Quotes & Sayings About Caring Less

Caring about someone is scary, Mac. I know. Especially when you've lost people. It's easy to think it's not worth it. It's easy to think life will hurt less if you don't. But it's not life unless you care about it. — Victoria Schwab

People lose their pleasures because they "don't care". Others misuse their treasures because they "care less". If you'll win, you must care! — Israelmore Ayivor

A relationship is like a garden. To create a condition that will cause your plants to thrive and produce abundantly, you must weed, water, fertilize, and care for the plants in your garden. You must also know about the special needs of the plants you're caring for. Some need more or less light than others, some need more or less water than others, and some need special fertilizers. — Chris Prentiss

Blind luck, to arrive in the world with your properly formed parts in the right place, to be born to parents who were loving, not cruel, or to escape, by geographical or social accident, war or poverty. And therefore to find it so much easier to be virtuous. For a while, the case had left her numb, caring less, feeling less, going about her business, telling no one. But she became squeamish about bodies, barely able to look at her own or Jack's without feeling repelled. How was she to talk about this? Hardly plausible, to have told him that at this stage of a legal career, this one case among so many others, its sadness, its visceral — Ian McEwan

Love gives insight, Maggie, and insight often gives foreboding. Listen to me, let me supply you with books; do let me see you sometimes, be your brother and teacher, as you said at Lorton. It is less wrong that you should see me than that you should be committing this long suicide. — George Eliot

We are mortals all, human and nonhuman, bound in one fellowship of love and travail. No one escapes the fate of death. But we can, with caring, make our good-byes less tormented. If we broaden the circle of our compassion, life can be less cruel. — Gary Kowalski

Less gossiping, more encouraging.
Less complaining, more thanksgiving.
Less criticizing, more complimenting.
Less hurting, more helping.
Less hating, more caring. — Matshona Dhliwayo

We are all part of the human family and we should be about doing what all good families do - caring for our less fortunate brothers and sisters. — Dan O'Neill

The harder you had to work to open a package, the less you ended up caring about what was inside. — Stephen King

Childhood is a time for pretending and trying on maturity to see if it fits or hangs baggy, tastes good or bitter, smells nice or fills your lungs with smoke that makes you cough. It's sharing licks on the same sucker with your best friend before you discover germs. It's not knowing how much a house cost, and caring less. It's going to bed in the summer with dirty feet on clean sheets. It's thinking anyone over fifteen is 'ancient'. It's absorbing ideas, knowledge, and people like a giant sponge. Childhood is where 'competition' is a baseball game and 'responsibility' is a paper route. — Erma Bombeck

Socrates claimed famously that one never loses by doing the right thing. Stephen Post and his contributors claim, a little less boldly, that at least the generous will, probably, stay healthy - and, improving on Socrates, they support this claim with careful empirical science, impressive for its comprehensive detail. Here ethics and religion join science and enjoin us to be more caring and healthy. A seminal work, with an urgent message. — Holmes Rolston III

When I see vegan food sold in single-use plastic containers, I get frustrated knowing that plastic is not really recycled; it is down-cycled to less and less reusable grades, and too much of it eventually ends up in the ocean - where it kills animals. Caring for animals means caring for the environment they live in, and vice versa. — Karen Dawn

I am starting to get into this whole idea of caring about what I wear. There was a time in my life when I could not care less about fashion. — James Marsden

Turtledoves They walk along together, A couple holding hands And never caring whether The sight of them demands Responses less than seemly: A point, a laugh, a stare. Her hazel eyes are dreamy; He loses himself there. Time melts away, revealing A boy and girl in love. With poplars for a ceiling, Heralded by doves, They stroll the cobbled pathway, A golden life ahead. The vision fades. It's today, And standing there instead, Forever by his side, Is the woman he adores. He cherishes his bride More deeply than before In spite of all the creases, The creaks and silver strands. He knows nothing but peace as They wander, holding hands. Erin McCarty — Jack Canfield

I'm getting less good at faking it. People in my family are noticing and asking what's wrong. My friends give me invitations to talk, to cry. I love them for their caring, but I want to run from it. I have lost their language, their facility with words that convey feelings. I am in new territory and feel like a foreigner in theirs. — Martha Manning

When Love Was New

When love was new
and life was young,
and once we walked
in gracious sun,
I never dreamt of darker days,
or feared that fate had cruel ways.

When life was strong
and love was free,
and time was once
eternity -
we never planned for more or less,
nor stopped to think we should digress.

When love was young
and life was new,
and everything
was once our due,
I never doubted what I owned,
nor knew the cost was merely loaned.

Now love is tried
and life is old,
and still my feet
drag down the road -
not knowing where it all has gone,
nor how much more it still goes on.

But life grows new
and love gets old,
and this tired heart
stays off the cold -
not caring it compares with fools,
nor wise enough to fear the rules.
-Drea Damara — Drea Damara

It is only when we feel deprived that we resent giving to others. Self-care does not mean you stop caring about others; it just means you start caring more about you. Start thinking about yourself more and others less. Since you have a choice between taking care of someone else, or giving to yourself, try choosing yourself sometimes. — Beverly Engel

I'm less interested in how we label ourselves. I'm more interested in how we treat each other. And if we're treating each other right, then I can be African-American, I can be multi-racial, I can be you name it, what matters is, am I showing people respect, am I caring for one, for other people. — Barack Obama

Ubuntu [...] speaks of the very essence of being human. [We] say [...] "Hey, so-and-so has ubuntu." Then you are generous, you are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate. You share what you have. It is to say, "My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours." We belong in a bundle of life. We say, "A person is a person through other persons."

[...] A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed, or treated as if they were less than who they are. — Desmond Tutu

I asked participants who claimed to be "strong followers of Jesus" whether Jesus spent time with the poor. Nearly 80 percent said yes. Later in the survey, I sneaked in another question, I asked this same group of strong followers whether they spent time wit the poor, and less than 2 percent said they did. I learned a powerful lesson: We can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy of the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor. — Shane Claiborne

One of the most pervasive political visions of our time is the vision of liberals as compassionate and conservatives as less caring. — Thomas Sowell

Sometimes, though, we let ourselves get so used to being 'fine' that we lose track of how 'not fine' we are. — Martina Boone

Hurting a softhearted caring person would please you but loss is yours; you would have friends less one. — Vikrmn

Nonviolent Communication is a powerful tool for peace and partnership. It shows us how to listen empathically and also communicate our authentic feelings and needs. Marshall Rosenberg has a genius for developing and teaching practical skills urgently needed for a less violent, more caring world. — Riane Eisler

More panic. More emergencies and disasters. Soon, emergencies fell into a sort of natural ranking: drop-everything emergencies, do-what-you-can emergencies, and you'll just-have-to-wait emergencies. Disasters, too, had their own ratings: unavoidable, did-the-best-we-could, my fault/your fault. Then there were godlike moments when a decision had to be made as to who most deserved to die. By the afternoon of her second day, Dtui wondered whether her heart had shrunk. She felt less. People had become less human. Death had become less of a tragedy. Her patients weren't blacksmiths or housewives, they were percentages. "With this little skill and this little pharmaceutical backup, this patient - let's call her number seven - has a forty percent chance of survival." It amazed and saddened her that, in order to do her job properly, she had to stop caring. — Colin Cotterill

We care about you."

Books snorted. "You, I believe do. The others, less so."

"Maldynado would be bored if he didn't have you to trade insults with."

"I see. And Sicarius?"

"Ah, he believes you're progressing with your training."

"And that's equivalent to caring about me?" Books asked.

"Most people he ignores. Or kills."

"True. — Lindsay Buroker

Anytime we're not converting to others the same glorious realities that sealed our own redemption in Christ, we're always an inch or less away from doing something wicked to somebody else - from not listening to them, not caring about them, not working hard for them, not valuing them, and all the various, ugly expressions that our lack of real love can embody. We won't give people the benefit of the doubt. We won't feel inclined to be gracious. We'll all too quickly assume our attack positions, establishing ourselves on a war footing. We'll flare up at perceived injustices and fight back with counterstrikes. We'll turn against people. We'll do it all. And know we're doing it. And sometimes, we won't even care. — Matt Chandler

But then, that's the question. Should you even pause to consider your own reactions? These men suffer so much more than he does, more than he can imagine. In the face of their suffering, isn't it self-indulgent to think about his own feelings? He has nobody to talk to about such things and blunders his way through as best he can. If you feel nothing -this is what he comes back to time and time again -you might just as well be a machine, and machines aren't very good at caring for people. There's something machine-like about a lot of the professional nurses here. Even Sister Byrd, whom he admires, he looks at her sometimes and sees an automaton. Well, lucky for her, perhaps. It's probably more efficient to be like that. Certainly less painful. — Pat Barker

If you can only do one thing today, choose to help someone in need. There are many who are less fortunate. Take some time to lend a helping hand. You will be surprised by how much you will uplift their spirit. — Amaka Imani Nkosazana

When I asked Afghans to describe to me the difference between men and women, over the years interesting responses came back. While Afghan men often begin to describe women as more sensitive, caring, and less physically capable than men, Afghan women tend to offer up only one difference, which had never entered my mind before.
Want to take a second and guess what that one difference may be?
Here is the answer: Regardless of who they are, whether they are rich or poor, educated or illiterate, Afghan women often describe the difference between men and women in just one word: freedom.
As in: Men have it, women do not. — Jenny Nordberg

And these days, I find I'm caring less and less about what people think of me. Maybe it's my age, maybe it's my security in my career, maybe it's because I'm skrilla flush with that dollah-dollah-bill-y'all, but if I had to identify my overall feeling these days, it's much more "Eh, screw it. Here's how I really feel. — Mindy Kaling

I'm allergic to latex and it makes me break out in a rash so most condoms are out for me because the last thing any of us wants is a vagina rash. The alternative is the ones made of sheepskin, but it always creeps me out because does that mean Victor and I are having sex with a sheep? A dead sheep, actually. So it's bestiality and necrophilia. And a three-way, I think. I actually mentioned that to Victor and he immediately booked a vasectomy, which is sweet because it's nice that he cares about me. He claimed it was less his caring and more "I'd rather have my nuts cut off than have to listen to you talk about having three-ways with dead sheep." But now I have all these leftover condoms. They make great water balloons though and I bet they'd be really good for championship bubblegum-blowing competitions. Really chewy sheep bubblegum. That might be cheating. I don't know the rules about bubblegum contests. — Jenny Lawson

When the Starbursts cost a cent apiece, the average number of candies per customer was 3.5, but when the price went down to zero, the average went down to 1.1 per customer. The students limited themselves to a large degree when the candy was free. In fact, almost all the students applied a very simple social-norm rule in this situation - they politely took one and only one Starburst ... What these results mean is that when price is not a part of the exchange, we become less selfish maximizers and start caring more about the welfare of others. We saw this demonstrated by the fact that when the price decreased to zero, customers restrained themselves and took far fewer units. — Dan Ariely

She was starting to think there might be such a thing as karma - that repetition - maybe you lived through the same thing over and over until you stopped caring. Maybe eventually it got less intense, until it was just nothing. — Janet Fitch

To me, the writer's main job is to just make the story unscroll in such a way that the reader is snared - she's right there, seeing things happen and caring about them. And if you dedicate yourself to this job, the meanings more or less take care of themselves. That's the theory, anyway. — George Saunders

For I'm neither a submitter nor a hating retaliator, I acknowledge the boundaries of my existence; yet, I still care. I care regardless of the way they choose to reduce me to the brand that is the birthmark of the accident of my conception. I care less about what that brand signifies in terms of my character, potential, and intentions. For the harmed I care. For the real victims. It's the most basic of my mandatory civil duties. Only in caring, am I a citizen of the world. — Asaad Almohammad

Caring less what everybody else thinks, but also caring less and less about what your own mind thinks, because what your own mind thinks, sometimes, is the thing that makes you sad. — Willow Smith

Thoughts turn to other's just a little more this time of year. Days grow shorter and memories grow longer. Families and friends gather in celebration or hope. Giving is a reflection of our love and caring for each other and those less fortunate. May your thoughts turn to gratitude this holiday season and carry on throughout the next year ... — James A. Murphy

During the periods in my marriage when I chose to stay home with my kids rather than work as an attorney, it caused me no end of anxiety. Despite the fact that I knew I was contributing to our family by caring for our children, I still felt that my worth was less because I wasn't earning. — Ayelet Waldman

comprehending little and caring less. — Marya Hornbacher

One thing I do know about death. The "better" the person, the more loving and happy and caring, the less of a gap that person's death makes. — Lucia Berlin

It is always correct to recommend that someone seek medical advice, in a truly caring way of course, if you feel that their condition is letting them down at the highest social levels. — Jonathan Rice

The gay people with whom I am close are some of the strongest, most passionate and caring people I know, and their demands for justice are no less imperative than those of any other community. — Cory Booker

The point of the resurrection ... is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die ... What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it ... What you do in the present - by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself - will last into God's future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether (as the hymn so mistakenly puts it ... ). They are part of what we may call building for God's kingdom. — N. T. Wright

We found out that the young people who had a substantial number of lessons in the Resolving Conflict Creatively Curriculum ... not only did better in terms of people skills, that they managed their emotions, they were less violent and more caring, but they actually did better on their academic achievement tests. — Linda Lantieri

The Grocery Checkout Proviso: The more things you care about, the more vulnerable you are. If you are part of that epicurean minority in this country that is still offended by violations of the English language, you will be slapped in the face every time you stand in line at the market. FIFTEEN ITEMS OR LESS. Caring passionately about grammar - caring passionately about anything most of humanity doesn't care about - is like poking a giant hole in your life and letting the wind blow everything around. — Rachel Kadish