Do One Thing Quotes & Sayings

I have spoken, and I was understood. It's not like I'm a tragic person who wasn't understood. All those books are in print, all those movies are still out there, the audience gets younger. So I don't have that "I've got to do one thing before I die." I did it. — John Waters

Singing is actually my favourite thing to do in the world - so when you don't consider yourself as talented at anything academically, and there is one thing you're good at, I think it's best to follow what you're good at. — Jess Glynne

The Prophet once said to his Companions, "Do you want to see a man of Paradise?" A man then passed by, and the Prophet said, "That man is of the people of Paradise." One of Companion of the Prophet wanted to find out what it was about this man that earned him such a commendation from the Messenger of God , so he decided to spend some time with this man and observe him closely. He noticed that this man did not perform the night prayer vigil (tahajjud) or do anything extraordinary. He appeared to be an average man of Medina. The Companion finally told the man what the Prophet had said about him and asked if he did anything special. The man replied, "The only thing that I can think of, other than what everybody else does, is that I make sure that I never sleep with any rancor in my heart towards another." That was his secret. — Hamza Yusuf

I don't have friends. I talk to people when I have to. I smile. I do the socially acceptable thing and tolerate people when I'm at work. But no one gets in my personal space. I don't need anybody! — Stevie J. Cole

You can buy all sorts of expensive fancy waters that will supposedly give you more energy, make you smarter, and turn straw into gold. (Okay, I made up that last one, but frankly, I think it is about as likely to happen as the first two. Mostly the only thing those specialty waters do is magickally turn your money into someone else's money.) — Deborah Blake

It's one of many ways that Barack shows me and the girls how special we are. And that's the thing that touches me about him. I don't care what's on his plate. I don't care what he's struggling with. When he steps off that elevator into our residence he is Barack and dad. And there's just those little things that you do that remind you, that you know, I still got ya. — Michel'le

No worries" is the best thing to happen to sullen teenagers since I was one - even better than vampire sexting, GTL, or Call of Duty. When I was a sullen teenager, we had to make do wtih the vastly inferior "whatever".
"No worries" beats "whatever" six ways to Sunday. I'ts a vaguely mystical way of saying "I hear your mouth make noise, saying something that I plan to ignore." It has a noble Rasta-man vibe, as if you're quoting some sort of timeless yet meaningless proverb on the nature of change - "Soon come," or "As the cloud is slow, the wind is quick." In terms of ignoring provocation, "no worries" is just about perfect. — Rob Sheffield

In a lot of ways it is easier to do things on a large scale. It is easier to build a skyscraper in Manhattan than it is to buy a bungalow in the Bronx. For one thing, it takes just as much time to close a big deal as it does to close a small deal. You will endure as much stress and aggravation; you will have all the same headaches and problems. It is easier to finance a big deal. Bankers would much rather lend money for a big project than for a small one. They are more comfortable investing money in a big prestigious building than they are a rundown house in a bad section of town. If you succeed with the big project, you stand to gain a lot more money. — Donald J. Trump

It isn't a coincidence that governments everywhere want to educate children. Government education, in turn, is supposed to be evidence of the state's goodness and its concern for our well-being. The real explanation is less flattering. If the government's propaganda can take root as children grow up, those kids will be no threat to the state apparatus. They'll fasten the chains to their own ankles. H.L. Mencken once said that the state doesn't just want to make you obey. It tries to make you want to obey. And that's one thing the government schools do very well. — Llewellyn Rockwell

A lot of people ask me to produce or direct, but I don't think I'm qualified. It's hard enough for a person to do just one thing well in their life. I don't want to do too much. — Gong Li

Society can give its young men almost any job and they'll figure how to do it. They'll suffer for it and die for it and watch their friends die for it, but in the end, it will get done. That only means that society should be careful about what it asks for ... Soldiers themselves are reluctant to evaluate the costs of war, but someone must. That evaluation, ongoing and unadulterated by politics, may be the one thing a country absolutely owes the soldiers who defend its borders. — Sebastian Junger

There is something intrinsically wrong about letters. For one thing they are not instantaneous ... Nor is this the only trouble about letters. They do not arrive often enough. A letter which has been passionately awaited should be immediately supplemented by another one, to counteract the feeling of flatness that comes upon us when the agonizing delights of anticipation have been replaced by the colder flood of fulfilment. — Vita Sackville-West

I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do - that was one of my favorite things about it, and when I first did it, I felt very perverse. — Diane Arbus

It is indeed a singular thing that people wish to pass laws to nullify the disagreeable consequences that the law of responsibility entails. Will they never realize that they do not eliminate these consequences but merely pass them along to other people? The result is one injustice the more and one moral the less. — Frederic Bastiat

I've discovered the burger is a crazy thing in Vegas, but I was one of the early chefs to do a lot of burgers. — Daniel Boulud

For me, the beauty of a person is a matter of the whole package. You have to look at the whole thing, not just a matter of outward appearance or whatever. It has to do with one's character, personality, upbringing and so on. — Gong Li

And it's still unclear to me why a person has abilities that they do not want to have, why a person feels things that person doesn't want to feel and why that person doesn't feel things that person does want to feel, and why a person falls out of love when being in love was such a good thing to be in, and why a person makes loud and clumsy attempts at midnight to kill the life one could reasonably expect that person to want to preserve. — Catherine Lacey

You have to trust your instincts and hope the fans like what you do, but you don't gut check with the fans. If we're going to make a series, people are going to have a lot of opinions and if there's one overwhelming majority or one thing you continuously hear repeated from the fans, you certainly take that into account going into next season. — Eli Roth

Hospitality is a wonderful and rare thing, but if you wanna get a lady's attention, you don't send one of your lackeys to ask her over, you do it yourself. — K'wan

Accustom your children constantly to this; if a thing happened at one window and they, when relating it, say that it happened at another, do not let it pass, but instantly check them; you do not know where deviation from truth will end — Samuel Johnson

Gogol remembers having to do the same thing when he was younger, when his grandparents died ... He remembers, back then, being bored by it, annoyed at having to observe a ritual no one else he knew followed, in honor of people he had seen only a few times in his life ... Now, sitting together at the kitchen table at six-thirty every evening, his father's chair empty, this meatless meal is the only thing that seems to make sense. — Jhumpa Lahiri

Reputation is what people expect us to do next. It's their expectation of the quality and character of the next thing we produce or say or do.
We control our actions (even when it feels like we don't) and our actions over time (especially when we think no one is looking) earn our reputation. — Seth Godin

Integrity is what you do when no one is watching; its doing the right thing all the time, even when it may work to your disadvantage. — Tony Dungy

There's only one thing more frightening than being asked to do a book tour, and that's not being asked to do a book tour. — Gerald Petievich

Sometimes all you need is one person with a guilty conscience to come forward and do the right thing. Often, the miracle you need resides inside of yourself, when you humbly ask for forgiveness. — Shannon L. Alder

There's one thing I don't ever think about: losing ... Instead, I think about how I'm going to win, and how I can do it the quickest way. — Joe Frazier

But that's why you built the towers, isn't it? Weren't the towers built as fantasies of wealth and power that would one day become fantasies of destruction? You build a thing like that so you can see it come down. The provocation is clear. What other reason would there be to go so high and then to double it, do it twice? It's a fantasy, so why not do it twice? You are saying, Here it is, bring it down. — Don DeLillo

As women of the western world, we see our sisters in other lands being raped, maimed and even executed simply for trying to exercise the most basic freedoms, such as taking a bus alone or wearing a bright red sweater. And when we look at our own world, we see that it too still lacks equality for the sexes.
It's a terrible thing to go through one's entire lifetime not getting to do all the things we dream of doing just because others say we're not permitted to do them, and to know that they will hurt us if we try.
But far, far worse than that is when there's not a thing or a person outside that's stopping us from living exactly as we wish, but we stop ourselves; internally we do not give ourselves permission, simply because we're too scared of what will happen if we dare. — PatriciaV. Davis

Do one heroic thing today; big or small doesn't matter because it defines who you are and what you really believe — Bob Goff

Jaenelle opened her mouth, closed it, and finally said timidly, "Do you think, when I'm grown up, I could wear an outfit like that?" Daemon bit his cheek. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Buying time, he looked down at himself. "Well," he said, giving it slow consideration, "the shirt would have to be altered somewhat to accommodate a female figure, but I don't see why not." Jaenelle beamed. "Daemon, it's a wonderful hat." It took him a moment to admit it to himself, but he was miffed. He stood in front of her, on display as it were, and the thing that fascinated her most was his hat. You do know how to bruise a man's ego, don't you, little one? he thought dryly as he said, "Would you like to try it on?" Jaenelle bounced to the mirror, brushing against him as she passed. — Anne Bishop

I say, Bertie, is it really true that you were once engaged to Honoria?"
"It is."
Biffy coughed.
"How did you get out - I mean, what was the nature of the tragedy that prevented the marriage?"
"Jeeves worked it. He thought out the entire scheme."
"I think, before I go," said Biffy thoughtfully, "I'll just step into the kitchen and have a word with Jeeves."
I felt that the situation called for complete candour.
"Biffy, old egg," I said, "as man to man, do you want to oil out of this thing?"
"Bertie, old cork," said Biffy earnestly, "as one friend to another, I do. — P.G. Wodehouse

The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn't shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing. — Toni Morrison

The one thing I've always done, because I like the sound of my guitar from where I sit - meaning not in front of it - so what I do is, I put microphones around my ears. I have them around my head, too. I don't know if it's a superstitious thing, but it's actually how I recorded my first album. — Kaki King

No man will treat with indifference the principle of race. It is the key to history, and why history is often so confused is that it has been written by men who are ignorant of this principle and all the knowledge it involves ... Language and religion do not make a race
there is only one thing which makes a race, and that is blood. — Benjamin Disraeli

The Stock Exchange is something very different. There is no economy and no production of goods and services. There are only fantasies in which people from one hour to the next decide that this or that company is worth so many billions, more or less. It doesn't have a thing to do with reality or with the Swedish economy. — Steig Larsson

There was one special thing you promised me at the beginning of the affair, and which you have certainly given me by the end of it."
"What do you mean?" cried the chaotic Gregory. "What did I promise you?"
"A very entertaining evening," said Syme, and he made a military salute with his sword-stick as the steamboart slid away. — G.K. Chesterton

But there's one thing about quitters you have to guard against - they are contagious. If one boy goes, the chances are he'll take somebody with him, and you don't want that. So when they would start acting that way, I used to pack them up and get them out, or embarrass them, or do something to turn them around. — Bear Bryant

One of the things about working for an old school studio like Warner Bros. is that there is an institutional culture and institutional memory, in terms of production design, camera work, and directors who understand how to do this kind of thing. — Bruno Heller

Everything in life turns out to be a distraction from the real thing you want to do. There are a million distractions and when I was a kid I was very disciplined. I knew that the other kids weren't. I was the one able to do the thing, not because I had more talent, maybe less, but because they simply weren't applying themselves. — Woody Allen

She had challenged his whole life plan - to find God's will and do it - said he was fixated on finding the one thing God intended for him, when every moment was an opportunity. What if she was right? Could one choice be God's will, and another as well? It might not be about finding the one right answer as much as knowing the heart of God and choosing from the possibilities. — Kristen Heitzmann

My skills weren't that I knew how to design a floppy disk, I knew how to design a printer interface, I knew how to design a modem interface; it was that, when the time came and I had to get one done, I would design my own, fresh, without knowing how other people do it. That was another thing that made me very good. All the best things that I did at Apple came from (a) not having money, and (b) not having done it before, ever. Every single thing that we came out with that was really great, I'd never once done that thing in my life. — Jessica Livingston

I think you'll make a great Congressman, Sam Porter. The people of New York couldn't ask for anything better.
New Jersey."
What do you mean, New Jersey?"
I live in Jersey. That's my home state."
But what about people of New York? Don't we deserve honest representatives, too?" It was one thing when he was going to be her Congressman, but he was going to be someone else's Congressman, not hers?
New York has good representatives."
But not as good as you, Sam. We deserve the best."
Move to Jersey. — Kathleen O'Reilly

If there is one thing about my family that I do identify with, it is that everyone is extremely hardworking. Also, the people whom I grew up with all did things they really loved. And I think that's an important lesson. — Rooney Mara

It's only in bad novels that people are divided into two camps and have nothing to do with each other. In real life everything gets mixed up! Don't you think you'd have to be a hopeless nonentity to play only one role all your life, to have only one place in society, always to stand for the same thing?
Ah, there you are!
- Larissa Fyodorovna in Doctor Zhivago. — Boris Pasternak

I do a lot with characters' sense of identity. I also like challenging stereotypes, gender roles, things like that. Give me a stereotype or a genre expectation and the first thing I want to do is stand it on its head. In the Nightrunner books I wanted to see if I could create a believable gay hero, one who wasn't someone's sidekick or a victim. — Lynn Flewelling

I'm never going to accomplish anything; that's perfectly clear to me. I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more. — Dorothy Parker

I had crossed fifty years of my life, and come across uncountable females as son, husband, father, friend in my life. Coming across several women I carefully studied most of them, and feels that I got master knowing female. But every time when my heart comes across to a female, my all knowledge on female goes to a vain. What they want? , What are they looking for? When their mind changes? When their priority changes? No one knows, in a minute they use to change decisions, if someone ask, they says it's a little thing. They never think, little things makes big or if they can't stick on little things how they can stand in important decisions. They never show they are weak, but every time they are compromising themselves. It's their big heart but impacting every around. They always think they can do anything by doing nothing. — Nutan Bajracharya

I choose every role, in association with the other ones. I try not to do one thing, over and over and over again. — Chloe Grace Moretz

We humans do thousand and one thing to impress others and show to the world that we are smart and wise but we tend to forget one very simple thing, there is small child in each one of us which is hungry for our own trust and inspirations. — Santosh Kalwar

Most of my colleagues go on backpacking trips when they have to do some thinking. I go to a good hardware store and head for the oiliest, dustiest corners ... If they're really good, they don't hassle me. They let me wander around and think. Young hardware clerks have a lot of hubris. They think they can help you find anything ... Old hardware clerks have learned the hard way that nothing in a hardware store ever gets bought for its nominal purpose. You buy something that was designed to do one thing, and you use it for another. — Neal Stephenson

There is one thing that makes life mighty in its veriest trifles, worthy in its smallest deeds, that delivers it from monotony, that delivers it from insignificance. All will be great, nothing will be overpowering, when, living in communion with Jesus Christ, we say as He says, My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me. — Alexander MacLaren

If there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that you've got no say in what other people do with their lives. Everyone makes their own choices, good or bad. — Francine Rivers

As a songwriter, I try not to be sloppy; same with the music. You can be very lean, very efficient, so you're not wasting a lot of time getting' to the point. You're saying it with as pure a word or phrase as you can. That's the part that was craft. You refine and refine and refine. Maybe that's why the songs still hang on, because they're very pure. For one thing, they're very short. "Bad Moon Rising" is like 2 minutes and 12 seconds. I would try to do everything as quickly and with as little extra as possible. It was a challenge. — John Fogerty

A word about TV: If a television is on, an infant will stare at it. This is not a sign of advanced development. TV entertains at a cost. Young children easily become dependent on the TV for stimulation and lose some of their natural drive to explore. A child with a plastic cup and spoon, a few wooden blocks, and a board book can think up fifty creative ways to use those objects; a child in front of a TV can only do one thing. — Benjamin Spock

Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary - the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there's a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trimtab.
It's a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trimtab. Society thinks it's going right by you, that it's left you altogether. But if you're doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go.
So I said, call me Trimtab. — R. Buckminster Fuller

That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
I warily oped her lids: again
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
And I untightened the next tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss ... — Robert Browning

The important thing is character. It's my character I've got to mould. I'm sure one can do anything with oneself if one tries. It's only a matter of will. — W. Somerset Maugham

The important thing is not to be masochistic. Women are so hard on themselves. Don't do that. No one is keeping score. — Simon Doonan

One thing that I really like to do is, I'll look in the mirror, and I'll imagine that I'm rapidly aging, until I'm just a skull. — Anna Akana

My mother took too much, a great deal too much, care of me; she over-educated, over-instructed, over-dosed me with premature lessons of prudence: she was so afraid that I should ever do a foolish thing, or not say a wise one, that she prompted my every word, and guided my every action. So I grew up, seeing with her eyes, hearing with her ears, and judging with her understanding, till, at length, it was found out that I had not eyes, ears or understanding of my own. — Maria Edgeworth

What do you think of boybands?"
I avoided eye contact, put my hands in my pockets, and shrugged.
"Not my thing, really." What was he getting at?
He chortled, and continued. "They are all the same. They've all got a lead singer whose head is stuck up his own arse, then a hard one who gets into trouble, an ugly one who wants to be taken seriously, and always, without exception, there's a gay one. — Eddie De Oliveira

It's a funny thing. I'll be in my home town of Columbus at a restaurant or something, and the waiter maybe asks, 'What do you do?' and I say, 'Oh, I'm in a band ... Twenty One Pilots,' and he'll say, 'Cool, I'll check it out. I never heard of them.' And then I say, 'In September we're playing the Schottenstein Center,' and it's like, 'What?!' — Tyler Joseph

You might have one thing in your head, but the things you're doing don't really lead down the right road, necessarily. When you're young, you don't want to hear that. You think you can do everything, be all things. — Chadwick Boseman

One, which I mention several times elsewhere, is the need for patience if big profits are to be made from investment. Put another way, it is often easier to tell what will happen to the price of a stock than how much time will elapse before it happens. The other is the inherently deceptive nature of the stock market. Doing what everybody else is doing at the moment, and therefore what you have an almost irresistible urge to do, is often the wrong thing to do at all. — Philip Arthur Fisher

I think cultural criticism and long-form critique have their place and their purpose. But for a creator, it's so easy for the discussion surrounding a phenomenon to usurp the phenomenon itself. It's worse, of course, with comment sections on websites and blogs, particularly anonymous comments, or the incessant chatter and opinions on social media. Everyone gets to write a headline, and when you or the thing you do is being talked about, you get to feel like a headline - an addicting feeling for sure, but also a pernicious one. The discourse builds its own body, and it's usually a monster. — Carrie Brownstein

The one thing I cannot stand is when I do interviews, when I interview people, and I listen to the tapes and I hear myself talking and sort of stumble and stammer, or I hear the horrible sound of my own voice, or God forbid I see myself on video, there is that complete revulsion with seeing how I occur in the world. — Chuck Palahniuk

Simon: You're in a dangerous line of work, Jayne. Odds are you'll be under my knife again, often. So I want you to understand one thing very clearly: No matter what you do or say or plot, no matter how you come down on us, I will never, ever harm you. You're on this table, you're safe ... 'cause I'm your medic. And however little we may like or trust each other, we're on the same crew. Got the same troubles, same enemies, and more than enough of both. Now, we could circle each other and growl, sleep with one eye open, but that thought wearies me. I don't care what you've done, I don't know what you're planning on doing, but I'm trusting you. I think you should do the same. 'Cause I don't see this working any other way.
River: Also, I can kill you with my brain. — Ben Edlund

I try to do one thing at a time to utilise my time well. — Gwyneth Paltrow

Now if you are going to win any battle you have to do one
thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the
body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up.
It is always tired morning, noon, and night. But the body is
never tired if the mind is not tired. When you were younger
the mind could make you dance all night, and the body was
never tired ... You've always got to make the mind take over
and keep going. — George S. Patton Jr.

How English you are, Basil! If one puts
forward an idea to a real Englishman, - always a rash
thing to do, - he never dreams of considering whether the
idea is right or wrong. The only thing he considers of any
importance is whether one believes it one's self. Now, the
value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the
sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the
probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it
will not be colored by either his wants, his desires, or his
prejudices. However, I don't propose to discuss politics,
sociology, or metaphysics with you. I like persons better
than principles. Tell me more about Dorian Gray. How
often do you see him? — Oscar Wilde

One thing I'm a big fan of is the theater of the absurd. That's what I come from, that's what I love to do more than anything. What I love about absurdity is the words "comedy" and "drama" get thrown out the window and it's just life, which is absurd. — Michael Shannon

One thing for me that modeling definitely did was that you go to do a different job every day, and you are working with a completely new team of people. You have to learn how to talk to people and how to creatively achieve the same goals. I think it just hones your people skills. — Cat Deeley

A wrong is just a wrong no matter who's doin' it or who it's done to. You know someone's doin' wrong and even if it has not one thing to do with you, you do what you can to right that wrong. You don't, you're no kind of person or, at least, no kind I'd wanna know. — Kristen Ashley

When I lived in New York, there wasn't as much TV or film around. I got asked to do a couple of indie films, just based on me being from The Smashing Pumpkins and A Perfect Circle. I did a couple of indie movies from Japan and one from Canada, and I thought it was an exciting, fun thing to do. I had a great time doing it, it was just that, in New York, there really wasn't as much. My studio in New York closed, so I moved out to L.A. and just started looking into composing as another thing to do, as a musician. I like it a lot. It's fun and it's a different way of thinking about music. — James Iha

I know I have to do the right thing. And the sooner you do the right thing, the better. You get it over with, and you don't have to worry about it anymore. But who does that in real life? Instead, you procrastinate and think about it and put it off and think about it some more until that one little pebble grows into a giant block inside your head. — Candace Bushnell

Look here,' she began, 'you can't go on like that, you know. If you are really keen on a thing, and it's a good thing, you ought to go and do it. It is no use waiting till people tell you that you may go. Asking permission is a coward's way of shifting responsibility on to some one else. — Winifred Holtby

A schizophrenic is a person who already has a natural tendency to absent himself from this world, until some factor, sometimes serious, sometimes superficial, depending on the individual circumstances, forces him to create his own reality. It can develop into a state of complete alienation, what we call catatonia, but people do occasionally recover, at least enough to allow the patient to work and lead a near-normal life. It all depends on one thing: environment. — Paulo Coelho

But what we have here is not a nice girl, as generally understood. For one thing, she's not beautiful. There's a certain set to the jaw and arch to the nose that might, with a following wind and in the right light, be called handsome by a good-natured liar. Also, there's a certain glint in her eye generally possessed by those people who have found that they are more intelligent than most people around them but who haven't yet learned that one of the most intelligent things they can do is prevent said people ever finding this out. — Terry Pratchett

Mercy is the one thing I cannot afford. Not yet. When Wallachia is stable, when we have rebuilt, then yes. What we do now, we do so that someday mercy will be able to survive here. — Kiersten White

Spoiler: I didn't win the Main Event. You had suspicions, you say? For one thing, the subtitle of this book would be "The Amazing Life-Affirming Story of an Unremarkable Jerk Who Won the World Series of Poker!" instead of having the word "Death" in it. For another, do these sound like the words of a motherfucker who won a million goddamn dollars? — Colson Whitehead

I don't like gadgets for their own sake. I like gadgets that are tools. And I like simple gadgets that do one thing really well like a hammer. — Rob Corddry

The only thing I knew to do with a man was what I'd learned from my parents: to fight or not fight. I had no idea how to craft a partnership beyond that one basic thing. — Veronica Chambers

Globalization has considerably accelerated in recent years following the dizzying expansion of communications and transport and the equally stupefying transnational mergers of capital. We must not confuse globalization with "internationalism" though. We know that the human condition is universal, that we share similar passions, fears, needs and dreams, but this has nothing to do with the "rubbing out" of national borders as a result of unrestricted capital movements. One thing is the free movement of peoples, the other of money. — Eduardo Galeano

One hears a lot of talk about the hostility between scientists and engineers. I don't believe in any such thing. In fact I am quite certain it is untrue ... There cannot possibly be anything in it because neither side has anything to do with the other. — David Hilbert

- Oscar Wilde said that we always destroy the thing we love the most. And it is true. The simple possibility of achieving that which we desire causes the soul of the common man to be filled with guilt. He looks around, and sees many others who have not succeeded, and so he thinks he does not deserve it. He forgets everything he overcame, all he suffered, everything he had to renounce in order to come this far. I know many people who, when they are within reach of their Personal Legend, make a series of silly mistakes and do not attain their objective - when it was just one step away. — Paulo Coelho

I'm an alcoholic who doesn't (and doesn't want to) drink anymore so I exist in a state of never-ending micro-addictions that reveal themselves in the form of obsessions. I was the same as a child. These obsessions are things I want, want to do, or want to be. I become so fixated I neglect every other aspect of my life. What results is that I get really good at doing a lot of different things but no matter what I do, it's never the thing that gives me the feeling, this is what I've been searching for, I am home. In other words, I never feel thin. One hundred percent of the time. It — Augusten Burroughs

Whenever you do any one thing intensely over a period of time you have to give up other lives you could be living. You have to have a real single-minded kind of tunnel vision if you want to get anything significant accomplished. Especially if the desire is not to be a businessman, but to be a creative person. — Steve Jobs

The sad truth is that certain types of things can't go backward. Once they start going forward, no matter what you do, they can't go back the way they were. If even one little thing goes awry, then that's how it will stay forever. — Haruki Murakami

Death is a certainty, an inevitable realization, the only thing that we know will befall us. There are no exceptions, no surprises: all paths lead to it. Everything we do is a preparation for it, a preparation that we begin at birth, whimpering with our foreheads against the ground. We never move farther away from death, only closer. But if it is a certainty, then why are we surprised when it comes? If this life is a short passage that lasts only an hour or a day, then why do we fight to prolong it one more day or hour? Worldly life is treacherous, eternity is better.3 — Mesa Selimovic

Shocked, Raven flung back her head to listen more intently. "The wolves are talking to you! How do I know that, Mikhail? How could I possibly know such a thing?"
He ruffled her hair lightly, affectionately. "You hang out with the wrong crowd."
He was rewarded with a bubble of laughter. It tugged at his heart, left him open and vulnerable.
"What is this?" she teased. "Lord of the manor picks up seventies slang?"
He grinned at her boyishly, mischievously. "Maybe I am the one hanging out with the wrong crowd."
"And maybe there's hope for you yet." She kissed his throat, his chin, the stubborn line of his blue-shadowed jaw. — Christine Feehan

The way we do one thing is the way we do everything. — Iyanla Vanzant

One of the things that is always difficult about a collaboration is that you don't necessarily find the same thing funny. And so the challenge becomes, how do you tell the other person that you don't think something's funny? The best collaborations tend to be when you are willing to be told that. But there's also ego involved, and so there's a lot of frustration in knowing that you're writing something, and the other person, on some level, needs to think that it's funny. — Michael Showalter

You do that, and I take back every nasty thing I've ever said about you."
He grinned, his mood changing from serious to wicked in an instant. "Why? I'm all those things and more."
I shook my head. Ian was more proud of his depravity than anyone I'd met, but if he helped me pull Bones out from under four bespelled vampires and one demonically-enchanced vamp, I'd shower him with prostitutes and porn while swearing he was an angel. — Jeaniene Frost

You know, they say you can reduce genius to someone who spent 10,000 hours trying to get good at something. I'm not claiming either one of those. I haven't done anything for 10,000 hours but sleep. But you do stuff enough, you get better at it. Usually it's a simple thing like that. Essentially, a brainless endeavor. — Randy Newman

It is a little ironic that one thing a babysitter should not do is sit on a baby. — Demetri Martin

I am prepared to discuss the things that I believe we need to do not just to raise the debt limit. Raising the debt limit is the easiest thing. That's one vote away. The hard thing is to show the world we are serious about putting our spending in order so we can show people we'll able to pay our bills down the road. — Marco Rubio

And what a story. The first thing that drew me in was disbelief. What? Humanity sins but it's God's Son who pays the price? I tried to imagine Father saying to me, 'Piscine, a lion slipped into the llama pen today and killed two llamas. Yesterday another one killed a black buck. Last week two of them ate a camel. The situation has become intolerable. Something must be done. I have decided that the only way the lions can atone for their sins is if I feed them you.' ... 'Yes, Father, that would be the right and logical thing to do. Give me a moment to wash up'. What a downright weird story. What a peculiar psychology. — Yann Martel

It's hard to do that, to decide to believe one thing over another. — Carol Rifka Brunt

We do take pleasure in one thing that you probably won't be able to guess. Namely, making friends with nature ... nature is always there at hand to wrap us up, gently: glowing, swaying, bubbling, rustling.
Just by looking at nature, I feel as if I'm being swallowed up into it, and in that moment I get the sensation that my body's now a speck, a speck from long before I was born, a speck that is melting into nature herself. This sensation is so amazing that I forget that I'm a human being, and one with special needs to boot.
Nature calms me down when I'm furious, and laughs with me when I'm happy. You might think that it's not possible that nature could be a friend, not really. But human beings are part of the animal kingdom too, and perhaps us people with autism still have some left-over awareness of this, buried somewhere deep down. I'll always cherish that part of me that thinks of nature as a friend. — Naoki Higashida

One thing that's clear in the Scriptures is that the nations do not lead people to peace; rather, people lead the nations to peace. — Shane Claiborne