Great Many Things Quotes & Sayings

Too many people are frightened. They want youth to last. They complain bitterly if sickness comes. But the world is always in tumult, and fortunes rise and fall and fail. It is the ambitious who accomplish things. It takes courage to be ambitious, for never was anything great achieved without risk. — Jeff Wheeler

A high school student wrote to ask, "What was the greatest event in American history?" I can't say. However, I suspect that like so many "great" events, it was something very simple and very quiet with little or no fanfare (such as someone forgiving someone else for a deep hurt that eventually changed the course of history). The really important "great" things are never center stage of life's dramas; they're always "in the wings". That's why it's so essential for us to be mindful of the humble and the deep rather than the flashy and the superficial. — Fred Rogers

Keats's odes are among my favorite poems ever. As are Neruda's. So yes, I think my poems are odes, though I really just see those titles as ways of more or less orienting the poem. I've never thought about this until now, but I guess you could say that one effect of all the titles, their pervasiveness in the book, might be to once again, as so many other things do, put into question the meaning of the word "for," which I suppose is one of the great human questions: what is all this for? Why, and for whom, are we doing whatever we are doing? — Matthew Zapruder

J. C. Ryle writes, "The day of judgment will reveal strange things. The hopes of many who were thought great Christians while they lived will be utterly confounded. The rottenness of their religion will be exposed and put to shame before the whole world. It will then be proved that to be saved means something more than 'making a profession.'"9 — Steven J. Lawson

The things that bring couples together will always terrify me more than the things that tear us apart. They will always be harder to explain. They will always keep me up later. Love gone wrong has inspired so many great songs, but somehow, love going right is what's bizarre. It exposes deep freakcraft in the universe. As far as I'm concerned, 'some people are very kind' is the scariest line Bob Dylan ever wrote. Compared to that, his breakup songs are kid stuff. Some people are very kind and there's nothing in the universe to explain why.
It's a mystery how people lose each other
but to me, it's an even stranger mystery we manage to stay together, or to collide together at all. — Rob Sheffield

Things come to the poor that can't get in at the door of the rich. Their money somehow blocks it up. It is a great privilege to be poor
one that no man covets, and brat a very few have sought to retain, but one that yet many have learned to prize. — George MacDonald

It leaned forward, elbows on its knees, all amusement vanishing from its features, leaving its chiseled visage quietly regal, dignified. "I give you my word, Gabrielle O'Callaghan," it said softly. "I will protect you."
"Right. The word of the blackest fairy, the legendary liar, the great deceiver," she mocked. How dare it offer its word like it might actually mean something?
A muscle leapt in its jaw. "That is not all I have been, Gabrielle. I have been, and am, many things."
"Oh, of course, silly me, I left out consummate seducer and ravager of innocence. — Karen Marie Moning

We find little in a book but what we put there. But in great books, the mind finds room to put many things. — Joseph Joubert

Also one of my heroes is Syd Mead, who designed the vehicles for the first Tron, So, there are so many beautiful things happening here. And working with Joe was great. He's an architect, so I worked with other directors in between who were just about the action — Daniel Simon

Very deep things in our nature, some dim sense of the dependence of great things upon small, some dark suggestion that the things nearest to us stretch far beyond our power, some sacramental feeling of the magic in material substances, and many more emotions past fading out, are in an idea like that of the external soul. The power even in the myths of savages is like the power in the metaphors of poets. The soul of such a metaphor is often very emphatically an external soul. — G.K. Chesterton

I got an image in my head that never got out. We see a great many things and can remember a great many things, but that is different. We get very few of the true images in our heads of the kind I am talking about, the kind that become more and more vivid for us as if the passage of the years did not obscure their reality but, year by year, drew off another veil to expose a meaning which we had only dimly surmised at first. Very probably the last veil will not be removed, for there are not enough years, but the brightness of the image increases and our conviction increases that the brightness is meaning, or the legend of meaning, and without the image our lives would be nothing except an old piece of film rolled on a spool and thrown into a desk drawer among the unanswered letters. — Robert Penn Warren

There are so many great things in life; why dwell on negativity? — Zendaya

I think that's what's great about being an actress is you get to learn so many different things like that, like learning a little bit of Tibetan here, learning a Southern accent there. — Jaime King

How fathomless the mystery of the Unseen is! We cannot plumb its depths with our feeble senses - with eyes which cannot see the infinitely small or the infinitely great, nor anything too close or too distant, such as the beings who live on a star or the creatures which live in a drop of water ... with ears that deceive us by converting vibrations of the air into tones that we can hear, for they are sprites which miraculously change movement into sound, a metamorphosis which gives birth to harmonies which turn the silent agitation of nature into song ... with our sense of smell, which is poorer than any dog's ... with our sense of taste, which is barely capable of detecting the age of a wine!
Ah! If we had other senses which would work other miracles for us, how many more things would we not discover around us! — Guy De Maupassant

Promises take many shapes, and the more ... momentous they are, the more they might look like threats. All great promises are threats, I suppose, to the way things have been until that point, to some aspect of our lives, and we all suddenly become conservative, even though we want and need what the promise holds, and look forward to the promised change at the same time. — Iain M. Banks

During the spring break I read a book called Everlasting. It was a really great book to read. It was about how a girl named Ivy and a boy named Triston were madly in loved but they couldn't be together. Triston had died but he came back to life as another person. But, the problem was that the person that he become was accused as a murderer. So he was being chased. But, even though he was being chased they figured things out and they were together forever. I chose to read this book because when I first started reading it i really liked it. I liked this book a lot because it talked about romance and how they didn't give up. They overcame the difficulties that came before them. What I didn't really like about this book is that many people came in between the love that Ivy and Triston had. — Elizabeth Chandler

How many perish through empty learning in this world, who care little for serving God. And because they love to be great more than to be humble, therefore they "have become vain in their imaginations." He only is truly great, who hath great charity. He is truly great who deemeth himself small, and counteth all height of honour as nothing. He is the truly wise man, who counteth all earthly things as dung that he may win Christ. And he is the truly learned man, who doeth the will of God, and forsaketh his own will. — Thomas A Kempis

Of course, people will laugh at you, but people laugh at a great many things so there is no need to take it personally. — Jeanette Winterson

Many beginners also at times possess great spiritual avarice. They hardly ever seem content with the spirit God gives them. They become unhappy and peevish because they don't find the consolation they want in spiritual things. Many never have enough of hearing counsels, or learning spiritual maxims, or keeping them and reading books about them. They spend more time in these than in striving after mortification and the perfection of the interior poverty to which they are obliged. — San Juan De La Cruz

In spite of all the talk and study about our next years, all the silent ponderings about what lies within them ... it seems plain to us that many things are wrong in the present ones that can be, must be, changed. Our texture of belief has great holes in it. Our pattern lacks pieces. — Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

We are the most focused company that I know of or have read of or have any knowledge of. We say no to good ideas every day. We say no to great ideas in order to keep the amount of things we focus on very small in number, so that we can put enormous energy behind the ones we do choose ... It's not just saying yes to the right products, it's saying no to many products that are good ideas, but just not nearly as good as other ones. — Tim Cook

After 'Prom Night' I did two movies where I was playing a prostitute. I gravitate towards characters that have some sort of inner turmoil or some sort of character arc. That's the great thing about acting, so many different things and being really diverse in your choices. — Brittany Snow

Freedom is not synonymous with an easy life ... There are many difficult things about freedom: It does not give you safety, it creates moral dilemmas for you; it requires self-discipline; it imposes great responsibilities; but such is the nature of Man and in such consists his glory and salvation. — Margaret Thatcher

Hi, Ceony," he said. He then stiffened like a soldier and added, "Magician Thane, it's a pleasure to meet you finally."

Bennet took a few long strides and offered his hand to the paper magician, who stood taller in height by several inches. Emery shook the apprentice's hand with an amused twinkle in his eye. Bennet continued. "I've heard a great many things about you."

"And you still shook my hand?" Emery asked. "Your mother raised you well. — Charlie N. Holmberg

Love is a great thing, yea, a great and thorough good.
By itself it makes that which is heavy light;
and it bears evenly all that is uneven.
It carries a burden which is no burden;
it will not be kept back by anything low and mean;
It desires to be free from all wordly affections,
and not to be entangled by any outward prosperity,
or by any adversity subdued.
Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble,
attempts what is above its strength,
pleads no excuse of impossibility.
It is therefore able to undertake all things,
and it completes many things and warrants them to take effect,
where he who does not love would faint and lie down.
Though weary, it is not tired;
though pressed it is not straightened;
though alarmed, it is not confounded;
but as a living flame it forces itself upwards and securely passes through all.
Love is active and sincere, courageous, patient, faithful, prudent, and manly. — Thomas A Kempis

Art has no immediate future because all art is collective and there is no more collective life(there are only dead collections of people), and also because of this breaking of the true pact between the body and the soul. Greek art coincided with the beginning of geometry and with athleticism, the art of the Middle Ages with the craftsmen's guilds, the art of the Renaissance with the beginning of mechanics, etc ... Since 1914 there has been a complete cut. Even comedy is almost impossible. There is only room for satire (when was it easier to understand Juvenal?). Art will never be reborn except from amidst a general anarchy - it will be epic no doubt, because affliction will have simplified a great many things ... It is therefore quite useless for you to envy Leonardo or Bach. Greatness in our times must take a different course. Moreover it can only be solitary, obscure and without an echo ... (but without an echo, no art). — Simone Weil

They've called me a great many things over the years, but my name is Nefarian Serpine. — Derek Landy

We put great expectations on our tomorrows when we truly need to rely on ourselves. Far too many overlook personal action, as a means to get things done. Blame is easily passed if one does not hold themselves accountable. — Jay Long

Lennon's was one of the first voices I emulated when I began to sing. When we held tryouts in my pal's dad's living room for the singer in our band, I sang a Beatles song that Lennon sang. There is something about the timbre of his voice, something that it conveys, that still gets to me. The quality and the poetry of his lyrics. The wry sense of humor. And the boyishness, in the beginning. There are a great many things that touch me about him ... Lennon was, to put it in his own words, a 'working-class hero.' — Don Henley

And in some ways, to me, that's one of the inspiring and powerful things about the Great Migration itself. There was no leader, there was no one person who set the date who said, 'On this date, people will leave the South.' They left on their own accord for as many reasons as there are people who left. They made a choice that they were not going to live under the system into which they were born anymore and in some ways, it was the first step that the nation's servant class ever took without asking. — Isabel Wilkerson

For many years, at great cost, I traveled through many countries, saw the high mountains, the oceans. The only things I did not see were the sparkling dewdrops in the grass just outside my door. — Rabindranath Tagore

Be Willing to Pay the Price If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem wonderful at all. MICHELANGELO Renaissance sculptor and painter who spent 4 years lying on his back painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel Behind every great achievement is a story of education, training, practice, discipline, and sacrifice. You have to be willing to pay the price. Maybe that price is pursuing one single activity while putting everything else in your life on hold. Maybe it's investing all of your own personal wealth or savings. Maybe it's the willingness to walk away from the safety of your current situation. But though many things are typically required to reach a successful outcome, the willingness to do what's required adds that extra dimension to the mix that helps you persevere in the face of overwhelming challenges, setbacks, pain, and even personal — Jack Canfield

I maybe many things to many people; but for me I am a writer; always have been and always will be.
I may not contribute to great literatures, but my contribution to writing would be always there; etched in the minds of the people whose lives I have touched with words.
Only a writer can understand what it means to a writer to not be able to be one.
To have the nib of pen broken ... like a death sentence ..
Or a life imprisonment in one's own mind without an outlet to thoughts.
I would give up things I love the most if that's the choice I am given to be able to be what I really want to be - A writer.
(C) Arti Honrao — Arti Honrao

People who run for office and are defeated aren't rejected in the usual sense of the word. They're just defeated because they couldn't get enough votes that one time. It doesn't mean the public despises them. It's a preference for somebody else for that particular office at that particular moment, that's all. The examples I've given have shown that when those men were passed up, they were still highly thought of and were still great men. There were a good many like that. You take the Adams family. After John Quincy Adams passed on, there were Adams descendants in Lincoln's cabinet. They wrote important histories and things of that kind. Even in the states, some good men are governors who have been defeated previously in elections, even in previous tries for governor. If they don't become pessimists and decide to lay down and take it, if they get up and start over again, why, they don't have any trouble. — Harry Truman

When I was a little kid wanting to play music, it was because of people like Pete Johnson, Huey Smith, Allen Toussaint, Professor Longhair, James Booker, Art Neville ... there was so many piano players I loved in New Orleans. Then there was guys from out of town that would come cut there a lot. There was so many great bebop piano players, so many great jazz piano players, so many great Latin piano players, so many great blues piano players. Some of those Afro-Cuban bands had some killer piano players. There was so many different things going on musically, and it was all of interest to me. — Dr. John

I have tried to know absolutely nothing about a great many things, and I have succeeded fairly well. — Robert Benchley

The kind of trust that is necessary to build a great team is what I call vulnerability-based trust. This is what happens when members get to a point where they are completely comfortable being transparent, honest, and naked with one another, where they say and genuinely mean things like "I screwed up," "I need help," "Your idea is better than mine," "I wish I could learn to do that as well as you do," and even, "I'm sorry." When everyone on a team knows that everyone else is vulnerable enough to say and mean those things, and that no one is going to hide his or her weaknesses or mistakes, they develop a deep and uncommon sense of trust. They speak more freely and fearlessly with one another and don't waste time and energy putting on airs or pretending to be someone they're not. Over time, this creates a bond that exceeds what many people ever experience in their lives and, — Patrick Lencioni

The garden is doing so well, we have so many greens and radishes that everyone is enjoying. Also, we are using one square as a compost bin, the Green Team is collecting food waste at lunch. Things are looking great, a huge thank you again. — Mike Moreno

Science is Christian, not when it condemns itself to the letter of things, but when, in the infinitely little, it discovers as many mysteries and as much depth and power as in the infinitely great. — Edgar Quinet

In order that life should be a story or romance to us, it is necessary that a great part of it, at any rate, should be settled for us without our permission. If we wish life to be a system, this may be a nuiseance; but if we wish it to be a drama, it is an essential. It may often happen, no doubt, that a drama may be written by somebody else which we like very little. But we should like it still less if the author came before the curtain every hour or so, and forced on us the whole trouble of inventing the next act. A man has control over many things in his life; he has control over enough things to be the hero of a novel. But if he had control over everything, there would be so much hero that there would be no novel. — G.K. Chesterton

Scotland is a great country and many wonderful things have come out of this country, however England gets the glory. — Joseph Hume

I felt like I could be a good example that you don't have to have all the right things in life, all the doors already open for you, in order to do great things. In fact, I truly believe that a lot of people who do great things, many of them have come from harder backgrounds. — Sara McMann

I listen a lot to how people speak. I've read a great many good books in my life. I had some excellent English teachers. Surely, those things were helpful. — Anthony Bourdain

Couldn't a woman be happy doing a great many things, just as a man could? — Zoe Marriott

One may do many things in a long life. I also played a great deal of tennis and brought up three children. There's time for all sorts of adventures. — Audrey Niffenegger

Visionary people are visionary partly because of the very great many things they don't see. — Berkeley Rice

Now some people are of the opinion that they are altogether holy and perfect, and go around the place with big deeds and big words, and yet they strive for and desire so many things, they wish to possess so much and are so concerned both with themselves and with this thing and that. They assert that they are seeking great piety and devotion, and yet they cannot accept a single word of reproval without answering back. Be certain of this: they are far from God and are not in union with him. — Meister Eckhart

Great things are brought about and burdens are lightened through the efforts of many hands anxiously engaged in a good cause. — M. Russell Ballard

In any case,' I added, 'I don't know that the great-niece is excluded under the Act - I only understand that she may be. In any case, there are still six months before the Act comes into force, and many things may happen before then.' " 'You mean that Auntie may die,' she said, 'but she's — Dorothy L. Sayers

Meaning makes a great many things endurable
per haps everything. — Carl Jung

Everything good takes a great amount of effort. Like, things went wrong with 'Prozac Nation' so much, and it went through so many rejections and incarnations, but I felt so much that it needed to exist. But if I hadn't been so persistent and insistent, it wouldn't have happened. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

I find it's more fun to write about something that you don't know completely and that you will discover on route. A dear friend of mine ... once said: 'The only time I know anything is when it comes to me at the point of my pen.' So I think that if you start to write about things that you know half well, that you're fascinated by, that you sense you have an appreciation of that others might not have, but you do have to acquire the knowledge as you go, you discover a great many things at the point of a pen. And it keeps the writing alive in itself in a way.
(in an interview with Martin Amis, 1991, see YouTube) — Norman Mailer

Who do I think was the greatest? This might shock you: Elgin Baylor. He did so many great things. Nobody could guard him, playing in the forward spot. I'd love to see some of today's greats playing against Elgin. They couldn't guard him. Nobody could. — Oscar Robertson

Some things I loved have vanished. A great many others have been given to me — Simone De Beauvoir

You may think this a strange story, but it is not. There are people whose lives are every bit as unusual as Bobby Box's
I can promise you that. Not all of them end as well, of course. For many people, the world is a place of sadness and sorrow, which is a great pity, as we have only one chance at life, and it is very bad luck if things do not go well.
But even if you think they are not going well, you can still wish, as Bobby Box did. And sometimes those wishes will come true, as his did, and the world will seem filled with light and happiness. That can happen, you know. So never give up hope; never think things are so bad that they can never get better. They can get better, and they do. And if you have the chance to make things easier for another person, never miss it. Stretch out your hand to help them, to cheer them up, to wipe away their tears. Stretch out your hand as that man and that woman did to Bobby Box. Stretch out your hand and see what happens. — Alexander McCall Smith

My great frustration is that, more and more, my memories come and go, and friends all my life are not recognized. Many of the things I say and do, I can no longer remember even right afterwards. — Alex Spanos

There are many things that you can't measure. But the great fun of what I do for a living is figuring out ways to measure things that people previously considered intangible. — Bill James

I make a point to appreciate all the little things in my life. I go out and smell the air after a good, hard rain. I re-read passages from my favorite books. I hold the little treasures that somebody special gave me. These small actions help remind me that there are so many great, glorious pieces of good in the world. — Dolly Parton

You must have had such a great childhood with a man like that for your father. (Delphine)
Yeah. All puppy dogs and rainbows and those weird furry people with padded coat hangers on their heads that look like space aliens on acid. (Jericho)
You mean the Teletubbies? (Berith)
The fact that you know what they're called, Berith, truly scares me. (Jericho)
As a demon of torture, it behooves me to know all things that are deeply annoying. You'd be amazed how many people in the modern age no longer fear zombies as much as Teletubbies. (Berith)
Not really. I'd rather battle a brain-eating zombie any day than hear them sing. (Jericho) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Imagination in a poet is a faculty so wild and lawless that, like a high ranging spaniel, it must have clogs tied to it, lest it outrun the judgment. The great easiness of blank verse renders the poet too luxuriant. He is tempted to say many things which might better be omitted, or, at least shut up in fewer words. — John Dryden

French novels generally treat of the relations of women to the world and to lovers, after marriage; consequently there is a great deal in French novels about adultery, about improper relations between the sexes, about many things which the English public would not allow. — Lafcadio Hearn

I AM come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence
whether much that is glorious
whether all that is profound
does not spring from disease of thought
from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however, rudderless or compassless into the vast ocean of the "light ineffable", and again, like the adventures of the Nubian geographer, "agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset exploraturi".
We will say then, that I am mad. — Edgar Allan Poe

I believe in mystery and, frankly, I sometimes face this mystery with great fear. In other words, I think that there are many things in the universe that we cannot perceive or penetrate, and that also we experience some of the most beautiful things in life only in a very primitive form. Only in relation to these mysteries do I consider myself to be a religious man ... — Albert Einstein

The iPhone is made on a global scale, and it blends computers, the Internet, communications, and artificial intelligence in one blockbuster, game-changing innovation. It reflects so many of the things that our contemporary world is good at - indeed, great at. — Tyler Cowen

It reminded him of the Sound of Music. Myron liked the ole Julie Andrews musical well enough. who didn't? but he always found one song particularly dumb. One of the classics, actually. My Favorite Things. The song made no sense. Ask a zillion people to list their absolute favorite things, and how many of them are going to list doorbells for crying out loud.
You know what, Milly, I love doorbells. To hell with strolling on a quiet beach, or reading a great book, or making love or seeing a broadway musical. Doorbells, Milly, doorbells really punch my ticket. Sometimes I just run up to people's houses and press their doorbells and, well, I think i am man enough to admit I shutter. — Harlan Coben

You are like everyone else," Alyosha concluded, "that is, like a great many others, only you ought not to be like everyone else, that's what." "Even if everyone is like that?" "Yes, even if everyone is like that. You be the only one who is not like that. And in fact you're not like everyone else: you weren't ashamed just now to confess bad and even ridiculous things about yourself. Who would confess such things nowadays? No one, and people have even stopped feeling any need for self-judgment. So do not be like everyone else; even if you are the only one left who is not like that, still do not be like that. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

My goal is to encourage people to see the possibilities that life holds. So many great things can happen in life, if we can find our own way of doing things, and believe in ourselves, no matter what challenges surround you. — Jim Abbott

I had no idea what to say to this. I had been nurtured in the U.S. school system on a steady diet of the Great Men theory of history. History was full of Great Men. I had to take separate Women's History courses just to learn about what women were doing while all the men were killing each other. It turned out many of them were governing countries and figuring out rather effective methods of birth control that had sweeping ramifications on the makeup of particular states, especially Greece and Rome.
Half the world is full of women, but it's rare to hear a narrative that doesn't speak of women as the people who have things done to them instead of the people who do things. More often, women are talked about as a man's daughter. A man's wife. — Kameron Hurley

One hears a great many things, true, but can gather nothing definite. — Franz Kafka

If I was a bajillionaire, I would spend a lot of time at Barneys just buying all kinds of great things all the time. I would have so many black cashmeres it would be out of control. I like the way nice things feel very much. — Natasha Lyonne

Love can never really be a great base for marriage because love is fun and play. If you marry someone for love you will be frustrated, because soon the fun is gone, the newness is gone, and boredom sets in. Marriage is for deep friendship, deep intimacy. Love is implied in it, but it is not alone. So marriage is spiritual. It is spiritual. There are many things which you can never develop alone. Even your own growth needs someone to respond, someone so intimate that you can open yourself totally to him or her. — Rajneesh

Who knows what will happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, expecting to be told to pack nothing, except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning. — Mary Oliver

There are a great many more good things than bad things to do. — George MacDonald

Polybius foresaw Rome's decadence. "All things are subject to decay and change," he wrote. "When a state, after having passed with safety through many and great dangers, arrives at the highest degree of power, and possesses an entire and undisputed sovereignty, it is manifest that the long continuance of prosperity must give birth to costly and luxurious manners, and that the minds of men will be heated with ambitious contests, and become too eager and aspiring in the pursuit of dignities. And as those evils are continually increased, the desire of power and rule, and the imagined ignominy of remaining in a subject state, will first begin to work the ruin of the republic; arrogance and luxury will afterwards advance it; and in the end the change will be completed by the people; when the avarice of some is found to injure and oppress them, and the ambition of others swells their vanity, and poisons them with flattering hopes. — Anonymous

The shareholders who own the businesses in this book have other, nonfinancial priorities in addition to their financial objectives. Not that they don't want to earn a good return on their investment, but it's not their only goal, or even necessarily their paramount goal. They're also interested in being great at what they do, creating a great place to work, providing great service to customers, having great relationships with their suppliers, making great contributions to the communities they live and work in, and finding great ways to lead their lives. They've learned, moreover, that to excel in all those things, they have to keep ownership and control inside the company and, in many cases, place significant limits on how much and how fast they grow. The wealth they've created, though substantial, has been a byproduct of success in these other areas. I call them small giants. — Bo Burlingham

The jobs, the housing, the relationships, the routines --- so many aspects of life that had been cut out of the whole cloth of the war emergency were now so intrinsic that it was easy to believe things had always been this way. Despite the best intentions of returning to their former lives, the come-heres tarried, realizing in small sips of awareness over the course of the war years --- or with great gulping realizations at the war's end abrupt end --- that they would not, or could not, go home again. — Margot Lee Shetterly

So many of us get caught up into the race game that we forget that in the end we are just people trying to do better for ourselves and our families. My father use to have a saying, that in order to be great you have to do great things that change the world of people around you. — D.E. Rogers

The blessing of the omnivore is that he can eat a great many different things in nature. The curse of the omnivore is that when it comes to figuring out which of those things are safe to eat, he's pretty much on his own. — Michael Pollan

Portability also explains why many old chests and trunks had domed lids- to throw off water during travel. The great drawback of trunks, of course, is that everything has to be lifted at to get things at the bottom. It took a remarkably long time- till the 1600s- before it occurred to anyone to put drawers in and thus convert trunks into chests of drawers. — Bill Bryson

I've learned that many of the worst things lead to the best things, that no great thing is achieved without a couple of bad, bad things on the way to them, and that the bad things that happen to you bring, in some cases, the good things. — Mike Nichols

Further, in the modern story, reality is that which is observable, measurable, and repeatable - the kinds of phenomena available, accessible, and verifiable to the five senses. Thus, reality comes to equal the scientific method. It should come as no surprise that in such a world the life of the spirit is ignored or marginalized (as well as a great many other nonmaterial things.) This view of life subsequently birthed in human beings a ravenous materialism as matters of the soul were ignored or reinterpreted within this tightly controlled version of reality. When the life of the spirit is ignored, people will seek to feed the hunger of a neglected soul with the only nourishment available: in our context, the consumptive acquisition of material goods. — Tim Keel

When many work together for a goal, Great things may be accomplished. It is said a lion cub was killed By a single colony of ants. — Saskya Pandita

In poor environment, I find great inspiration. Many of the men and women whom I admire as artists, the things they write, the songs they sing, the admission is filled with inspired moments to overcome oppression. — Harry Belafonte

For (strange as it may sound to many people, who tend to think of critics as being motivated by the lower emotions: envy, disdain, contempt even) critics are, above all, people who are in love with beautiful things, and who worry that those things will get broken. What motivates so many of us to write in the first place is, to begin with, a great passion for a subject (Tennessee Williams, Balanchine, jazz, the twentieth-century novel, whatever) that we find beautiful; and, then, a kind of corresponding anxiety about the fragility of that beauty. — Daniel Mendelsohn

Concerning culture as a process, one would say that it means learning a great many things and then forgetting them; and the forgetting is as necessary as the learning. — Albert J. Nock

The shepherds made haste, partly no doubt from human curiosity, in order to see this great thing that had been announced to them. But surely, too, they were driven by their joy on hearing that now, truly, the Saviour, the Messiah, the Lord had been born, the one so long awaited - and they would be the first to see him. How many Christians make haste today, where the things of God are concerned? Surely if anything merits haste - so the evangelist is discreetly telling us - then it is the things of God. — Pope Benedict XVI

I never want to hold myself up as the poster child of the successful mother-businesswoman. It's a total 'Gong Show.' I won't pretend. When you do so many things, something always suffers. You just can't be great at everything. — Candice Olson

In my experience there are few people who are of true genius. There are many who are gifted, but most of the world's work and great things come from ordinary people with a talent which they develop. — James E. Faust

One of the heaviest load so many people are carrying today is neither thoughts about things they lack nor things they wish to have, nor how to manage what they already have, but toxic words that have taken a greater portion of their thoughts and such words not just occupying a great part of their hearts, but also draining their very joy in life! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Philosophy is a necessary activity because we, all of us, take a great number of things for granted, and many of these assumptions are of a philosophical character; we act on them in private life, in politics, in our work, and in every other sphere of our lives
but while some of these assumptions are no doubt true, it is likely, that more are false and some are harmful. So the critical examination of our presuppositions
which is a philosophical activity
is morally as well as intellectually important. — Karl Popper

Too many of us have lost the passion and emotion of the remarkable things we-ve done in space. Let us not tear up the future, but rather again heed the creative metaphors that render space travel a religious experience. When the blast of a rocket launch slams you against the wall and all the rust is shaken off your body, you will hear the great shout of the universe and the joyful crying of people who have been changed by what they-ve seen. — Ray Bradbury

In diplomacy, like in great many other things, the rules of engagement survive only until one remarkable person decides to break them. — Ilona Andrews

The growing pains of ... being an actor, that was a little frustrating at times because you feel like you have great capacity to do many things. And yet there seems to be a misunderstanding about who you are and what you're trying to do. And that requires patience, and people eventually will understand. — Matt Dillon

Personally, I was never more passionate about manga than when preparing for my college entrance exams. It's a period of life when young people appear to have a great deal of freedom, but are in many ways actually opressed. Just when they find themselves powerfully attracted to members of opposite sex, they have to really crack the books. To escape from this depressing situation, they often find themselves wishing they could live in a world of their own - a world they can say is truly theirs, a world unknown even to their parents. To young people, anime is something they incorporate into this private world.
I often refer to this feeling as one yearning for a lost world. It's a sense that although you may currently be living in a world of constraints, if you were free from those constraints, you would be able to do all sorts of things. And it's that feeling, I believe, that makes mid-teens so passionate about anime. — Hayao Miyazaki

Joseph Smith visited me a great deal after his death, and taught me many important principles ... Among other things, he told me to get the Spirit of God; that all of us needed it ... He said, "I want you to teach the people to get the Spirit of God. You cannot build up the Kingdom of God without that." ... But how is it with the Holy Ghost? The Holy Ghost does not leave me if I do my duty. It does not leave any man who does his duty. — Wilford Woodruff

There's so many great things that come with being successful. The one thing that is weird is trying to figure out whose intentions are in the right place, and who is really on your team. — Donald Faison

Because of the lingering discrimination, many women still lack confidence. They live in fear of stepping beyond what they feel is acceptable 'female' behavior. I can remember feeling that I wasn't 'normal' because I was aggressive, had dreams and goals, and wanted do do great things ... I am glad now that I found courage to do something radical and chase my dreams. — Joyce Meyer

A great many complimentary things have been said about the faculty of memory, and if you look in a good quotation book you will find them neatly arranged. — Robertson Davies

There was nothing now but this empty treadmill of what Clifford called the integrated life, the long living together of two people, who are in the habit of being in the same house with one another.
Nothingness! To accept the great nothingness of life seemed to be the one end of living. All the many busy and important little things that make up the grand sum-total of nothingness! — D.H. Lawrence

It has been said that the great things in life are exactly what they seem to be. Such simplicity can be difficult to understand. I have had many visions that I could not interpret, visions meant to be passed to a greater soul. I am but a thread in the fabric. Nevertheless, I do know this: even the finest and most self-sacrificing actions must be paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them so fine. — Susan Cartwright