Care A Little Less Quotes & Sayings

Our feelings about menstruation are the image of what it is to be a woman in this culture. While menstruation and the fear of revealing evidence of loss of body control bear possibilities of humiliation for women of which men are not aware, it is humiliating too to be that sex whose voice and presence carry less significance. It is humiliating to speak the same words as a man and have his heard, and not yours. It is humiliating to feel invisible when God gave you a body as solid as his. It is humiliating that women are accorded little dignity unless they are married. We twist these humiliations around, of course, and say it is glorious to have a man fight our battles for us, put us on a pedestal, take care of us. It is, if you enjoy being dependent on someone else. — Nancy Friday

There are many of us who live alongside others, less fortunate, watching them go through everyday suffering for one reason or another, and we're not moving even our little finger to help them. It's in human nature, unfortunately: for the most part, the only people we genuinely care about are ourselves. However, once in a while we encounter different species, different kind of human beings among us: full of compassion, willing and wanting to help, and doing so with joy and happiness. Those are a rarity. But you know what, my dear? Being one of them is not a special calling- it's a choice. So what will you choose, huh? — Yoleen Valai

And she said it was a pity, because my father was so "keen", and what did I care about?
So I said, well, I was not quite sure, but on the whole I thought I liked having everything very tidy and calm all around me, and not being bothered to do things, and laughing at the kind of joke other people didn't think at all funny, and going for country walks, and not being asked to express opinions about things (like love, and isn't so-and-so peculiar?). So then she said, oh, well, didn't I think I could try to be a little less slack, because of Father, and I said no, I was I afraid I couldn't; and after that she left me alone. But all the others still said I was no good. — Stella Gibbons

No duties. I don't have to be profound.
I don't have to be artistically perfect.
Or sublime. Or edifying.
I just wander. I say: 'You were running,
That's fine. It was the thing to do.'
And now the music of the worlds transforms me.
My planet enters a different house.
Trees and lawns become more distinct.
Philosophies one after another go out.
Everything is lighter yet not less odd.
Sauces, wine vintages, dishes of meat.
We talk a little of district fairs,
Of travels in a covered wagon with a cloud of dust behind,
Of how rivers once were, what the scent of calamus is.
That's better than examining one's private dreams.
And meanwhile it has arrived. It's here, invisible.
Who can guess how it got here, everywhere.
Let others take care of it. Time for me to play hooky.
Buena notte. Ciao. Farewell. — Czeslaw Milosz

We come to the page with too many expectations. Each poor little story is like a trembling donkey upon which we heap tons of weight. We don't just want a good book, we want a bestseller. If it isn't perfect, we hate it. If it isn't 100% right, it's 1000% wrong. Problem: we care too damn much. It's all or nothing with us and that's the kind of dichotomy that shanks our happiness right in the kidneys. So: care less. Ease off the stress stick. Have more fun with what you're doing. When your kids and dogs play in the mud, you can either freak out that they're too dirty, or you can laugh and jump in the mud, too. So, fuck it: jump in the damn mud already. — Chuck Wendig

Glamour to the outside world is taking some sense of care in your appearance and should give you inner confidence. You can do a full on look or you can do a 'less is more' look but you want to have those components, those little things that are special to you. — Zac Posen

If we remember what we have been called to and devote ourselves to praying for what is best, we may care a little less about the opinions of a secular world and devote ourselves more scrupulously to serving the only Master whose opinion matters. — D. A. Carson

Do not worry, little heart. They are only feelings. So care a little less, the ride will be much more than what it seems. — Robert M. Drake

When your garden is finished I hope it will be more beautiful that you anticipated, require less care than you expected, and have cost only a little more than you had planned. — Thomas Church

this integration of Jefferson and Jesus is in many ways how members of the evangelical right can oppose abortion yet ignore the needs of disenfranchised members of society, how they can rage against sexual revolutions and offer little critique on economic greed or mass consumption, and how they can keep labor unions and government in check while not doing the same to Wall Street, insurance companies, and other big American businesses. Of course, much of today's evangelical political doctrine has become so radical, so driven by fear and hyperbole that it's more or less a parody of the doctrines of Thomas Jefferson and Jesus, a culture where the poor in spirit are not blessed, they are marginalized and expected to care for themselves. — Matthew Paul Turner

It's a revolution. But it's the sort of revolution that no one will notice. It might get a little shadier. Buildings might function better. You might have less money to earn because your food is all around you and you don't have any energy costs. Giant amounts of money might be freed up in society so that we can provide for ourselves better ... So it's a revolution. But permaculture is anti-political. There is no room for politicians or administrators or priests. And there are no laws either. The only ethics we obey are: care of the earth, care of people, and reinvestment in those ends. — Bill Mollison

My life itself couldn't very conceivably be less Zenful than it is, and what little I've been able to apprehend - I pick that verb with care - of the Zen experience has been a by-result of following my own rather natural path of extreme Zenlessness. — J.D. Salinger

I hear very little from evangelicals about the impact of gun proliferation on violent crime, much less an issue like nuclear disarmament. I hear almost nothing about health care for the poor and protecting widows and orphans, both biblical mandates, and scant mention of the thirteen million children who die worldwide from malnutrition in a year. I hear scornful dismissal of concerns about global warming, an issue viewed seriously by the vast majority of scientists. I hear talk about family values, but when an administration proposed legislation to allow mothers to take unpaid leave after childbirth, conservative religious groups opposed it. — Philip Yancey

Wait a second," Four says. I turn toward him, wondering which version of Four I'll see now-the one who scolds me, or the one who climbs Ferris wheels with me. He smiles a little, but the smile doesn't spread to his eyes, which look less tense and worried.
"You belong here, you know that?" he says. "You belong with us. It'll be over soon, so just hold on, okay?"
He scratches behind his ear and looks away, like he's embarrassed by what he said.
I stare at him. I feel my heartbeat everywhere, even in my toes. I feel like doing something bold, but I could just as easily walk away. I am not sure which option is smarter, or better. I am not sure that I care.
I reach out and take his hand. His fingers slide between mine. I can't breathe.
I stare up at him, and he stares down at me. For a long moment, we stay that way. Then I pull my hand away and run after Uriah and Lynn and Marlene. Maybe now he thinks I'm stupid, or strange. Maybe it was worth it. — Veronica Roth

To me, the raveled sleeve of care is never more painlessly knitted up than in an evening alone in a chair snug yet copious, with a good light and an easily held little volume sloppily printed and bound in inexpensive paper. I do not ask much of it - which is just as well, for that is all I get. It does not matter if I guess the killer, and if I happen to discover, along around page 208, that I have read the work before, I attribute the fact not to the less than arresting powers of the author, but to my own lazy memory. I like best to have one book in my hand, and a stack of others on the floor beside me, so as to know the supply of poppy and mandragora will not run out before the small hours. In all reverence I say Heaven bless the Whodunit, the soothing balm on the wound, the cooling hand on the brow, the opiate of the people.
Book review Of Ellery Queen: The New York Murders, from Esquire, January 1959 — Dorothy Parker

He felt a little less paranoid, and Cole was right - they weren't boys. They were men capable of taking care of their own. It came down to him wanting to do their dirty work for them. But they were good. They'd be fine. Instead he needed to work on getting the violence out of his system. It was his go-to drug. He actually couldn't think of a conflict he hadn't fought or killed his way out of. To stand in front of Eve again, he needed to handle himself differently. — Debra Anastasia

As I got older, I got craftier and less obvious, but I've always put a lot of energy and effort into people liking me. That's why I've never understood the compliment "effortless." People love to say: "She just walked into the party, charming people with her effortless beauty." I don't understand that at all. What's so wrong with effort, anyway? It means you care. What about the girl who "walked into the party, her determination to please apparent on her eager face"? Sure, she might seem a little crazy, and, yes, maybe everything she says sounds like conversation starters she found on a website, but at least she's trying. Let's give her a shot! — Mindy Kaling

I'm sick of you all acting like I'm this English freak raining on your little math-science parade. Sung seems to think my contribution to this team is a little less than everyone else's."
"Anyone can memorize book titles!" Sung shouted. "Oh, please.Like I care what you think? You don't even know the difference between Keats and Byron. — Holly Black

They had pulled me from the hemorrhaging, dying body of my mother and turned me over to the care of the man who was not my father. He had taken me home to their tiny apartment above the old hardware store and done what little he knew to take care of me.
It took less than six weeks for him to realize his mistake. Maybe even less than six hours, but he never abandoned me. He clung to me as though I was the last remnant of some great and powerful love.
And that gave me hope that maybe my mother was really something else and not just some girl who got knocked up by a guy whose name she didn't even know. She was something special, someone worthy of a man's loyalty and devotion.
Rocky Evans — Gwenn Wright

Of the little less than a million eligibles roaming around, 5 percent don't know their sign and don't even care. Another 5 percent are tied to their mothers by a food fixation. That leaves only 20 percent who are searching for a girl who will pick up their clothes, run their baths, burn her fingers shelling their three-minute eggs, run their errands, bear them a child every year, look like a fashion model, tend their needs when they are sick, and hold down a full-time job outside the home to make payments on their boat. — Erma Bombeck

Small towns seem to appreciate things a little bit more. They're less jaded and they're more kind of authentic and more themselves and they don't care as much. — Pauly Shore

I suppose in reality not a leaf goes yellow in autumn without ceasing to care about its sap and making the parent tree very uncomfortable by long growling and grumbling - but surely nature might find some less irritating way of carrying on business if she would give her mind to it. Why should the generations overlap one another at all? Why cannot we be buried as eggs in neat little cells with ten or twenty thousand pounds each wrapped round us in Bank of England notes, and wake up, as the sphex wasp does, to find that its papa and mamma have not only left ample provision at its elbow, but have been eaten by sparrows some weeks before it began to live consciously on its own account? — Samuel Butler

We identify our secrets, our pasts and their blotches, with our identity, that revealing our habits or losses or deeds somehow makes us one less of oneself. But it's just the opposite, more is more is more
more bleeding, more giving. These things, details, stories, whatever are like the skin shed by snakes, who leave theirs for anyone to see. What does he care where it is, who sees it, this snake, and his skin? He leaves it where it molts. Hours, days or months later, we come across a snake's long-shed skin and we know something of the snake, we know that it's of this approximate girth and that approximate length, but we know very little else. Do we know where the snake is now? What the snake is thinking now? No. By now the snake could be wearing fur; the snake could be selling pencils in Hanoi. The skinks no longer his, he wore it because it grew from him, but then it dried and slipped off and he and everyone could look at it. — Dave Eggers

I was a closet pacifier advocate. So were most of my friends. Unknown to our mothers, we owned thirty or forty of those little suckers that were placed strategically around the house so a cry could be silenced in less than thirty seconds. Even though bottles were boiled, rooms disinfected, and germs fought one on one, no one seemed to care where the pacifier had been. — Erma Bombeck

The world we know is dwarfed by the worlds we don't. Why not explore them all? Being out there in the wilderness, you have no idea what'll happen, really. It could be just you and this gorgeous night sky, or maybe you are surfing and some big ass wave comes at you, and if you don't ride that sucker, it'll put you under and have you for lunch, or you might turn a corner on a hike and there's some beautiful deer and her little fawn-- now that has meaning, all of those things, and I need more of that and less of trying to make money so I can pay bills to live in a way I just don't care about anymore. — Erica Ferencik

They call me a monster and if it were untrue the weight of my crimes would pin me to the ground. I have maimed and I have murdered and if this mountain stood but a little higher I would cut the angels from their heaven. I care less for accusations than for the rain that soaks me, that runs down every limb. I spit both from my lips. Judgment has always left a sour taste. — Mark Lawrence

Here in This New Place Is Your Memory"

For P. Smith

Here in this new place it is reasonable to own
a dog or to tell somebody you've been needing
them less. A tree is always on a journey
toward becoming a better tree, limbs waving like eager sails
on an anchored ship. It is sad when you understand that nothing
else can come along. It is worse when you care
a little less. What you love requires a prioritized list, thus
that nothing is equal but to itself. And you are equal to a dangerous
ivory moon. Here there is sacrifice on the doorstep
of beauty. Here there is an altar made of sand. It dismantles
no less than itself to please the sea. — Wendy Xu

It's been my experience that most folk who ride trains could care less where they're going. For them it's the journey itself and the people they meet along the way. You see, at every stop this train makes, a little bit of America, a little bit of your country, gets on and says hello. That's why trains are so popular at Christmas. People get on to meet their country over the holidays. They're looking for some friendship, a warm body to talk to. People don't rush on a train, because that's not what trains are for. How do you put a dollar value on that? What accounting line does that go on? — David Baldacci

When you assume you make a you-know-what out of U and me. Yep, so let's stop assuming so much. We are often quick to explain details to strangers, who we understand might not be reading our minds, but we often assume that those people closest to us, those who share our household such as spouses, children parents and siblings, can read our minds. And we get upset with them when they don't go figure.
I wonder how many angry words are directed not at an action or inaction as would at first appear, but simply at the fact that somebody did not read our minds.
So let's give those people we care most about the benefit of the doubt and do a little less assuming and a little more explaining. — David Leonhardt

Jessica James, you're going to have to get used to me wanting to take care of you and fix your troubles."
"I'm not a damsel. I don't need rescuing."
"I know. You're capable and stubborn, and I like that about you a whole lot. But maybe you could pretend to be a little less capable from time to time?"
"To what end?"
"So I get to feel good about rescuing you. — Penny Reid

Don't appeal to mercy to God the Father up in the sky, little man, because he's not at home and never was at home, and couldn't care less. What you do with yourself, whether you are happy or unhappy- live or die- is strictly your business and the universe doesn't care. In fact you may be the universe and the only cause of all your troubles. But, at best, the most you can hope for is comradeship with comrades no more divine (or just as divine) as you are. So quit sniveling and face up to it- 'Thou art God!' — Robert A. Heinlein

Are you using me simply as a vulgar tool? Don't you care for me the least little bit? Let me suggest that for a girl in your-your ambiguous position, you are too proud, by several shades. Don't go back to Roger in a hurry! You're not the unspotted maiden you were but two short days ago. Who am I, what am I, to the people whose opinion you care for? A very low fellow, madam; and yet with me you've gone far to cast your lot. If you're not prepared to do more, you should have done less.
Nora, Nora," he went on, breaking into a vein none the less revolting for being more ardent, "I confess I don't understand you! But the more you puzzle me the more you fascinate me; and the less you like me the more I love you. What has there been between you and Lawrence? Hang me if I can understand! Are you an angel of purity, or are you the most audacious of flirts? — Henry James

Long ago it was said that "one half of the world does not know how the other half lives." That was true then. It did not know because it did not care. The half that was on top cared little for the struggles, and less for the fate of those who were underneath, so long as it was able to hold them there and keep its own seat. There came a time when the discomfort and consequent upheavals so violent, that it was no longer an easy thing to do, and then the upper half fell to inquiring what was the matter. Information on the subject has been accumulating rapidly since, and the whole world has had its hands full answering for its old ignorance. — Jacob A. Riis

Tipsy, they tumbled early into bed - to get as much sleep as they could. So they would feel less hunger. The summer catch had been poor; there wasn't much food. They ate with care and looked sideways at the old: the old were gluttons, everybody knew it, and what was the good of feeding them? It wouldn't harm them to starve a little.
The hungry dogs howled. The women rinsed the children's bellies with hot water three times a day, so they wouldn't cry so much for food. The old starved silently. ("The North") — Yevgeny Zamyatin

It's my experience that most folk who ride trains could care less where they're going. For them it's the journey itself and the people they meet along the way. You see, at every stop this train makes, a little bit of America, a little bit of your country, gets on and says hello. — David Baldacci

While large, impersonal orphanages provided children with minimal care and attention from an ever-changing series of nurses, children in loving foster families had available to them surrogate caregivers with whom they readily formed attachments. Children in foster care also demonstrated significantly less distress about the separation from their mothers, and they overcame their distress more readily when reunited with their own families. Therefore, it is not separation per se that is so devastating, but rather the extended stay in a strange, bleak or socially insensitive environment with little or no contact with the mother or other familiar figures. — Patricia K. Kerig

When I spoke to a colleague about Joe's report, her face registered surprise. She said, "Is it possible for a death in a nursing home to be premature?"
Joe told me, "If it were happening in any other kind of institution, to any other part of the population - workers, say, or children - there'd be an outcry, media, inquiries, swift intervention. The truth is we do not value the last months or years of a person's life. The remaining life of someone old. Particularly if they are in residential care."
If we are all just economic units who lift or lean, then very little is "lost" when a nursing home resident or anyone getting on in their years dies prematurely. In fact money might be saved - one less nursing-home bed to fund, and the kids can finally get their hands on the house. — Karen Hitchcock

Al Gore, best described by CNN sound tech Mark A. as "amazingly lifelike"; Steve Forbes, with his wet forehead and loony giggle; G.W. Bush's patrician smirk and mangled cant; even Clinton himself, with his big red fake-friendly face and "I feel your pain." Men who aren't enough like human beings even to hate-what one feels when they loom into view is just an overwhelming lack of interest, the sort of deep disengagement that is often a defense against pain. Against sadness. In fact, the likeliest reason why so many of us care so little about politics is that modern politicians make us sad, hurt us deep down in ways that are hard even to name, much less talk about. It's way easier to roll your eyes and not give a shit. You probably don't want to hear about all this, even. — David Foster Wallace

Men cannot be men - much less good or heroic men - unless their actions have meaningful consequences to people they truly care about. Strength requires an opposing force, courage requires risk, mastery requires hard work, honor requires accountability to other men. Without these things, we are little more than boys playing at being men, and there is no weekend retreat or mantra or half-assed rite of passage that can change that. A rite of passage must reflect a real change in status and responsibility for it to be anything more than theater. No reimagined manhood of convenience can hold its head high so long as the earth remains the tomb of our ancestors — Jack Donovan

he had sixty thousand as good soldiers as ever trod the earth; better than any European soldiers, because they not only worked like a machine but the machine thought. European armies know very little what they are fighting for, and care less. — Ulysses S. Grant