Quotes & Sayings About Good Routine

Ordinary people, caught in the trap of their routine lives, are not villains any more than eccentrics or rebels are villains. Essentially, both kinds of people are struggling to be good, through a maze of conflicts and a haze of shadows. — Sydney J. Harris

A good detective not only has to be intelligent, persevering and prepared to do enless boring routine work, he also needs one other quality: Intuition. I see it rather as the ability to make connections which are there but are not immediately apparent. Subterranean connections. — Dorothy Simpson

The caveman in me was pretty proud of myself as I did the metaphorical Tarzan beat-on-the-ole-chest routine. Good thing I was smart enough to keep my trap shut about it. — Raine Miller

Nobody ever becomes an expert parent. But I think good parenting is about consistency. It's about being there at big moments, but it's also just the consistency of decision making. And it's routine. — Sebastian Coe

Reilly: The human condition ... they may remember the vision they have had, but they cease to regret it, maintain themselves by the common routine, learn to avoid excessive expectation, Become tolerant of themselves and others, Giving and taking, in the usual actions what there is to give and take. They do not repine; Are contented with the morning that separates and with the evening that brings together for casual talk before the fire. Two people who know they do not understand each other, breeding children whom they do not understand and who will never understand them.
Celia: Is that the best life?
Reilly: It is a good life. Though you will not know how good until you come to the end. But you will want nothing else, and the other life will be only like a book you have read once, and lost. In a world of lunacy, violence, stupidity, greed ... it is a good life. — T. S. Eliot

Routines are normal, natural, healthy things. Most of us take a shower and brush our teeth every day. That is a good routine. Spiritual disciplines are routines. That is a good thing. But once routines become routine you need to change your routine. — Mark Batterson

I feel an important part of beauty is not only what you do on the outside but also what you put into the inside. Good fresh food with many vegetables along with love and caring for others. I spend way more time serving others than I do on my beauty routine daily. — Kim Alexis

If you eliminate the junk food, you don't really run the risk of gaining weight if you've got a good workout routine. — Joe Bastianich

I believe in having a few pupils at one time as it requires a constant alert observation of each individual in order to establish a direct relationship. A good teacher can never be fixed in a routine ... each moment requires a sensitive mind that is constantly changing and constantly adapting. — Bruce Lee

There are plenty of people in the world whose lives are governed by rote and routine. Such people will never be happy dealing with me, because I don't conform. Luckily, the world is also full of people who care about results, and those people are usually very happy with me, because my Asperger's compels me to be the ultimate expert in whatever field of interest I choose. And with substantial knowledge, I can obtain good results. — John Elder Robison

Over time I tried everything from "the good girl" with my "perform-perfect-please" routine, to clove-smoking poet, angry activist, corporate climber, and out-of-control party girl. At first glance these may seem like reasonable, if not predictable, developmental stages, but they were more than that for me. All of my stages were different suits of armor that kept me from becoming too engaged and too vulnerable. Each strategy was built on the same premise: Keep everyone at a safe distance and always have an exit strategy. — Brene Brown

My approach to photograph is kept simple, almost routine. All work, good and bad, is documented. I use standard film, a standard lens and no filters. Each work grows, strays, decays-integral parts of a cycle which the photograph shows at its height, marking the moment when the work is most alive. There is an intensity about a work at its peak that I hope is expresses in the image. Process and decay are implicit. — Andy Goldsworthy

To be fair, on a good project, no matter whether it's improvised or scripted or meticulously prepared, or all up for grabs, it's always, always beyond the safety zone. Every project becomes interesting and exciting once you move beyond that routine. You always aspire to that. It's not that this improvisational mode is the only mode that facilitates that. — Christoph Waltz

Daily routine is the great balm that keeps her spirits up and holds her life together, warding off the existential fright that can take you by ambush anytime you're dithering or at a loss, reminding you of the magnitude of the void you are sitting on. Keeping busy is the middle-class way - a practical way and a good way. — A.S.A Harrison

If man is not made in the image of God, nothing then stands in the way of inhumanity. There is no good reason why mankind should be perceived as special. Human life is cheapened. We can see this in many of the major issues being debated in our society today: abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, the increase of child abuse and violence of all kinds, pornography ... , the routine torture of political prisoners in many parts of the world, the crime explosion, and the random violence which surrounds us. — Francis A. Schaeffer

I have a conscience, but it's a feeble, withered shred of a thing. It couldn't protect you or anyone else from a stiff breeze.' Glokta sighed, long and hard. The room was too hot, too bright, his eyes were sore and twitchy and he rubbed at them slowly as he spoke. 'You could not even guess at the things that I have done. Awful, evil, obscene, the telling of them alone could make you puke.' He shrugged. 'They nag at me from time to time, but I tell myself I had good reasons. The years pass, the unimaginable becomes everyday, the hideous becomes tedious, the unbearable becomes routine. I push it all into the dark corners of my mind, and it's incredible the room back there. Amazing what one can live with. — Joe Abercrombie

I'm sure a lot of it is my fault," he said. He smiled ruefully. "And by a lot, I mean all."
"Ah, the self-deprecating dude routine," Hannah said. " 'What a lovable fuck-up I am.' The annoying thing is that it makes you look good, but it doesn't get me anything. — Adelle Waldman

I'm not particularly good at running things when once they get to a certain level. Once it gets routine, get me out of the way. — Jim McKelvey

Touring is very routine. You get to the city, you go to the hotel, you got to be at the hotel by a certain time - it's very routine. I'm not a very structured person, so when I get some structure, it's cool; it's good for me. — J. Cole

In Aristotle ... leisure is a far more noble, spiritual goal than work ... leisure is pursued solely for its own sake ... : the pleasures of music and poetry, ... conversation with friends, and ... gratuitous, playful speculation. In Latin, the ultimate good is otium - the opposite is negotium, or gainful work.
We have sought too much counsel in the proto-Calvinist work ethic preached by St Paul ... during the cessation of work we nurture family, educate, nourish friendships ... in loafing, most of our innovations come ... the routine of daily work has too often served as ... sleep ... a refuge from two crucial states - awakedness to the needs of others, and to the transcendent, which only comes ... loitering, dallying, tarrying, goofing off. — Francine Du Plessix Gray

Thoughts are a powerful thing, but most of us wield them haphazardly. By the time we are young adults our minds and personalities are shaped to a great degree. Our thinking becomes habit and routine, like a river, and our thoughts must follow wherever the ravine takes us. As our negative thinking takes over our mind like strangling vines, the years continue to pass and we lose our goals and dreams. We form perceptions of reality and assume that everyone else thinks and sees the world as we do. They do not. An interesting fact is that your perception of reality is almost always wrong. The good and bad news is that our lives are most affected by the way we think things are, not the way they actually are. Be careful what you think about, it absolutely will shape your life. — Adam Shepherd

A daily routine built on good habits and disciplines separates the most successful among us from everyone else. The routine is exceptionally powerful. — Darren Hardy

A good teacher can never be fixed in a routine ... each moment requires a sensitive mind that is constantly changing and constantly adapting. A teacher must never impose this student to fit his favourite pattern; a good teacher functions as a pointer, exposing his student's vulnerability (and) causing him to explore both internally and finally integrating himself with his being. Martial art should not be passed out indiscriminately. — Bruce Lee

So I am led to one or two choices! Can I write? Will I write if I practice enough? How much should I sacrifice to writing anyway, before I find out if I'm any good? Above all, CAN A SELFISH, EGOCENTRIC, JEALOUS, AND UNIMAGINATIVE FEMALE WRITE A DAMN THING WORTHWHILE? Should I sublimate (my how we throw words around!) my selfishness in serving other people- through social or other such work? Would I then become more sensitive to other people and their problems? Would I be able to write honestly? Then of other beings besides a tall, introspective adolescent girl? I must be in contact with a wide variety of lives if I am not to become submerged in the routine of my own economic strata and class. — Sylvia Plath

For all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner ... on an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100 billion galaxies ... That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that. — Carl Sagan

My sadness has become so routine that no one notices anymore. It's really good to finally talk about it, but what I have to say runs deeper than that false happiness. I don't sleep properly anymore. I feel I'm just being self-obsessed, trying to impress people as if I were a child. I cry alone in the shower for no reason. I've — Paulo Coelho

Good work requires of us an appreciation of the value of routine, ordinary, mundane rhythms of doing what needs to be done, each day and each week, thoroughly and with care. — Gordon T. Smith

Good tradecraft keeps espionage routine and boring. — Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius

Because "we human beings are imaginative by nature, we cannot choose to live by the routine of the ant-heap. If deprived of the imagery of virtue" - imaginative depictions of the truly good life - "we will seek out the imagery of vice. — Russell Kirk

I've been lucky: my Japanese genes - from my mother's side - and a lifelong moisturising routine have helped keep me looking good. — Marie Helvin

Your ribcage never meant to hurt you.
Your windpipe doesn't know how to be pretty,
but she knows how to howl -
and here, I'd like to take a moment
to submit a formal apology to my soft parts
because they kept me warm
when I was trying to freeze to death,
and I hated them for it. An apology
for a starvation that went deeper than my skin.
One for the strongest skeleton I will ever own
and how I kept using the word girl against it.
Or how I turned words like beautiful into shapes
I could contort myself into. I didn't mean
to compare myself to faces I can't have.
Or spend years trying to carve myself,
like Michelangelo's angels, from the marble -
forgetting what it is to be skin instead of stone.
I let myself be afraid. I was taught to be.
When you learn you are only as good
as your beauty routine, you forget
how to define yourself by anything else. — Ashe Vernon

Stepping out into the hall of statues, he rushed down past the marble figures, envying them their calm poses and their serene faces. Sure as shit the everything's-cool routine made being inanimate seem like a good deal. Whereas it meant they felt no joy, they didn't have to go through this burning pain, either. — J.R. Ward

I've come down in the world. I've slid to a place where the ceiling is low and there isn't much room for me to move.Most of the time I'm good. I accepted my sentence and do not brood or look back. But sometimes a shift makes me remember. Routine is ruffled and a new start makes me suddenly conscious of what I've become - — Leila Aboulela

The Marquesa would even have been astonished to learn that her letters were very good, for such authors live always in the noble weather of their own minds and those productions which seem remarkable to us are little better than a day's routine to them. — Thornton Wilder

I took comfort in doing without because I knew it was all for the greater good. We all made great sacrifices, none more so than those boys who lost their lives. Tragedy was part of our daily routine. But through it all, I never understood the point of being sad when I could choose to be happy. — Megan McCafferty

Truman, Acheson knew, was far more sentimental than generally known, or than he wished people to know, far more touched by gestures that to many might seem routine. On board his plane later in the year, bound again for Key West, he would write Acheson a brief longhand note marked and underscored "Personal." It was good of you to see us off. You always do the right thing. I'm still a farm boy and when the Secretary of State of the greatest Republic comes to the airport to see me off on a vacation, I can't help but swell up a little. "And then he was so fair," Acheson would say. "He didn't make different decisions with different people. He called everyone together. You were all heard and you all got the answer together. He was a square dealer all the way through. — David McCullough

We're not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery
it recharges by running. You may be surprised to find how quickly daily routine and the demands of "just getting by" absorb your waking hours. You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see your politics and religion become matters of habit rather than thought and inquiry. You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see your life in terms of other people's expectations rather than issues. You may be surprised to find out how quickly reading a good book sounds like a luxury. — Bill Watterson

I value the kind of prayer when you stand at the edge of the sea, or beneath a tree, or smell a flower, or love someone, or do a good thing. Those prayers validate existence and snatch it away from meaningless routine. — Roger Ebert

We kiss good-bye. It's our typical morning good-bye kiss. A quick peck. A well-intentioned habit. I look down and notice Lucy's round, blue eyes paying close attention. I flash to studying my own parents kissing when I was little ... I promised myself that when I got married someday, I would have kisses that meant something. Kisses that would make me weak in the knees. Kisses that would embarrass the kids. Kisses like Han Solo kissing Princess Leia ...
Now I get it. we aren't living in some George Lucas blockbuster adventure. Our morning kiss good-bye isn't romantic, and it certainly isn't sexual. It's a routine kiss, but I'm glad we do it. It does mean something. It's enough. And it's all we have time for. — Lisa Genova

I was always a clown. In the eighth grade I won a city speech contest by doing an Eddie Murphy routine. I'm no good at public speaking, but if I can assume a role and speak as that person, then I'm fine. When I had to give a book report, I always did it in character. — Jason Wiles

Looking beautiful isn't just about what you apply on your face. It's the little things you do that matter. A combination of a good diet, exercise, healthy habits, discipline, dancing etc. is what my beauty routine consists of. Also, I have no bad habits; I don't drink or smoke. All these contribute to me being fit and looking good. — Madhuri Dixit

I'm a writer! If you work in an office, it dampens you. It makes you fit a routine. The effect of being a writer is not dissimilar to being long-term unemployed. And everyone knows that is not good for you. — Mark Haddon

All involve risk, uncertainty, and complexity - and therefore steps that are worth committing to a checklist and testing in routine care. Good checklists could become as important as doctors and nurses as good stethoscopes (which, unlike checklist, have never been proved to make a difference in patient care). The hard question - still unanswered - is whether medical culture can seize the opportunity. — Atul Gawande

I observed an eighteen-year-old friend of one of our daughters talking to his mother on the telephone. As he hung up the phone in frustration he said, "She makes me so angry, she's always telling me what to think and where to go and how to do things." He was obviously upset and filled with anger. I told him he had one of two choices. He could either continue to practice being right, or practice being kind. If you insist on being right you will argue, get frustrated, angry, and your problem will persist with your mom, I explained. If you simply practice being kind, you can remind yourself that this is your mom, she's always been that way, she will very likely stay that way, but you are going to send her love instead of anger when she starts in with her routine. A simple statement of kindness such as, "That's a good point, Mom, I'll think about it," and you have a spiritual solution to your problem. — Wayne W. Dyer

It is the strict adherence to daily routine that tends towards the maintenance of good morale and the preservation of sanity, he says out loud. — Margaret Atwood

At home in Moscow everything was in its winter routine; the stoves were heated, and in the morning it was still dark when the children were having breakfast and getting ready for school, and the nurse would light the lamp for a short time. The frosts had begun already. When the first snow has fallen, on the first day of sledge-driving it is pleasant to see the white earth, the white roofs, to draw soft, delicious breath, and the season brings back the days of one's youth. The old limes and birches, white with hoar-frost, have a good-natured expression; they are nearer to one's heart than cypresses and palms, and near them one doesn't want to be thinking of the sea and the mountains. — Anton Chekhov

Resolution without routine is like a Ferrari without gas ... it might look real good but it will get you no where. — Steven Furtick

A perfectly routine piece of news: "Last night our planes attacked Dresden. All planes returned safely." The only good German is a dead one: over one hundred thousand evil men, women, and children (the able-bodied were at the fronts) forever purged of their sins against humanity. — Kurt Vonnegut

In the future I would like to try other forms of racing, testing Formula cars or single seaters would be good, but again it is finding the time as I am incredibly busy. I don't think I have the time to try any other new sports. I have already cut skiing out of my routine in order to manage the racing and riding relationship. By the looks of things I am going to be busy for quite a few years. — Liz Halliday

Night landings were a routine part of carrier operations - and perhaps the best of all examples of how a man's accumulated good works did him no good whatsoever at each new step up the great pyramid, of how each new step was an absolute test, and of how each bright new day's absolutes - chosen or damned - were built into the routine. — Tom Wolfe

Your morning routine generates a 10x return for good or for bad. Make it good. — Todd Stocker

I've always thought the main argument for organic was more environmental than a health argument. I just don't think spraying a lot of pesticides into the environment on a routine basis is a good thing. — John Mackey

It was us they were talking about, with the objectivity of businessmen completing a routine transaction. In Barrett there wasn't even the hint of remorse or conscience. Some folks, they say, are born incapable of those things. Often they behave beyond suspicion, those sick people, until it's too late. Sometimes they're good-looking, charming, intelligent. Maybe they liked to pull the wings off flies more than other kids. But boys will be boys. If they served in the Army they made lousy soldiers, complaining and griping all the time about discipline, until they got a taste of combat. They often won medals, then, and were afraid but didn't go stiff and inadequate with fear like some of their buddies. They felt above the crowd. They were arrogant. Laws didn't apply to them. They could kill you with an absolute lack of concern if it suited them. They were called psychopathic personalities, P.P.'s, and Barrett was one of them.

It looked as if we were going to die. — Stephen Marlowe

Actually, I very much dislike routine. Creating music is my chaos therapy. The writing process puts me in a good place. Recording the music is the release of however I felt in the song. — Mpho Koaho

The problem is that many entrepreneurs start with good intentions to create a new mindset system but then slack off. The solution is to make that system part of your daily routine. — Lisa A. Mininni

This rarely happens in a visit to the pediatrician's office, but it should. The good doctor would ask you about the health of your baby and give your little bundle of joy a routine examination. Then she'd look you in the eyes and ask some truly intrusive questions about your social life. "Do you have many friends?" the pediatrician would inquire. "What social groups do you and your husband belong to? How important are these groups to you? How diverse are they? How much contact time do you and your husband have with them?" The doctor doesn't ask about these things because your social life is none of her business. The problem is, it is plenty of the infant's business. — John Medina

I go to bed is around 11, and I do that for every race. I get good sleep. I don't lie awake for any race. That's my routine. — Mario Andretti

To actually make you believe that your problems were spiritual and mental but absolutely not boozical. Good Christ, just the alcohol-related loss of the REM sleep was enough to screw you up righteously, but somehow you never thought of that while you were active. Booze turned your thought-processes into something akin to that circus routine where all the clowns come piling out of the little car. — Stephen King

One of the main reasons that we lose our enthusiasm in life is because we become ungrateful..we let what was once a miracle become common to us. We get so accustomed to his goodness it becomes a routine.. — Joel Osteen

It is the height of professionalism to be able to make an ordinary piece of music sound good. When playing routine melodic studies the player must treat them as if they are musical value. — Howard Snell

I'm a fan of Tom's of Maine natural oral care line for those very reasons; they deliver on both healthy and environmental goodness. The beauty of it is you'll feel even more empowered knowing you're doing something good for yourself and the environmental footprint of your beauty routine. — Sophie Heyman Uliano

Seeking with all of your heart requires more than just the routine Christian good girl checklist. — Lysa TerKeurst

There is not a single penal institution or reformatory in the United States where men are not tortured "to be made good," by means of the blackjack, the club, the straightjacket, the water-cure, the "humming bird" (an electrical contrivance run along the human body), the solitary, the bullring, and starvation diet. In these institutions his will is broken, his soul degraded, his spirit subdued by the deadly monotony and routine of prison life. — Emma Goldman

She had been crying after a routine row with her mother and, as had happened on former occasions, had not wished me to see her swollen eyes: she had one of those tender complexions that after a good cry get all blurred and inflamed, and morbidly alluring. I regretted keenly her mistake about my private aesthetics, for I simply love that tinge of Botticellian pink [3], that raw rose about the lips, those wet, matted eyelashes; and, naturally, her bashful whim deprived me of many opportunities of specious consolation. — Vladimir Nabokov

You sell your own wares,then.Are you clever at it?"
Shelby lifted her wine. "I like to think so." Tossing her hangs out of her eyes, she turned to Alan. "Would you say I was clever at it, Senator?"
"Amazingly so," he returned. "For someone without any sense of organization, you manage to work at your craft,run a shop,and live precisely as you choose."
"I like odd compliments," Shelby decided after a moment. "Alan's accustomed to a more structured routine. He'd never run out of gas in the freeway."
"I like odd insults," Alan murmured into his wine.
"Makes a good balance. — Nora Roberts

Why did every human concern clog itself up in a tangle of routines, formalities, disciplines, imperatives? Why couldn't one be free? Really free? Guarding one's freedom, wasn't freedom at all. Why couldn't one win one's freedom for good and all, and get on with life? — H.G.Wells

For the most part I've been focusing on my knees, trying to keep those as good as possible. I'm 100% now, you know with rehab and rest and I feel great. As far as training and the routine I get up and bike for awhile, and go in and have a great leg day, and get a full day in at the gym and try to improve. — Brandon Spikes

Appreciation involves being alert to the positive aspects of the current situation and feeling thankful for what one has and for one's circumstances. This requires not only a positive perspective in the present but also conscious awareness of features in the surround. The latter, in fact, is something that may be surprisingly rare. Especially when we are engaging in routine activities, we often do so mindlessly (Langer, 1997) or as though we were on automatic pilot (Cialdini, 1993). If we learn to bring our attention to the current state, we can choose to focus on positive aspects of the situation and to remind ourselves of the potential sources of good feelings that might otherwise pass unnoticed. — Sandra L. Schneider

Look, I didn't ask for any of this, but I'm here now. I get that it's dangerous. I get that I'm fat. I get that I'm about as far from prepared for this insanity as you can get. But I'll tell you something about me: I don't quit. So enough with the let's-scare-the-fat-girl routine, okay? — Bill Blais

People are fucking maintenance. I don't need more maintenance. I need peace and quiet and routine. Routine is good, ... — Lexi Blake

Wigs have always been a part of my life and have become a staple accessory in my closet. I can remember being a little girl and hearing all the commotion in my house from my mom, aunts and grandmother when picking out their wigs for the day. It was such a good time for them and part of their everyday beauty routine. — Sherri Shepherd

It needs more than ever to be stressed that the best and truest educators are parents under God. The greatest school is the family. In learning, no act of teaching in any school or university compares to the routine task of mothers in teaching a babe who speaks no language the mother tongue in so short a time. No other task in education is equal to this. The moral training of the children, the discipline of good habits, is an inheritance from the parents to the children which surpasses all other. The family is the first and basic school of man. — Rousas John Rushdoony

There is no tomorrow. Time cannot be saved and spent. There is only today and how we choose to live it. The future is unknowable and unpredictable; it offers no clear path to happiness. Science will not save us. Each of us, then, needs to cobble together a daily routine filled with basic human pleasures, wedded, to be sure, to the best that modernity has to offer. It is a life of compromise rather than extremes. It is a touch of the old and a taste of the new. And cooking, it seems to me, offers the most direct way back into the very heart of the good life. It is useful, it is necessary, it is social, and it offers immediate pleasure and satisfaction. It connects with the past and ensures the future. Standing in front of a hot oven, we remind ourselves of who we are, of what we are capable of and how we might stumble back to the center of happiness. Effort and pleasure go hand in hand. — Christopher Kimball

I knew that good like bad becomes a routine, that the temporary tends to endure, that what is external permeates to the inside, and that the mask, given time, comes to be the face itself. — Marguerite Yourcenar

I cannot pretend he escaped unscathed. The extended period of low blood pressure damaged an optic nerve and left him essentially blind in one eye. He didn't get off the respirator for days. He was out of work for months. I was crushed by what I had put him through. Though I apologized to him and carried on with my daily routine, it took me a long time to feel right again in surgery. I can't do an adrenalectomy without thinking of his case, and I suspect that is good. I have even tried refining the operative technique — Atul Gawande

In the NFL game today, there are a lot of better athletes than I am, and quarterbacks these days are faster than the quarterbacks have always been, they're running like crazy. But I kind of stick to my roots of the disciplined quarterback. You know, I'm doing the same routine every week, studying tapes and working hard, getting ready to play and making good decisions on Sundays. — Peyton Manning

Clov: Why this farce, day after day?
Hamm: Routine. One never knows. [Pause.] Last night I saw inside my breast. There was a big sore.
Clov: Pah! You saw your heart.
Hamm: No, it was living. [Pause. Anguished.] Clov!
Clov: Yes.
Hamm: What's happening?
Clov: Something is taking its course. [Pause.]
Hamm: Clov!
Clov: [impatiently] What is it?
Hamm: We're not beginning to ... to ... mean something?
Clov: Mean something! You and I, mean something! [Brief laugh.] Ah that's a good one!
Hamm: I wonder. [Pause.] — Samuel Beckett

Life becomes a lot simpler for a creative person when he or she finds the routine that works best ... get in the habit of going through the routine every day, and on some of those days, you're going to be lucky and have done some good work ... Go to your study, close the door, invent your confidence. — Diane Ackerman

The man who has not the habit of reading is imprisoned in his immediate world, in respect to time and space. His life falls into a set routine; he is limited to contact and conversation with a few friends and acquaintances, and he sees only what happens in his immediate neighbourhood. From this prison there is no escape. But the moment he takes up a book, he immediately enters a different world, and if it is a good book, he is immediately put in touch with one of the best talkers of the world. This talker leads him on and carries him into a different country or a different age, or unburdens to him some of his personal regrets, or discusses with him some special line or aspect of life that the reader knows nothing about. An ancient author puts him in communion with a dead spirit of long ago, and as he reads along, he begins to imagine what the ancient author looked like and what type of person he was. — Lin Yutang

I'm not an expert in stillness, but I have been trying to practice more peace in my life. As someone who wants it all, and tries to go after it, I once thought including quiet time in my routine was a good idea. Now I find it's more than that - it's critical to my success. — Michelle McCullough

Because people get together, sit in a room, sing some songs and share scripture, they think they've experienced the life of the church. If that's all been real, they may have. More times than not, however, it's just a routine they feel good about having accomplished, but in the end they haven't really shared his life at all. That's why I like pulling commitment off of people. You find out where they really are on the inside and that's good for you and for them. — Wayne Jacobsen And Dave Coleman

For all my good intentions, there are days when things go wrong or I fall into old habits. When things are not going well, when I'm grumpy or mad, I'll realize that I've not been paying attention to my soul and I've not been following my best routine. — Robert Fulghum

What I have learned from the year past is something about miracles
miracles of healing and answered prayer and unexpected happy endings. Each came quietly and simply, on tiptoe, so that I hardly knew it had occurred.
All this makes me realize that miracles are everyday things. Not only the sudden, great good fortune, wafting in on a new wind from the sky. They are almost routine, yet miracles just the same.
Every time something hard becomes easier; every time you adjust to a situation which, last week, you didn't know existed; every time a kindness falls as softly as the dew; or someone you love who was ill grows better; every time a blessing comes, not with trumpet and fanfare, but silently as night, you have witnessed a miracle. — Faith Baldwin

I write in complete silence using only two fingers so I can't type faster than I edit at the same time, saving me from having to go back. Although it does create a lot of capitalization issues. And punctuation problems. I didn't say it was a good routine. — Dan Alatorre

Mentally practice two or three times each week for about 10 to 15 minutes per rehearsal. Select a specific sports skill to further develop, or work your way though different scenarios, incorporating various game-ending situations. Examples include meeting your marathon goal time, striking out the side in the bottom of the ninth, or making the game-winning shot as the final buzzer is sounding. Mental practice sessions that are shorter in length are also beneficial. Good times include during any downtime in your schedule, the night before a competition, as an element of your pregame routine, and especially as part of a preshot routine. — Jim Afremow

Running had always put me into a kind of trance. It was one of my first meditative experiences, and it let me escape from my self-berating, never-good-enough routine. Running produces endorphins that are calming; running lowers anxiety. I loved the feeling I had when I ran. It was shelter from the storm. — Colleen Saidman Yee

Routine is important, i think.a good routine diverts the mind from morbid imaginings. — Grant Morrison

Court life for a queen of France at that time was, however, stultifyingly routine. Eleanor found that she was expected to be no more than a decorative asset to her husband, the mother of his heirs and the arbiter of good taste and modesty. — Alison Weir

These days I travel so much it's hard to get into a routine. When I'm on the road, I tend to use hotel gyms. When I'm home in L.A., I like to hike and hit the surf. All in all, I try to keep a balanced diet and exercise routine, which has stood me in good stead to date. — Curtis Stone

Everyone suspected that the rigors of a good school would have the desired, dulling effect on Noah and Simon - Gravesend Academy would assault them with a host of new demands, of impossible standards. The sheer volume (if not the value) of the homework would tire them out, and everyone knew that tired boys were safer boys; the numbing routine, the strict attentions paid to the dress code, the regulations regarding only the most occasional and highly chaperoned encounters with the female sex ... all this would certainly civilize them. Why — John Irving

When ever the light of civilization faces upon you with a blighting power ... go to the wilderness ... Dull business routine, the fierce passions of the marketplace, the perils of envious cities became but a memory ... The wilderness will take hold of you. It will give you good red blood; it will turn you from a weakling into a man ... You will soon behold all with a peaceful soul. — Estwick Evans

In England on a hot day, women are happy to walk around with their bra straps showing. In Paris, they don't shave their armpits. And you just can't mention Germany and style in the same book, let alone the same sentence. It's the same story in America too, where the Farrah Fawcett haido of 1975 still reigns supreme. In Italy, even the policemenists look like they've just come off a catwalk. One I found, standing on a rostrum in the middle of a Roman square, was immaculate, as was his routine. Each wave of the hand, each toot of the whistle and each twist of the body was Pans People perfect. Never mind that the traffic was completely ignoring him, he looked good, and that's what mattered. Looking good in Italy is even more important than looking where you're going. — Jeremy Clarkson

Good habits are developed in the workshops of our daily lives. It is not in the great moments of test and trial that character is built. That is only when it is displayed. The habits that direct our lives and form our character are fashioned in the often uneventful, commonplace routine of life. — Delbert L. Stapley