First Tries Quotes & Sayings

When a founder has cast a bell he does not presently fix it in the steeple, but tries it with his hammer, and beats it on every side to see if there be any flaw in it. So Christ doth not presently after he hath converted a man, convey him to heaven; but suffers him first to be beaten upon by many temptations and then exalts him to his crown. — Richard Cecil

The short answer to our question is that we are not entering a post-American world. It is not possible for this (or any) book to see "the future," because there are so many possible futures dependent on unpredictable events and they play a larger role the further out one tries to look. Thus it is important to specify a time horizon. For example, if the "American century" began in 1941, will the United States still have primacy in power resources and play the central role in the global balance of power among states in 2041? My guess is "yes." In that sense, the American century is not over, but because of transnational and non-state forces, it is definitely changing in important ways that are described below. But first, we must look at the charge that the United States is in decline. — Joseph S. Nye Jr.

There were other things,too, to ask him. Always she tries to be less forward. Always she tried to find the right thing to say and didn't trust the etiquette pendulum swinging in her head, so she simply said nothing, which was perceived either as painful shyness of haughtiness. Dasha never had that problem. She just said the first thing that came into her head. Tatiana knew she needed to rust her inner voice more. It was certainly loud enough — Paullina Simons

Maybe demons are defined as anything other than God that tries to tell us who we are. And maybe, just moments after Jesus' baptism, when the devil says to him, "If you are the Son of God ... " he does so because he knows that Jesus is vulnerable to temptation precisely to the degree that he is insecure about his identity and mistrusts his relationship with God. So if God's first move is to give us our identity, then the devil's first move is to throw that identity into question. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

We know the truth not only through our reason but also through our heart. It is through the latter that we know first principles, and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to refute them. — Blaise Pascal

During the first seven years, every society tries to condition the mind - and conditioning means nothing but hypnosis: forcing authority, law, tradition, religion, scripture, the priest, the church, into the innermost unconscious of the child so that from there you can control him. — Rajneesh

But when his parents consciously or unconsciously exploit him for their own ends or pleasure, or hate or reject him, so that he cannot be sure of minimal support when he tries out his new independence, the child will cling to the parents and will use his capacity for independence only in the forms of negativity and stubbornness. If, when he first begins tentatively to say "No," his parents beat him down rather than love and encourage him, he thereafter will say "No" not as a form of true independent strength but as a mere rebellion. — Rollo May

One of the first things a family tries to teach its children is the difference between good and evil, right and wrong. One of the first things our schools do is destroy that distinction. — John Taylor Gatto

When a young child is taught that telling the truth will result in a good feeling, she has taken the first step toward realizing that truth has a spiritual quality. It isn't necessary to use punishment. If you foster the attitude of "tell the truth or you'll be in trouble," you have taught something spiritually false. A child who is tempted to lie is under the influence of fear; if truth gets associated with this fear, then the mind quite logically tries to get better at seeming to tell the truth. — Deepak Chopra

I'll always remember being called by my mother who beckoned me to look at the screen where a young man was being tortured by the church. Bag over his head, rolling on the ground, crying, suffocating, vomiting while the congression continues yelling chants, "God will save you!" treating him like the devil's child.

It was the first time I've ever doubted God. First time I've ever heard the terms 'Gays, and 'Queers.' I went through a lot in my childhood, but this was the first I've ever been so traumatized. My mom tells me they deserved it and the church tries to justify their actions as if it was the most intelligent excuse in the world. At 12 years old, I knew only one thing. I would never be like them. — Merlin

Since the time of the ancient Greeks a democracy has depended on its philosophers and creative artists. It can only flourish by continuous probing, prodding, and questioning of the social conditions under which man exists and tries to better himself. One of the first moves of a dictatorship is to stifle the artists and thinkers who have the ability to stir up dissent from any prescribed dogma which might enslave them. Because the artist can arouse the curiosity and conscience of his community, he becomes a threat to those who have taken power. — Uta Hagen

A leader first tries to listen, then tries to understand, then creates a common vision and then together takes action for the realization. — Debasish Mridha

This is because Marxism looks at things as a whole and in relation to each other - or tries to, but its limitations are not the point for the moment. A person who has been influenced by Marxism takes it for granted that an event in Siberia will affect one in Botswana. I think it is possible that Marxism was the first attempt, for our time [written in 1971], outside the formal religions, at a world-mind, a world ethic. It went wrong, could not prevent itself from dividing and subdividing, like all the other religions, into smaller and smaller chapels, sects and creeds. But it was an attempt. — Doris Lessing

When Heaven is going to give a great responsibility to someone, it first makes his mind endure suffering. It makes his sinews and bones experience toil, and his body to suffer hunger. It inflicts him with poverty and knocks down everything he tries to build. In this way Heaven stimulates his mind, stabilizes his temper, and develops his weak points. - The Book of Mencius (Chinese, 300 BC) — Timothy Keller

He tries not to give offense. He likes to think of himself by nature as reasonable and conciliatory. He can duck out, prevaricate, evade the issue. He can smile enigmatically and refuse to come down on either side. He can quibble, and stand on semantics. It's a living, he thinks; but it isn't. For there comes the bald question, the one choice out of two: do you want a revolution, M. de Robespierre? Yes, damn you, damn all of you, I want it, we need it, that's what we're going to have. — Hilary Mantel

Whoever wants to be a leader should educate himself before educating others. Before preaching to others he should first practice himself. Whoever educates himself and improves his own morals is superior to the man who tries to teach and train others. — Bill Vaughan

There seems to be at least one common denominator to all intelligent life: it was bipedal and bimannual. Four legs was the most practical number for any animal on any planet, and it seems that nature has nothing else to work with. When she decided to give intelligence to a species, she taught him to stand on his hind legs, freeing his forefeet to become tools of his intellect. And she usually taught him by making him use his hands to climb. As a Cophian biologist had said, Life first tries to climb a tree to get to the stars. When it fails, it comes down and invents the high-C drive. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

The Top Ten Things Every Girl Should Have the First Time
5. A guy who realizes it's a big deal for you, this time.
6. A guy who understands that it's a big deal every time.
7. A guy who tries to make it special. Every time. — Melissa Jensen

[Raymond Roussel] said that after his first book he expected that the next morning there would be a kind of aura around his person and that everyone in the street would be able to see that he had written a book. This is the obscure desire harboured by everyone who writes. It is true that the first text one writes is neither written for others, nor because one is what one is: one writes to become other than what one is. One tries to modify one's way of being through the act of writing. — Michel Foucault

Because this is another thing your average American man in crisis does: he tries to go home, forgetting, momentarily, that he is the reason he left home in the first place, that the home is not his anymore, and that the crisis is him. — Brock Clarke

Science, in all its greatness, is still subject to human creativity. It starts the first moment a child tries to reach up and grab at the clouds. Soon, the child learns that his own hands cannot reach the sky, but his hands are not the limit of his potential. For the human brain observes, considers, understands, and adapts. Locked within the mind is infinite possibility. — Yukito Kishiro

Serial tasking is hard because switching tasks is hard, even when the tasks are easy and similar. In some experiments, bilingual speakers are asked to read out numbers, first in one language and then midway in another language. They often stumble at the switch, taking many tries before they hit their stride again. — Sendhil Mullainathan

Can you imagine how incredibly quiet it was everywhere, when the gentlemen from this world" - he made a vague circular gesture towards the battalions of meditating Asians behind him - "were hatching and proclaiming their ideas? Anyone who now tries to follow these ideas in order to find the road back to what they were talking about, is faced with obstacles that would have driven an entire tribe of oriental ascetics into the ravine. The world from which they felt it so necessary to retreat would have seemed idyllic to us. We live in a vision of hell, and we have actually got used to it." He looked at his statues and continued, "We have become different people. We still look the same, but we have nothing in common with them any more. We are differently programmed. Anyone who now wants to become like them must acquire a big dose of madness first; otherwise he will no longer be able to bear the life of our world. We are not designed for their kind of life. — Cees Nooteboom

Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator's first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. . . . After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it on herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on. The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail. — Rebecca Solnit

Herman's Trauma and Recovery, which addresses rape, child molestation, and wartime trauma together, notes: Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator's first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. . . . After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it on herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on. The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail. They — Rebecca Solnit

In his very first encyclical Pius X had uttered a warning: ... We shall take the greatest care to see that the members of the clergy do not allow themselves to be taken in by the insidious maneuvers of a certain new science which dons the mask of truth and from which one does not discern the fragrance of Jesus Christ; it is a mendacious science which, using fallacious and perfidious arguments, tries to beat a path to the errors of rationalism and semi-rationalism, and against which the Apostle was already warning his beloved Timothy when he wrote: Guard the deposit, avoiding profane novelties in language as well as in the arguments of a knowledge falsely so-called, whose enthusiasts, with all their promises, have failed in the faith.19 — Anonymous

I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing. — William Faulkner

If one tries to think about history, it seems to me - it's like looking at a range of mountains. And the first time you see them, they look one way. But then time changes, the pattern of light shifts. Maybe you've moved slightly, your perspective has changed. The mountains are the same, but they look very different. — Robert Harris

Self-forgiveness. It's more like a constant attitude. It's just being hopeful. It's refusing to hold your breath. It's loving yourself enough to offer yourself a million more tries. It's what we want our kids to do every day for their whole lives, right? We want them to embrace being human instead of fighting against it. We want them to offer themselves grace. Forgiveness and grace are like oxygen: we can't offer it to others unless we put our masks on first. We have to put our grace masks on and breathe in deep. — Glennon Doyle Melton

We need to substitute 'trier' for failure. The word 'fail' is closely related to the word fall. A child taking his first step falls, cries and then tries again. Why does he try again? Because he wants to, but does not, know the meaning of failure. — Anup Kochhar

America is the only major country that tries to ascertain who was the first applicant to invent the product or procedure. This may seem fair, but long proceedings to determine precisely when each party conceived an idea result mostly in keeping innovations from hitting the market. — Robert Pozen

In every philosophical school, three thinkers succeed one another in the following way: the first produces out of himself the sapand seed, the second draws it out into threads and spins a synthetic web, and the third waits in this web for the sacrificial victims that are caught in it
and tries to live off philosophy. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The exciting thing about mathematics and science and music and literature is what they can tell us about the workings of the human mind. For these disciplines are literally models (extensions) of at least certain parts of the mind. Just as the knife cuts but does not chew, while the lens does only a portion of what the eye can do, extensions are reductionist in their capability. No matter how hard it tries, the human race can never fully replace what was left out of extensions in the first place. Also, it is just as important to know what is left out of a given extension system as it is to know what the system will do. Yet the extension-omissions side is frequently overlooked. — Edward T. Hall

The writer is a secret criminal. How? First because writing tries to undertake the journey toward strange sources of art that are foreign to us. "The thing" does not happen here, it happens somewhere else, in a strange and foreign country. The writer has a foreign origin; we do not know the particular nature of these foreigners, but we feel they feel there is an appeal, that someone is calling them back. — Helene Cixous

First New York was a sort of provincial capital, bigger and richer than Manchester or Marseilles, but not much different in its essential spirit. Then, after the war, it became one among half a dozen world cities. Today it has the appearance of standing alone, as the center of culture in the part of the world that still tries to be civilized. — Malcolm Cowley

Propaganda tries first of all to create conditioned reflexes in the individual so that certain words, signs, or symbols, even certain persons or facts, provoke unfailing reactions ... The important thing is that when the time is ripe, the individual can be thrown into action by the utilization of the psychological levers that have been set up ... — Jacques Ellul

The human spirit tries to break free again and again, not in hate like the Dark Revolt. But for love. They don't mimic each other. They aren't inspired by others who come before them. Each is willing to take the leap, thinking they are the first. That's bravery. And that means it's a part of who we are as people. — Pierce Brown

The monetary union tries to handle two groups of countries which differ greatly in terms of economic culture. First, the North-West European countries [ ... ] which aspiring to rules and discipline, and the Mediterranean countries [ ... ] which aspiring political solutions to economic problems. The first group [ ... ] aspires to solidity, the second group aspires solidarity, that is to say; other people's money. — Frits Bolkestein

So when life throws a curve ball, do your best to hit it and run to first base. If it tries to get you out of the game, do your best to get to the home plate. Yes there will be those looking for you to fail, but there are also those who are cheering you on. If not then cheer for yourself! — Atlanta Hunter

goodness tries to get the upper hand in us whenever it seems to have the slightest chance - on Sunday mornings, perhaps, when we are set free from the grinding hurry of the week, and take the little three-year old on our knee at breakfast to share our egg and muffin; in moments of trouble, when death visits our roof or illness makes us dependent on the tending hand of a slighted wife; in quiet talks with an aged mother, of the days when we stood at her knee with our first picture-book, or wrote her loving letters from school. — George Eliot

These machines have no common sense; they have not yet learned to "think," and they do exactly as they are told, no more and no less. This fact is the hardest concept to grasp when one first tries to use a computer — Donald Knuth

Unless you are addressing the issues people are concerned about and contributing positive direction, they'll never support you. The first thing the enemy tries to do is isolate revolutionaries from the masses of people, making us horrible and hideous monsters so that our people will hate us — Assata Shakur

There are two great rules of life; the one general and the other particular. The first is that everyone can, in the end, get what he wants, if he only tries. That is the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is, more or less, an exception to the rule. — Samuel Butler

Her gaze met his, her green eyes glazed and filled with shadows. "I-Iain?"
Iain understood those shadows only too well. She was in shock. She had witnessed the full horror of war. Worse, she had killed a man. Like a young soldier after his first battle, she was struggling to cope. 'Twas an anguish no woman should have to bear.
His rage broke like the tide against the shore, and before he could think, he pulled her hard against him, held her, stroked her hair. "You foolish, brave woman! Why do you no' obey me?"
"What the bloody hell is he doin'?" Connor asked from somewhere behind them.
Morgan answered, "I think he's punishin' her."
"If he tries this on the men, they'll mutiny. — Pamela Clare

Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn't know the first thing about either. — Marshall McLuhan

Similarly, if a dog barks annoyingly to be let into the house from the yard and the owner usually eventually caves in, the first time the owner ignores the dog's barking the behavior won't stop right away. The dog will try harder and bark more. How hard he tries depends on how much he's had to bark to get his way in the past. The existence of the extinction burst means that when we address a bad behavior by removing the reward, we have to be ready to endure a temporary worsening of the behavior. — Sophia Yin

Paul Otremba's remarkable first book, The Currency, is an intriguing foray into lyric epistemology that tries to come to ter ms with the implacable, paradox-ridden nature of knowledge and experience. These are deeply felt, deeply meditated poems guided by a sensibility highly attenuated to the physical world. In their openness to friendship and love and in their fearless directness, they remind me of the work of Larry Levis and Jon Anderson. Like Levis and Anderson, Otremba promises to be an influential and important voice for his generation. — Michael Collier

When the mathematician says that such and such a proposition is true of one thing, it may be interesting, and it is surely safe. But when he tries to extend his proposition to everything, though it is much more interesting, it is also much more dangerous. In the transition from one to all, from the specific to the general, mathematics has made its greatest progress, and suffered its most serious setbacks, of which the logical paradoxes constitute the most important part. For, if mathematics is to advance securely and confidently, it must first set its affairs in order at home. — Edward Kasner

Though every thinking being longs for God, the First Cause, it is powerless ... to grasp Him. Tired with the yearning it chafes at the bit and, careless of the cost, it tries a second tack. Either it looks at things visible and makes of these a god - a gross mistake, for what visible thing is more sublime, more godlike, than its observer ... - or else it discovers God through the beauty and order of things seen, using sight as a guide to what transcends sight without losing God through the grandeur of what it sees. — Gregory Of Nazianzus

Have you ever watched a baby learning to walk? He totters, arms stretched out to balance himself. He wobbles - and falls, perhaps bumps his nose. Then he puts the palms of his little hands flat on the floor, hikes his rear end up, looks around to see if anybody is watching him. If nobody is, usually he doesn't bother to cry, just precariously balances himself - and tries again. Well, the baby can teach us. What you've undertaken ... isn't a state of perfection to be arrived at all of the sudden. It's a WALK, and a walk isn't static but ever-changing. We Friends say that all discouragement is from an evil source and can only end in more evil. Wallowing in self-condemnation or feeling sorry for yourself is worse than falling on your face in the first place ... So thee is human. — Catherine Marshall

Americans who read and think are patriots of the first order. The kind who know enough to roll their eyes whenever anyone tries to claim sole custody of the flag and weild it as a blunt instrument. There are as many ways to love America as there are Americans, and our country needs us all. — Barbara Kingsolver

Man little knows what calamities are beyond his patience to bear till he tries them; as in ascending the heights of ambition, which look bright from below, every step we rise shows us some new and gloomy prospect of hidden disappointment; so in our descent from the summits of pleasure, though the vale of misery below may appear, at first, dark and gloomy, yet the busy mind, still attentive to its own amusement, finds, as we descend, something to flatter and to please. Still as we approach, the darkest objects appear to brighten, and the mortal eye becomes adapted to its gloomy situation. — Oliver Goldsmith

There are people who think that we cannot rule ourselves because the few times we tried, we failed, as if all the others who rule themselves today got it right the first time. It is like telling a crawling baby who tries to walk, and then falls back on his buttocks, to stay there. As if the adults walking past him did not crawl, once — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

In Jenny Offill's remarkable first novel, 'Last Things,' 7-year-old Grace Davitt watches her mother, Anna, descend into madness and tries to make sense of the claustrophobic world that Anna has created for her. — Nancy Willard

Rolen's the perfect baseball player. It's his tenacity, his preparation, the way he plays. He tries to do everything fundamentally sound. And he puts the team team first-there's no fanfare with him. — Ned Yost

I wish I could break this window. Step through it. But I can't break this window. I can't even find some less dramatic way to die inside of this school, like hanging myself or slitting my wrists, because what would they do with my body? It might put everyone at risk. I won't let myself do that.
I'm not selfish like Lily.
I hate her. I hate her so much my heart tries to crawl out of my throat but it gets stuck there and beats crazily in the too narrow space. I bring my hands to my neck and try to massage it back down. I pres so heard against the skin, my eyes sting, and then I'm hurrying back down the stairs, back to the first floor. I think of Trace running laps, something he can control. — Courtney Summers

It is true that freedom, when it is made up principally of privileges, insults labor and separates it from culture. But freedom is not made up principally of privileges; it is made up especially of duties. And the moment each of us tries to give freedom's duties precedence over its privileges, freedom joins together labor and culture and sets in motion the only force that can effectively serve justice. The rule of our action, the secret of our resistance can be easily stated: everything that humiliates labor also humiliates the intelligence, and vice versa. And the revolutionary struggle, the centuries-old straining toward liberation can be defined first of all as a double and constant rejection of humiliation. — Albert Camus

When I read the actual story-how Gatsby loves Daisy so much but can't ever be with her no matter how hard he tries-I feel like ripping the book in half and calling up Fitzgerald and telling him his book is all wrong, even though I know Fitzgerald is probably deceased. Especially when Gatsby is shot dead in his swimming pool the first time he goes for a swim all summer, Daisy doesn't even go to his funeral, Nick and Jordan part ways, and Daisy ends up sticking with racist Tom, whose need for sex basically murders an innocent woman, you can tell Fitzgerald never took the time to look up at clouds during sunset, because there's no silver lining at the end of that book, let me tell you. — Matthew Quick

No one knows of these people," she says. "No one but a handful of Golds with access. The human spirit tries to break free, again and again, not in hate like the Dark Revolt. But for love. They don't mimic each other. They aren't inspired by others who come before them. Each is willing to take the leap, thinking they are the first. That's bravery. And that means it's a part of who we are as people." Bravery. — Pierce Brown

Of course they didn't give us this much, Sage. But I had to make sure I nailed my first assignment. Takes a lot of tries before you hit perfection." He paused to reconsider that. "Well, except for my parents. They got it on the first try. — Richelle Mead

So it is that whenever Heaven invests a person with great responsibilities, it first tries his resolve, exhausts his muscles and bones, starves his body, leaves him destitute, and confound his every endeavor. In this way his patience and endurance are developed, and his weaknesses are overcome. We change and grow only when we make mistakes. We realize what to do only when we work through worry and confusion. And we gain people's trust and understanding only when our inner thoughts are revealed clearly in our faces and words. — Mencius

Everything about filmmaking tries to distract you from that first fine rapturous vision you have of the film. — Ted Kotcheff

Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it. — H.L. Mencken

The vision of Hinduism is unity in diversity. First, Hinduism lovingly embraces all alien elements; second, it tries to assimilate them; third, it tries to expand itself as a whole, with a view to serving humanity and nature. — Sri Chinmoy

As I rock down the hall I am flung from my path- snatched and grabbed. Before I can even utter a word, a large palm is covering my mouth. In less than five seconds I am inside a pitch black room, pushed face first into a cold metal door, and I hear the lock snick into place. A heavy weight presses at my back. I didn't even have time to panic. It was a well-timed attack.
My mind flashes to another time and place, another hand on my mouth. I breathe though the panic that tries to overcome me.
I allow my senses to put me at ease. He's just softly breathing near my ear. His body is relaxed. The way he holds me feels more playful than threatening.
"Let me guess ... the Boss," I say to the heavy weight at my back. My tone is a mix of amused annoyance. — Erica Chilson

There are people, she once wrote, who think that we cannot rule ourselves because the few times we tried, we failed, as if all the others who rule themselves today got it right the first time. It is like telling a crawling baby who tries to walk, and then falls back on his buttocks, to stay there. As if the adults walking past him did not all crawl, once. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

All the pathos and irony of leaving one's youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered, and the wise traveller learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time. — Paul Fussell

Job tries to comfort himself with philosophical pessimism like the intellectuals of the nineteenth century. But God comforts Job with indecipherable mystery, and for the first time Job is comforted. . . . Job flings at God one riddle, God flings back at Job a hundred riddles, and Job is at peace. He is comforted with conundrums. — G.K. Chesterton

It's interesting to note that when something like a virus tries to poison us, the first thing our bodies do is heat up. We burn away the infection. Maybe that's what Earth is doing to us. — Simon Toyne

When the ANSI C standard was under development, the pragma directive was introduced. Borrowed from Ada, #pragma is used to convey hints to the compiler, such as the desire to expand a particular function in-line or suppress range checks. Not previously seen in C, pragma met with some initial resistance from a gcc implementor, who took the "implementation-defined" effect very literally - in gcc version 1.34, the use of pragma causes the compiler to stop compiling and launch a computer game instead! The gcc manual contained the following: The "#pragma" command is specified in the ANSI standard to have an arbitrary implementation-defined effect. In the GNU C preprocessor, "#pragma" first attempts to run the game "rogue"; if that fails, it tries to run the game "hack"; if that fails, it tries to run GNU Emacs displaying the Tower of Hanoi; if that fails, it reports a fatal error. In any case, preprocessing does not continue. - Manual for version 1.34 of the GNU C compiler — Peter Van Der Linden

Reality is far more vicious than Russian roulette. First, it delivers the fatal bullet rather infrequently, like a revolver that would have hundreds, even thousands of chambers instead of six. After a few dozen tries, one forgets about the existence of a bullet, under a numbing false sense of security. Second, unlike a well-defined precise game like Russian roulette, where the risks are visible to anyone capable of multiplying and dividing by six, one does not observe the barrel of reality. One is capable of unwittingly playing Russian roulette - and calling it by some alternative "low risk" game. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Now, during the tourist season, she first tries to speed the sale of an item that has been difficult to move by increasing its price substantially. — Robert B. Cialdini

Debugging: what an odd word. As if "bugging" were the job of putting in bugs, and debugging the task of removing them. But no. The job of putting in bugs is called programming. A programmer writes some code and inevitably makes the mistakes that result in the malfunctions called bugs. Then, for some period of time, normally longer than the time it takes to design and write the code in the first place, the programmer tries to remove the mistakes. — Ellen Ullman

He grinned at me, and it was a boyish weary grin aiming for wicked, but too tired and worried to reach it. "I love you. You're mine. I'll kill any bastard who tries to take you from me. So, here's how it's going to go: Ellie comes first, but while we're taking care of her you can be as pig-headed as you want and pretend that we're broken up. I'll even let you. But I'm also going to be here, every day, showing you what you're missing. — Samantha Young

It takes a lot of dedication to quit smoking, and whether you give up for good on your first try or have to give it a couple of tries - just keep swinging at it and you will succeed. — Harmon Killebrew

Takes a lot of tries before you hit perfection." He paused to reconsider that. "Well, except for my parents. They got it on the first try." (Adrian) — Richelle Mead

Why does a dad matter so much to a daughter, in particular? A dad is the one who teaches a daughter what a male is all about. It's the first man in her life
the first man she loves, the first male she tries to please, the first man who says no to her, the first man to discipline her. In effect, he sets her up for success or failure with the opposite sex. Not only that, but she takes cues from how Dad treats Mom as she grows up about what to expect as a woman who is in a relationship with a man. So Dad sets up his daughter's marriage relationship too. — Kevin Leman

Any performer tries to perform music as if for the first time, with all that energy and excitement that comes from discovering a new piece--maybe trying to recreate the memory of falling in love with a piece when hearing it first as a child--and just as people regularly say of a brilliant conductor that they seem to conduct as if recreating the energy an audience must have felt when the piece was first played decades, even centuries, before, so too I think we need to communicate our knowledge with the passion we first encountered as children. — Armando Iannucci

So I'm on my way to work and I stop to watch a pigeon fight a rat in the snow, and some fuckhead tries to mug me! — Josh Bazell

When I lived in New York and went to Chinatown, I learned that these flavors and their meanings were actually a foundation of ancient Chinese medicine.
Salty translated to fear and the frantic energy that tries to compensate for or hide it.
Sweet was the first flavor we recognized from our mother's milk, and to which we turned when we were worried and unsure or depressed.
Sour usually meant anger and frustration.
Bitter signified matters of the heart, from simply feeling unloved to the almost overwhelming loss of a great love. Most spices, along with coffee and chocolate, had some bitterness in their flavor profile. Even sugar, when it cooked too long, turned bitter. But to me, spice was for grief, because it lingered longest. — Judith Fertig

Once someone tries a real extra virgin
an adult or a child, anybody with taste buds
they'll never go back to the fake kind. It's distinctive, complex, the freshest thing you've ever eaten. It makes you realize how rotten the other stuff is, literally rotten. But there has to be a first time. Somehow we have to get those first drops of real extra virgin oil into their mouths, to break them free from the habituation to bad oil, and from the brainwashing of advertising. There has to be some good oil left in the world for people to taste. — Tom Mueller

In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator's first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalization. After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it upon herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on. The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail. JUDITH LEWIS HERMAN Trauma and Recovery — Jon Krakauer

Avoiding the appearance of queenly behavior is politically wise. But it does American culture no favors if a first lady tries so hard to be average that she winds up looking common, — Robin Givhan

I'm not saying it will be perfect, it seldom ever is, BUT what's wrong with giving love another chance? I want to make new memories with you, Chase. I want you to show up at my house for a date. A real date. I want to stress over what to wear. I want to miss you when you're not with me. I want to get all giggly whenever you call saying you need to hear my voice one last time before you can go to sleep. I want get jealous because some girl realizes what I've got and tries to convince you ... you can do better. I want to smile when you tell her that she doesn't have a chance ... . -Chasing Memories — Adriana Law

Setting limits has to do with telling the truth. The Bible clearly distinguishes between those who love truth and those who don't. First, there is the person who welcomes your boundaries. Who accepts them. Who listens to them. Who says, "I'm glad you have a separate opinion. It makes me a better person." This person is called wise, or righteous. The second type hates limits. Resents your difference. Tries to manipulate you into giving up your treasures. Try our "litmus test" experiment with your significant relationships. Tell them no in some area. You'll either come out with increased intimacy - or learn that there was very little to begin with. — Henry Cloud

The only way to write honestly about the scene is to be part of it. If there is one quick truism about psychedelic drugs, it is that anyone who tries to write about them without first-expierience is a fool and a fraud. — Hunter S. Thompson

Danger lies before you, while safety lies behind, Two of us will help you, whichever you would find, One among us seven will let you move ahead, Another will transport the drinker back instead, Two among our number hold only nettle wine, Three of us are killers, waiting hidden in line. Choose, unless you wish to stay here forevermore, To help you in your choice, we give you these clues four: First, however slyly the poison tries to hide You will always find some on nettle wine's left side; Second, different are those who stand at either end, But if you would move onward, neither is your friend; Third, as you see clearly, all are different size, Neither dwarf nor giant holds death in their insides; Fourth, the second left and the second on the right Are twins once you taste them, though different at first sight. — J.K. Rowling

People carry around with them internalization's fixed-feature space learned early in life. Man is like other members of the animal kingdom , first, last and always a prisoner of his biological organism. No matter how hard he tries, it is impossible for him to the best himself of his own culture, where it has penetrated to the roots of his nervous system and determines how he perceives the world. — Edward T. Hall

People in one of two states in a relationship. The first is what I call positive sentiment override, where positive emotion overrides irritability. It's a buffer. Their spouse will do something bad, and they'll say,'Oh, he's just in a crummy mood.'Or they can be in negative sentiment override, said that even a relatively new tool thing that a partner says get perceived as negative. In negative sentiment override state, people draw lasting conclusions about each other. If their spouse does something positive, it's a selfish person doing a positive thing. It's really hard to change their states, and those states determine whether when one party tries to repair things, the other party sees that as repair or hostile manipulation. — John Gottberg

There is the first satisfaction of arranging it on a bit of paper; after many, many false tries, false moves, finally you have the sentence you recognize as the one you are looking for. — Vladimir Nabokov

maybe she should take out a book and read, for it don't make no sense to just lean against the shop front, doing nothing, and she start to search in her bag, when she hear Pansy shout, "Lord Jesus! Oh God, help me!" Pansy bawling for help louder and louder, so Grace get frighten. She drop her schoolbag, run quick into the shop, and push on the door to the back room with all her might. After a couple tries, it fly open. Staring at her are one pair of feet with brown socks, one pair of feet with no socks, four legs with no covering and Mortimer's bare bottom rising and falling with a motion that remind her of when he was using the saw. Grace look, turn right around, march out, pick up her school bag, and start walking home. First she is furious with Pansy, but then she start to laugh. Mortimer have a nice body, but he is short. Pansy is a good-sized girl. Grace remember Gramps say, "Tiny insects pollinate sizeable flowers, — Pamela Mordecai

What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and succeeds in getting; what he gains is civil liberty and the proprietorship of all he possesses. If we are to avoid mistake in weighing one against the other, we must clearly distinguish natural liberty, which is bounded only by the strength of the individual, from civil liberty, which is limited by the general will; and possession, which is merely the effect of force or the right of the first occupier, from property, which can be founded only on a positive title. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

God tries to first create a joyous yes inside of you, far more than any kind of no ... Just saying no is resentful dieting, whereas finding your deeper yes, and eating from that table, is always a spiritual banquet. — Richard Rohr

To be a warrior a man has to be, first of all, and rightfully so, keenly aware of his own death. But to be concerned with death would force any one of us to focus on the self and that would be debilitating. So the next thing one needs to be a warrior is detachment. The idea of imminent death, instead of becoming an obsession, becomes an indifference.
Now you must detach yourself; detach yourself from everything. Only the idea of death makes a man sufficiently detached so he is incapable of abandoning himself to anything. Only the idea of death makes a man sufficiently detached so he can't deny himself anything. A man of that sort, however, does not crave, for he has acquired a silent lust for life and for all things of life. He knows his death is stalking him and won't give him time to cling to anything, so he tries, without craving, all of everything. — Carlos Castaneda

If an artist tries consciously to do something to others, it is to stretch their eyes, their thoughts, to something they would not see or feel if the artist had not done it. To do this, he has to stretch his own first. — Henry Moore

An actress reading a part for the first time tries many ways to say the same line before she settles into the one she believes suits the character and situation best. There's an aspect of the rehearsing actress about the girl on the verge of her teens. Playfully, she is starting to try out ways to be a grown-up person. — Stella Chess