Good Suggestion Quotes & Sayings

A PRAYER The supreme prayer of my heart is not to be learned, rich, famous, powerful, or "good," but simply to be radiant. I desire to radiate health, cheerfulness, calm courage and good will. I wish to live without hate, whim, jealousy, envy, fear. I wish to be simple, honest, frank, natural, clean in mind and clean in body, unaffected - ready to say "I do not know," if it be so, and to meet all men on an absolute equality - to face any obstacle and meet every difficulty unabashed and unafraid. I wish others to live their lives, too - up to their highest, fullest and best. To that end I pray that I may never meddle, interfere, dictate, give advice that is not wanted, or assist when my services are not needed. If I can help people, I'll do it by giving them a chance to help themselves; and if I can uplift or inspire, let it be by example, inference, and suggestion, rather than by injunction and dictation. — Elbert Hubbard

So we get a plan," I said. "Any suggestions?"
"Blow up the building," Kincaid said without looking up. "That works good for vampires. Then soak what's left in gasoline. Set it on fire. Then blow it all up again."
"For future reference, I was sort of hoping for a suggestion that didn't sound like it came from that Bolshevik Muppet with all the dynamite. — Jim Butcher

If you desire to find the true spirit of Christmas and partake of the sweetness of it, let me make this suggestion to you. During the hurry of the festive occasion of this Christmas season, find time to turn your heart to God. Perhaps in the quiet hours, and in a quiet place, and on your knees - alone or with loved ones - give thanks for the good things that have come to you, and ask that His Spirit might dwell in you as you earnestly strive to serve Him and keep His commandments. He will take you by the hand and His promises will be kept. — Howard W. Hunter

We have to get them into your boat quickly. Is there a dark room, a cave, anywhere dark we can take them?" Gary asked. He was already lifting Savannah into his arms.
LaRue watched him carry her to his boat. "A hospital would be good." He made the suggestion in a soft, reasonable tone, as if he feared Gary had lost his mind. — Christine Feehan

Lost," I say, dropping the photo on to the counter. "I've lost Elizabeth." She pauses a moment and straightens to look at the photo. "Oh, was it an advert you wanted?" Breath floods into my lungs. "Yes. Yes, that's it. I wanted to place an advert." "I'll get you a form. Awful, cats, aren't they?" I nod, feeling as though I've missed some part of the conversation. I nod, but I quite like cats, and I wonder what this woman has against them. "I remember when my auntie lost her Oscar. She was frantic. Missing for weeks, he was. Found him in a beach hut in the end. Have you asked your neighbours to look in their sheds?" I stare at the woman. I can't imagine finding Elizabeth in a shed. But perhaps it is a good suggestion. Perhaps it's just me it doesn't make sense to. I borrow a pen and write beach hut on a scrap of paper. — Emma Healey

Being able to hear an opinion. And then how to apply that opinion is something I am learning and working with every day. What can be tricky is how to differentiate a good suggestion that you should apply to your work [from] someone's personal taste at their opinionated best. — Tori Amos

One snake wasn't enough. Time for Perl's suggestion. I handed everyone two capsules and a pin. "Get as close to the guards as you can. Poke a small hole in the capsule and squirt the liquid near them. Don't get it on you," I instructed.
"Why not?" Leif asked.
"You'll have a necklace snake trying to mate with you."
"Gee, Yelena. I'm so glad you're home," Leif grumbled. "It's good to know Mother is doing something useful with her time."
"I thought your mother madeperfumes," Moon Man said.
"It all depends on how you look at it — Maria V. Snyder

The belief that there is a difference between good and bad, meaningful and meaningless, profound and vapid, exciting and banal - this belief was once fundamental to musical education. But it offends against political correctness. Today there is only my taste and yours. The suggestion that my taste is better than yours is elitist, an offence against equality. But unless we teach children to judge, to discriminate, to recognise the difference between music of lasting value and mere ephemera, we give up on the task of education. Judgment is the precondition of true enjoyment, and the prelude to understanding art in all its forms. — Roger Scruton

The second suggestion is to think as well as to read. I know people who read and read, and for all the good it does them they might just as well cut bread-and-butter. They take to reading as better men take to drink. They fly through the shires of literature on a motor-car, their sole object being motion. They will tell you how many books they have read in a year. Unless you give at least 45 minutes to careful, fatiguing reflection (it is an awful bore at first) upon what you are reading, your 90 minutes of a night are chiefly wasted. — Arnold Bennett

Presently Arnaud folded the paper napkin, in the same careful way he always folded a table napkin, and said I ought to follow Chantal's suggestion and get a job in teaching a nursery school. (So Maman had mentioned that to Mme. Pons, too) I should teach until I had enough working time behind me to claim a pension. It would be good for me in my old age to have an income of my own. Anything could happen. He could be killed in a train crash or called up for a war. My father could easily be ruined in a lawsuit and die covered with debts. There were advantages to teaching, such as long holidays and reduced train fares.
"How long would it take?" I said. "Before I could stop teaching and get my pension."
"Thirty-five years," said Arnaud. "I'll ask my mother. She had no training, either, but she taught private classes. All you need is a decent background and some recommendations. — Mavis Gallant

Fred, shy?" Jess frowned in puzzlement.

"Lacking in confidence, I'd say, which he covers up with all this comedy stuff," suggested Luke.

Jess thought about this suggestion for a moment or two. "You know," she concluded, "ever since I dumped him, I've been waiting for him to do something amazing to get back into my good books. You know, take the initiative or something. Or even apologize properly."

"You could have a long wait," said Luke, smiling ruefully. "I think he's a passive character - he bounces off people; he reacts to situations instead of taking the initiative." ...

"I see," mused Jess. "But I kind of hate that in him, though - being so passive."

"But you don't hate Fred, do you? It's just part of his personality. And people do change sometimes. But everybody's got faults. — Sue Limb

Ordinary people who have lots of good ideas want more than a suggestion box, and they need a union to represent that thinking. — Frances O'Grady

Lawrence's suggestion for a starter wardrobe: a black dress, a fitted black jacket, black pants, a black skirt, a camel-colored skirt, a white blouse, a trendy-looking cardigan in a color (red could be good, for instance), several cool, inexpensive blouses (from places such as H&M or Zara) that pick up or work with the color of the cardigan and will go with your pants and skirts. For shoes, go for black heels and a pair of colored ones (they will make one of your all-black outfits look totally fab). Then build from there. — Kate White

Now, Woolf calls her fictional bastion of male privilege Oxbridge, so I'll call mine Yarvard. Even though she cannot attend Yarvard because she is a woman, Judith cheerfully applies for admission at, let's call it, Smithcliff, a prestigious women's college. She is denied admission on the grounds that
the dorms and classrooms can't
accommodate wheelchairs, that her speech pattern would interfere with her elocution lessons, and that her presence would upset the other students. There is also the suggestion that she is not good marriage material for the men at the elite college to which Smithcliff is a bride-supplying "sister school." The letter inquires as to why she hasn't been institutionalized.
When she goes to the administration building to protest the decision, she can't get up the flight of marble steps on the Greek Revival building. This edifice was designed to evoke a connection to the Classical world, which practiced infanticide of disabled newborns. — Rosemarie Garland-Thomson

It's been suggested that if the super-naturalists really had the powers they claim, they'd win the lottery every week. I prefer to point out that they could also win a Nobel Prize for discovering fundamental physical forces hitherto unknown to science. Either way, why are they wasting their talents doing party turns on television?
By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out. — Richard Dawkins

I have spoken of analogy as a constructive method. This, however, should be used only for suggestion, for it is most dangerous. Often we use an analogy and are quite unaware of it. Thus many social and political thinkers have called society an "organism," and have proceeded to deal with it as if it were a large animal. They have thought not in terms of the actual phenomena under consideration, but in terms of the analogy. In so far as the terms of the analogy were more concrete than those of the phenomena, their thinking has been made easier. But no analogy will ever hold good throughout, and consequently these thinkers have often fallen into error. — Henry Hazlitt

In our democratic culture people often think it is threatening to judge another person's taste. Some are even offended by the suggestion that there is a difference between good and bad taste, or that it matters what you look at or read or listen to. — Roger Scruton

I discovered that everything you do is in response to a request or a suggestion made to you by some other party either inside you or outside. Some of these suggestions are good and praiseworthy and some of them are undoubtedly delightful. But the majority of them are definitely bad and are pretty considerable sins as sins go. — Flann O'Brien

Suggestion is generally better than Definition. There is a seeming dogmatism about Definition that is often repellent, while Suggestion, on the contrary, disarms suspicion and summons to co-operation and experiment. Definition provokes discussion. Suggestion provokes to love and good works. Defining is limiting. Suggestion is enlarging. Defining calls a halt; Suggestion calls for an advance. Defining involves the peril of contentment: "I am here, I rest." "Thus far," says Definition, and draws a map. "Westward," cries Suggestion, and builds a boat. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

How are you going to get in?" Stokes asked anxiously.
"I shall try the windows first, I think," Radcliffe said with a frown as he straightened out his skirts. "I fear using the front door would be too much of a risk."
"Aye," Stokes said, then, "My lord, you ... er ... your purpose may be better served did you try to ... er ... keep your face turned away from anyone you encounter."
"Aye," Elizabeth agreed encouragingly. "And mayhap if you tried not to look quite so tall, you might be able to avoid some unwanted attention."
"And if anyone does approach and question you, you might merely cover your face with a handkerchief and titer."
Radcliffe blinked at that suggestion from Bessie. "I do not have a handkerchief."
"Oh!" Whipping one from her sleeve, Beth handed it to him as he got out of the carriage. "Good luck, my lord. I know you will save her. — Lynsay Sands

To the best of my recollection, I became a philosopher because my parents wanted me to become a lawyer. It seems to me, in retrospect, that there was much to be said for their suggestion. On the other hand, many philosophers are quite good company; the arguments they use are generally better than the ones that lawyers use; and we do get to go to as many faculty meetings as we like at no extra charge. — Jerry Fodor

Most writers cannot afford focus groups or A/B testing, but they can ask a roommate or colleague or family member to read what they wrote and comment on it. Your reviewers needn't even be a representative sample of your intended audience. Often it's enough that they are not you. This does not mean you should implement every last suggestion they offer. Each commentator has a curse of knowledge of his own, together with hobbyhorses, blind spots, and axes to grind, and the writer cannot pander to all of them. Many academic articles contain bewildering non sequiturs and digressions that the authors stuck in at the insistence of an anonymous reviewer who had the power to reject it from the journal if they didn't comply. Good prose is never written by a committee. A writer should revise in response to a comment when it comes from more than one reader or when it makes sense to the writer herself. — Steven Pinker

Mere children, ha!" said Jane. "I say we tie up the knave and then discuss his fate."
Since everyone thought this a good idea, Batty and Hound donated Jeffrey's neckties, and soon Bug Man, aka Sock or Spock, aka Norman Birnbaum, was bound hand and foot. Jane, Batty, and Hound then took a few minutes to be Aztec priests calling for blood, until Rosalind quieted them down. Norman was slime, but that was no reason to terrify him.
Then came a long discussion about what they should do next... Jane's suggestion of throwing Norman into their basement so that he could dwell on his sins was rejected outright. — Jeanne Birdsall

Two hundred tons of ore is a great amount of ore. If, after a reasonable amount of time and effort you remain unhappily single, my suggestion is that you employ the services of a cat or a dog. Both cats and dogs are known hiding places of soul mates. They are also very, very good at getting strangers to talk to them in kind voices. Which, it should be noted, could be of some use to those who might otherwise be too shy to step forward and say, hello. — Augusten Burroughs

I won't offer you a tired admonition to avoid my path. I won't advise you to stay on the straight and narrow. I won't suggest that you make good choices. I won't even tell you to do the right thing. You can get that kind of advice from teachers and parents and TV evangelists, and if you are like me, you wouldn't listen anyway.
I just make one suggestion.
Know what path you're on. — Carolee Dean

If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love - You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance.
The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. — C.S. Lewis

Sometimes a fool makes a good suggestion. — Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux

The suggestion that Jews were selected from among all nations of the earth to be God's chosen people suggested a kind of group arrogance, especially when the good news was first reported by Jews. However, the choice was interpreted not as tribute to superior virtue but as divine challenge. — Israel Shenker

Are you at work? I asked.
Not precisely, but that's a good suggestion ... — Kat Richardson

I don't know why it was so important for her to prove to a stranger that we were good-hearted, when we knew ourselves to be - but the suggestion that we were anything less than angels walking the earth, that our natures were more complexly shaded, seemed to bother her. "They don't understand," she kept saying. Then again, I thought, maybe they do. — Ransom Riggs

Don't feel like you have to take every suggestion people give you. Not every good idea is a God idea. — Joyce Meyer

Innocent?" He was incensed at her suggestion he was somehow responsible for this mess. "I've done nothing wrong, I intend nothing wrong. I am innocent!"
"Half the evil in this world occurs while decent people stand by and do nothing wrong. It's not enough to refrain from evil, Trell. People have to attempt to do right, even if they believe they cannot succeed."
"Even when it's stupid to try?" he asked with savage sarcasm.
"Especially then," she replied sweetly. "That's how it's done, Trell. You break your heart against this stony world. You fling yourself at it, on the side of good, and you do not ask the cost. That's how you do it. — Robin Hobb

During this time I had the singular good fortune of being able to discuss the problem constantly with Einstein. Some experiments done at Einstein's suggestion yielded no decisively new result. — Walther Bothe

After I give lectures-on almost any subject-I am often asked, "Do you believe in UFOs?" I'm always struck by how the question is phrased, the suggestion that this is a matter of belief and not evidence. I'm almost never asked, "How good is the evidence that UFOs are alien spaceships?" — Carl Sagan

That is why no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party that inflicted those bitter experiences on me. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin. They condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation. Now the Tories are pouring out money in propaganda of all sorts and are hoping by this organised sustained mass suggestion to eradicate from our minds all memory of what we went through. But, I warn you young men and women, do not listen to what they are saying now. Do not listen to the seductions of Lord Woolton. He is a very good salesman. If you are selling shoddy stuff you have to be a good salesman. But I warn you they have not changed, or if they have they are slightly worse than they were. — Aneurin Bevan

Great. Okay. That, uh ... was easier than I thought."
Jack cocked his head. Wait a second ... He couldn't decide if he was pissed or really impressed. He hooked a finger into the waistband of the workout pants she'd changed into and pulled her closer. "Did you fake me out with those tears, Cameron?"
She peered up at him, defiantly, seemingly outraged by the suggestion. "Are you kidding? What, after the day I've had, I'm not entitled to a few tears? Sheesh."
Jack waited.
"This wedding is very important to me
I can't believe you're even doubting me. Honestly, Jack, the tears were real."
He waited some more. She would talk eventually. They always did.
Cameron shifted under the weight of his stare. "Okay, fine. Some of the tears were real." She looked him over, annoyed. "You are really good at that."
He grinned. "I know. — Julie James

The Great Being unseen, but all-present, who in his beneficence desires only our welfare, watches the struggle between good and evil in our hearts, and waits to see whether we obey his voice, heard in the whispers of conscience, or lend an ear to the Spirit Evil, which seeks to lead us astray. Rough and steep is the path indicated by divine suggestion; mossy and declining the green way along which temptation strews flowers. Then conscience whispers, "Do what you feel is right, obey me, and I will plant for you firm footing. — Charlotte Bronte

If I'm going to give you forever," she said, raising her chin higher, "I want something in return."
"I already offered to help you out of your mess. What else do you want?"
Eleanor considered her demands. He sounded open to suggestion, which was good because she had a suggestion.
"Everything."
"Everything?" he repeated. "As in ... ?"
"Every. Thing." She stared at him across the desk, and this time it was her turn not to blink. "I give you forever, the least you can give me is everything. — Tiffany Reisz

And I say that Your Highnesses ought not to consent that any foreigner does business or sets foot here, except Christian Catholics since this was the end and the beginning of the enterprise, that it should be for the enhancement and glory of the Christian religion, nor should anyone who is not a good Christian come to these parts. Here may be found the first suggestion of the exclusive colonial policy that Spain and other nations followed. — Christopher Columbus

It was dusk when I drove back into downtown Detroit. I was annoyed by how much traffic there was at that hour of the day. Being a guy with two good legs who doesn't mind ankling, I hadn't realized the car situation had gotten so bad in the city. I almost had two smack-ups with people who refused to yield to me. Then I bumped someone from behind, intentionally, at the new flashing traffic light on Jefferson. The guy in the car had refused to move - he just sat there waiting because the light was red. After I bumped him (not that hard), the squirt hopped out of his car red in the face, and I must admit the sight of him gave me my first laugh in two days. He said, "Can't you see it's a red light?" I told him a red light is just a suggestion. Then I pressed the gas lightly and started pushing his car further out into the intersection whilst he stood there in disbelief. "Better get back in, your car is leaving without you," I said. — W.K. Berger

Abstract understanding doesn't mean arbitrary sloshing and messing. Abstract art is controlled visual magic based on laws and methodology. Abstraction generally involves implication, suggestion and mystery rather that obvious description. Like a good poem, a good abstraction attacks your feelings before your understanding. Abstraction within realism adds zest and excitement to otherwise dull subject matter. Abstract understanding takes time and patience. — Robert Genn

He is best of all who of himself conceiveth all things; Good again is he too who can adopt a good suggestion; But whoso neither of himself conceiveth nor hearing from another Layeth it to heart; - he is a useless man. [Sidenote: V] But to return from this digression. Now of the Chief Good (i.e. of Happiness) men seem to form their notions from the different modes of life, as we might naturally expect: the many and most low conceive it to be pleasure, and hence they are content with the life of sensual enjoyment. For there are three lines of life which stand out prominently to view: that just mentioned, and the life in society, and, thirdly, the life of contemplation. — Aristotle.

Can we find nothing good to say about TV? Well, yes, it brings scattered solitaries into a sort of communion. TV allows your isolated American to think that he participates in the life of the entire country. It does not actually place him in a community, but his heart is warmed with the suggestion (on the whole false) that there is a community somewhere in the vicinity and that his atomized consciousness will be drawn back toward the whole. — Saul Bellow

Thanksgiving is a time for gratitude. It can also be a time when feeling grateful can be an acrobatic feat that you're just not up for. There's no rules that need to be followed here. Authentic living is your only option, so it's ok to turn off the tv when another ad screams for you to be a certain way just because the calendar says so. Power of suggestion can be great medicine - but don't judge yourself or a loved one who is having trouble learning the words to this song. It's a tough season from some people. Huddle and cuddle with those you trust and love. That's real medicine and it's a good place to be during the holidays. xoxo — Deborah Pardes

Oh, how our good knight reveled in this speech, and more than ever when he came to think of the name that he should give his lady! As the story goes, there was a very good=looking farm girl who lived near by, with whom he had once been smitten, although it is generally believed that she never knew or suspected it. Her name was Aldonza Lorenzo, and it seemed to him that she was the one upon whom he should bestow the title of mistress of his thoughts. For her he wished a name that should not be incongruous with his own and that would convey the suggestion of a princess or a great lady; and, accordingly, he resolved to call her "Dulcinea del Toboso," she being a native of that place. A musical name to his ears, out of the ordinary and significant, like the others he had chosen for himself and his appurtenances. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

If flying-saucer creatures or angels or whatever were to come here in a hundred years, say, and find us gone like the dinosaurs, what might be a good message for humanity to leave for them, maybe carved in great big letters on a Grand Canyon wall? Here is this old poop's suggestion: WE PROBABLY COULD HAVE SAVED OURSELVES, BUT WERE TOO DAMNED LAZY TO TRY VERY HARD ... — Kurt Vonnegut

His continued success in the field had blinded him. He was so good at his job that the suggestion that he might not have been infallible was ridiculous. Now, as he examined his file with the benefit of hindsight, he saw that he had missed a series of indicators. — Mark Dawson

Good science requires distinguishing between "felt knowledge" and knowledge arising out of testable observations. "I am sure" is a mental sensation, not a testable conclusion. Put hunches, gut feelings, and intuitions into the suggestion box. Let empiric methods shake out the good from bad suggestions. — Robert A. Burton

It's advice, not a commandment.
Don't swallow it whole until you're absolutely sure you've been given good, healthy advice. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Throughout one's life, time addresses man in a variety of languages: in those of innocence, love, faith, experience, history, fatigue, cynicism, guilt, decay, etc. Of those, the language of love is clearly the lingua franca. Its vocabulary absorbs all the other tongues, and its utterance gratifies a subject, however inanimate it may be. Also, by being thus uttered, a subject acquires an ecclesiastical, almost sacred denomination, echoing both the way we perceive the objects of our passions and the Good Book's suggestion as to what God is. Love is essentially an attitude maintained by the infinite toward the finite. The reversal constitutes either faith or poetry. Akhmatova's — Joseph Brodsky