Quotes & Sayings About Change In A Good Way

To invoke Jesus' name is to place yourself in his presence, to open yourself to his power, his energy. The prayer of Jesus' name actually brings God closer, making him more present. He is always present in some way, since he knows and loves each one of us at every moment; but he is not present to those who do not pray as intimately as he is present to those who do. Prayers a difference; 'prayer changes things.' It may or may not change our external circumstances. (It does if God sees that that change is good for us; it does not if God sees that it is not.) but it always changes our relationship to God, which is infinitely more important than external circumstances, however pressing they may seem, because it is eternal but they are temporary, and because it is our very self but they are not. — Peter Kreeft

It's something that I love about this business and that scares me about this business, but in a good way. You just never know what's going to happen. And things change constantly. But there's always opportunities for new work, so you just have to enjoy the job that you're on while you're on it because it doesn't last forever. — Candice Accola

Nature does abhor a vacuum, and when you begin moving out of your life what you do not want, you automatically are making way for what you do want. By letting go of the lesser, you automatically make room for your greater good to come in. — Catherine Ponder

Third Wave technology will also change how we measure success in the classroom. What good is an annual standardized test, after all, once teachers and parents can get detailed reports with a wide range of metrics, comparing their students on a regular basis to others in their class or school or state? In this way, big data on individual students will do for education what standardized testing never quite could: bring quantitative precision to a qualitative learning process. — Steve Case

It's never too late to start eating well. A good diet can reverse many of those conditions as well. In short: change the way you eat and you can transform your health for the better. — T. Colin Campbell

This room had long served as a retreat from the disharmony and sadness of the first floor, and it was here I had fallen in love with these books and authors in a way that only lifelong readers know and understand. A good movie had never once affected me in the same life-changing way a good book could. Books had the power to alter my view of the world forever. A good movie could change my perceptions for a day. — Pat Conroy

I'm the first man you saw today," he pointed out, "so I'm officially your valentine."
She let out a harsh laugh. "Because of a silly superstition? I think not."
"Because I want to be," he said in a low voice. "And because you want me to be, too."
Her gaze would have skewered a stone. "Want a drunken debaucher fresh from some whore's bed as my valentine? Not if you were the last man on earth."
She slammed the door in his face.
His brothers laughed, but he ignored them. He couldn't blame her for being angry; he'd given her good reason to be so.
But it didn't change a thing. He'd be damned if he let her go now. One way or the other, Maria Butterfield was going to be his. One way or the other, she would share his bed. — Sabrina Jeffries

Swing, though, started in the wrong place. He didn't look around, and watch and learn, and then say, 'This is how people are, how do we deal with it?' No, he sat and thought: This is how the people ought to be, how do we change them?' And that was a good enough thought for a priest but not for a copper, because Swing's patient, pedantic way of operating had turned policing on its head. — Terry Pratchett

Basketball's so much like life: if something's going great, you wait a minute, it will change. If something's going bad, you wait a minute, it will change. So I try to play things on such an even keel, knowing that things are going to change. You take the good with the bad; you don't get too excited, you don't get too down and sometimes that's the hardest thing in the world to do when you're in the midst of it, but that's the best way to handle it. — Tim Duncan

Do you ever wonder why a battered wife stays with her husband? Why people continue to spend money they don't have even though they know they are deeply in debt? Why some keep jamming food in their mouths when they're already overweight? Why do people stay in bad relationships? Why are some people still racist? Why do people still drink and drive? You'd think the response to all these things would be obvious and cause them to scream, "Duh, of course I need to change this." Why do we keep doing church the same way even when we know it's in critical decline? Why do paid church leaders spend so much time preparing for a 90-minute service for Christians who have heard it all before? Why do we still call our message the good news when it clearly seems to be bad news or no news to Sojourners? Why do we think Pharisees are only found in the Bible? Why is returning to a simpler form of ancient church so hard to grasp? — Hugh Halter

Love is eternal
the aspect may change, but not the essence. There is the same difference in a person before and after he is in love as there is in an unlighted lamp and one that is burning. The lamp was there and was a good lamp, but now it is shedding light too, and that is its real function. And love makes one calmer about many things, and that way, one is more fit for one's work. — Vincent Van Gogh

There seldom is a single wave. Another way to look at it is, 'when it rains, it pours.' Good luck or bad luck often followed by more of the same. Whatever path you begin, it's almost impossible to change your direction. You're sent hurtling through space, crashing through experiences decided by the first few decisions you ever made. Binary choices set against something as simple as a yes or no in your earliest stages of development. As a Future Child, that would be your primitive choices in Genus. Actions, friendships, whether to smile in one moment or frown in the next. Those are all paths that, once set upon, are entirely unchangeable. At least, that's what I was designed to think. — Brandon R. Chinn

Oh, I think so. Yeah. Oh, well, sure. A 'type-token' ratio, I suppose, would be as good a way as any to work that out, and with samples of a thousand words or more, you could just check the frequency of occurrence of the various parts of speech." "And would you call that conclusive?" "Pretty much. You see, that sort of test would discount any change in the basic vocabulary. It's not the words but the expression of the words; the style. We call it 'index of diversity.' Very baffling to the layman, which, of course, is what we want." The director smiled wryly. Then he nodded at the tape in Karras's hands. "And so this other person's voice is on that one?" "Not exactly." "Not exactly? — William Peter Blatty

Everyone feels hemmed in from time to time, no matter where they live." She laid a hand on his thigh. "When I'm feeling that way, I go to Ireland. Walk along an empty beach. When I do, I think of all the people who have walked there before, and will walk there again. Then it occurs to me that nothing is forever. No matter how bad, or how good, everything passes and moves on to another level." "'All things change; nothing perishes,'" he mumbled. — Nora Roberts

My hope and prayer for all who read this book is a reformation - that an army of African-American men will make their way back into the church, back into the leadership of the church, back into leading a change in the church to be and do what it is called to be and do, so that we may have power to do good for our people, and people all over the world, in a way that no government or service organization has been or will be able to do, and that no one will be able to take away. — Eric Redmond

It was a music that had so little wisdom you wanted to clean nearly every note he passed, passed it seemed along the way as if travelling in a car, passed before he even approached it and saw it properly. There was no control except the mood of his power ... and it is for this reason it is good you never heard him play on recordings. If you never heard him play some place where the weather for instance could change the next series of notes - then you should never have heard him at all. He was never recorded. — Michael Ondaatje

Resting beside her, he seemed to Ildiko a living statue, carved from dark granite into a form of supple elegance and power. He was beautiful, and the tremor change in her perception of him robbed her lungs of air.
He opened both eyes suddenly, making her jump. Two shimmering gold coins stared at her unblinking. "Good evening, wife," he said in a voice raspy with the remnants of sleep. A closed-lip smile curved his mouth upward and deepened the tiny lines that fanned from the corners of his eyes. "You're staring. Do I have a fly on my nose?"
Fighting down a blush at being caught gawking at her own husband, Ildiko lightly tapped the tip of his nose with one finger. "I was trying to find a way to kill it without punching you in the face. Lucky for you, it flew away. — Grace Draven

A woman who might have been a good mother and a good grandmother, had not a quirk of nature put her in the wrong body many years ago....

What an ordeal, to have to conduct one's life in such deception, just to be able to live in peace with someone you love. Perhaps things will change on day, and people will be able to live the way they were created. — Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson

If people want to change, they will. If they don't want to, it's hard to make them do so. The current interest in the environment is a good thing. The best way to make a contribution in fashion is to promote the idea that a fundamental interest in preserving the environment is itself fashionable. — Giorgio Armani

POPPY: 25 December 2016

POPPY (standing up to Paul): You see family life as respecting boundaries and saying what makes people happy and treating everyone like they're treasured but only in a sanitized way.

I see family life as invading everyone's privacy and saying whatever I feel and treating everyone as they're treasured because they're my family and thus special as compared to the rest of the world.

I see a good family as loud and frantic and intrusive...He fits me, and I don't want to change. Not for you or anyone. I'm deeply in love with myself, and Emmett respects that...

"I'm not her (Christine). I don't have a dream to fix animal boo-boos. Loving Emmett and living close to my family are the only dreams I see as worth having. — Bijou Hunter

Fiction is dangerous because it lets you into other people's heads. It shows you that the world doesn't have to be like the one you live in." At the first nationally recognized science fiction convention in China in 2007, Gaiman took a party official aside and said, "While not actually illegal, science fiction is regarded as dangerous and subversive in China. Why did you say yes to a science-fiction convention?"
The party official answered, "In China, we're really good at making things people bring to us, but we don't invent, we don't innovate." When Chinese party officials visited Google, Apple and Microsoft, they asked what the executives read as children. The official continued: "They all said, 'We read science fiction. The world doesn't have to be the way it is right now. We can change it.' " "That," said Gaiman, "is the big dangerous thing. — Neil Gaiman

Don't put people, or anything else, on pedestals, not even your children. Avoid global labels such as genius or weirdo. Realize those closest get the benefit of the doubt and so do the most beautiful and radiant among us. Know the halo effect causes you to see a nice person as temporarily angry and an angry person as temporarily nice. Know that one good quality, or a memory of several, can keep in your life people who may be doing you more harm than good. Pay attention to the fact that when someone seems nice and upbeat, the words coming out of his or her mouth will change in meaning, and if that same person were depressive, arrogant, or foul in some other way, your perceptions of those same exact words would change along with the person's other features. — David McRaney

Unfortunately, as inspiring as people find Barack Obama, change can be interpreted in so many different ways. I think he might do a great deal of good things for social programs here in America and as well, as much as people want to characterize anybody who's a leader and try and sell that, and market it and characterize them in a good way or a bad way, I think it's very telling about the system that we have when we come to the realization that the war is not going to end. — Immortal Technique

Any change of my style, the way I've played for 10 years, will not be a drastic one. Yes, I've always given as good as I've got; as a forward you have to do that because, if you don't look after yourself, you might find yourself being thrown in a hole and buried. — Alan Shearer

And it's just anathema to being a writer. It's not healthy. But in another way, when I'm writing, what it's about for me is being good on the page. None of that noise could change the way I feel about my writing. Which is not always particularly positive. — Zadie Smith

That's my problem with new-age stuff. In common with many irrational views it harks back to a sense of something ancient while rejecting anything provably historical. It's like the miserable concept of Original Sin. There seems to be an obsession with the idea that there were ancient humans, uncorrupted by their capricious intellects, who lived in the 'right way'.
They didn't eat too much dairy or any wheat. They didn't sit down too long for their spines or walk around in posture-ruining shoes. They didn't consume too many sugars or fats for their unblemished guts to digest, or pop painkilling and antibiotic tablets to deal with the short-term symptoms of long-term problems that should be dealt with by wholesale lifestyle change. They didn't drink or smoke. They were perfect and we should sling out all our stuff and emulate them. Except they had an average life expectancy of about 18 and the planet could only support a few hundred thousand of them. Apart from that, good plan. — David Mitchell

A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love. — Pearl S. Buck

In the case of Switzerland, a whole country is concerned with the species-appropriate treatment of all things green. The constitution reads, in part, that "account [is] to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants and other organisms." So it's probably not a good idea to decapitate flowers along the highway in Switzerland without good reason. Although this point of view has elicited a lot of head shaking in the international community, I, for one, welcome breaking down the moral barriers between animals and plants. When the capabilities of vegetative beings become known, and their emotional lives and needs are recognized, then the way we treat plants will gradually change, as well. Forests are not first and foremost lumber factories and warehouses for raw material, and only secondarily complex habitats for thousands of species, which is the way modern forestry currently treats them. Completely the opposite, in fact. — Peter Wohlleben

Every religion I know of has changed its views with respect to concrete controversies over long periods of time. People's views about the morality of homosexuality are likely to undergo some change, even though they're making judgments based on their religious beliefs. Because in fact, religion is an extremely durable, and yet flexible, way of trying to apprehend what's good and what's bad in the world. In fact, its durability comes from its flexibility. Now, speaking from inside a religion, it's hard to talk that way. — Jack Balkin

The quickest way to change a child's behavior and attitude is to get him involved in fixing his mistake. The best way to inspire a child to do better in the future is to give him an opportunity to do better in the present. A punishment makes him feel bad about himself. Making amends helps him feel good about himself, and helps him to see himself as a person who can do good. — Joanna Faber

Do not assume that order and stability are always good, in a society or in a universe. The old, the ossified, must always give way to new life and the birth of new things. Before the new things can be born the old must perish. This is a dangerous realization, because it tells us that we must eventually part with much of what is familiar to us. And that hurts. But that is part of the script of life. Unless we can psychologically accommodate change, we ourselves begin to die, inwardly. What I am saying is that objects, customs, habits, and ways of life must perish so that the authentic human being can live. And it is the authentic human being who matters most, the viable, elastic organism which can bounce back, absorb, and deal with the new. — Philip K. Dick

I doubt it's a strictly factual account, but these attitudes are deeply imbedded.
Which means that our only hope of changing them, of ending the wrecks, lies not in stopping or even changing the Internet -- even with the best blocking functions, report-abuse functions, real-name transparency protocols, and twenty-four-hour moderation in the world, hate (to quite Jurassic Park) finds a way -- but in changing ourselves, and our definitions of womanhood. We have to stop believing that when a woman does something we don't like, we are qualified and entitled to punish her, violate her, or ruin her life. We have to change our ideas of what a "good" woman, or a "likable" woman, or simply a "woman who can leave her house without fearing for her life because she is a woman," can be. — Sady Doyle

1. Never forget
"they" are always the enemy.
2. Just remember, assholes are born that way, and they usually don't change.
3. You don't want to go to jail.
4. When you start to take this job seriously, you're in trouble.
5. It takes no more time to see the good side of life than it takes to see the bad.
6. If you decide to run the ball, just count on fumbling and getting the shit knocked out of you a lot, but never forget how much fun it is just to be able to run the ball! — Jimmy Buffett

If Vin Scully calling a game is just as good in 2013 as he was in 1963, that's the way a game should sound. If Jack Buck were around today, I don't think anybody would ask him to change his style. My style has always been a little bit of a combination of old and new, if only because my frame of reference, personally, was different than that of Ernie Harwell or Jack Buck or Harry Caray. I was a younger guy. Just as Joe Buck's frame of reference is somewhat different from mine. But the nuts and bolts of how to call a ballgame well, I think remain the same. — Bob Costas

I've always thought you should be able to freeze time. This way you could hit the Pause button at a really good point in your life so that nothing changes — Jennifer Niven

I miss him, my lady."
"Well, he is now living adjacent. You can hardly miss him all that much."
"True. But we are no longer compatible - I am a werewolf; he is a vampire."
"So?"
"So we cannot dance the same dance we used to."
Biffy was so sweet when he tried to be circumspect. Alexia shook her head at him.
"Biffy, and I mean this in the kindest way possible: then you should change the music."
"Very good, my lady. — Gail Carriger

THE ONLY WAY TO MAKE PROGRESS IN BUSINESS IS THROUGH CHANGE. AND CHANGE, BY DEFINITION, HAS A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF RISK ATTACHED TO IT. BUT IF YOU PICK YOUR SHOTS, USE YOUR HEAD, AND APPLY GOOD MANAGEMENT, THOSE ROLLS OF THE DICE CAN TURN OUT PRETTY — Phil Rosenzweig

Yes, but perhaps he did have something to do with it." (In such arguments Stenham often found himself unexpectedly extolling the bourgeois virtues.) "If he was good himself, and worked hard - "

"Never!" cried Amar, his eyes blazing. "You're a Nazarene, a Christian. That's why you talk that way. If you were a Moslem and said such things, you'd be killed or struck blind here, this minute. Christians have good hearts, but they don't know anything. They think they can change what has been written. They're afraid to die because they don't understand what death is for. And if you're afraid to die, then you don't know what life is for. How can you live? — Paul Bowles

In a world full of sadness and travail, kindness is not to be underestimated. You have the change to do a great deal of good, my dear, just by showing kindness to those the trail brings your way. Whatever you do, do your work heartily, not as unto men, but as unto God. He will take notice and He will be pleased. — Stephanie Grace Whitson

It's been my habit of mind, over these years, to understand that every situation in which human beings are involved can be turned on its head. Everything someone assures me to be true might not be. Every pillar of belief the world rests on may or may not be about to explode. Most things don't stay the way they are very long. Knowing this, however, has not made me cynical. Cynical means believing that good isn't possible; and I know for a fact that good is. I simply take nothing for granted and try to be ready for the change that's soon to come. — Richard Ford

To whatever extent the Hell's Angels may or may be latent sadomasochists or repressed homosexuals is to me
after nearly a year in the constant company of outlaw motorcyclists
almost entirely irrelevant. There are literary critics who insist that Ernest Hemingway was a tortured queer and that Mark Twain was haunted to the end of his days by a penchant for interracial buggery. It is a good way to stir up a tempest in the academic quarterlies, but it won't change a word of what either man wrote, nor alter the impact of their work on the world they were writing about. Perhaps Manolete was a hoof fetishist, or suffered from terrible hemorrhoids as a result of long nights in Spanish horn parlors ... but he was a great matador, and it is hard to see how any amount of Freudian theorizing can have the slightest effect on the reality of the thing he did best. — Hunter S. Thompson

Lord, when things happen that are troublesome and disturbing to me, help me to see the bright side of all of it. Help me to look above my circumstances to Your goodness, mercy, and love. Help me to focus on the power of Your mighty hand and the way You can touch, change, and transform my problems. Turn whatever seems frightening or negative to me into something positive and great. Make these situations work for good in my life and turn them into a blessing as only You can do. — Stormie O'martian

A fortune teller told me if I can predict your future, You give me some small change, to which I replied why, he said, for my knowledge about Your life, I did not need that, he replied as I yours Father's and Mother can call by name than You give me money, which I answered as you come to me as a soothsayer and do not know whether I will or do not pay then You walk down on the wrong path for Your future, and are You a cheater.

So please stop to tell stories about others when You not even know them in person or about their past for sure.
A story from another is many time not based on the true, so let that story rest before till You know its a honest one, and not let lead it a way so it damage somebody's private life.

This is not pointed to a person, but general in life.
keep smiling and a good day
Jan Jansen — Jan Jansen

Who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we this way and not some other? What does it mean to be human? Are we capable, if need be, of fundamental change, or do the dead hands of forgotten ancestors impel us in some direction, indiscriminately for good or ill, and beyond our control? Can we alter our character? Can we improve our societies? Can we leave our children a world better than the one that was left to us? Can we free them from the demons that torment us and haunt our civilization? In the long run, are we wise enough to know what changes to make? Can we be trusted with our own future? — Carl Sagan

I invite you to open your mind to new possibilities. Let's fake it till we make it. Let's create visions of an aspirational future. You don't have to quit your job. But think about what might change your trajectory by half a degree. It could be that when you come home every night your first words are "I'm home! How can I help?" Try doing that. You may have a shitty job. You don't like it. You do it for the money, even if the money isn't great. Try to look at your work in a different way. Find something about your life that's great. Follow that thread. Volunteer. Even if you're in the worst possible situation, there's hope. Challenge yourself. Set your own bar. Redefine your success metrics. Create opportunities for yourself. Reassess your situation. We are all marching together. We're headed toward something big, and it's going to be good. — Biz Stone

To all of you reading this who are on the fence about therapy because of the cost: It's smart money, spend it. That one hundred bucks an hour pays off down the road when you learn through therapy how to get out of your own way, stop self-sabotaging and thus make good decisions about relationships and career. Think of it as an investment in yourself. Simply going to therapy helps. Just carving out an hour for yourself, and deciding that you and your life are worth spending some time and money on makes a difference. That simple act alone boosts your self-esteem. Don't think of going to therapy as "I'm a broken pile of crap and need someone to fix me," think of it as "I'm going to change myself for the better instead of crying, masturbating and blaming my parents for the rest of my life. — Adam Carolla

I tried to be the greatest boxer in the world and a good parent, too. I had instant feedback on my success as a boxer. Often, parents don't really know if what they are doing is right or wrong until their child is grown and it is too late to change any of the decisions. Whatever my failings as a parent, I am very proud of all my children. It wasn't easy for them to make their own way with such a controversial and public father. — Muhammad Ali

We can easily imagine a monetary organization which, by the exclusive use of notes or clearing-house methods, allows all transfers to be made with the instrumentality of sums of money that never change their position in space.
If differences due to the geographical position of money are disregarded in this way, we get the following law for the exchange-ratio between money and other economic goods: every economic good, that is ready for consumption (in the sense in which that phrase is usually understood in commerce and technology), has a subjective use-value qua consumption good at the place where it is and qua production good at those places to which it may be brought for consumption. — Ludwig Von Mises

You do not get to choose the events that come your way nor the sorrows that interrupt your life. They will likely be a surprise to you, catching you off quard and unprepared. You may hold your head in your hands and lament your weak condition and wonder what you ought to do. To suffer, that is common to all. To suffer and still keep your composure, your faith and your smile, that is remarkable. Pain will change you more profoundly than success or good fortune. Suffering shapes your perception of life, your values and priorities, and your goals and dreams. Your pain is changing you, — David Crosby

We have had a good working relationship. He has got a tough job. We had different ideas sometimes and we got on pretty well. I have challenged him and he has challenged me. His form has been up and down and that can be tough. I suppose we've been lucky. Sourav and I complement each other. We are two different personalities. He is softer than me. I probably spoke my mind in the change rooms in a rougher way than him. Sourav and I formed an odd couple but it seems to have worked. — John Wright

If you ask what you are going to do about global warming, the only rational answer is to change the way in which we do transportation, energy production, agriculture and a good deal of manufacturing. The problem originates in human activity in the form of the production of goods. — Barry Commoner

I was a very driven person, wanting to help and to do good, hopefully to write and teach in a meaningful way - wanting to make change. And I discovered humbly that life was changing me. — Mark Nepo

Typecasting is an interesting thing because, in a way, if you're good at something, you're going to work at that thing. In other ways, you constantly have to change people's opinion of you as one thing, especially if you want to play different roles. You have to shatter that image sometimes. — Aaron Tveit

In the same way that your Emotional Set-Points can change from feeling basically good or secure to feeling bad or insecure, your set-points can change from not feeling good to feeling good, for your set-points are achieved simply by attention to a subject, and through your practiced thought. — Esther Hicks

Few coffee shops have books, fewer have good books, and even less will have one book that can change your whole life. Now, the question is: How many people can find that book? And, among those who do, how many will read it? Because, you see, life always provides opportunities, but not many can see them, when they're just there, waiting to be found, when they come our way, even if in the most unexpected place in the world. One has to be very sharp to recognize a window of opportunity in a wall of illusions. And the ability to redirect attention, demands that one can be capable as well of knowing his own limitations in the vast sea of energy and vibrations. Now, I could be talking about a book, a group or a person, as the axiom remains true to itself. — Robin Sacredfire

Renunciation Suzuki Roshi said, "Renunciation is not giving up the things of this world, but accepting that they go away." Everything is impermanent; sooner or later everything goes away. Renunciation is a state of nonattachment, acceptance of this going away. Impermanence is, in fact, just another name for perfection. Leaves fall; debris and garbage accumulate; out of the debris come flowers, greenery, things that we think are lovely. Destruction is necessary. A good forest fire is necessary. The way we interfere with forest fires may not be a good thing. Without destruction, there could be no new life; and the wonder of life, the constant change, could not be. We must live and die. And this process is perfection itself. — Charlotte Joko Beck

I think, as a filmmaker, my style of filmmaking is very well-suited to 3-D anyway, so it's not like I'm having to change a huge amount of the way I shoot to work in 3-D. I think you could probably dimensionalize some of my movies and they would make very good 3-D films. — Paul W. S. Anderson

It's my birthday, by the way, and as of 2:05 this morning (the time of my birth in the middle of a snow storm on the Fort Dix army base in New Jersey) I'm 52 years old. I decided to say that because there's such pressure in our culture for women ... well, for everybody ... to stay perpetually young. And that's never going to change if we (women especially) don't embrace, enjoy, and take pride in each and every age that we pass through. I'm not young, I'm half a century old, and grateful to have made it this far. And I have this to say to the young women coming on behind me: 52 feels pretty damn good! — Terri Windling

To sit beside the board and drink good wine And watch the turf smoke coiling from the fire And feel content and wisdom in your heart, This is the best of life; when we are young We long to tread a way none trod before, But find the excellent old way through love And through the care of children to the hour Forbidding Fate and Time and Change goodbye. — William Butler Yeats

The capacity of the brain to forsee the future has much to do with the fear of death.
For when the body is worn out and the brain is tired, the whole organism welcomes death. But it is difficult to understand how death can be welcome when you are young and strong, so that you come to regard it as a dread and terrible event. For the brain, in its immaterial way, looks into the future and conceives it a good to go on and on and on forever - not realizing that its own material would at last find the process intolerably tiresome. Not taking this into account, the brain fails to see that, being itself material and subject to change, its desires will change, and a time will come when death will be good. On a bright morning, after a good night's rest, you do not want to go to sleep. But after a hard day's work the sensation of dropping into unconsciousness is extraordinarily pleasant. — Alan W. Watts

There are moments in history when a door for massive change opens, and great revolutions for good or evil spring up in the vacuum created by these openings. In these divine moments key men and women and even entire generations risk everything to become the hinge of history, the pivotal point that determines which way the door will swing. — Lou Engle

I'm one of those people that thinks the world changes in smaller and in more mysterious ways than a lot of people like to think. A lot of traditional charities and organizations do things that on the surface seem like a good idea, but it doesn't change the way that people think about interacting with other people. — Misha Collins

God is a good God, and He gives good things to his children. No matter who has denigrated you or how much pain you've experienced in life, no matter how many setbacks you have suffered, you cannot allow yourself to accept that as the way life is supposed to be. No, God has better things in store for you. You must reprogram your mind with God's word; change that negative, defeated self-image, and start seeing yourself as winning, coming out on top. Start seeing that marriage as restored. See your business as flourishing. See your children as enjoying the good things of God. You must see it through your eyes of faith, and then it will begin to happen. — Joel Osteen

A world without God to give people faith that all their suffering is not meaningless is a nightmare. A world without religion means a world without any systematic way of ennobling people. A world without countries is a world without the United States of America, and it is a world governed by the amoral United Nations, where mass murderers sit on "human rights" councils. A world without heaven or hell is a world without any ultimate justice, where torturers and their victims have identical fates. A world without possessions is a world in which some enormous state possesses everything, and the individual is reduced to the status of a well-fed serf. Liberals frequently criticize conservatives for fearing change. What we fear is transforming that which is already good. The moral record of humanity does not fill us with optimism about "fundamentally transforming" something as rare as America. Evil is normal. America is not. — Dennis Prager

When was the last time those two kids had a full meal or a good, long, clean drink of water? This was the way he had been as a child. Nothing had changed. The sultan still sat in his beautiful golden-domed palace, playing with his toys while people starved on the streets. Nothing would ever change until the sultan- or someone-woke up and saw how his people were suffering. — Liz Braswell

A philosophical thought is not supposed to be impervious to all criticism; this is the error Whitehead describes of turning philosophy into geometry, and it is useful primarily as a way of gaining short-term triumphs in personal arguments that no one else cares (or even knows) about anyway. A good philosophical thought will always be subject to criticisms (as Heidegger's or Whitehead's best insights all are) but they are of such elegance and depth that they change the terms of debate, and function as a sort of "obligatory passage point" (Latour's term) in the discussions that follow.
Or in other words, the reason Being and Time is still such a classic, with hundreds of thousands or millions of readers almost a century later, is not because Heidegger made "fewer mistakes" than others of his generation. Mistakes need to be cleaned up, but that is not the primary engine of personal or collective intellectual progress. — Graham Harman

The baby was warm against my chest. I knew I was broken too. I wasn't like other people. I was scared and weird and anxious and sad lots of the time, and I didn't know why. My parents thought I was abnormal, I was pretty sure. They said I wasn't, but you don't get sent to a therapist if you're normal.
Sometimes we really aren't supposed to be the way we are. It's not good for us. And people don't like it. You've got to change. You've got to try harder and do deep breathing and maybe one day take pills and learn tricks so you can pretend to be more like other people. Normal people. But maybe Vanessa was right, and all those other people were broken too in their own ways. Maybe we all spent too much time pretending we weren't. — Kenneth Oppel

A few years ago, a friend said to me: "You do realize, Ian, when X-Men and Lord of the Rings come out, your life will totally change?" I didn't know what he was talking about, but he was right. My life has totally changed - but in a good way. Unbeknownst to me, it's given me a lot more confidence. — Ian McKellen

Acceptance is not a state of passivity or inaction. I am not saying you can't change the world, right wrongs, or replace evil with good. Acceptance is, in fact, the first step to successful action. If you don't fully accept a situation precisely the way it is, you will have difficulty changing it. Moreover, if you don't fully accept the situation, you will never really know if the situation should be changed. — Peter McWilliams

What is called storing money is a way of using wealth. The uncertainty of the future makes it seem advisable to hold a larger or smaller part of one's possessions in a form that will facilitate a change from one way of using wealth to another, or transition from the ownership of one good to that of another, in order to preserve the opportunity of being able without difficulty to satisfy urgent demands that may possibly arise in the future for goods that will have to be obtained by way of exchange. — Ludwig Von Mises

The chair and desk and stuff, they change in the darkness. Like people change. And I lay in my bed and I think, you know, this is the way the chair really is. The way it looks in the daytime, that's just a foolie. It looks that way to make me think it's all right. But it's an ugly thing, a chair at night is. And I know even in the day that it's ugly underneath. It will be ugly again, when I'm alone with it. When it's dark...I'm scared of chairs... I try not to be scared of things. I try to fight it. But I'm not good at it. It's everywhere at once. It's like fighting the night. — Torey L. Hayden

There are good books, indifferent books, and bad books. Amongst the good books some are honest, inspiring, moving, prophetic and improving. But in my language there is another category: there are Ah! Books. This is one of them. Ah! Books are those which induce a fundamental change in the reader's consciousness. They widen his sensibility in such a way that he is able to look upon familiar things as though he is seeing and understanding them for the first time. Ah! Books are galvanic. They touch the nerve centre of the whole being so that the reader receives an almost palpable physical shock. A tremor of excited perception ripples through the person. — Vernon Sproxton

It is said in the Upanishads: 'I am the Universe.' If you ask a hundred people as to how they find the world, they are all likely to give different answers. For some, the world is beautiful and the people are good, while for others, the world is extremely bad, and the people are treacherous and sinful. Why the same world is different for different people? It is so, because the outer world is the projection of our inner world. Therefore, the only way to improve the world outside is to improve the world within. While we may not have any control over the outside world, we can change our world within and thus change the world outside. — Awdhesh Singh

The habit of doubt; of distrusting his own judgment and of totally rejecting the judgment of the world; the tendency to regard every question as open; the hesitation to act except as a choice of evils; the shirking of responsibility; the love of line, form, quality; the horror of ennui; the passion for companionship and the antipathy to society
all these are well-known qualities of New England character in no way peculiar to individuals but in this instance they seemed to be stimulated by the fever, and Henry Adams could never make up his mind whether, on the whole, the change of character was morbid or healthy, good or bad for his purpose. — Henry Adams

It seems as if we can't go right, or do right, or be righted,' said Toby. 'I hadn't much schooling, myself, when I was young; and I can't make out whether we have any business on the face of the earth, or not. Sometimes I think we must have a little; and sometimes I think we must be intruding. I get so puzzled sometimes that I am not even able to make up my mind whether there is any good at all in us, or whether we are born bad. We seem to do dreadful things; we seem to give a deal of trouble; we are always being complained of and guarded against. One way or another, we fill the papers. Talk of a New Year!' said Toby, mournfully. — Charles Dickens

The future was also the place where the bad stuff waited in ambush. My children were embarking on their futures in fragile vessels, and I trembled. I wanted to remove obstacles, smooth their way, I wanted to change their childhoods. I needed to be right all the time, I wanted them to listen to me, learn from my mistakes, and save themselves a lot of grief. Well, now I know I can control my tongue, my temper, and my appetites, but that's it. I have no effect on weather, traffic, or luck. I can't make good things happen. I can't keep anybody safe. I can't influence the future and I can't fix up the past.
What a relief. — Abigail Thomas

A Path Appears is an insightful book focused on how individuals can contribute to positive change and the remarkable people behind the organizations that make it happen. The authors' desire to motivate people to support good causes, learn about the situation in other countries, and find the best way to help their fellow men and women is inspiring. — Angelina Jolie

I got an abortion and learned how to make dehydrated tuna flakes and turkey jerky and took a refresher course on basic first aid and practiced using my water purifier in my kitchen sink. I had to change. I had to change was the thought that drove me in those months of planning. Not into a different person, but back to the person I used to be
strong and responsible, clear-eyed and driven, ethical and good. And the PCT would make me that way. There, I'd walk and think about my entire life. I'd find my strength again, far from everything that had made my life ridiculous. — Cheryl Strayed

Every person and everything can change the destiny of every other person and every other thing, in a good or in a bad way! We are all destiny makers; everything is a destiny maker! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

"Hard" science fiction probes alternative possible futures by means of reasoned extrapolations in much the same way that good historical fiction reconstructs the probable past. Even far-out fantasy can present a significant test of human values exposed to a new environment. Deriving its most cogent ideas from the tension between permanence and change, science fiction combines the diversions of novelty with its pertinent kind of realism. — Jack Williamson

One song isn't going to ever change things, but I suppose it's the accumulation of music generally [that is]. If you can imagine a world that has no music in it, it would be a very different world, so music does change the world by virtue of all the music in it. Cumulative music of every kind, from banging a drum to playing a flute or recording symphonies, or singing 'War, what is it good for?' All those things change the whole way we live. — Mick Jagger

Developing compassion for Congress and politicians is a good way to begin practicing the new social activism if you want to make effective changes in the world. Perhaps the most startling new insight of all is that there is no other way to effectively change the world. — Gary Zukav

The world has changed. It's gotten better. It's gotten worse. After all these years, Jenna's words still echo is my head, 'just as one problem is solved, a new one is created.' The work never ends. If there's one thing you can always count on in this world, it is change. I don't fear it the way I used to. I try to be read for it. One day, maybe, all the changes will be only for the good. I can dare to dream. I can always hope for more. — Mary E. Pearson

If only I had met Molly sooner, when it was still possible to choose one road rather than another! Before that bitch Musyne and that little turd Lola crimped my enthusiasm! But it was too late to start being young again. I didn't believe in it any more! We grow old so quickly and, what's more, irremediably. You can tell by the way you start loving your misery in spite of yourself. Nature is stronger than we are, no two ways about it. She tries us in one particular mould, and we're never able to throw it off. I had started out as the restless type. Little by little, without realizing it, you begin to take your role and fate seriously, and, before you know it, it's too late to change. You're a hundred per cent restless, and it's set that way for good. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

There's a startling fact that you read somewhere: after airbags became standard in cars, statisticians noticed that the incidence of severe leg injuries increased dramatically. Think about it for a minute: Why should that be? Is there something about the way airbags inflate during collision that targets the passengers' legs, makes them more vulnerable? No. It's a matter of checks and balances. Before airbags, there were certain accidents that would have killed you; you'd be a corpse in the morgue, and no one would be paying any attention to your legs. When we change the way we do things - the way we shop for groceries or take care of our children or protect ourselves from harm - we set other changes in motion, for good or for ill. And it may be years before we figure out what we've done. — Carolyn Parkhurst

If you're not feeling good and you want to change the way you feel, or if you want to lift good feelings higher, then take a minute or two and god through a mental list of everything you love and adore. You can do it while getting dressed in the morning, walking, driving or traveling anywhere. — Rhonda Byrne

What are you going to do with your life?" In one way or another it seemed that people had been asking her this forever; teachers, her parents, friends at three in the morning, but the question had never seemed this pressing and still she was no nearer an answer ... "Live each day as if it's your last', that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that? What if it rained or you felt a bit glandy? It just wasn't practical. Better by far to be good and courageous and bold and to make difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance. — David Nicholls

Work on your strengths, not your weaknesses. How many of your New Year's resolutions have been about fixing a flaw? And how many of those resolutions have you made several years in a row? It's difficult to change any aspect of your personality by sheer force of will, and if it is a weakness you choose to work on, you probably won't enjoy the process. If you don't find pleasure or reinforcement along the way, then - unless you have the willpower of Ben Franklin - you'll soon give up. But you don't really have to be good at everything. Life offers so many chances to use one tool instead of another, and often you can use a strength to get around a weakness. — Jonathan Haidt

There are two ways to think about all this. One way is that life is absurd to start with and that only a mad man goes out and tries to change the world, to fight for good and against evil. The other way is that life is indeed absurd to start with and that it can be given meaning only if you live it for your ideals, visions and poetic truths, and despite all the skepticism of all the Sancho Panzas' in the world, saddle up whatever worn out horse you've got and go after those visions. — Leonard Bernstein

Your mind always follows your heart. That will never change. The one good thing about you is that you are a survivor. You can survive and get out of any situation. The bad part about it is that in the process you always unintentionally hurt others as well as yourself. Did you ever ask yourself how long you will be able to go this way? Whatever you are after in your life, is it worth it? — Stevan V. Nikolic

Every day is a grand adventure into the great unknown and you cannot know what lies around the next corner. So, standing in this place, with the unknown before you, you have only two choices: you can live in trust (believing you are safe and that good things are coming) or you can live in fear (scared of the future and focused on you). Your choice will not change what's around that next corner, it will be what it's meant to be, but it will have a big impact on the way you feel today. Do you want to experience today in fear, focused on yourself? Or do you want to experience trust and focus on love? It's up to you. — Kimberly Giles

...one good decision can totally change the trajectory of our lives. And that one good decision will lead to better decisions. But it starts by making the right decision when no one is looking.

There is a past cause and future effect to every decision that goes way beyond what is discernible in the here and now. Decisions have long and often complex genealogies. And every decision is a genesis moment that has the potential to radically alter not just our destiny but the course of human history as well. — Mark Batterson

To me, enlightenment is a big shift inside your eyes, a different way to use your mind so you can understand some of God, some of Jesus. But it is maybe not one shift, but many small shifts. You change your spiritual condition - by prayer, by meditation, by the way you live, the way you decide to think, by the lessons you learn in living this life with a good intention - and then, when this happens, after a long times or a short times, the way you see the world changes. — Roland Merullo

If you want to draw some advantage from your history, you must accept not only this miracle but also many others. In memory, everything can become miraculous. All you have to do is wish it, and freezing winter turns into spring, miserable rooms fill up with golden tapestries, murderers turn good, and children who cry out of loneliness receive caring teachers who are really the children themselves moved back from adulthood to their early years. Yes, my daughter, the past is not fixed and unalterable. With faith and will we can change it, not erasing its darkness but adding lights to it to make it more and more beautiful, the way a diamond is cut. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

A dragon is a confusion at the heart of things, a law unto himself. He embraces good, evil, and indifference; in his own nature he makes them indivisible and absolute. He knows who he is. Surely you see that... Put it this way. Dragons all love life's finer things- music, art, treasure- the works of the spirit; yet in their personal habits they're foul and bestial- they burn down cathedrals, for instance, and eat maidens- and they see in their whimsical activities no faintest contradiction... Dragons never grow, never change... Believe me, nothing in this world is more despicable than a dragon. They're a walking- or flying- condemnation of all we stand for, all we pray for our children, nay, for ourselves. We struggle to improve ourselves, we tortuously balance on the delicate line between our duties to society and our duties within- our duties to God and our own nature. — John Gardner

When we are rich and famous and powerful, we do not want to die. On the other hand, if we are miserable and suffering, we want to die and leave it all. But can joy or misery last forever? There is a saying, "All celebrations must end sometime." Any wish to live forever or die immediately is often a whim of the moment. How do we know that, although we are happy now, we may not be sad the next day, or sad now but may be happy soon? Given that good and ill, fortune and misfortune come in their own way, we should not cling to life or embrace death. Life and death will come of their own. Why be greedy about life and afraid of death? — Liezi

It was too much for weak men, of more or less good will, who knew in their hearts that the Pope was right ad that they ought to cooperate with him, when the Pope demanded, with harsh and angry words, that they should immediately change their way of life and give up all small comforts they had grown accustomed to, in order to live in a state of self-denial suitable for the strictest ascetic. They were agreed that it was time for a reform within the Church. But if this were reform ... And the language he used when he broke into a rage! "Shut up!" he said to the cardinals. He shouted "Pazzo!" -Idiot- to Cardinal Orsini, and "Ribaldo!" -Bandit- to the Cardinal of Geneva. His electors began to regret their choice bitterly. — Sigrid Undset

Well, I think the way you feel as a teenager stays with you, forever. I really believe that. And we try to change and we hope that we change, but we don't really in big ways, in serious ways. I think the personality is formed at that time, for the good and for the bad ... We all want to grow up and move on and appear to be different to people. And we want people to see us in a different way. But, I don't know, I think the personality is very, very strongly cemented, and we just bear whatever shortcomings we have and learn to live with it. — Steven Morrissey

As long as we try to project from the relative and conditioned to the absolute and unconditioned, we shall keep the pendulum swinging between dogmatism and skepticism. The only way to stop this increasingly tiresome pendulum swing is to change our conception of what philosophy is good for. But that is not something which will be accomplished by a few neat arguments. It will be accomplished, if it ever is, by a long, slow process of cultural change - that is to say, of change in common sense, changes in the intuitions available for being pumped up by philosophical arguments. — Richard Rorty

Science, as I pointed out in the previous chapter, is flexible and nondogmatic. It sticks to facts and to reality (which always can change) and to logical thinking (which does not contradict itself and hold two opposite views at the same time). But it also avoids rigid all-or-none and either/or thinking and sees that reality is often two sided and includes contradictory events and characteristics. Thus, in my relations with you, I am not a totally good person or a bad person but a person who sometimes treats you well and sometimes treats you badly. Instead of viewing world events in a rigid, absolute way, science assumes that such events, and especially human affairs, usually follow the laws of probability. — Albert Ellis