Best Better Half Quotes & Sayings

You count the days and watch the years go by. You tell yourself, and you believe it, that you'd rather just die. You'd rather stare death boldly in the face and say you're ready because whatever is waiting on the other side has to be better than growing old in a six-by-ten cage with no one to talk to. You consider yourself half-dead at best. Please take the other half.
You've watched dozens leave and not return, and you accept the fact that one day they'll come for you. You're nothing but a rat in their lab, a disposable body to be used as proof that their experiment is working. An eye for an eye, each killing must be avenged. You kill enough and you're convinced that killing is good.
You count the days, and then there are none left. You ask yourself on your last morning if you are really ready. You search for courage, but the bravery is fading. When it's over, no one really wants to die. — John Grisham

The socializing hadn't been so bad, he acknowledged, and he couldn't say he minded the food, though a man would do better with a good beef sandwich. Still it was plentiful, even if you did have to pick your way through half of it to get to something recognizable. — Nora Roberts

I think - I think it's a big deal. Bigger for him and Eve than for most people.' Shane kept his eyes down, fixed on the sidewalk and the steps they were taking. 'Look, ask him, okay? This is girl talk. I don't do girl talk.'
She punched him in the shoulder. 'Ass.'
'That's better. I was starting to feel like we should go shoe shopping or something.'
'Being a girl is not a bad thing!'
'No.' He took his hand out of his pocket and put his arm around her shoulders, hugging her close. 'If I could be half the girl you are, I'd be - wow, I have no idea where I was going with that, and it just turned out uncomfortable, all of a sudden.'
'Jackass.'
'You like being a girl - that's good. I like being a guy - that's also good.'
'Next you'll be all Me, Tarzan, you, Jane! — Rachel Caine

It's better to dare to dream big and achieve half of your dreams than to dream small dreams and achieve all — Bernard Kelvin Clive

A half truth, like half a brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better. — Stephen Leacock

On December 13, the tsarina suggests to the tsar: "Anything but this responsible ministry about which everybody has gone crazy. Everything is getting quiet and better, but people want to feel your hand. How long they have been saying to me, for whole years, the same thing: 'Russia loves to feel the whip.' That is their nature!" This orthodox Hessian, with a Windsor upbringing and a Byzantine crown on her head, not only "incarnates" the Russian soul, but also organically despises it. Their nature demands the whip - writes the Russian tsarina to the Russian tsar about the Russian people, just two months and a half before the monarchy tips over into the abyss. In — Leon Trotsky

For example, knowing that it takes only about eleven and a half days for a million seconds to tick away, whereas almost thirty-two years are required for a billion seconds to pass, gives one a better grasp of the relative magnitudes of these two common numbers. — John Allen Paulos

Better know nothing than half-know many things. — Friedrich Nietzsche

When you get down to the bottom of it, only about half of what we remember really happened. We tend to modify things to make ourselves look better in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. Then, if what we did wasn't really very admirable, we tend to forget that it ever happened. A normal human being's grasp on reality is very tenuous at best. Our imaginary lives are usually much nicer. — David Eddings

For Oscar, high school was the equivalent of a medieval spectacle, like being put in the stocks and forced to endure the peltings and outrages of a mob of deranged half-wits, an experience from which he supposed he should have emerged a better person, but that's not really what happened - and if there were any lessons to be gleaned from the ordeal of those years he never quite figured out what they were. He walked into school every day like the fat lonely nerdy kid he was, and all he could think about was the day of his manumission, when he would at last be set free from its unending horror. Hey, Oscar, are there faggots on Mars? - Hey, Kazoo, catch this. The first time he heard the term moronic inferno he know exactly where it was located and who were its inhabitants. — Junot Diaz

There's a one in six billion chance you're gonna find your soul mate. But, maybe, your perfect soul mate is actually three or four half perfect people. How far are you willing to go to actually find that perfect somebody ... ies. If you're not willing to make a group of people your soul mate then you'd better plan on being alone. You'll always have television. — Christopher Titus

Data matters. It's the very essence of what we care about. Personal data is not equivalent to a real person - it's much better. It takes no space, costs almost nothing to maintain, lasts forever, and is far easier to replicate and transport. Data is worth more than its weight in gold - certainly so, since data weighs nothing; it has no mass. Data about a person is not as valuable as the person, but since the data is so much cheaper to manage, it's a far better investment. Alexis Madrigal, senior editor at The Atlantic, points out that a user's data can be purchased for about half a cent, but the average user's value to the Internet advertising ecosystem is estimated at $1,200 per year. Data's value - its power, its meaning - is the very thing that also makes it sensitive. The more data, the more power. The more powerful the data, the more sensitive. So the tension we're feeling is unavoidable. — Eric Siegel

You have a billion people who know 'Tribbles' and only half a million who know my novel 'The Man Who Folded Himself,' which is one of my better-known books. — David Gerrold

Instead of facing a crisis as I approached middle age, I discovered that a new and better life lay before me. I called the process of discovery 'halftime,' and the outcome led to my second half. — Bob Buford

I do regret, as I described in my book, the time that I shaved off half of my eyebrows thinking that I could draw them in better - and they would grow back anyway. — Molly Ringwald

Come on, let's go meet the guy who thinks he's my better half . And dear God, I apologize ahead of time if he starts talking to you about how many eight-point bucks he's planning to hunt this weekend. — J. Lynn

No one can write a best-seller by taking thought. The slightest touch of insincerity blurs its appeal. The writer who keeps his tongue in his cheek, who knows that he is writing for fools and that, therefore, he had better write like a fool, makes a respectable living out of serials and novelettes; but he will never make the vast, the blaring, half a million success. That comes of blended sincerity and vitality. — Rebecca West

Half an hour of exercise in the morning makes for better interactions all day. Then a sound night of sleep gives me energy to tackle the next day. I am a more active parent, a better spouse, and more engaged in my work when I eat, move, and sleep well. — Tom Rath

It is better not to be loved than to be ill-loved or half-loved. — Louise Colet

The inspired moment may sometimes be described as a kind of hallucinatory state of mind: one half of the personality emotes and dictates while the other half listens and notates. The half that listens has better look the other way, had better simulate a half attention only, for the half that dictates is easily disgruntled and avenges itself for too close inspection by fading entirely away. — Aaron Copland

You're better off with a kick-ass half than a half-assed whole. — David Heinemeier Hansson

I think Francis at half form is better than anybody else by 50%, you know? I think it's just that he has never ... he has a late pick of the things that are ambitious enough for him. — John Milius

I'd be lying if I wrote that I remember exactly what he said. I don't. Which is the sad half life of arguments - we usually remember our side better. — Leslie Jamison

What do you think vision is?" she asked him. "You don't see a fraction of the things that surround you, and at least half the things you do see are deceptive. Hell, color doesn't even exist outside your own head. Vision's just plain wrong; it only persists because it works. If you're going to dismiss the idea of God, you better stop believing your own eyes in the bargain. — Peter Watts

Every letter was a love letter. Of course, as love letters went, this one could have been better. It was not very promising, for instance, that Madeleine claimed not to want to see him for the next half-century. — Jeffrey Eugenides

If I die tonight it will be with every single thing unfinished (like, I suppose, any other night), and yet, what a gift to die on the verge of tears. I have spent my life trying to understand the way this rock and this ache go together, why a granite peak is more dramatic half dressed in clouds ... ,why sunlight under fog is better than the sum of its parts, why my best days and my worst days are always the same days, why (often) leaving seems like the only solution to the predicament of loving (each other) the world. — Pam Houston

Well over half of the time you spend working on a project (on the order of 70 percent) is spent thinking, and no tool, no matter how advanced, can think for you. Consequently, even if a tool did everything except the thinking for you - if it wrote 100 percent of the code, wrote 100 percent of the documentation, did 100 percent of the testing, burned the CD-ROMs, put them in boxes, and mailed them to your customers - the best you could hope for would be a 30 percent improvement in productivity. In order to do better than that, you have to change the way you think. — Fred Brooks

Happily Single is holding out for the best and letting go of the rest. It's saying "I will and I can" to yourself before you say "I do" to someone else. It means you're not looking for a better half because you are already whole. And ultimately, it means that someday when you do invite someone to join you on your journey, it will be because he complements your life, not because he completes it. — Mandy Hale

This was puzzling, as the standard textbook of psychiatry at the time stated that incest was extremely rare in the United States, occurring about once in every million women.8 Given that there were then only about one hundred million women living in the United States, I wondered how forty seven, almost half of them, had found their way to my office in the basement of the hospital. Furthermore, the textbook said, "There is little agreement about the role of father-daughter incest as a source of serious subsequent psychopathology." My patients with incest histories were hardly free of "subsequent psychopathology" - they were profoundly depressed, confused, and often engaged in bizarrely self-harmful behaviors, such as cutting themselves with razor blades. The textbook went on to practically endorse incest, explaining that "such incestuous activity diminishes the subject's chance of psychosis and allows for a better adjustment to the external world."9 — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

I think the best thing about being dumb is that it makes magic a lot better. Where the hell did that rat come from? I dunno, but I'm calling the cops because he just cut that lady in half. — Demetri Martin

Lorcan heard the moan of the soldier pinned to the floor beneath his boot. With a sneer, he pushed his foot down harder on his neck. The worthless little bastard had failed him. He'd come back without the bitch.
He glanced over his shoulder at his lieutenants. They watched him, trying their best to hide their fear. But he could smell it. He looked back at the lowering suns. "I want my sister." He growled the words low. "I want my sister!" He slammed his foot down, snapping the man's neck and crushing his jaw. "Now get out of my sight!"
He heard them run from the room.
They better run.
He would have his sister. He would see the bitch dead if he had to destroy half the world to get to her. — G.A. Aiken

You aren't my type, just the way that I am not yours. But that's why we are good for each other - we are so different, yet we're the same. You told me once that I bring out the worst in you. Well, you bring out the best in me. I know you feel it, too, Tessa. And yes, I didn't date, until you. You make me want to date, you make me want to be better. I want you to think I am worthy of you; I want you to want me the way I do you. I want to fight with you, even scream at each other until one of us admits we are wrong. I want to make you laugh, and listen to you ramble about classic novels. I just . . . I need you. I know I am cruel at times . . . well, all the time, but that's only because I don't know how else to be." His voice becomes a half whisper, his eyes wild. "This has been me for so long, I have never wanted to be any other way. Until now, until you." - Hardin — Anna Todd

If there is "better", then there is a "best". If there is "half", then there is a "complete". Far more than being a "better half", you can be a "best complete"; like a word/phrase that beautifies and gives meaning to a sentence when it is added. — Olaotan Fawehinmi

Our culture today is obsessively focused on unrealistically positive expectations: Be happier. Be healthier. Be the best, better than the rest. Be smarter, faster, richer, sexier, more popular, more productive, more envied, and more admired. Be perfect and amazing and crap out twelve-karat-gold nuggets before breakfast each morning while kissing your selfie-ready spouse and two and a half kids goodbye. Then fly your helicopter to your wonderfully fulfilling job, where you spend your days doing incredibly meaningful work that's likely to save the planet one day. — Mark Manson

Mort moved my ending to the beginning, took out all the adjectives, cut the whole thing in half, and made it one hundred percent better.
'That's how it's done,' he said. Best writing lesson I ever had. — Anita Diamant

Dr. Michael Gurian said it best: "Every time you raise a loving, wise, and responsible man, you have created a better world for women. Women [today] are having to bond to half-men, with boys who were not fully raised to manhood, don't know how to bond, don't know what their responsibilities are to humanity, and don't have a strong sense of service."5 Today's fathers have an opportunity to change that. — James C. Dobson

Always Emma, the better, brighter half of him, who tempered his ruthlessness, who forced him to acknowledge the light when he saw only darkness. - Julian Blackthorn — Cassandra Clare

I have spent over half my life teaching love and brotherhood, and I feel that it is better to continue to try to teach or live equality and love than it would be to have hatred or prejudice. Everyone living together in peace and harmony and love - that's the goal that we seek, and I think that the more people there are who reach that state of mind, the better we will all be. — Rosa Parks

Cold?" Ravus echoed. He took her arm and rubbed it between his hands, watching them as though they were betraying him. "Better?" He asked warily.
His skin felt hot, even through the cloth of her shirt, his touch was both soothing and electric.
She leaned into him without thinking. His thighs parted, rough black cloth scratching against her jeans as she moved between his long legs. His eyes half-lidded as he pushed himself off the desk, their bodies sliding together, his hands still holding hers. Then, suddenly, he froze. — Holly Black

Half a calamity is better than a whole one. — T.E. Lawrence

I asked you to be my parabatai because I needed you, but you're allowed to need me, too. This" - he indicated his own parabatai rune - "means you are the better, other half of me, and I care about you more than I care about myself. Remember that. I'm sorry I didn't realize how much you were hurting. I didn't see it then, but I see it now. — Cassandra Clare

The Pew Economic Mobility Project studied how Americans evaluated their chances at economic betterment, and what they found was shocking. There is no group of Americans more pessimistic than working-class whites. Well over half of blacks, Latinos, and college-educated whites expect that their children will fare better economically than they have. Among working-class whites, only 44 percent share that expectation. Even more surprising, 42 percent of working-class whites - by far the highest number in the survey - report that their lives are less economically successful than those of their parents'. In — J.D. Vance

I used to tell women graduate students, half-seriously, that the role of slightly rebellious daughter was one of the better roles for women living in patriarchy. — Carol Gilligan

It's better for us to be in six states and have all of our stores concentrated than spread out over half the United States. We — Howard Stoeckel

Don't blink. You just might miss your babies growing like mine did. Turning into moms and dads next thing you know your 'better half' Of fifty years is there in bed. And you're praying God takes you instead. Trust me friend a hundred years goes faster than you think So don't blink. — Kenny Chesney

He's private about it. You saw his
personal training ring, inside the palace.
He'll go a few rounds with some of the
guard occasionally, with Rochert, with
me
laid me out a few times. He's not as
good as his brother was, but you only
have to be half as good as Auguste to be
ten times better than everyone else. — C.S. Pacat

I felt guilty that I hadn't thought of Kizuki right away, as if I had somehow abandoned him. Back in my room, though, I came to think of it this way: two and a half years have gone by since it happened, and Kizuki is still seventeen years old. Not that this means my memory of him has faded. The things that his death gave rise to are still there, bright and clear, inside me, some of them even clearer than when they were new. What I want to say is this: I'm going to turn twenty soon. Part of what Kizuki and I shared when we were sixteen and seventeen has already vanished, and no amount of crying is going to bring that back. I can't explain it any better than this, but I think that you can probably understand what I felt and what I am trying to say. — Haruki Murakami

Singing is probably the better medicine than half the stuff they sell in pill bottles, and it's cheaper, too. — Erin McKean

Funny thing about life, it's so easy to view it from the outside in. We can see the exact point where our friends fuck up, do the wrong thing, are blind to what's right in front of them. As in, why the fuck won't they just listen to us and take our advice instead of bumbling all over the place? We watch horror movies and know when to shout at the dumb girl who goes in the basement to investigate that noise; we revel in her stupidity, feel superior to it. If it were us, we assure ourselves, we wouldn't be so stupid. Sure we would; we just wouldn't realize the danger. Because the truth is, we're walking deaf, dumb, and blind half of the time. And even though I can tell myself this afterward, after I fuck up, it doesn't make me feel any better. Because I'm about to do a fuck up royale. With cheese. — Kristen Callihan

Nina pulled the pins from her hair, shucked off the blonde wig, and tossed it on the table they'd set in the middle of the tomb. She slumped into a chair, rubbing her fingers along her scalp. "So much better," she said with a happy sigh. But Matthias could not ignore the almost greenish cast to her skin.
She was worse tonight. Either she'd run into trouble with Smeet or she'd simply overexerted herself. And yet, watching her, Matthias felt something in him ease. At least now she looked like Nina again, her brown hair in damp tangles, her eyes half-shut. Was it normal to be fascinated by the way someone slouched? — Leigh Bardugo

Skill teachers are made scarce by the belief in the value of
licenses. Certification constitutes a form of market manipulation and is plausible only to a schooled mind.
Most teachers of arts and trades are less skillful, less inventive, and less communicative than the best craftsmen
and tradesmen. Most high-school teachers of Spanish or French do not speak the language as correctly as their
pupils might after half a year of competent drills. Experimentsconducted by Angel Quintero in Puerto Rico
suggest that many young teen-agers, if given the proper incentives, programs, and access to tools, are better than
most schoolteachers at introducing their peers to the scientific exploration of plants, stars, and matter, and to the
discovery of how and why a motor or a radio functions. — Ivan Illich

I think that man was half-right. He is better off out of the game - but the game may not be better off without him. A man should not exist for himself alone. Life made an investment in him, and that investment was not paid off. — Piers Anthony

It is better to do the smallest thing in the world than to hold half an hour to be too small a thing. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

It can only be true love when you enable your other half to be better, to be the person they're destined to be. — Michelle Yeoh

The closer I got to my finish line, that rubbley (ph) rocky coast of Ross Island, the more I started to realize that the biggest lesson that this very long, very-hard walk might be teaching me is that happiness is not a finish line and that if we can't feel content on our journeys amidst the mess and the striving that we all inhabit - the open loops, the half-finished to-do lists, the could-do-better-next-times - then we might never feel it. — Ben Saunders

I'm the guy who will persist in his path. I'm the guy who will make you laugh. I'm the guy who strives to be open. I'm the guy who's been heartbroken. I'm the guy who has been on his own, and I'm the guy who's felt alone. I'm the guy who holds your hand, and I'm the guy who will stand up and be a man. I'm the guy who tries to make things better. I'm the guy who's the whitest half Cuban ever. I'm the guy who's lost more than he's won. I'm the guy who's turn, but never spun. I'm the guy you couldn't see. I'm that guy, and that guy is me. — Blake Jenner

Half my life was spent trying to be a better person, but you reach a certain age and you realize you don't have a choice about who you are. All of us are slaves to ourselves. — Gareth P. Jones

To understand one thing well is better than understanding many things by halves. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe