Betterness Quotes & Sayings

This is what schizophrenia is: endless despair, endless, inconclusive treatment; endless clutching at little straws of betterness; endless realisation that that is all they are, is all there is. — Tim Salmon

Can I see another's woe,
And not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another's grief,
And not seek for kind relief?
Can I see a falling tear,
And not feel my sorrow's share?
Can a father see his child
Weep, nor be with sorrow filled?
Can a mother sit and hear
An infant groan, an infant fear?
No, no! never can it be!
Never, never can it be! — William Blake

There are different types of people in the world. There are people who accept what's in front of them unquestioningly. The live in the dark. In defeat. Ignoring what the future might bring or how they might help to make things happen. Then there are people like me. Optimists. They too live in the dark, in times like these, but dream of the light. I trust in the possibilities of betterness. I believe there is more to life than this. I have to. There's no other choices for me. — Jeyn Roberts

Katie cleared her throat again. Then she looked into the window at her gums. She said, To change the subject, do you think I could tell if I had gingivitis? — M T Anderson

It was the widest concerted attack ever. Hundreds of ships on at least four sides. Dozens of stations, millions of lives. Among the stars, it didn't stand out. — James S.A. Corey

Quality ... you know what it is, yet you don't know what it is. But that's self-contradictory. But some things are better than others, that is, they have more quality. But when you try to say what the quality is, apart from the things that have it, it all goes poof! There's nothing to talk about. But if you can't say what Quality is, how do you know what it is, or how do you know that it even exists? If no one knows what it is, then for all practical purposes it doesn't exist at all. But for all practical purposes it really does exist. What else are the grades based on? Why else would people pay fortunes for some things and throw others in the trash pile? Obviously some things are better than others ... but what's the betterness? ... So round and round you go, spinning mental wheels and nowhere finding anyplace to get traction. What the hell is Quality? What is it? — Robert M. Pirsig

There's no reason to assume that my idea of what's better would really be better. I resent it when other people try to inflict their ideas of betterness on me. I don't think they know. And I can't see any authority on the horizon that's got any answers that seem worthwhile. Most of the things that are suggested are probably detrimental to your mental health. — Frank Zappa

People are looking for someone to listen to them. Someone willing to grant them time, to listen to their dramas and difficulties. This is what I call the "apostolate of the ear," and it is important. Very important. I feel compelled to say to confessors: talk, listen with patience, and above all tell people that God loves them. — Pope Francis

It's a songwriter's dream to have a song recorded and run up the charts. — Valerie Simpson

Maybe falling in love isn't about someone wrapping his arm around you and shooting the bad guys while shielding you and then promising he'll always be around to do that. Maybe it's just about finding the right person for a certain time in your life. Maybe I do love him because he was kind to me, because he gave me a place to belong. Because he kidnapped me. And maybe one day, he'll let me go. Or I'll let him go.
It doesn't mean we didn't love each other. It doesn't mean he didn't give me a betterness that will last my whole life. It just means things shift quietly.
I decide it's okay for me to be in love with him right now. I don't have to tell him about it. I just have to show him. — J.A. Rock

[The American public demands] a sense of legitimacy from and in the presidency. There is more to this than dignity, more than propriety. The president is expected to personify our betterness in an inspiring way, to express in what he does and is, not just what he says, a moral idealism which, in much of the public mind, is the very opposite of politics. — James David Barber

Judith Brigham expected her daughter to remain a spinster the rest of her life. In the more pungent phraseology of her soon-to-be stepfather, "Margaret had a face like the ass end of a gasoline truck and a body to match." He — Stephen King

I was often asked how one could even make sense of this. Isn't the category of knowledge something that we project upon the world, rather than something that we discover in it? — Hilary Kornblith

There is a difference between this world and the world of Faery, but it is not immediately perceptible. Everything that is here is there, but the things that are there are better than those that are here. All things that are bright are there brighter. There is more gold in the sun and more silver in the moon of that land. There is more scent in the flowers, more savour in the fruit. There is more comeliness in the men and more tenderness in the women. Everything in Faery is better by this one wonderful degree, and it is by this betterness you will know that you are there if you should ever happen to get there. — James Stephens

To the Christian, love is the works of love. To say that love is a feeling or anything of the kind is an unchristian conception of love. That is the aesthetic definition and therefore fits the erotic and everything of that nature. But to the Christian love is the works of love. Christ's love was not an inner feeling, a full heart and what not, it was the work of love which was his life. — Soren Kierkegaard

Some ... sexist evil probably predates religion and can be ascribed to our biology, but there is no question that religion promulgates and renders sacrosanct attitudes toward women that would be unseemly in a brachiating ape. — Sam Harris