Best Which Quotes & Sayings

The happiest life is that which constantly exercises and educates what is best in us. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

The saints are sinners still. Our best tears need to be wept over, the strongest faith is mixed with unbelief, our most flaming love is cold compared with what Jesus deserves, and our intensest zeal still lacks the full fervor which the bleeding wounds and pierced heart of the crucified might claim at our hands. Our best things need a sin offering, or they would condemn us. — Charles Spurgeon

I have begun in old age to understand just how oddly we all are put together. We are so proud of our autonomy that we seldom if ever realize how generous we are to ourselves, and just how stingy with others. One of the booby traps of freedom
which is bordered on all sides by isolation
is that we think so well of ourselves. I now see that I have helped myself to the best cuts at life's banquet. — Saul Bellow

That was the one thing about the rain that likened it to sorrow: You did your best to remain untouched, safe and dry, but if and when you failed, there came a point in which you started seeing the problem less in terms of drops than as an incessant gush, and thereby you decide you might as well get drenched. — Elif Shafak

The art of injudicious reading, the art of miscellaneous reading which every normal man ought to cultivate, is a very fine and satisfactory art; for the best guide to books is a book itself. It clasps hands with a thousand other books. — Maurice Francis Egan

All mechanical habits are bad and slavish, and this one is ferocious as well. Of course, if you look upon the work of the revolutionist as the mere wresting of certain definite concessions from the government, then the secret sect and the knife must seem to you the best weapons, for there is nothing else which all governments so dread. But if you think, as I do, that to force the government's hand is not an end in itself, but only a means to an end, and that what we really need to reform is the relation between man and man, then you must go differently to work. Accustoming ignorant people to the sight of blood is not the way to raise the value they put on human life. — Ethel Lilian Voynich

I love you. As the same value, as the same expression, with the same pride and the same meaning as I love my work, my mills, my Metal, my hours at a desk, at a furnace, in a laboratory, in an ore mine, as I love my ability to work, as I love the act of sight and knowledge, as I love the action of my mind when it solves a chemical equation or grasps a sunrise, as I love the things I've made and the things I've felt, as *my* product, as *my* choice, as a shape of my world, as my best mirror, as the wife I've never had, as that which makes all the rest of it possible: as my power to live. — Ayn Rand

To be a good storyteller one must be gloriously alive. It is not possible to kindle fresh fires from burned-out embers. I have noticed that the best of the traditional storytellers whom I have heard have been those who live close to the heart of things-to the earth, the sea, wind and weather. They have been those who knew solitude, silence. They have been given unbroken time in which to feel deeply, to reach constantly for understanding. They have come to know the power of the spoken word. These storytellers have been sailors and peasants, wanderers and fisherman. — Ruth Sawyer

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

I feel fortunate. I've really gotten to work with amazing talented people, and to learn from them, which is why I'm doing this. If I can work with the best director I'm going to do it. — Armie Hammer

The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can. — Julian Barnes

Some three or four years before this Dr. Sloper had moved his household gods up town, as they say in New York. He had been living ever since his marriage in an edifice of red brick, with granite copings and an enormous fanlight over the door, standing in a street within five minutes' walk of the City Hall, which saw its best days (from the social point of view) about 1820. After this, the tide of fashion began to set steadily northward, as, indeed, in New York, thanks to the narrow channel in which it flows, it is obliged to do, and the great hum of traffic rolled farther to the right and left of Broadway. — Henry James

When all is done, you must look in your own heart to know the truth. It lies at some middle depth, half-truths above, half-truths below. Even my truth, what I tell you know, is colored to fit my vision. Find your own truths as best you can, only remember that few are courageous enough to tell a tale of which they are not the hero. — Alida Van Gores

The entire hierarchy of angels
can best be described as an endlessly vast sphere of beings,
who surround an unknowable centre-point, which is called God. — Malcolm Godwin

We'll have for a president a symbolic Rebel against his own power whose election was underwritten by inhuman soulless profit-machines whose takeover of American civic and spiritual life will convince Americans that rebellion against the soulless inhumanity of corporate life will consist in buying products from corporations that do the best job of representing corporate life as empty and soulless. We'll have a tyranny of conformist nonconformity presided over by a symbolic outsider whose very election depended on our deep conviction that his persona is utter bullshit. A rule of image, which because it's so empty makes everyone terrified - they're small and going to die, after all - — David Foster Wallace

We are wolves, which are wild dogs, and this is our place in the city. We are small and our house is small on our small urban street. We can see the city and the train line and it's beautiful in its own dangerous way. Dangerous because it's shared and taken and fought for.
That's the best way I can put it, and thinking about it, when I walk past the tiny houses on our street, I wonder about the stories inside them. I wonder hard, because houses must have walls and rooftops for a reason. My only query is the windows. Why do they have windows? Is it to let a glimpse of the world in? Or for us to see out? — Markus Zusak

The wisdom of literature is quite antithetical to having opinions. 'Nothing is my last word about anything,' said Henry James. Furnishing opinions, even correct opinions - whenever asked - cheapens what novelists and poets do best, which is to sponsor reflectiveness, to pursue complexity. Information will never replace illumination. — Susan Sontag

When our gifts are remembered and lived, we discard the idea that happiness requires an ideal life in which we are comparatively the best. Many beautiful and enjoyable things are messy and far from ideal. Some of the greatest cooks have the messiest of kitchens, and beautiful gardens are the result of sweat and dirt. As we move closer to our essence, we better understand that we can have a wonderful life in the absence of perfection. — Robert A. Giacalone

His only thought now was the question in what way he could best, with most propriety and comfort for himself, and consequently, with most justice, shake off the mud with which she had splattered him in her fall, and then proceed along his path of active, honourable, and useful existence. — Leo Tolstoy

They [people] start asking themselves "Well which one is the best? Which one would be good for me?" And all those questions are much easier to ask if you're choosing from six than when you're choosing from 24 and if you look at the marketplace today most often we have a lot more than 24 of things to choose from. — Sheena Iyengar

In the end, it wasn't so much that there was an alternative narrative
there always was
but it came down to belief: Which one did you want to believe. Which one suited you best? Or, perhaps more to the point: Which one told the story you were already telling yourself? — Michael Paterniti

I have remained true to my deepest convictions. I mean the courage of those who are born to be defeated, the weaknesses of the strong, and the tragedy of misunderstandings and missed opportunities, which I have done my best to treat as comedy - for otherwise how can we manage to bear it? — Penelope Fitzgerald

She is the person I ran to when I got my period; the one who helped me knit back together my first broken heart; the hand I would reach for in the middle of the night when I could no longer remember which side our father parted his hair on, or what it sounded like when our mother laughed. No matter what she is now, before all that, she was my built-in best friend. — Jodi Picoult

[Louis Brandeis] insisted on the necessity of public reason, which he thought could only be achieved if all of us just take the time to inform ourselves about the best arguments on all sides of questions so that we can make up our own minds. — Jeffrey Rosen

When it comes to such open-heart reflection, I'm a firm believer in the observer effect, which states that anything you try to observe is automatically changed by the mere fact that you're looking at it. The way I see it, if you try to study your emotions on a microscopic level, the best you can do is understand how it feels to hold the magnifying glass. — Neal Shusterman

It may be that the best time for Otherness has already passed. Clearly part of the basis for this renaissance has been wealth, especially the unprecedented comfort enjoyed by the vast majority of Westerners since World War II, in which very few of us can even conceive of starving — David Brin

That which ordinary men are fit for, I am qualified in. and the best of me is diligence. — William Shakespeare

She realized how many of her beliefs were either unrealistic or belonged to her deceased parents and her ex-husband. She also realized that her expectations for herself and others were sometimes too rigid. She was trying to live up to what everyone else said was best for her, which made her depressed and hard to be around at times. Once she changed her beliefs about herself and others, she began to smile more and enjoy life. — Salle Merrill Redfield

You are infinitely my superior in merit; all that I know - You have qualities which I had not supposed to exist in such a degree in any human creature. You have some touches of the angel in you, beyond what - not merely beyond what one sees, because one never sees any thing like it - but beyond what one fancies might be. But still I am not frightened. It is not by equality of merit that you can be won. That is out of the question. It is he who sees and worships your merit the strongest, who loves you most devotedly, that has the best right to a return. (326) — Jane Austen

Things said by political parties are different from the decisions of the government which are taken to uphold the rule of law. The government takes decisions that are best for the country. — Oscar Fernandes

[Soho] is all things to all men, catering comprehensively for those needs which money can buy. You see it as you wish. An agreeable place to dine; a cosmopolitan village tucked away behind Piccadilly with its own mysterious village life, one of the best shopping centres for food in London, the nastiest and most sordid nursery of crime in Europe. Even the travel journalists, obsessed by its ambiguities, can't make up their minds. — P.D. James

Evil, which is our companion all our days, is not to be treated as a foe. It is wrong to cocker vice, but we grow narrow and pithless if we are furtive about it, for this is at best a pretense, and the sage knows good and evil are kindred. The worst of men harm others, and the best injure themselves. — Edward Dahlberg

What is the purpose of my writing about the various experiences of my life? It is not for publicity, but with the hope that the reader, especially my descendants, may plan a career to which they are naturally best adapted. Most children are born with a gift or talent which can be noticed in early childhood and should be encouraged and directed in the right way. Solomon said, 'Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it.' Train does not mean compel, or to compare him with other children, but to encourage him in that for which he has a natural tendency. The boy who will become proficient in a lawful trade or profession, other things being favorable, will be a value to society and remunerative to himself and others. — Ernest Albert Law

Indeed, the best books have a use, like sticks and stones, which is above or beside their design, not anticipated in the preface,not concluded in the appendix. Even Virgil's poetry serves a very different use to me today from what it did to his contemporaries. It has often an acquired and accidental value merely, proving that man is still man in the world. — Henry David Thoreau

enough. Still, the swirls which could be defined appeared to match the ones taken from Oswald's left hand tonight. The photos were reversed, and the eyes of the men scanned them again. It wasn't the best of evidence, but both appeared to be made from the same hand. — Jim Bishop

Architecture is, to a certain extent, a sensual gratification. It addresses itself to the eye, and affords the best scope for the parade of barbaric pomp and splendour. It is the form in which the revenues of a semi-civilized people are most likely to be lavished. The most gaudy and ostentatious specimens of it, and sometimes the most stupendous, have been reared by such hands. It is one of the first steps in the great march of civilization. — William H. Prescott

You can't be transcendent,... which will mean to be perfect in everything. You can try to act as such person, but there is a lot of to learn.

- As first you always will know the few from everything

- Everything is endless!

- (The Wolf of Wall Street), forgot everything what people say to you about the topic "Money"...because money are the thing which make your life interesting. You could buy the best phone, the best hotel or the best room, the best house, the best car, the best TV, the best books... the best wife... There are outside a lot of women which will sleep with you in replace of money... so reality you need money to have them...
(More far than this I can't take you, because the train is too fast It will delete everything.... it will just start from here.)... What I gonna say or I will say is "Good Luck and try by yourself the finish the mission". — Deyth Banger

The best way to think of the ageing process in relation to a human face is to imagine a map of an area of innocent land which slowly becomes a city with many long and winding routes. — Matt Haig

The problem is that we cannot recognize that what we say about out thoughts and actions is, at best, incoherent; we can and do recognize this after the fact. But once having admitted to ourselves our own subterfuges we are confronted by newer forms, which again we only recognize after the fact. We can never at the moment itself be honest with ourselves, never really understand when we are acting out what we are truly all about. It is only in retrospect that we can explain ourselves, and this retrospective view is hardly reassuring because it does so little to alter our behavior in the future — Israel Rosenfield

If you set your heart upon philosophy, you must straightway prepare yourself to be laughed at and mocked by many who will say Behold a philosopher arisen among us! or How came you by that brow of scorn? But do you cherish no scorn, but hold to those things which seem to you the best, as one set by God in that place. Remember too, that if you abide in those ways, those who first mocked you, the same shall afterwards reverence you; but if you yield to them, you will be laughed at twice as much as before. — Epictetus

The public lands are a public stock, which ought to be disposed of to the best advantage for the nation. — James Monroe

We, however, want to become those we are
human beings who are new, unique, incomparable, who give themselves laws, who create themselves. To that end we must become the best learners and discoverers of everything that is lawful and necessary in the world: we must become physicists in order to be able to be creators in this sense
while hitherto all valuations and ideals have been based on ignorance of physics or were constructed so as to contradict it. Therefore: long live physics! And even more so that which compels us to turn to physics
our honesty! — Friedrich Nietzsche

If God exists, and I truly don't believe he does, he will know that there are limits to human understanding. He was the one who created the confusion in which there is poverty, injustice, greed, and loneliness. He doubtless had the best of intentions, but the results have proved disastrous; if God exists, he will be generous with those creatures who chose to leave this Earth early, and he might even apologize for having made us spend time here. — Paulo Coelho

The greatest thing each person can do is to give himself to God utterly and unconditionally - weaknesses, fears, and all. For God loves obedience more than good intentions or second-best offerings, which are all too often made under the guise of weakness. — Soren Kierkegaard

The presumption of innocence is not just a legal concept. In commonplace terms, it rests on that generosity of spirit which assumes the best, not the worst, of the stranger. — Kingman Brewster Jr.

There is something in our minds like sunshine and the weather, which is not under our control. When I write, the best things come to me from I know not where. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

When we pray, "Give us this day our daily bread," we are, in a measure, shutting tomorrow out of our prayer. We do not live in tomorrow but in today. We do not seek tomorrow's grace or tomorrow's bread. They thrive best, and get most out of life, who live in the living present. They pray best who pray for today's needs, not for tomorrow's, which may render our prayers unnecessary and redundant by not existing at all! — E. M. Bounds

Whether I was a character in WCW, WWE or The Longest Yard, you want to be able to - the best part about myself is that I have a very wide range of emotions in that one second I can be speaking on Capital Hill about dog fighting and giving them a voice, which they can't obviously speak for themselves. — Bill Goldberg

To benefit from what the best teachers do, however, we must embrace a different model, one in which teaching occurs only when learning takes place. Most fundamentally, teaching in this conception is creating those conditions in which most
if not all
of our students will realize their potential to learn. That sounds like hard work, and it is a little scary because we don't have complete control over who we are, but it is highly rewarding and obtainable. — Ken Bain

Choices are usually decisions motivated by pleasure and pain, and the divided mind acts with the sole purpose of getting "I" into pleasure and out of pain.

But the best pleasures are those for which we do not plan, and the worst part of pain is expecting it and trying to get away from it when it has come. — Alan W. Watts

There's no mystery to confidence, it's just about self knowledge. It's savvy to know which of our flaws can be changed, and which ones to accept and let go. Then, asking the best of the good points. — Immodesty Blaize

The States in which the citizens have enjoyed their rights longest are those in which they make the best use of them. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Many of the books I loved as a kid, that even my mother read as a child, are very slow going. Today's children are not as patient. The best example of this is 'The Secret Garden,' which I adored as a child. — Lois Lowry

Oh, I should add, I'm not looting the city, but the people I heal often bring me gifts. I've got a statue of a dog made of gold with bright ruby eyes that dates back two thousand years. I've got the best television set that Arucu Corporation made last year. And I've got a piece of slightly used butcher paper with a crayon drawing of something that might be me or might be a spider, I'm not sure which, with the words "THAK YOU DRRON GRAGON" written on it. And various other treasures. — Bard Bloom

Wheelchair-accessible front ramp, take a bit of getting used to, and some like the engineer never do get comfortable with them and use the less garish auditory side-doors; and the abundant sulcus-fissures and gyrus-bulges of the slick latex roof make rain-drainage complex and footing chancy at best, so there's not a whole lot of recreational strolling up here, although a kind of safety-balcony of skull-colored polybutylene resin, which curves around the midbrain from the inferior frontal sulcus to the parietooccipital sulcus - a halo-ish ring at the level of like eaves, demanded by the Cambridge Fire Dept. over the heated pro-mimetic protests of topological Rickeyites over in the Architecture Dept. (which the M.I.T. administration, trying to placate Rickeyites and C.F.D. Fire Marshal both, had had the pre-molded resin injected with dyes to render it the distinctively icky brown-shot off-white of living skull, so that the balcony resembles at once corporeal bone and — David Foster Wallace

For know you, child, I have that faculty which is better than any one sense, better than a perfect body, better than courage and will, better than experience, ordinarily the best product of the longest lives - the faculty divinest of men, but which" - he stopped, and laughed again, not bitterly, but with real zest - "but which even the great do not sufficiently account, while with the herd it is a non-existent - the faculty of drawing men to my purpose and holding them faithfully to its achievement, by which, as against things to be done, I multiply myself into hundreds and thousands. — Lew Wallace

It's about that applause I want to speak to you. I want you to remember that when you've done a little dance or a song or sketch, the applause which you get is not only because you yourself have done your best, but because each of those men is seeing in you someone he loves at home, and because of you is able to forget for a little while the unhappiness of not being in his home, and in some cases the great tragedy of not knowing what has happened to the children in his family. — Noel Streatfeild

According to a new survey, 90% of men say their lover is also their best friend. Which is really kind of disturbing when you consider man's best friend is his dog. — Jay Leno

That which had made Helmholtz so uncomfortably aware of being himself and all alone was too much ability. What the two men shared was the knowledge that they were individuals. But whereas the physically defective Bernard had suffered all his life from the consciousness of being separate, it was only quite recently that, grown aware of his mental excess, Helmholtz Watson had also become aware of his difference from the people who surrounded him. This Escalator-Squash champion, this indefatigable lover (it was said that he had had six hundred and forty different girls in under four years), this admirable committee man and best mixer had realized quite suddenly that sport, women, communal activities were only, so far as he was concerned, second bests. Really, and at the bottom, he was interested in something else. But in what? In what? — Aldous Huxley

Time is your most precious gift because you only have a set amount of it. You can make more money, but you can't make more time. When you give someone your time, you are giving them a portion of your life that you'll never get back. Your time is your life. That is why the greatest gift you can give someone is your time.
It is not enough to just say relationships are important; we must prove it by investing time in them. Words alone are worthless. "My children, our love should not be just words and talk; it must be true love, which shows itself in action." Relationships take time and effort, and the best way to spell love is "T-I-M-E. — Rick Warren

I actually don't have any fear of people reading Wild and going out unprepared. Because one of the best things that ever happened to me was that I went out unprepared. And when you really think about it, all I did wrong was that I took too much stuff, which is the most common backpacker mistake. The part that I wasn't prepared for is the part you can't prepare for. — Cheryl Strayed

Actually, there is no way of making vomiting courteous. You have to do the next best thing, which is to vomit in such a way that the story you tell about it later will be amusing. — P. J. O'Rourke

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

These women lived their lives happily. They had been taught, probably by loving parents, not to exceed the boundaries of their happiness regardless of what they were doing. But therefore they could never know real joy. Which is better? Who can say? Everyone lives the way she knows best. What I mean by 'their happiness' is living a life untouched as much as possible by the knowledge that we are really, all of us, alone. That's not a bad thing. Dressed in their aprons, their smiling faces like flowers, leaning to cook, absorbed in their little troubles and perplexities, they fall in love and marry. I think that's great. I wouldn't mind that kind of life. Me, when I'm utterly exhausted by it all, my skin breaks out, on those lonely evenings when I call my friends again and again and nobody's home, then I despise my own life - my birth, my upbringing, everything. I feel only regret for the whole thing. — Banana Yoshimoto

I love Koscielny, I've seen him a lot. He has good leg speed, which reminds me of Lilian [Thuram]. The last time we spoke I told him to work hard and he'll become one of the best defenders in the world. He's at the standard of a Vidic or Pique. I mean that sincerely. — Marcel Desailly

It argued a special genius; he was clearly a case of that. The spark of fire, the point of light, sat somewhere in his inward vagueness as a lamp before a shrine twinkles in the dark perspective of a church; and while youth and early middle-age, while the stiff American breeze of example and opportunity were blowing upon it hard, had made the chamber of his brain a strange workshop of fortune. This establishment, mysterious and almost anonymous, the windows of which, at hours of highest pressure, never seemed, for starers and wonderers, perceptibly to glow, must in fact have been during certain years the scene of an unprecedented, a miraculous white-heat, the receipt for producing which it was practically felt that the master of the forge could not have communicated even with the best intentions. — Henry James

After breakfast they went whooping and prancing out on the bar, and chased each other round and round, shedding clothes as they went, until they were naked, and then continued the frolic far away up the shoal water of the bar, against the stiff current, which latter tripped their legs from under them from time to time and greatly increased the fun. And now and then they stooped in a group and splashed water in each other's faces with their palms, gradually approaching each other, with averted faces to avoid the strangling sprays, and finally gripping and struggling till the best man ducked his neighbor, and then they all went under in a tangle of white legs and arms and came up blowing, sputtering, laughing, and gasping for breath at one and the same time. — Mark Twain

The best social philosophies do not claim any greater objective than that the individual human beings living under such a regime shall have happy individual lives. If there are social philosophies which deny the happiness of the individual life as the final goal and aim of civilization, those philosophies are the product of a sick and unbalanced mind. — Lin Yutang

If you believe in divine intervention, it's because you think that mankind is the best creation of all beings. But for those who do not think so, mankind is nothing but guinea pigs which will someday be divided into two categories, finished goods or the rejects. — Toba Beta

I don't know why one person gets sick, and another does not, but I can only assume that some natural laws which we don't understand are at work. I cannot believe that God "sends" illness to a specific person for a specific reason. I don't believe in a God who has a weekly quota of malignant tumors to distribute, and consults His computer to find out who deserves one most or who could handle it best. "What did I do to deserve this?" is an understandable outcry from a sick and suffering person, but it is really the wrong question. Being sick or being healthy is not a matter of what God decides that we deserve. The better question is "If this has happened to me, what do I do now, and who is there to help me do it?" As we saw in the previous chapter, it becomes much easier to take God seriously as the source of moral values if we don't hold Him responsible for all the unfair things that happen in the world. — Harold S. Kushner

The liturgy of the Eucharist is best understood as a journey or procession. It is the journey of the Church into the dimension of the Kingdom. We use the word 'dimension' because it seems the best way to indicate the manner of our sacramental entrance into the risen life of Christ. Color transparencies 'come alive' when viewed in three dimensions instead of two. The presence of the added dimension allows us to see much better the actual reality of what has been photographed. In very much the same way, though of course any analogy is condemned to fail, our entrance into the presence of Christ is an entrance into a fourth dimension which allows us to see the ultimate reality of life. It is not an escape from the world, rather it is the arrival at a vantage point from which we can see more deeply into the reality of the world. — Alexander Schmemann

I do not know who coined the statement "an idle mind is the devil's playground," but it is true. When camping in dangerous places, it is often recommended that you keep a campfire going to keep the predators away. When we set our hearts on fire, demonic predators stay out of our camp, which is my main point in this chapter. The apostle Paul put it best: "Love never fails" (see 1 Corinthians 13:8). We have spent several chapters talking about how to win spiritual battles in our own lives and in the lives of others. But when all else fails, remember this: Love cannot be defeated. — Kris Vallotton

Unity is the only way in which the people of this country can overthrow the fascists, communists, capitalists, and all the other assholes who claim running a representative government is so difficult. The emphasis has been taken from the Bill of Rights and placed on the type of interpretation of the Constitution that best suits the people in power. — William Powell

When you are in a bad production there are two things you can do. You can do your best or you can leave. I chose to do the third thing which was sulk. — Samuel West

And see those clouds?'
'Hard to miss'
'Those are cumulus clouds. Did you know that?'
'I'm sure I should.'
They're the best ones.'
'How come?'
Because they look the way clouds are supposed to look, the way you draw them when you're a kid. Which is nice, you know? ... — Jennifer E. Smith

I never really understood that massive collaboration involving hundreds of people is what makes movies possible, and it's also why I would agree that curiosity is not the most important human trait; the urge to collaborate is. Heck ... only we have the ability to cooperate to make like online communities and space telescopes and imaginariums and movies. So the great thrill of this whole experience [my novel being made into a movie] for me was ..seeing humanity do what it's best at, which ultimately is not competing but cooperating. — John Green

Those Saints, which God loves best, The Devil tempts not least. — Robert Herrick

The ignorant mass looks upon the man who makes a violent protest against our social and economic iniquities as upon a wild beast, a cruel, heartless monster, whose joy it is to destroy life and bathe in blood; or at best, as upon an irresponsible lunatic. Yet nothing is further from the truth. As a matter of fact, those who have studied the character and personality of these men, or who have come in close contact with them, are agreed that it is their super-sensitiveness to the wrong and injustice surrounding them which compels them to pay the toll of our social crimes. The most noted writers and poets, discussing the psychology of political offenders, have paid them the highest tribute. Could anyone assume that these men had advised violence, or even approved of the acts? Certainly not. Theirs was the attitude of the social student, of the man who knows that beyond every violent act there is a vital cause. — Emma Goldman

All I desire is, that my poverty may not be a burden to myself, or make me so to others; and that is the best state of fortune that is neither directly necessitous nor far from it. A mediocrity of fortune, with gentleness of mind, will preserve us from fear or envy; which is a desirable condition; for no man wants power to do mischief. — Seneca The Younger

My pick for Best Political Move of the Year, which is the decisive (ph) and this means it is actually the best political movement is Bill Clinton getting on the phone and encouraging Donald Trump to run for the president. — Lawrence O'Donnell

You will perceive that economy, scientifically speaking, is a very contracted science; it is in fact a sort of vague mathematics which calculates the causes and effects of man's industry, and shows how it may be best applied. — William Stanley Jevons

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

What I love about the thriller form is that it makes you write a story. You can't get lost in your own genius, which is a dangerous place for writers. You don't want to ever get complacent. If a book starts going too well, I usually know there's a problem. I need to struggle. I need that self-doubt. I need to think it's not the best thing ever. — Harlan Coben

My first day at MGM they decided to bring this lion out, male, and it was not the best time for him to see me. All of a sudden he thought I was in heat and this lion went into the dressing room, which was just a trailer on the sound stage, and went crazy. — Kim Novak

No [movie is really worth watching] which does not either impart valuable knowledge; or set before us some ideal of beauty, strength, or nobility of character. There are enough [great movies] to occupy us during all our short and busy years. If we are wise, we will resolutely avoid all but the richest and the best. — J.R. Miller

God language can tie people into knots, of course. In part, that is because 'God' is not God's name. Referring to the highest power we can imagine, 'God' is our name for that which is greater than all and yet present in each. For some the highest imaginable power will be a petty and angry tribal baron ensconced high above the clouds on a golden throne, visiting punishment on all who don't believe in him. But for others, the highest power is love, goodness, justice, or the spirit of life itself. Each of us projects our limited experience on a cosmic screen in letters as big as our minds can fashion. For those whose vision is constricted (illiberal, narrow-minded people), this can have horrific consequences. But others respond to the munificence of creation with broad imagination and sympathy. Answering to the highest and best within and beyond themselves, they draw lessons and fathom meaning so redemptive that surely it touches the divine. — Forrest Church

When we pillow our heads at night, we need to have things that give us peace. Many such things are available, but one of the best is the simple peace of knowing that we've done things that day that were not easy for us to do. If we can see ourselves as people who are learning little by little to master the hard parts of life, we will live with a greater confidence and be able to serve those around us more helpfully. The ancient adage is true which tells us, A ship in the harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. — Gary Henry

The best practical advice I can give to the present generation is to practice the virtue which the Christians call love. — Bertrand Russell

I would sooner have the approval of my own conscience and know that I had done my duty than to have the praise of all the world and not have the approval of my own conscience. A man's own conscience, when he is living as he should live, is the finest monitor and the best judge in all the world. Men can accuse you of wrong-doing, and it has no effect at all if you know they lie and you have done that which is right — Heber J. Grant

I find myself hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few. — Alexander Pope

Russ decided the best defense was a good offense. "I'm Russell Van Alstyne, Millers Kill chrief of police." He held out his hand. She shook firm, like a guy.
"Clare Fergusson," she said. "I'm the new priest at Saint Alban's. That's the Episcopal Church. At the corner of Elm and Church." there was a faint testiness in her voice. Russ relaxed a fraction. A woman priest. If that didn't beat all.
"I know which it is. There are only four churches in town." He saw the fog creeping along the edges of his glasses again and snatched them off, fishing for a tissue in his pocket. "Can you tell me what happened, um ... " What was he supposed to call her? "Mother?"
"I go by Reverend, Chief. Ms. is fine, too."
"Oh. Sorry. I never met a woman priest before."
"We're just like the men priests, except we're willing to pull over and ask directions. — Julia Spencer-Fleming

Marriage was an economic institution in which you were given a partnership for life in terms of children and social status and succession and companionship. But now we want our partner to still give us all these things, but in addition I want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot, and we live twice as long. So we come to one person, and we basically are asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide: Give me belonging, give me identity, give me continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one. Give me comfort, give me edge. Give me novelty, give me familiarity. Give me predictability, give me surprise. And we think it's a given, and toys and lingerie are going to save us with that. Ideally, though, we're lucky, and we find our soul mate and enjoy that life-changing mother lode of happiness. But a soul mate is a very hard thing to find. — Aziz Ansari

GUARD YOUR WEAK POINT. He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty: and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city. - Bible. The first and best of victories is for a man to conquer himself: to be conquered by himself is, of all things, the most shameful and vile. - Plato. The worst education which teaches self-denial is better than the best which teaches everything else and not that. - John Sterling. Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power. - Seneca. The energy which issues in growth, or assimilates knowledge, must originate in self and be self-directed. - Thomas J. Morgan. — Orison Swett Marden

There are a couple of projects that are sort of on the plate; I haven't closed any of them yet. I'm trying to figure out which one is going to be the best one for me. — Jay Hernandez

I thought the other ones were so obviously - what are we going to do if she burns down the house? The DEA, which I think was maybe the best one because she's wearing the jacket when she goes through the mirror and I think that was kind of amazing because you really weren't expecting that. There's something almost slapstick about this in a way that worried me. It was a little pratfalley with the golf club and the - but I think it probably cut together okay. — Mary-Louise Parker

But the stories you told yourself
which you pretended to recall as if they'd happened every afternoon of an infinite summer
were really a pocketful of days distorted into legend, another jailhouse exaggeration, like the dimensions of those ballpoint-crosshatched tits or of the purported mountains of blow you once used to enjoy, or how you'd bellowed an avenger's roar when you squeezed the trigger of a pistol you'd actually brandished in self-pissing terror. How often had that hydrant even been opened? Did you jet water through a car window, what, twice at best? Summer burned a few afternoons long, in the end. — Jonathan Lethem

Obstacles are not opposing you, but merely and gently re-routing you. It is important not to view that which stands in your way as your 'enemy.' It can often be your best friend, sending you on a detour that takes you around what would have been your biggest stumbling block. — Neale Donald Walsch

Your right is to work, and not to expect the fruit. The slave-owner tells the slave: 'Mind your work, but beware lest you pluck a fruit from the garden. Yours is to take what I give.' God has put us under restriction in the same manner. He tells us that we may work if we wish, but that the reward of work is entirely for Him to give. Our duty is to pray to Him, and the best way in which we can do this is to work with the pick-axe, to remove scum from the river and to sweep and clean our yards. This, certainly, is a difficult lesson to learn. — Mahatma Gandhi

I will know that only those with inferior ability can always be at their best, and I am not inferior. There will be days when I must constantly struggle against forces which would tear me down. Those such as despair and sadness are simple to recognize but there are others which approach with a smile and the hand of friendship and they can also destroy me. Against them, too, I must never relinquish control - — Og Mandino

I prefer to connect with fans from the stage. Like, I don't have a Twitter page, or anything like that. So for me, that's what the show is about. For me - is a way to interact with fans; being up onstage and showing them, through music - which is all I really know - the best way to say thank you. — Nate Ruess