American or mixed, or anything other than black. We're raised to believe that there's something better about not being fully black, something eccentric about it. I'm saying I used to tell girls that I was mixed, which is a bold-faced lie! — Chance The Rapper

Before I was married, I didn't consider my failure to manage even basic hand tools a feminist inadequacy. I thought it had more to do with being Jewish. The Jews I knew growing up didn't do 'do-it-yourself.' When my father needed to hammer something he generally used his shoe, and the only real tool he owned was a pair of needle-nose pliers. — Ayelet Waldman

Something is missing: that's as close as I can come to naming the sensation, an awareness of missed or thwarted connections, or of a great hollowness left where something lovely and solid used to be ... There is something fundamentally insatiable about being human, as though we come into the world with a kind of built-in tension between the experience of being hungry, which is a condition of striving and yearning, and the experience of being fed, which may offer temporary satisfaction but always gives way to new strivings, new yearnings. — Caroline Knapp

Ivan tells Anna: I used to imagine that being embraced by a woman ... as something so wonderful that it would make me forget everthing ... [But] happiness, it turns out, will be to share with you the burden I can't share with anyone else. — Vasily Grossman

It's incomprehensible to me why a magician would create something that can be used against him. It's like giving your sword to your previously unarmed enemy, and then being surprised when he stabs you with it!" Bruns — Maria V. Snyder

Thack seemed to sort something out for a moment.
"Sometimes I watch him when he's playing with Harry or digging in the yard. And I think: This is it, this is the guy I've waited for all my life. Then this other voice tells me not to get used to it, that it'll only hurt more later. It's funny. You're feeling this enormous good fortune and waiting for it to be over at the same time."
"You seem happy," Brian ventured.
"I am."
"Well ... that's a lot. I envy you that."
Thack shrugged. "All we've got is now, I guess. But that's all anybody gets. If we wasted that time being scared ... "
"Absolutely. — Armistead Maupin

I used to flirt with fundamentalism, and I had this idea that creation was something that happened. Now I see creation as something that is happening. Hundreds of millions of stars are still being born every day. Creation is an ongoing process. The Artist has not yet cleaned out the brushes. The paint is still wet. Human beings are the small clumps of clay and breath, and we have been handed brushes of our own, like young artist apprentices. The brushes aren't ours, nor the paint or canvas, but here they are in our hands, on loan. What shall we make? — Michael Gungor

My eyes fix on my reflection in the mirror as the water warms up for my shower.
I'm not sure if it's just my perception, but I look older than my thirty-eight years.
I certainly feel older, too.
I feel like I've lived more than one lifetime, each of them lasting an eternity. An eternity of rage, and resentment, and wrongdoing ... it takes its toll on a man, that's for certain. But none of it had half as much effect on me as this past year. Something I learned was sentiment can take it out of you. I used to have no regard for myself - or anybody, for that matter. I had no reason to live anymore. But now that I care about what happens to her - and for her sake, me - I'm growing exhausted from the constant worry.
Worry my past will catch up to us.
Worry that she'll be the one to pay for those sins.
It's the consequence, I think, of loving me.
The consequence of being with someone who lived so carelessly. — J.M. Darhower

But that was something, wasn't it? It was good to be needed. It was better than being alone. It even felt good to be used. Being used brought you deep inside the machinery of the world. — Christopher Bram

I shouldn't have said it, but the word slipped out of my mouth as easy as air. it wasn't exactly the kind of work any well-behaved student would use, which sort of explained why I had just used it. And it certainly isn't the most elegant way to start off a story, but it honestly represents what I was feeling. Besides, I could have said something a lot stronger. But not everybody wants to read a story with those kinds of words and thoughts being expressed in the very first sentence.
"Stop swearing," Jason screamed. — Obert Skye

Grief is not a one-time thing for people with chronic health problems. Just like people grieving the loss of a loved one find the sadness washes over them at holidays or family events or even unexpected everyday moments, we who are grieving the loss of ourselves, or our former lives, will find the feelings come at random - when someone mentions an activity we used to love, or even something as simple as spilling a glass of milk, or not being able to find our keys. It doesn't mean you're a failure. It means you're human. And it's okay. Then — Kimberly Rae

When the two men sat down to supper, Jan Myers cracked some of his favorite jokes about the clergy and their dogma. Though Zeno remembered that he used to find such pleasantries amusing, they seemed rather flat to him now; nevertheless...he said to himself that at a time when religion was leading to savagery, the rudimentary skepticism of this good fellow certainly had its value. For himself, however, being more advanced in methods of negating assumptions, at first, in order to see if thereafter something positive can be reaffirmed, and of breaking down a whole in order to watch the parts recompose themselves on another plane or in some other fashion, he no longer felt able to laugh at those easy jests. — Marguerite Yourcenar

I look over at the Garde. They're so used to being on the run, to physical threats that they can fight and destroy. But how are they supposed to escape or defeat, something that attacks them from within? — Pittacus Lore

As you know, I was a solo singer, something I just got very much used to. Turns out I'm quite enjoying being in a band! — Gareth Gates

The poet's role has changed over the centuries, the ages. The poets, the griots, used to be the keepers of the facts; they were the story tellers, and the stories were allegorically written truths: where we came from, how we migrated over this river, got with this tribe, became this nation, and tamed the mountains. It changed from that to being purely entertainment. And once it became purely entertainment, it lost something. — Malik Yusef

When I first started out all the attention could be a bit unnerving, especially when people stared. Now I find the best thing is to just relax. Being recognized is just something you have to get used to. — Tom Cruise

I'm used to being coached. Something I learned long ago is that a coach is trying to make you better and to be the best version of yourself. — Meryl Davis

I don't have a problem with many uses of the word genre, just certain ones. I have the most trouble when these labels are used to prevent discussion, to prevent a work from being taken seriously as literature. When we say "genre," we generally mean "something crappy," something that would be sold in an airport. — Michael Chabon

Hana's voice is completely toneless. I can't tell if she's being sarcastic. But she is lucky, whether she knows it or not.
And there it is: Even though we're standing in the same patch of sun-drenched pavement, we might as well be a hundred thousand miles apart.
You came from different starts and you'll come to different ends : That's an old saying, something Carol used to repeat a lot. I never really understood how true it was until now. — Lauren Oliver

Dad always warned that it was misleading when one imagined people, when one sas them in the Mind's Eye, because one never remembered them as they really were, with as many inconsistencies as there were hairs on a human head (100,000 to 200,000). Instead, the mind used a lazy shorthand, smoothed the person over into their most dominating characteristic
their pessimism or insecurity (something really being lazy, turning them into either Nice or Mean)
and one made the mistake of judging them from this basis alone and risked, on a subsequent encounter, being dangerously surprised. — Marisha Pessl

It's true, I used to be so shy. I used to never talk, just sit back and do my thing. I was never bullied, though, and it was never like it was something that needed to be 'fixed', like being shy is a bad thing. — Kendall Jenner

It's Simon. He's missing."
"Ah," said Magnus, delicately, "missing what, exactly?"
"Missing," Jace repeated, "as in gone, absent, notable for his lack of presence, disappeared."
"Maybe he's gone and hidden under something," Magnus suggested. "It can't be easy getting used to being a rat, especially for someone so dim-witted in the first place."
"Simon's not dim-witted," Clary protested angrily.
"It's true," Jace agreed. "He just looks dim-witted. Really his intelligence is quite average. — Cassandra Clare

Life is mostly an exercise in being something other than what we used to be while remaining fundamentally - and sometimes maddeningly - who we are. — Meghan Daum

The thing that's hard about it - the thing that makes it so hard when the person you love has been taken from you, not by something evil you could have seen coming but by random, pure chance - is that you find yourself suddenly living through a history other than the one you expected to live, through no fault of your own. I feel . . . it's hard to describe, but I feel weirdly outside of time. Ever since the accident I've had these moments when I felt like a visiting guest in this world, not a permanent resident. Like sometimes I look in a mirror and I feel like I can almost see through the version of me on the other side of the glass. And sometimes I feel like I can see the history I used to be in more clearly than the history I'm in now - the real history is one where Philip and Sean and I are all together, being a family and doing whatever family things people do, and this one's like . . . like a fake version of events that I've been yanked into, where everything's gone wrong. — Dexter Palmer

I don't accept the currently fashionable assertion that any view is automatically as worthy of respect as any equal and opposite view. My view is that the moon is made of rock. If someone says to me 'Well, you haven't been there, have you? You haven't seen it for yourself, so my view that it is made of Norwegian Beaver Cheese is equally valid' - then I can't even be bothered to argue. There is such a thing as the burden of proof, and in the case of god, as in the case of the composition of the moon, this has shifted radically. God used to be the best explanation we'd got, and we've now got vastly better ones. God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining. So I don't think that being convinced that there is no god is as irrational or arrogant a point of view as belief that there is. I don't think the matter calls for even-handedness at all. — Douglas Adams

On the job people feel skillful and challenged, and therefore feel more happy, strong, creative, and satisfied. In their free time people feel that there is generally not much to do and their skills are not being used, and therefore they tend to feel more sad, weak, dull, and dissatisfied. Yet they would like to work less and spend more time in leisure.
What does this contradictory pattern mean? There are several possible explanations, but one conclusion seems inevitable: when it comes to work, people do not heed the evidence of their senses. They disregard the quality of immediate experience, and base their motivation instead on the strongly rooted cultural stereotype of what work is supposed to be like. They think of it as an imposition, a constraint, an infringement of their freedom, and therefore something to be avoided as much as possible. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

He [D'Artangnan] succumbs to her [Miledy Winter] level of seduction and gives into it. It's only when the series starts to progress that he realizes what she's doing, and the tables turn slightly. But that relationship really pays homage to how D'Artagnan can be easily swayed. You see him grow into somebody who can actually make a decision where he's not being used and forced into doing something that he doesn't want to do. — Luke Pasqualino

I used to think that life was hills and valleys-you go through a dark time, then to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don't believe that anymore. Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe it is it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times in your life, there is something bad that needs to be worked on. And no matter how bad things are in our lives, there is always something good to thank God for. — Elizabeth Adeniyi

A text makes the word more specific. It really kind of defines it within the context in which it is being used. If it is just taken out of a context and presented as a sort of object, which is what - you know, which is a contemporary art idea, you know. It is like an old surrealist idea or an old cubist idea to take something out of context and put it in a completely different context. And it sort of gives it a different meaning and creates another world, another kind of world in which we enter. — Robert Barry

As Scripture presents it, the Word itself - wielded by the heavenly agent (the Holy Spirit) and the earthly ambassador (the preacher) - does what it threatens in the law and promises in the gospel. The Word itself does this work, not because it provides an occasion for us to do something but simply by its being used by God according to his own sovereign will. — Michael S. Horton