Carefully Planned Quotes & Sayings

Now, over the years I've been forced to conclude that most celebrations don't work. The more carefully planned a signal occasion, the more likely it will trickle by on a pale tide of dilute well-meaningness. Christmases, birthdays, award ceremonies, and weddings are swallowed by planning and preparation on the one side and cleaning up on the other, and almost never seem to have actually happened. — Lionel Shriver

Before I became President, in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, there had been fairly dramatic, and I think excessive, reductions in the capability of our military forces, and as a former military man myself - I was a professional naval officer, a submarine officer - I thought it was better, on a step-by-step, very carefully planned way, to increase the technical, or technological, capability of our weapons systems. — Jimmy Carter

Having arrived at this point, he had found no direction in which to go save that of further withdrawal into a subjectivity which refused existence to any reality or law but its own. During these postwar years he had lived in solitude and carefully planned ignorance of what was happening in the world. Nothing had importance save the exquisitely isolated cosmos of his own consciousness. Then little by little he had had the impression that the light of meaning, the meaning of everything was dying. Like a flame under a glass it had dwindled, flickered and gone out, and all existence, including his own hermetic structure from which he had observed existence, had become absurd and unreal. — Paul Bowles

In my innocent cynicism I didn't see that Cleveland was not trying to look tough; he just didn't care. Which is to say, he knew what he was, and was, if not content with, at least resigned to knowing that he was an alcoholic. And an alcoholic is nothing if not sensitive to the proper time and place for his next drink; his death is one of the most carefully planned and prepared for events in the world. — Michael Chabon

By using our international network, utilising templates and thinking ahead with pre-planned pages that contain carefully selected relevant news, we can deliver stories that other people just don't have. And that will release resources for the web. — Lionel Barber

After the trial, I watched as another female pathologist collected maggots from a spinal column found in the desert. There was a decomposed head, too, and before leaving work she planned to simmer it and study the exposed cranium for contusions. I was asked to pass this information along to the chief medical examiner, and, looking back, I perhaps should have chosen my words more carefully. 'Fire up the kettle,' I told him. 'Ol'-fashioned skull boil at five p.m. — David Sedaris

True heroics must be carefully planned - and strenuously avoided. — Steven Brust

ominous murmur ran through the legion of onlookers, who had heretofore maintained an uncharacteristic silence. Their resentment was palpable. Five days later Coligny was assassinated, and the streets of Paris ran with blood as the entire Huguenot wedding party was hunted down and slaughtered in one of the most infamous episodes in French history, known today as the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre. But this horrific mass murder, which claimed more than five thousand martyrs over the course of a week, was no spontaneous bloodletting. Rather, it was the denouement of a carefully constructed plot that utilized the unsuspecting Margot as both victim and bait to lure Coligny and his faction to their doom, an intrigue planned, instigated, and executed by the one individual in France powerful enough — Nancy Goldstone

There can be no doubt that these attacks are deliberate acts of terrorism, carefully planned and coordinated and as such I condemn them utterly. Terrorism must be fought resolutely wherever it appears. — Kofi Annan

No, it wasn't an accident, I didn't say that. It was carefully planned, down to the tiniest mechanical and emotional detail. But it was a mistake. — John Paxton

When things go awry, if they are mostly an inconvenience to you or a threat to your ego, instead of getting furious, can you laugh?
Sometimes the even the best-laid plans, the most carefully planned events can turn out quite differently than planned. — James Martin

The last five years had been a series of carefully orchestrated events. Every move, every strategy had been poured over in painstaking detail before it was set into motion.
Pieces on a chess board.
A collision of fate and circumstance. I'd planned for every hitch. Every contingency. Except the one that blindsided me like a vat of acid to the face.
I fell in love with her. — A. Zavarelli

I planned my death carefully, unlike my life, which meandered along from one thing to another, despite my feeble attempts to control it. — Margaret Atwood

History is not happenstance: it is conspiratorial. Carefully planned and executed by people in power. — George Carlin

She still said nothing and I purposely did not look at her because I did not wish either to press her or to embarrass her. I was in love with her, and my heart went out to her as she tried to fathom her own feelings. I felt like saying: Don't bother to explain, darling. I know it all.
Instead, the calculating side of my mind was at work: the side that plotted carefully, planned to get what it wanted and nearly always succeeded. — John Bingham

9/11 was a deliberate, carefully planned evil act of the long-waged war on the West by Koran-inspired soldiers of Allah around the world. They hated us before George W. Bush was in office. They hated us before Israel existed. And the avengers of the religion of perpetual outrage will keep hating us. — Michelle Malkin

Any carefully planned thing destroys the creativity. You can't think your way through a story; you have to live it. So, you don't build a story; you allow it to explode. — Ray Bradbury

Do all that you can to make your baptismal services a spiritual, Christ-centered experience. A new convert deserves to have this be a sacred, carefully planned, and spiritually uplifting moment. The prayers, the hymns, surely the talks that are given-all ought to be focused on the significance of this ordinance and the Atonement of Christ, which makes it efficacious. — Jeffrey R. Holland

The greatest events occur without intention playing any part in them; chance makes good mistakes and undoes the most carefully planned undertaking. The world's greatest events are not produced, they happen. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Most people, in committing a suicidal act, are just as muddled as when they do anything important under emotional stress. Carefully planned acts of suicide are as rare as carefully planned acts of homicide. — Erwin Stengel

Experimental observations are only experience carefully planned in advance, and designed to form a secure basis of new knowledge. — Sir Ronald Fisher

I am all in favour of spontaneity, providing it is carefully planned and ruthlessly controlled. — John Gielgud

It is impossible to foretell the future with any degree of accuracy, that it is impossible to rehearse life. A fault in the scenery, a face in the audience, an interruption of the audience on to the stage, and all our carefully planned gesture mean nothing, or mean too much. — E. M. Forster

We want to take our time with 'Descender' and let the story unfold at its own pace. But we have carefully planned each world and worked to give each its own look and feel. And each of the 9 core worlds will play a role in the series. — Jeff Lemire

In a play, you know where you start and end and all the stops you have to do, but in television, you can't construct this carefully planned out arc for your character. You often get a script and you're shooting it two days later, and you don't know what's going to happen next. It's one of the harder things that I've done. — Caitlin Fitzgerald

At university, one of my areas of study was Victorian literature, so I decided to see if I could write a novel as carefully planned and constructed as those of George Eliot, but with the narrative energy of Dickens. — Michel Faber

Lesson number 1b in Bibwit's carefully planned curriculum: For most of the universe's inhabitants, life is not all gummy wads and tarty tarts; it is a struggle against hardship, unfairness, corruption, abuse, and adversity in all its guises, where even to survive - let alone survive with dignity- is heroic. To soldier through the days in a wake of failure is the corageous act of many. To rule benevolently, a queen should be able to enter into the feelings of those less fortunate than herself. — Frank Beddor

Together, they would watch everything that was so carefully planned collapse, and they would smile at the beauty of destruction. — Markus Zusak

When I climb a building, I've been there already, and carefully planned how to start the climb as well as how to do it. — Alain Robert

A man's reading program should be as carefully planned as his daily diet, for that too is food, without which he cannot grow mentally. — Andrew Carnegie

I can have my day carefully planned, but if someone wakes up with a cough or a sniffle, then everything changes. Thinking quickly and adapting without grumbling are essential skills to learn, in my opinion. — Susanna Kearsley

If something fails despite being carefully planned, carefully designed, and conscientiously executed, that failure often bespeaks underlying change and, with it, opportunity. — Peter Drucker

Crime, carefully planned and executed, is demonstrably the royal high road to pecuniary success in the United States. — Ferdinand Lundberg

No other game combines the wonder of nature with the discipline of sport in such carefully planned ways. A great golf course both frees and challenges a golfer's mind. — Tom Watson

There are some people...who might feel that such practices are misguided, like trying to wield heaven's powers on earth. And yet it was only in the carefully planned and created garden of Yugiri that I had found a sense of order and calm and even, for a brief moment of time, forgetfulness. — Tan Twan Eng

It's Ky's move. In the quiet before the Ky takes his turn, Xander watches him carefully. Ky's hand hovers over the board. For a moment, as he holds the piece in the air, I see where he could put it to win and I know he sees it, too, that he planned the whole game for that last move. He looks at Xander and Xander looks back, both of them locked in some kind of challenge that seems to run deeper and older than what's happening here on this board.
Then Ky moves his hand and puts his piece down in a spot where Xander can eventually overtake him for the win. Ky doesn't hessitate once he places the piece; he sets it down with a solid sound and leans back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling. I think I see the slightest hint of a smile on his lips but I can't be sure. — Ally Condie