Best Familiar Quotes & Sayings

Life itself has lost its plane reality: it is projected, not along the old fixed points, but along the dynamic coordinates of Einstein, of revolution. In this new projection, the best-known formulas and objects become displaced, fantastic, familiar-unfamiliar. This is why it is so logical for literature today to be drawn to the fantastic plot, or to the amalgam of reality and fantasy. ("The New Russian Prose") — Yevgeny Zamyatin

The foot that is familiar with the grass belongs usually to a man of lighter heart than he whose soles seldom wander from the pavement; and the best elixir vitae is a run, as often as we can contrive it, amid the sweets of new and lovely scenery, where nature sits, fresh from the hand of the Creator, almost chiding us for our delay. — Leopold Hartley Grindon

It took my breath away, that evening. If you've ever dreamed that you walked into your best-loved book or film or TV program, then maybe you've got some idea how it felt: things coming alive around you, strange and new and utterly familiar at the same time; the catch in your heartbeat as you move through the rooms that had such a vivid untouchable life in your mind, as your feet actually touch the carpet, as you breathe the air; the odd, secret glow of warmth as these people you've been watching for so long, from so far away, open their circle and sweep you into it. — Tana French

Bitch!" Rebecca shot back, triggering a verbal duel that he was, unfortunately, all too familiar with.

"Whore!"

"Tramp!"

"Bieber lover!" Melanie growled as she put Rebecca in a headlock and earned a gasp of outrage, because clearly that was crossing the line.

"You bitch!" Rebecca snarled, forgoing her attempts to escape so that she could put her best friend in a headlock of her own. — R.L. Mathewson

Fella's a genius. Best ever by a distance in my life time. Never really saw Pele ... Souness, Gullit, Venables and now Rooney agree Messi is the best they have seen. He plays a game with which we are not familiar. — Gary Lineker

Children delight in folk-tale and fairy lore, but the very little child loves best the story which mirrors the familiar. And it is for him, and for the mother who is striving in this age of profusion to guard the innate simplicity of her child's nature, that I have written my little stories. — Maud Lindsay

I felt myself begin to slide down into that recognizable abyss, down and down, where I knew it would be cold and dark, but which had become more familiar to me than my face in the mirror. I knew I should instead be grateful for this time with my two best friends, for having laughed, but I let myself slide anyway. And hoped someone would pull me back up. — Tracy H. Tucker

Telling our personal story constitutes an act of consciousness that defines the ethical lining of a person's constitution. Recounting personal stories promotes personal growth, spurs the performance of selfless deeds, and in doing so enhances the ability of the equitable eye of humanity to scroll rearward and forward. Every person must become familiar with our communal history of struggle, loss, redemption, and meaningfully contemplate the meaning behind our personal existence in order to draft a proper and prosperous future for succeeding generations. Accordingly, every person is responsible for sharing their story using the language of thought that best expresses their sanguine reminiscences. Without a record of pastimes, we will never know what were, what we now are, or what we might become by steadfastly and honorably struggling with mortal chores. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Perhaps the best testimony to the effectiveness of the reforms of 1852 is the fact, that men of a slightly later generation, familiar with the working of the courts half a century after, find it difficult to believe that such abuses as are plainly described by the legislation of that year, should really have existed in the middle of the nineteenth century. — Edward Jenks

It never was anything very splendid at the best," said he. He lifted the lamp from the table with a sort of abstraction, not remarking even my offer to take it from him, and led the way. He was on the verge of seventy, and looked his age; but it was a vigorous age, with no symptom of giving way. The circle of light from the lamp lit up his white hair and keen blue eyes and clear complexion; his forehead was like old ivory, his cheek warmly colored; an old man, yet a man in full strength. He was taller than I was, and still almost as strong. As he stood for a moment with the lamp in his hand, he looked like a tower in his great height and bulk. I reflected as I looked at him that I knew him intimately, more intimately than any other creature in the world, - I was familiar with every detail of his outward life; could it be that in reality I did not know him at all? * — Mrs. Oliphant

By a symbol I do not mean an allegory or a sign, but an image that describes in the best possible way the dimly discerned nature of the spirit. A symbol does not define or explain; it points beyond itself to a meaning that is darkly divined yet still beyond our grasp, and cannot be adequately expressed in the familiar words of our language. — Carl Jung

Are broken windows a new decorating theme around here?" Archer asked, coming up behind Jenna and me and poking his head into the parlor.
"So it would seem," I said. I was still looking outside when a faint light appeared in the gloom. It took me a minute to realize that it was from Cal's cabin. Was someone out there? Was Cal out there?
But just as quickly as it had appeared, the light went out again. Frowning, I turned from the doorway, and I went to slip my arm through Archer's. Then I remembered what Nausicaa had said earlier. Now wasn't exactly the best time for PDA, probably.
The three of us trailed behind everyone else into the ballroom. Here, at least, things looked more or less the same. Of course, the ballroom had always been one of the more bizarre rooms at Hex Hall, so that didn't say much. Still, I was relieved to see the familiar jumble of tables and chairs and not, like, tree stumps or whatever. — Rachel Hawkins

There's a word people in business use a lot: disruptive. The market can never be stable, the best it can be is falling apart in useful ways. Like the universe in general, really. To disrupt the market in your favour is now seen as being the ultimate achievement. Create a climate of absolute uncertainty, continual fear about enormous change, and you'll see people's . . . well, I was about to say 'true selves,' but they don't really have true selves, they're continually falling apart too . . . you'll see people concentrate on looking after themselves and their own, grabbing for familiar symbols. The right . . . brands, shall we say, can prosper hugely then, in the ultimate disruption. — Paul Cornell

In the world of journalism, the personal Web site ("blog") was hailed as the killer of the traditional media. In fact it has become hailed as the killer of the traditional media. In fact it has become something quite different. Far from replacing newspapers and magazines, the best blogs-and the best are very clever- have become guides to them, pointing to unusual sources and commenting on familiar ones. They have become mediators for the informed public. — Fareed Zakaria

These are all good things, I said. But no one knows where your country is or who you are. You don't have a familiar ethnic cuisine; your diaspora , from what I understand, is mostly in Southern California, three time zones removed from the national media in New York; and you don't have a recognizable, long-simmering conflict like the one between the Israelis and the Palestinians, where people in the richer nations can take sides and argue over at the dinner table. The best you can do is get the United Nations involved, as in East Timor. Maybe they'll send troops."
"We don't want the United Nations" Mr. Nanabragov said. "We don't want Sri Lankan troops patrolling our streets. We're better tan that. We want America. — Gary Shteyngart

Panic strikes me when I think about a sentence that isn't given the chance to live because I don't have a pen in my hand or am not sitting near enough to someone familiar to speak it to. Especially if it's a particularly good sentence, a sentence with truth or beauty or humor or sadness to it. The best ones always take you by surprise. They sneak into your head while you're walking down the aisles at a supermarket, or flat-out assault you when you're at your grandmother's funeral, and you have to scramble to give the thought life before it's gone forever. Cocktail napkins, palms, text messages sent to yourself. — Adi Alsaid

Was it worth it?" he asked me, breaking the silence.
"Was what worth it?" I asked, looking up at him.
"Taking a chance with me," he said softly, kissing the top of my head. "Not thinking, going with your gut?"
"It was the best chance I've ever taken," I said, snuggling closer to him and breathing in his familiar scent. — Monica Alexander

After months of separation her friends still catalyzed her thoughts and challenged her opinions and wrangled with her emotions, and she was relieved to see that they still slid into the familiar patterns, the comfortable ruts of long-established personalities. It was nice but it also worried her. Could there be room for growth? How could you change around the people that knew you best, who knew you backwards and forwards and knew you so well that they defined themselves by you and you by them? How could you possibly evolve, like really evolve and become a whole person all on your own, when your own makeup was inextricably intertwined with someone else's perception of themselves? — Katie Neipris

I used to wonder how a man working for the saintly organization of the saintly Dr. King could find himself in such a sinful place. But I'm no saint although I'm a good Christian, and even the best Christians are more familiar with sinners than saints. — Rashad Harrison

The past was a consumable, subject to the national preference for familiar products. And history, in America, is a dish best served plain. The first course could include a dollop of Italian in 1492, but not Spanish spice or French sauce or too much Indian corn. Nothing too filling or fancy ahead of the turkey and pumpkin pie, just the way Grandma used to cook it. — Tony Horwitz

As an actor the best thing you have is your imagination. You're not going to have all the experiences, but you draw on the things that you know. So I think you definitely use the things that you're familiar with to your advantage. — Vince Vaughn

The best things occur when you challenge yourself and face your fears. If you think of your greatest achievements and take an inventory of the times you have demonstrated to yourself (and others) just how strong you are, you will notice it has never been while remaining within your comfort zone doing things that are easy and familiar to you. — Miya Yamanouchi

Do I watch dancers as people? Yes, absolutely. Do I watch really good dancers for specifically who they are? Absolutely, because how they move best and how they look best is going to be most familiar to them, and not necessarily to me. — Twyla Tharp

We know that diversity can sometimes be more uncomfortable because things are less familiar - but it gets the best results. — Megan Smith

Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundations of the world - the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine.
It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache, it infallibly prevented hair from turning gray, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack. — Charles Dickens

And if travel is like love, it is, in the end, mostly because it's a heightened state of awareness, in which we are mindful, receptive, in dimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed. That is why the best trips, like the best love affairs, never really end. — Pico Iyer

The best method for a given teacher is the one which is most familiar to the teacher. — Leo Tolstoy

Neil Shepard's (T)RAVEL/ UN(T)RAVEL takes us from the sublime
Paris in Spring, sunset on Corfu
to an unscheduled toilet stop in a Chinese desert as fellow passengers cheer. Yes, there's light at the heart of this book; but darkness too, as the world and the traveler unravel and re-ravel, fall together, come apart. Shepard proves the best sort of traveling companion
lively, observant, incisive, eloquent, charmed by the strange and familiar, the old and new. Climb aboard these poems. Enjoy the ride. — Charles Harper Webb

Nostalgia. It haunts us, it destroys us, and sometimes, its sentimentality consumes us piece by piece so that we may realize our once-familiar circumstance may never again return. It is a state of mind best indulged infrequently. — Bryant A. Loney

What the best fiction does is make powerful affirmations of familiar truths ... the trivial fiction which times filters out is that which either makes wrong affirmations or else makes affirmations in a squeaky little voice. Powerful affirmation comes from strong intellect and strong emotions supported by adequate technique. — John Gardner

You're familiar with the old written law, 'Love your friend,' and its unwritten companion, 'Hate your enemy.' I'm challenging that. I'm telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best - the sun to warm and the rain to nourish - to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that. 48 "In a word, what I'm saying is, Grow up. You're kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you." THE WORLD IS NOT A STAGE — Eugene H. Peterson

The wrong place to start is to hire familiar people who are in your comfort zone - good buddies, but not the best in their skill set. Such people are difficult to fire and hard to manage. — Henry Kressel

An all-too-familiar ache rises in my chest as I settle onto my throne. I do my best to keep composed, quiet, and dutiful. Loyal to my blood. It's all I know. — Victoria Aveyard

It's only by becoming familiar with poisons that you can make the best antidotes. — Aprilynne Pike

If you are a white person who would like to treat black people as equals in every way - who would like to have a set of associations with blacks that are as positive as those that you have with whites - it requires more than a simple commitment to equality. It requires that you change your life so that you are exposed to minorities on a regular basis and become comfortable with them and familiar with the best of their culture, so that when you want to meet, hire, date, or talk to a member of a minority, you aren't betrayed by your hesitation and discomfort. — Malcolm Gladwell

No fainting in the middle of the road," said a voice close to my ear as a heavy arm landed across my shoulders and gave me a squeeze. I looked up to see Mal's familiar face, a smile in his bright blue eyes as he fell into step beside me. "C'mon," he said. "One foot in front of the other. You know how it's done." "You're interfering with my plan." "Oh really?" "Yes. Faint, get trampled, grievous injuries all around." "That sounds like a brilliant plan." "Ah, but if I'm horribly maimed, I won't be able to cross the Fold." Mal nodded slowly. "I see. I can shove you under a cart if that would help." "I'll think about it," I grumbled, but I felt my mood lifting all the same. Despite my best efforts, Mal still had that effect on me. And I wasn't the only one. A pretty blond girl strolled by and waved, throwing Mal a flirtatious glance over her shoulder. "Hey, — Leigh Bardugo

In the absence of data, we will always make up stories. In fact, the need to make up a story, especially when we are hurt, is part of our most primitive survival wiring. Mean making is in our biology, and our default is often to come up with a story that makes sense, feels familiar, and offers us insight into how best to self-protect. — Brene Brown

The sight of the money depressed her, because in such small familiar things the foreign country around her was best expressed. — Philip Larkin

We make attachments to what's familiar. We find the beauty, even in the lack. That's human. We make the best of what we're given. — Emily Murdoch

Number 23 had plenty of redeeming qualities that made falling for him a justifiable accident. But our connection had nothing to do with our similarities, our differences, our aesthetic attractions, or our emotional and physical needs. When we spoke, he was truly with me. Our egos, our personas, expected social cues, the facades that everyone builds around them that are supposed to sculpt the way the world sees us, were stripped with Number 23 and I. He was immediately my best friend, familiar and safe - an epiphany that I had been spending my life alone in crowded rooms.
Our souls were naked. We initially curled into the warmth of that connection. But once we knew how real it was, we felt exposed, vulnerable, and raw. While his defense was his fearful recoil, mine was dictation. — Maggie Young

Photography's potential as a great image-maker and communicator is really no different from the same potential in the best poetry where familiar, everyday words, placed within a special context, can soar above the intellect and touch subtle reality in a unique way. — Paul Caponigro

Sir Arthur Eddington summed up the situation brilliantly in his book The Nature of the Physical World, published in 1929. "No familiar conceptions can be woven around the electron," he said, and our best description of the atom boils down to "something unknown is doing we don't know what". — John Gribbin

I don't know that the Brits have the monopoly on being organized, but they do have a way of working with which I'm familiar. It's not necessarily the best way, but it's a way. — Kenneth Branagh

The thing is, you can't always have the best of everything. Because for a life to be real, you need it all: good and bad, beach and concrete, the familiar and the unknown, big talkers and small towns. — Sarah Dessen

I believe hurling is the best of us, one of the greatest and most beautiful expressions of what we can be. For me that is the perspective that death and loss cast on the game. If you could live again you would hurl more, because that is living. You'd pay less attention to the rows and the mortgage and the car and all the daily drudge. Hurling is our song and our verse, and when I walk in the graveyard in Cloyne and look at the familiar names on the headstones I know that their ownders would want us to hurl with more joy and more exuberance and more (as Frank Murphy used to tell us) abandon than before, because life is shorter than the second half of a tournament game that starts at dusk. — Donal Og Cusack

Prior to the monotheistic Yahweh, the gods made sense, in that they had familiar, if supra-human appetites - they didn't just want a lamb shank, they wanted the best lamb shank, wanted to seduce all the wood nymphs, and so on. But the early Jews invented a god with none of those desires, who was so utterly unfathomable, unknowable, as to be pants-wettingly terrifying. So even if His actions are mysterious, when He intervenes you at least get the stress-reducing advantages of attribution - it may not be clear what the deity is up to, but you at least know who is responsible for the locust swarm or the winning lottery ticket. There is Purpose lurking, as an antidote to the existential void. — Robert M. Sapolsky

I write about adversity, I praise adversity, not to be pessimistic, but rather to strengthen myself. The more familiar that you are with it, the less likely you are to have a breakdown when it occurs. You become more reflective of its purpose, you understand God's reason for it, and are then able to make the best of everything that you are handed. The darkness is only frightening after constant sunshine. — Criss Jami

COURAGE isn't an absence of fear. It is doing what you are afraid to do, letting go of the familiar and forging ahead into new territory. What I have discovered is that the best leaders have the courage to act - are willing to take the risk, make the statement, point the way, lead the way - when others hesitate out of fear. Effective leadership requires the ability to stand up, stand out, and the conviction to do it. I have never known a successful leader that was not courageous. — John C. Maxwell

There is something about saying, 'We always do this,' which helps keep the years together. Time is such an elusive thing that if we keep on meaning to do something interesting, but never do it, year would follow year with no special thoughtfulness being expressed in making gifts, surprises, charming table settings, and familiar, favorite food. Tradition is a good gift intended to guard the best gifts. — Edith Schaeffer

Our minds automatically seek explanations for things, so when we don't know something for sure, we make assumptions. For someone with ADHD, her symptoms are clear but the explanation isn't, so everyone makes assumptions about why she doesn't do better. Of course, all the old familiar explanations are used - she just needs to try harder, she's irresponsible, she doesn't care enough, she wants to do badly. This very much adds insult to injury. Not only doesn't it help her do better, but it just makes her question herself: "Huh. I thought I tried my best on that, but maybe I didn't." Initially most people tend to fight back against these accusations, but over time the accusations begin to sink in and influence how people see and feel about themselves. — Ari Tuckman

There's an awful lot of choices in the world as far as what one can do for a living. It's best to be familiar with as many sectors of the working world as you can be so you'll be better at your creative job anyway. — Justine Bateman

God never says the safe and familiar is His best. — Norma Gail

I wrapped my hands around the familiar cup and tried to draw strength from it. It was from Thea's old Moss Rose set, remnant of careful scrimping and saving in her first year of marriage. Yet the mellow old cup now brought me no comfort, only a feeling of helplessness, of time slipping away. Sunday-best dishes gone to everyday and now to mismatched pieces. Like Thea and me — Lorena McCourtney

If you or I want to be healthy (whether it's our digestion, our reproduction, our skin, or anything) we have to assume greater responsibility for our wellness. One of the best ways to do that is to be familiar with and to use on a regular basis, plant medicines. — Chris Kilham

Right now, I've got the weight of several worlds on my shoulders. My best friend is living in a cancer ward, and there's nothing I can do for him. The Serpents have hired the Jester to spark race riots with faked news stories, and I don't know how to smoke him out. My enemies are hiding all around, watching everything I do, and I can't find them. For the first time in months I find myself in the familiar, paralyzing grip of overwhelming depression. — Mark Waid

Nostalgia washes over me with tons of memors and lifetime rolled on this land. Every oblivious memory from the childhood wraps open in the fragrance of these busy roads and familiar land, long signals, irritating traffic,honking cars,rushing people,excessive pollution defining Delhi at its best. — Parul Wadhwa

They also bring to mind what sometimes seems to be a rapt predilection of small but influential cults of intellectuals or esthetes for what is generally regarded as perverse dispirited or distastefully unintelligible. The award of a Nobel Prize in literature to Andre Gide who in his work fervently and openly insists that pederasty is the superior and preferable way of life for adolescent boys furnishes a memorable example of such judgments. Renowned critics and some professors in our best universities reverently acclaim as the superlative expression of genius James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake a 628page collection of erudite gibberish indistinguishable to most people from the familiar word salad produced by hebephrenic patients on the back wards of any state hospital. — Hervey M. Cleckley

It's like they say about soldiers coming back from war. People all around you are dying. Really dying, Eric. You go in for a week's chemotherapy and you're in a ward with people who are really, actually dying, there and then and doing their best to come to terms with it. When the week's up, you go home and you see your family and your friends and everything's normal and familiar. It's too much. You think - one world can't possibly hold both these lives and you feel like you're going to go crazy when you realise the world is that big and it can fill with the most terrible things whenever it wants to. — Steven Hall

Other people
grandparents, sisters and brothers, the mother's best friend, the next-door neighbor
get to be familiar to the baby. If the mother communicates her trust in these people, the baby will regard them as delicious novelties. Anybody the mother trusts whom the baby sees often enough partakes a bit of the presence of the mother. — Louise J. Kaplan

In a field you're already familiar with - like your own job - think carefully about what characterizes good performance and try to come up with ways to measure that, even if there must be a certain amount of subjectivity in your measurement. Then look for those people who score highest in the areas you believe are key to superior performance. Remember that the ideal is to find objective, reproducible measures that consistently distinguish the best from the rest, and if that ideal is not possible, approximate it as well as you can. Once — Anders Ericsson

In rereading one of the best essays I know on Dante's Paradiso, Giovanni Getto's "Aspetti della poesia di Dante" (Aspects of Dante's Poetry, 1947), one can see that there is not one single image of Paradise that does not stem from a tradition that was part of the medieval reader's heritage, I won't say of ideas, but of daily fantasies and feelings. It is from the biblical tradition and the church fathers that these radiances come from, these vortices of flame, these lamps, these suns, these brilliances and brightnesses emerging "like a horizon clearing" (Par. 14.69) ... For medieval man, reading about this light and luminosity was equivalent to when we dream about the sinuous gracefulness of a movie star, the elegant lines of a car ... It is this appeal to a poetry of understanding that can make the Paradiso fascinating even for the modern reader who has lost the reference points familiar to his medieval counterpart. — Umberto Eco

The best way to know God's will is to be familiar with the Bible. — Pat Robertson

Left, Right. Steady effort. This is familiar. Most accomplishment is like this . . . Not the result of decisive actions, or moments of truth.

No, persistence is the source of the best of what we do, of real change. Even, single-minded persistence. — Paul Chadwick

Life itself today has lost its plane reality: it is projected, not along the old fixed points, but along the dynamic coordinates of Einstein, of revolution. In this new projection, the best-known formulas and objects become displaced, fantastic, familiar-unfamiliar. This is why it is so logical for literature today to be drawn to the fantastic plot, or to an amalgam of reality and fantasy. — Yevgeny Zamyatin

Nothing is so easy as to deceive one's self when one does not lack wit and is familiar with all the niceties of language. Language is a prostitute queen who descends and rises to all roles. Disguises herself, arrays herself in fine apparel, hides her head and effaces herself; an advocate who has an answer for everything, who has always foreseen everything, and who assumes a thousand forms in order to be right. The most honorable of men is he who thinks best and acts best, but the most powerful is he who is best able to talk and write — George Sand

The problem may be a literary one: we are given a single story line about what makes a good life, even though not a few who follow that story line have bad lives. We speak as though there is one good plot with one happy outcome, while the myriad forms a life can take flower - and wither - all around us.
Even those who live out the best version of the familiar story line might not find happiness as their reward. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I know a woman who was lovingly married for seventy years. She has had a long, meaningful life that she has lived according to her principles. But I wouldn't call her happy; her compassion for the vulnerable and concern for the future have given her a despondent worldview. What she has had instead of happiness requires better language to describe. There are entirely different criteria for a good life that might matter more to a person - honor, meaning, depth, engagement, hope. — Rebecca Solnit

It's tempting to tether ourselves to the familiar comfort of the way things are, but fulfillment is often discovered in the unpredictable and unknown. We can serve ourselves and our universe, best, when we can take the journey that takes us from the limited desire of our ego, to the ever-expanding love and wisdom, of our divine nature. — Jaeda DeWalt

[W]hen the modern mythmaker, the writer of literary fairy tales, dares to touch the old magic and try to make it work in new ways, it must be done with the surest of touches. It is, perhaps, a kind of artistic thievery, this stealing of old characters, settings, the accoutrements of magic. But then, in a sense, there is an element of theft in all art; even the most imaginative artist borrows and reconstructs the archetypes when delving into the human heart. That is not to say that using a familiar character from folklore in the hopes of shoring up a weak narrative will work. That makes little sense. Unless the image, character, or situation borrowed speaks to the author's condition, as cryptically and oracularly as a dream, folklore is best left untapped. — Jane Yolen

For me parks are good when first of all, they're not impeccable, and when solitude has appropriated them in such a way that solitude itself becomes an emblem, a defining trait for walkers, sporadic at best, who in my opinion should be irrevocably lost or absorbed in thought, and a bit confused, too, as when one walks through a space that's at once alien and familiar. — Sergio Chejfec

The single best piece of advice I give to aspiring writers is to always write about things that they know. I suggest that they write about people and places and events and conflicts they are familiar with. That way their writing will be real and hopefully readers will respond to it. I try to take my own advice. — D.J. MacHale

Lacking a clear formula for making decisions, we get reactive and fall back on familiar, comfortable ways to decide what to do. Pinballing through our day like a confused character in a B-horror movie, we end up running up the stairs instead of out the front door. The best decision gets traded for any decision. — Gary Keller

To explore the unknown and the familiar, distant and near and to record in detail with the eyes of a child, any beauty, (of the flesh or otherwise) horror, irony, traces of utopia or Hell. Select your team with care, but when in doubt, take on some new crew and give them a chance. But avoid at all costs fluctuations of sincerity with your best people. — Dan Eldon

Slowly, though, my fingers savoring the familiar soft skin. And then I let her go. I let her go all the way then, because she's my best friend. And because I care way too much to hurt her any more than I already have by keeping her close. — Lauren Layne

The work of democratic government is routinely concerned with matters defined as troubles. In "The Presidency and the Press" I make the point, familiar to anyone who has flown about the world much, that the best quick test of the political nature of a regime is to read the local papers on arrival. If they are filled with bad news, you have landed in a libertarian society of some sort. If, on the other hand, the press is filled with good news, it is a fair bet that the jails will be filled with good men. — Daniel Patrick Moynihan

In our blessed and mostly peaceful society we're not as familiar with courage as we once were. We ascribe the virtue to all manner of endeavors that only really require skill, fortitude and a little daring, the qualities Pat Tillman showed on the football field. Pat's best service to his country was to remind us all what courage really looks like, and that the purpose of all good courage is love. — John McCain

From their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustrations as best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things. — Maurice Sendak

So, if music is the best, what is music? Anything can be music, but it doesn't become music until someone wills it to be music, and the audience listening to it decides to perceive it as music.
Most people can't deal with that abstraction
or don't want to. They say: Gimme the tune. Do I like this tune? Does it sound like another tune that I like? The more familiar it is, the better I like it. Hear those three notes there? Those are the three notees I can sing along with. I like those notes very, very much. Give me a beat. Not a fancy one. Give me a GOOD BEAT
something I can dance to. It has to go boom-bap, boom-boom-BAP. If it doesn't, I will hate it very, very much. Also, I want it right away
andthen, write me some more songs like that
over and over and over again, because I'm really into music. — Frank Zappa

Though not my field, I was familiar with the notion of alternative realities, but was not used to occupying the one I liked the best. — David Nicholls

He unpacks his bag of tales
with fingers quick
as a weaver's
picking the weft threads
threading the warp.
Watch his fingers.
Watch his lips
speaking the old familiar words:

"Once there was
and there was not,
oh, best beloved,
when the world was filled with wishes
the way the sea is filled with fishes..."

All those threads
pulling us back
to another world, another time,
when goosegirls married well
and frogs could rhyme,
when maids spoke syllables of pearl
and stepmothers came to grief.

.... (from The Storyteller poem) — Jane Yolen

To introduce children to literature is to instal them in a very rich and glorious kingdom, to bring a continual holiday to their doors, to lay before them a feast exquisitely served. But they must learn to know literature by being familiar with it from the very first. A child's intercourse must always be with good books, the best that we can find. — Charlotte Mason

Love me this first day of June.
I'd rather sleep with ashes than priestly wisdom.
Of all the lonely places in the world this is best where debris is human.
I kiss the precious ashes that fall from fiery flesh.
On these familiar shapes I lay my kisses down. — Leonard Cohen

I wanted you," he repeated in a softer voice, touching his thumb to her lower lip. "But I like you better like this. I never wanted you to need me, and now you don't."

"Not like you mean." Being this close to him was sparking the now-familiar buzz, arousal flowing through her, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. "I need you in better ways."

"The best ones," he agreed, and kissed her. — Kit Rocha

I travelled the old road every day, I took my fruits to the market,
my cattle to the meadows, I ferried my boat across the stream and
all the ways were well known to me.
One morning my basket was heavy with wares. Men were busy in
the fields, the pastures crowded with cattle; the breast of earth
heaved with the mirth of ripening rice.
Suddenly there was a tremor in the air, and the sky seemed to
kiss me on my forehead. My mind started up like the morning out of
mist.
I forgot to follow the track. I stepped a few paces from the
path, and my familiar world appeared strange to me, like a flower
I had only known in bud.
My everyday wisdom was ashamed. I went astray in the fairyland
of things. It was the best luck of my life that I lost my path that
morning, and found my eternal childhood. — Rabindranath Tagore

Most consumers are simultaneously neophilic, curious to discover new things, and deeply neophobic, afraid of anything that is too new. The best hit makers are gifted at creating moments of meaning by marrying new and old, anxiety and understanding. They are architects of familiar surprises. — Derek Thompson

Science is often characterized as a quest for truth, where truth is something absolute, which exists outside of the observer. But I view science more as a quest for understanding, where the understanding is that of the observer, the scientist. Such understanding is best gained by studying relations - relations between different ideas, relations between different phenomena; relations between ideas and phenomena. Rather than asking "How does this phenomenon work?" we ask, "How does this phenomenon resemble others with which we are familiar?" Rather than asking "Does this idea make sense?" we ask, "How does this idea resemble other ideas? — Robert Aumann

Love hath so long possess'd me for his own
And made his lordship so familiar
That he, who at first irk'd me, is now grown
Unto my heart as its best secrets are.
And thus, when he in such sore wise doth mar
My life that all its strength seems gone from it.
Mine inmost being then feels thoroughly quit
Of anguish, and all evil keeps afar.
Love also gathers to such power in me
That my sighs speak, each one a grievous thing.
Always soliciting
My Gabriel's salutation piteously.
Whenever he beholds me, it is so,
Who is more sweet than any words can show. — Sylvain Reynard

Trying to write books with a subject matter or in a genre or style you're not familiar with is the best way to find the Big Block looming. — Jeffery Deaver

Any smart executive understands that to find the best talent she has to explore new territory that lies beyond familiar geography. That applies not only to gender, but also to race, religion, background and age. — Madeleine M. Kunin

When I was in high school, I would drive into Seattle to see bands and sip coffee late into the night, and I always ended up taking the long way home. I'd be a little anxious about stalling my Datsun on one of the hills around the city, so when I saw Denny Way, I always turned onto it, even though it led away from my home to Seattle's Capitol Hill district. From there I navigated winding hills and eventually ended up at home. A quick look at a map would have revealed the freeway that heads straight to my house, but since my circuitous route was familiar, I stuck to it. I should have known better, but I was just a kid. What excuse does the richest nation on earth have for driving around in the dark like an adolescent? Just because our familiar arguments over how best to help families and the economy lead us along well-trod paths doesn't make them the best ones we could be taking. — Heather Boushey

Remind yourself, in whatever way is personally meaningful, that it is not in your best interest to reinforce thoughts and feelings of unworthiness. Even if you've already taken the bait and feel the familiar pull of self-denigration, marshal your intelligence, courage, and humor in order to turn the tide. Ask yourself: Do I want to strengthen what I'm feeling now? Do I want to cut myself off from my basic goodness? Remind yourself that your fundamental nature is unconditionally open and free. — Pema Chodron

Honesty is the best policy, says the familiar axiom; but people who are honest on that principle defraud no one but themselves. — James A. Garfield