Quotes & Sayings About Doing Something Before It's Too Late

He was ever conscious of his obligation to play well. Late in his career, when his legs were bothering him and the Yankees had a comfortable lead in a pennant race, a friend of his, columnist Jimmy Cannon, asked him why he played so hard - the games, after all, no longer meant so much. "Because there might be somebody out there who's never seen me play before," he answered. — David Halberstam

I don't want all these germs all over my kid. "What's her name?" the woman asks. "Jamie." I stare steadily at the crosswalk signal, willing the little green man to pop up before the chick starts flirting. "And what's her daddy's name?" Too late. "Tucker, but my wife calls me Tuck." That shuts her up fast. Normally I'm not this rude during these random street pick-ups, but I really don't like the way she touched my child without permission. Fuck that. — Elle Kennedy

Dad and I were mixing with a new set of people who had not known much, if anything, about my father. If they had even heard of Dad before he came on the pro-life scene in the mid-to-late seventies, they probably hadn't liked the sound of him. These people included Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, James Kennedy, and all the rest of the televangelists, radio hosts, and other self-appointed "Christian leaders" who were bursting on the scene in the 1970s and early '80s. Compared — Frank Schaeffer

People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late. It is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists. It is no answer to say, with a distant optimism, that the scheme is only in the air. A blow from a hatchet can only be parried while it is in the air. — G.K. Chesterton

You deal with me very frankly, and I thank you for it,' said I. 'I will try on my side to be no less honest. I believe these deep duties may lie upon your lordship; I believe you may have laid them on your conscience when you took the oaths of the high office which you hold. But for me, who am just a plain man
or scarce a man yet
the plain duties must suffice. I can think but of two things, of a poor soul in the immediate and unjust danger of a shameful death, and of the cries and tears of his wife that still tingle in my head. I cannot see beyond, my lord. It's the way I am made. If the country has to fall, it has to fall. And I pray God, if this is wilful blindness, that He may enlighten me before too late. — Robert Louis Stevenson

Indeed, there are recurrent hints in the Bible that the Israelites had feelings of guilt about taking the Canaanites' land,147 a curious adumbration of Israeli twinges about homeless Palestinian Arabs in the late twentieth century. The Israelites, however, hid any remorse in the belief that the conquest was a pious act: it is 'because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you'. — Paul Johnson

Nokia and Research in Motion needed a modern operating system. They could have bought Palm or Android before Google did, but they didn't. Today, it's probably too late, and at the time they would have been criticized for overpaying, but as they say - shift happens. — Marc Andreessen

Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed ... .To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! — Samuel Beckett

A person, for example, reads in adulthood a book that is important for him, and it makes him say, "How could I have lived without reading it!" and also, "What a pity I did not read it in my youth!" Well, these statements do not have much meaning, especially the second, because after he has read that book, his life becomes the life of a person who has read that book, and it is of little importance whether he read it early or late, because now his life before that reading also assumes a form shaped by that reading. — Italo Calvino

I sipped my own coffee, heavy on the sugar and cream, trying to make up for the late work the night before. Caffeine and sugar, the two basic food groups. — Laurell K. Hamilton

This morning when I looked out the roof window
before dawn and a few stars were still caught
in the fragile weft of ebony night
I was overwhelmed. I sang the song Louis taught me:
a song to call the deer in Creek, when hunting,
and I am certainly hunting something as magic as deer
in this city far from the hammock of my mother's belly.
It works, of course, and deer came into this room
and wondered at finding themselves
in a house near downtown Denver.
Now the deer and I are trying to figure out a song
to get them back, to get all of us back,
because if it works I'm going with them.
And it's too early to call Louis
and nearly too late to go home.
[from poem, "Song for the Deer and Myself to Return On"] — Joy Harjo

It is never too late to ask yourself, 'Am I ready to change the life I am living? Am I ready to change within?' Even if a single day in your life is the same as the day before, it surely is a pity. At every moment and with each new breath, one should be renewed and renewed again. There is only one way to be born into a new life: to die before death. — Elif Shafak

The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt. It is no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are mortally hurt. People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late. it is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists. — G.K. Chesterton

And then our late grand controversy, concerning the qualifications necessary for admission to the privileges of members in complete standing in the visible church of Christ, will be examined and judged in all its parts and circumstances, and the whole set forth in a clear, certain and perfect light. Then it will appear whether the doctrine which I have preached and published concerning this matter be Christ's own doctrine, whether he will not own it as one of the precious truths which have proceeded from his own mouth, and vindicate and honor as such before the whole universe. Then it will appear what is meant by "the man that comes without the wedding garment"; for that is the day spoken of, Matt. xxii. 13, wherein such an one shall be bound hand and foot, and cast into outer darkness, where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And then it will appear whether, in declaring this doctrine, and acting agreeable to it, and in my general conduct in the affair, — Jonathan Edwards

There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!" (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and, burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge. — Lewis Carroll

The tallest adults are the ones who had the most childhood and adolescent growth before puberty started; puberty typically tacks on a standard nine inches, and then the game's over. "The children who are going to be the biggest adults are those who are tall by age one or two, and have a relatively late puberty," says Rosenfeld. — Arianne Cohen

I am sorry for your disappointment,' he continued, glancing into her face. Their eyes having met, became, as it were, mutually locked together, and the single instant only which good breeding allows as the length of such a look, became trebled: a clear penetrating ray of intelligence had shot from each into each, giving birth to one of those unaccountable sensations which carry home to the heart before the hand has been touched or the merest compliment passed, by something stronger than mathematical proof, the conviction, 'A tie has begun to unite us.' Both faces also unconsciously stated that their owners had been much in each other's thoughts of late. Owen had talked to the young architect of his sister as freely as to Cytherea of the young architect. — Thomas Hardy

I am, in general, an easygoing person. I try to take a reed-bending-with-the-wind attitude toward life, rather than fight everything. But these constant "out of the frying pan, into the fire, into a worse fire, into a worse fire than the worse fire before it" situations that had been riddling my life of late were beginning to wear me down — Katie MacAlister

It's early spring, some late or early hour with Orion toppling backward onto the serrated edge of the mountains and not crying out but silent, silent as he tries to shoot the bull before it tramples him. Sometimes he is very peaceful not tonight. Tonight he is fighting for his life. — Peter Heller

Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for one the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! What do you say? It is true that when with folded arms we weigh the pros and cons we are no less a credit to our species. The tiger bounds to the help of his congeners without the least reflexion, or else he slinks away into the depths of the thickets. But that is not the question. What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in the immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come
— Samuel Beckett

It may be that religion is dead, and if it is, we had better know it and set ourselves to try to discover other sources of moral strength before it is too late. — Pearl S. Buck

It seemed my whole life was composed of these disjointed fractions of time, hanging around in one public place and then another, as if I were waiting for trains that never came. And, like one of those ghosts who are said to linger around depots late at night, asking passersby for the timetable of the Midnight Express that derailed twenty years before, I wandered from light to light until that dreaded hour when all the doors closed and, stepping from the world of warmth and people and conversation overhead, I felt the old familiar cold twist through my bones again and then it was all forgotten, the warmth, the lights; I had never been warm in the life, ever. — Donna Tartt

Be a half-assed crusader, a part-time fanatic. Don't worry to much about the fate of the world. Saving the world is only a hobby. Get out there and enjoy the world, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, husbands wives; climb mountains, run rivers, get drunk, do whatever you want to do while you can, before it's too late. — Edward Abbey

Men go to sea, before they know the unhappiness of that way of life; and when they have come to know it, they cannot escape from it, because it is then too late to choose another profession; as indeed is generally the case with men, when they have once engaged in any particular way of life. — Samuel Johnson

this is real, and it is happening now, just as it happened before: We are under the big tree in my backyard, on that patch of dirt where we used to build fairy houses from moss and sticks and scraps of birch. It is late afternoon. All around us is golden light. We have been together all day, in our cutoff shorts and bare feet. It is the start of fifth grade, the start of being the oldest in the school. Next year, we will be the youngest all over again. But not yet. We are playing that hand-slapping game, the one we like to play at recess. You hold your hands out, palms up, and I place mine lightly on top. You pull yours out and try to slap mine. You hit air three times. On the fourth try, your — Ali Benjamin

Children close their ears to Advice but Open their eyes to example.
Even New Genx Moms close their ears to Advice but Open their eyes to realize their mistakes eventually.
Think, Act Wise before it's Late. — Ilaxi Patel

I had done quite a bit of research about math education when I spoke before Congress in 2000 about the importance of women in mathematics. The session of Congress was all about raising more scholarships for girls in college. I told them I felt that it's too late by college. — Danica McKellar

White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races. — Jesse Helms

That's exactly what I'm talking about. That's the evil that's seducing you. The malevolent power that is crawling through your blood tempting you onto a treacherous path that will cost you everything you love and hold dear. You have to let that anger go before it's too late. Vengeance always turns inward and it will consume you until nothing's left but an empty hole that nothing can fill. (Ambrose) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Operation Find A Toilet Before It Was Too Late was in full swing. — Gabrielle Tozer

Reading was like an addiction; I read while I ate, on the train, in bed until late at night, in school, where I'd keep the book hidden so I could read during class. Before long I bought a small stereo and spent all my time in my room, listening to jazz records. But I had almost no desire to talk to anyone about the experience I gained through books and music. I felt happy just being me and no one else. In that sense I could be called a stack-up loner. — Haruki Murakami

Kids: get away from the cell phones, get away from the computers, and mail someone a fish before it's too late. — Tom Magliozzi