Better Off Single Quotes & Sayings

That's not a goal," Kit said.
"Why? Because it's not yours? Which is better, Kit Meinem of Atyar? A single great victory, or a thousand small ones? — Kij Johnson

Elle!" She chuckled at her sister's frustration. "What? The less interaction I have with other passengers, the better." "That's hardly the point of this trip, remember? Two hundred and fifty single women, Elle. And you haven't been on a date in an eternity. It wouldn't kill you to at least look around a little. Maybe smile at someone for once, and see what happens. — Miranda MacLeod

The evidence of history speaks with a single voice. I do not know any exception to the proposition that if you compare like with like, the freer the system, the better off the ordinary poor people have been. — Milton Friedman

Jesus offered a single incentive to follow him; it was woven into all he said and did. Here is how I would after twenty-four years of following summarize his selling point: Follow me, and you might be happy
or you might not. Follow me, and might be empowered
or you might not. Follow me, and you might have more friends
or you might not. Follow me, and you might have the answers
or you might not. Follow me, and you might be better off
or you might not. If you follow me, you may be worse off in every way you use to measure life. Follow me nevertheless. Because I have an offer that is worth giving up everything you have: you will learn to love well. — Samir Selmanovic

The value of your travels does not hinge on how many stamps you have in your passport when you get home
and the slow nuanced experience of a single country is always better than the hurried, superficial experience of forty countries. — Rolf Potts

Is he crying? I lean forward for a better look and find him staring right at me.
Oh,no.Oh no oh no oh NO.
He stops. "Anna?"
"Um.Hi." My face is on fire. I want to rewind this reel,shut it off, destroy it.
His expression runs from confusion to anger. "Were you listening to that?"
"I'm sorry-"
"I can't believe you were eavesdropping!"
"It was an accident.I was passing by,and ... you were there. And I've heard so much about your father,and I was curious.I'm sorry."
"Well," he says, "I hope what you saw met your grandest expectations." He stalks past me,but I grab his arm.
"Wait! I don't even speak French, remember?"
"Do you proise," he says slowly, "that you didn't understand a single word of our conversation?"
I let go of him. "No.I heard you. I heard the whole thing. — Stephanie Perkins

Making a record is a lot like surgery without an anesthetic. You first have to cut yourself up the middle. Then you have to rip out every single organ, every single part and lay them on a table. You then need to examine the parts, and the reality of the situation hits you. You find yourself saying things like "I didn't know that part was so ugly." Or "I better get a professional opinion about that." You go to bed hollow and then back into the operating room the next day ... facing every fear, every disgusting thing you hate about yourself. Then you pop it all back in, sew yourself shut and perform ... you perform like your life depended on it
and in those perfect moments you find beauty you never knew existed. You find yourself and you friends all over again, you find something to fight for, something to love. Something to show the world. — Gerard Way

When there is a huge crack in your relationship with someone, you wonder what others do in similar situations. I realize I'm trying as hard as I can to present myself as the most unthreatening being in the world, like a small animal. I hunch into myself, avoiding going back to the same places I frequented with him. Obviously I don't eat the kind of food we ate or made together. But I don't think I'm going to move to a new house, because I have the kitchen and the large fridge that I'd wanted for so long. People say you can't possibly like your lover every single second of your life. But that's not true. I liked and looked to my lover every single second we were together. And I still can't admit that he's gone. True sorrow is when one person desires but the other doesn't. I don't know any better words to describe it, and I can't yet express this feeling through any kind of food. The one thing we know about sorrow is that it's a very personal, individual feeling. — Kyung-ran Jo

Hana?" Lena says softly. "Are you okay?"
That single stupid question breaks me. All the metal fingers relax me at once, and the tears they've been holding back come surging up at once. Suddenly I am sobbing and telling her everything: about the raid, and the dogs, and the sounds of skulls cracking underneath regulator's nightsticks. Thinking about it again makes me feel like I might puke. At a certain point, Lena puts her arms around me and starts murmuring things into my hair. I don't even know what she's saying, and I don't care. JUst having her here - solid, real, on my side - makes me feel better than I have in weeks. Slowly I manage to stop crying, swallowing back the hiccups and sobs that are still running through me. I try to tell her that I've missed her, and that I've been stupid and wrong, but my voice is muffled and thick — Lauren Oliver

Jane, who is much better at reading guide books than I am (I always read them on the way back to see what I missed, it's often quite a shock), discovered something wonderful in the book she was reading. Did I know, she asked, that Brisbane was originally founded as a penal colony for convicts who committed new offences after they had arrived in Australia ? I spent a good half hour enjoying this single piece of information. It was wonderful. There we British sat, poor grey sodden creatures, huddling under our grey northern sky that seeped like a rancid dish cloth, busy sending those we wished to punish most severely to sit in bright sunlight on the coast of the Tasman Sea at the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef and maybe do some surfing too. No wonder the Australians have a particular kind of smile that they reserve exclusively for use on the British. — Douglas Adams

it was always slightly off when everyone was in a couple except for one person. the entire group tended to single that person out, as if to try and make him feel better in his aloneness, as though it were an unnatural state. — Meg Wolitzer

A gambler must think of three main quantities, stake, odds, and prize. If the prize is very large, a gambler is prepared to risk a big stake. A gambler who risks his all on a single throw stands to gain a great deal. He also stands to lose a great deal, but on average high-stake gamblers are no better and no worse off than other players who play for low winnings with low stakes. An analogous comparison is that between speculative and safe investors on the stock market. In some ways the stock market is a better analogy than a casino, because casinos are deliberately rigged in the bank's favour (which means, strictly, the high-stakes players will on average end up poorer than low-stake players; and low-stake players poorer than those who don't gamble at all. — Richard Dawkins

By concentrating single-mindedly on your most important task, you can reduce the time required to complete it by 50 percent or more. It has been estimated that the tendency to start and stop a task - to pick it up, put it down, and come back to it - can increase the time necessary to complete the task by as much as 500 percent. Each time you return to the task, you have to familiarize yourself with where you were when you stopped and what you still have to do. You have to overcome inertia and get yourself going again. You have to develop momentum and get into a productive work rhythm. But when you prepare thoroughly and then begin, refusing to stop or turn aside until the job is done, you develop energy, enthusiasm, and motivation. You get better and better and more productive. You work faster and more effectively. — Brian Tracy

Sometimes Christians speak of each decision of their lives as though they were launching a moon-shot where a single miscalculation would send the capsule into a trackless void. Even space scientist do better than that, correcting the flight of their space-probes by radioed signals. God does much better. He knows that we are often incapable of distinguishing trivial decisions from momentous ones, and that we are foolish and imperceptive. He knows---- and keeps us in his hand. — Edmund P. Clowney

A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us. — Henry David Thoreau

I clinked my bottle against his. "To being the only girl a
guy with no standards doesn't want to sleep with." I said,
taking a swig.
"Are you serious?" he asked, pulling the bottle from my
mouth. When I didn't recant, he leaned toward me. "First of
all ... I have standards. I've never been with an ugly woman.
Ever. Second of all, I wanted to sleep with you. I thought
about throwing you over my couch fifty different ways, but I
haven't because I don't see you that way anymore. It's not
that I'm not attracted to you, I just think you're better than
that."
I couldn't hold back the smug smile that crept across my
face. "You think I'm too good for you."
He sneered at my second insult. "I can't think of a single
guy I know that's good enough for you. — Jamie McGuire

Did anybody ever come back from the dead any single one of the millions who got killed did any one of them ever come back and say by god i'm glad i'm dead because death is always better than dishonor? did they say i'm glad i died to make the world safe for democracy? did they say i like death better than losing liberty? did any of them ever say it's good to think i got my guts blown out for the honor of my country? did any of them ever say look at me i'm dead but i died for decency and that's better than being alive? did any of them ever say here i am i've been rotting for two years in a foreign grave but it's wonderful to die for your native land? did any of them say hurray i died for womanhood and i'm happy see how i sing even though my mouth is choked with worms? — Dalton Trumbo

You are so special and important and elegant and smart and kind and worthwhile, and you are so much better than me and everyone else I've ever known in every single way, and you are the only truth I have ever found in this lying world, and I love you to the floor of me, and it breaks me to imagine a future without you in it, and I just want you to know all that, just because. — Seth King

I think he likes you."
I watched Paci join the others, noticing that he was still glancing at me occasionally, and watching other guys who were looking over at Peter and me.
"Really?"
"Yeah. He keeps watching you. Once he heard Bodo wasn't your boyfriend, he was all over that."
I sighed. "Shit."
"Yeah. Exactly. You'd better not go around advertising you're single. There's not a hell of a lot of available jawbreakers if you know what I mean."
My mind raced with the implications. It was stupid of me not to have been thinking about all this stuff before. I guess I was so wrapped up in finding food to eat, a place to live, and companions who wouldn't eat me, I hadn't much considered the other human needs, other than on the most basic level. God, I hope there are no rapists in this group. The last thing I wanted to do was kill a guy in the swamp. — Elle Casey

Stick with the people who love you and don't spend a single second on the rest. Life will be better that way. — James Altucher

Although we tend to think of the brain as a discrete organ - a lump of squidgy tissue - it is better to think of it as part of an elaborate network of nervous tissue that reaches out to every single part of the body. — Tim Birkhead

It is better to break off a thousand friendships, than to endure the sight of a single enemy. — Saadi

Her father would return from China. He'd come back with all his soldiers. He'd pick her up in his strong arms and say that he'd never meant to leave, that he hadn't meant to sail away and leave her and her mother alone in the canals of the Drowned Cities as the Army of God and the UPF and the Freedom Militia came down like a hammer on every single person who'd ever trafficked with the peacekeepers. A stupid little dream for a stupid little war maggot. Mahlia hated herself for dreaming it. But sometimes she curled in on herself and held the stump of her right hand to her chest and pretended that none of it had happened. That her father was still here, and she still had a hand, and everything was going to get better. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Any man for her had better be well-dressed, well-groomed, and well-hung, and if he couldn't get her off at least twice with his mouth, she wouldn't return his calls. Couldn't imagine why she was thirty-nine and still single. — Lauren Gallagher

Right now I think I'm the smartest I've ever been. I'm doing everything great now and everything perfect. Like with this taxes stuff. I'm getting better at that. I'm making sure everything is a write-off. Every single thing. — Kendra Wilkinson

The single word that counted on Wednesday was the one that came from the muzzle of a gun, addressed to somebody on their knees. Better to choose our hour than to accept this. We know each other. We've known each other from the time of Crocodilopolis. [Letter unsent] — John Berger

For me, it's always a failure of the imagination. I have that anxiety that time is passing, that everything is ultimately fleeting and impermanent. I better take advantage of every single moment. — Jason Silva

You're better off single," Bill had always told him. "More marketable. A relationship will threaten your role as America's heartthrob." And always he would add, "Whatever you do, Hill, don't get someone pregnant. It'd be a death knell to your image. — Karen Kingsbury

The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others. Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects - his laziness, incompetence, improvidence, or stupidity. — Henry Hazlitt

Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford, estimates that the students of a very bad teacher will learn, on average, half a year's worth of material in one school year. The students in the class of a very good teacher will learn a year and a half's worth of material. That difference amounts to a year's worth of learning in a single year. Teacher effects dwarf school effects: your child is actually better off in a bad school with an excellent teacher than in an excellent school with a bad teacher. — Malcolm Gladwell

We were giving advice for the single-worst idea to come forward from a group that's been rife with them, it would be this: The idea is this: Let's make the tax code of America better for very rich people; let's give substantial tax relief to the richest people we can find. Forget about the person making $40,000 a year and paying Social Security payroll tax. Forget about all those other people paying income tax; we're here to give tax relief to the richest 2% of America. — Barney Frank

Is this better or worse than being married and living in the suburbs? Better or worse? Who can tell? — Candace Bushnell

What is truly arresting about our kind is better captured in the story of the Tower of Babel, in which humanity, speaking a single language, came so close to reaching heaven that God himself felt threatened. — Steven Pinker

We seem to forget that everything that is good for the environment is a job. Solar panels don't put themselves up. Wind turbines don't manufacture themselves. Houses don't retrofit themselves and put in their own new boilers and furnaces and better-fitting windows and doors. Advanced biofuel crops don't plant themselves. Community gardens don't tend themselves. Farmers' markets don't run themselves. Every single thing that is good for the environment is actually a job, a contract, or an entrepreneurial opportunity. — Van Jones

Happiness is that single and glorious thing which is the very light and sun of the whole animated universe; and where she is not it were better that nothing should be. — Charles Caleb Colton

A woman who dreams of a good home with a man who holds for her only a poor love is putting a $50 saddle on a $20 horse. She'd be far better off single than riding with him. — Nancy E. Turner

The illusion that consumption - and its correlative, income - is desirable probably stems from too great preoccupation with what Knight calls "one-use goods," such as food and fuel, where the utilization and consumption of the good are tightly bound together in a single act or event ... any economy in the consumption of fuel that enables us to maintain warmth or to generate power with lessened consumption again leaves us better off ... there is no great value in consumption itself. — Kenneth E. Boulding

They are all very serious people with stern expressions on their faces. They discuss nothing but important matters and like to philosophize a great deal, while at the same time everyone can see that the workers are detestably fed, sleep without suitable bedding, thirty to forty in a room with bedbugs everywhere, the stench, the dampness, and the moral corruption ... Obviously all our fine talk has gone on simply to hoodwink ourselves and other people as well. Show me the day nurseries that they're talking about so much about. And where are the libraries? Why, they just write about nurseries and libraries in novels, while in fact not a single one even exists. What does exist is nothing but dirt, vulgarity, and a barbarian way of life ... I dislike these terribly serious faces, they frighten me, and I'm afraid of serious conversations, too. We'd be better off if we all would just shut up for a while! — Anton Chekhov

I never thought to ascribe my mother's emotional and physical exhaustion to the lack of a husband and father; rather, I ascribed it to my existence. In other words, I grew up learning the exact opposite of what Eisenhower was taught. I learned that if I didn't exist, the family would be better off. I grew up believing that if I had never been born, things would be easier for the people I loved. (page 35) — Donald Miller

Some kids have never seen what a real tomato looks like off the vine. They don't know where a cucumber comes from. And that really affects the way they view food. So a garden helps them really get their hands dirty, literally, and understand the whole process of where their food comes from. And I wanted them to see just how challenging and rewarding it is to grow your own food, so that they would better understand what our farmers are doing every single day across this country and have an appreciation for ... that American tradition of growing our own food and feeding ourselves. — Michelle Obama

Although it was only a single instrument, each note had the peculiar echoed quality of a thousand harmonics voiced together. There was a whisper behind the strongest note and a shout beneath the softest, and they sang of far off places in long forgotten times. There were no words, but the images of ancient pride, noble heritage, and castles in the sand were imagined from the progression. This was the song that would be played at the birth of a nation, full of hope and promise of better days ahead. This was the song of the end of days with all love and longing lost beyond recall or desire. Farris could see this song playing at her wedding, or her funeral, as a herald of joy and sorrow. She found tears in her eyes and heard herself laugh, and she couldn't say why she was doing either. Her skin was tense and covered with goosebumps, and she shivered with pleasure. — Tobias Wade

I tried so hard to fix what I'd ruined. I tried every single day to be what they wanted. I tried all the time to be better but I never really knew how.
I only know now that the scientist are wrong.
The world is flat.
I know because I was tossed right off the edge and I've been trying to hold on for 17 years. I've been trying to climb back up for 17 years but its nearly impossible to beat gravity when no one is willing to give you a hand.
When no one wants to risk touching you. — Tahereh Mafi

If you're a poet, you do something beautiful. I mean, you're supposed to leave something beautiful after you get off the page and everything. The ones you're talking about don't leave a single, solitary thing beautiful. All that maybe the slightly better ones do is sort of get inside your head and leave something there, but just because they do, just because they know how to leave something, it doesn't have to be a poem for heaven's sake. It may just be some kind of terribly fascinating, syntaxy droppings
excuse the expression. Like Manlius and Esposito and all those poor men. — J.D. Salinger

Bullshit. You lied to me every single day. Were the nights a lie too? Am I just like all those other girls? Maybe I'd be better off with a new owner, at least I know when he fucks me I will hate him. Not like you. You made me love you then you wrecked me with it. Then you gave me back piece by piece every night only to take it all away over again in the morning. — Nashoda Rose

The key ingredient to better content is separating the single from the stream. — David Hahn

I know this much, is all," Franny said. "If you're a poet, you do something beautiful. I mean you're supposed to leave something beautiful after you get off the page and everything. The ones you're talking about don't leave a single, solitary thing beautiful. All that maybe the slightly better ones do is sort of get inside your head and leave something there. — J.D. Salinger

If you come, you better come in force because I will kill every single one of you. My hand won't shake, my aim won't falter. My face will be the last thing you'll see before you die. I jammed my knife into the table and walked out. — Ilona Andrews

A mother-in-law is better than a single and childless political persona, though. — Vladimir Zhirinovsky

People would be a lot better off if they'd enjoy being single. — Lewis Black

Technology transforms people's lives. From mitigating poverty to simplifying processes, ending corruption to providing better services, Technology is omnipresent. It has become the single-most important instrument of human progress. — Narendra Modi

Oliver couldn't walk away. Not when the wallflower needed rescuing. His goddamn Achilles heel, no matter how disastrous the outcome tended to be. He just wished his heroics would work out for once.
He kept his eyes trained on the pretty black-haired American, every muscle tensed for action. An eternity ticked by. No one approached her. She had no one to dance with, to talk to. She looked... lost. Hauntingly lonely. Frightened and defiant all at the same time.
'Twould be better for them both if he turned around right now. Never met her eye. Never exchanged a single word. Left her to her fate and him to his.
It was already too late. — Erica Ridley

What the United States needs is for a unifying, positive, aspirational force to sweep through our national community. American conservatives have a generational opportunity to become precisely this kind of force. We have a shot, if we take it, to help every single American build a better life, and unite our nation in the process. — Arthur C. Brooks

Why is it that people think staying in a bad relationship is better than being single? Don't they know that being single is the first step to finding a great relationship? — Jennifer O'Neill

The central idea of love is not even a relationship commitment, the first thing is a personal commitment to be the best version of yourself with or without that person that you're with. You have to every single day-mind, body, and spirit-wake up with a commitment to be better. — Will Smith

I remember every player - every single one - who wore the Tennessee orange, a shade that our rivals hate, a bold, aggravating color that you can usually find on a roadside crew, "or in a correctional institution," as my friend Wendy Larry jokes. But to us the color is a flag of pride, because it identifies us as Lady Vols and therefore as women of an unmistakable type. Fighters. I remember how many of them fought for a better life for themselves. I just met them halfway. — Pat Summitt

If the world were to end tomorrow and we could choose to save only one thing as the explanation and memorial to who we were, then we couldn't do better than the Natural History Museum, although it wouldn't contain a single human. The systematic Linnean order, the vast inquisitiveness and range of collated knowledge and beauty would tell all that is the best of us. — A.A. Gill

The goblins of the city may hold committees to divide a single potato, but the strong and the cruel still sit on the hill, and drink vodka, and wear black furs, and slurp borscht by the pail, like blood. Children may wear through their socks marching in righteous parades, but Papa never misses his wine with supper. Therefore, it is better to be strong and cruel than to be fair. At least, one eats better that way. And morality is more dependent on the state of one's stomach than of one's nation. — Catherynne M Valente

We humans can never learn everything. The purpose of human life is not to learn everything. Rather it is to learn from every single walk of life and put that knowledge into practice in the pursuit of making human life a little better. — Abhijit Naskar

I want India to come into her own and that state cannot be better defined by any single word than Swaraj. — Mahatma Gandhi

Collect impressions. Don't be in a hurry to write them down. Because that's something music can do better than painting: it can centralise variations of colour and light within a single picture a truth generally ignored, obvious as it is. — Claude Debussy

Technology is permeating every single thing we do ... And to the extent that we can better expose our young people to all the different ways that technology can be used, not just for video games or toys, we're planning for the future. — Marc Morial

Way back last summer I asked some of the most outstanding educational minds in this Nation to tackle this problem. I gave them a single instruction: find out how we can best invest each education dollar so that it will do the most good. Your support and the support of every leading education group proves that they did their job better than I had hoped, because for the first time we have succeeded in finding goals which unite us rather than divide us. — Lyndon B. Johnson

A Champion is all they can be in every facet of their lives. They prioritize what they need to get done. But for me it's someone who works every single day on being a better person. — Shannon Higgins-Cirovski

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

Failure instructs better than success. A single death shapes the surgeon's psyche in a way that fifty "saves" cannot. — Frank T. Vertosick Jr.

Would this country be better off if no one drank? Yes, it would be, but we tried that; it doesn't work. I don't want to tell anybody that they can't have as many drinks as they want every single night of the week as long as they don't get behind the wheel of a car. — Gary Johnson

I don't know that you ever get over this kind of loss. The fact that Chris is gone is a sharp hurt I feel every single day. It's really hard. Some days are better than others, but it's going to be hard every day for the rest of my life. — Jon Krakauer

It's been a long, hard day, and bit by bit you have been transformed into a single, vertical, barely ambulatory ache. All that awaits you now is another long, lonely night on the hard, cold ground. "What am I doing out here?" you ask yourself. "I must be mad!" Indeed, you are mad. Otherwise right now you could be warm and cozy and stretched out in front of your beloved TV, munching popcorn and swigging down ice-cold brew, just like a civilized person. "Oh well," you sigh to yourself. "I'd better stop and get a fire going. — Patrick F. McManus

Listening to as many guitar solos as possible is the best method for someone in the early stages. But saxophone solos can be helpful. They're interesting because they are all single notes, and therefore can be repeated on the guitar. If you can copy a sax solo you're playing very well, because the average saxophonist can play much better than the average guitarist. — Ritchie Blackmore

We have babies because we want them to love us, to make us important, but the only make us tired and fat and stinking of spit up because they're babies, not saviors. Their fathers leave us, sick of crap and sour milk, sweatpants and tears.
But the babies still need all of us, only there isn't anything left to give because we based our worth on the lowlifes who knocked us up and around.
So our babies end up screwed up and screwed with because not we're single again, too, so we're bringing home guys who secretly like pink satin baby skin more than our silvery stretch marks. We don't see what we should see because having anyone is till supposedly better than being alone. — Laura Wiess

Single cells analyze thousands of stimuli from the microenvironment they inhabit. The more awareness an organism has of its environment, the better its chances for survival. When cells band together they increase their awareness exponentially. Division of labor among the cells in the community offers an additional survival advantage. The efficiency it enables more cells to live on less. Evolution is based on an instructive, cooperative interaction among organisms and their environment enables life forms to survive and evolve in a dynamic world. — Bruce H. Lipton

Landscapes are culture before they are nature; constructs of the imagination projected onto wood and water and rock. It is ... difficult to think of a single natural system that has not, for better or worse, been substantially modified by human culture. The cultural habits of humanity have always made room for the sacredness of nature. — Simon Schama

We got up at 6am to go to school for a few years and we found it so challenging. Some people in our country have woken up at 6am every single morning for decades now so that this nation can wake up and see great mornings. I salute all those wonderful super humans who are inspiring a better tomorrow. Thank you, Teachers! — Sharad Vivek Sagar

Gideon and I sit there in the dark, wordless for a while, only our ragged breaths disturbing the silence. Memories of my sister overwhelm me - I see her impish grin as she leans over me at the orphanage, tugging on my hair until I wake up. I remember us climbing up to the roof as kids, sitting cross-legged next to the herbs and vegetables our caretakers were growing while we read the English books Rose had "borrowed" from her class at school. And then there was L.A. - all of our hope for a better life so quickly crushed, but Rose never let despair overtake her. She was there after every single night to hold me until the pain went away. And later, when I got numb to it all, she still made a point of holding me, of promising me that one day things would be different. — Paula Stokes

It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death. — Maimonides

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