Quotes & Sayings About Influences In Life

Further, the constitution of our consciousness is the ever present and lasting element in all we do or suffer; our individuality is persistently at work, more or less, at every moment of our life: all other influences are temporal, incidental, fleeting, and subject to every kind of chance and change. This is why Aristotle says: It is not wealth but character that lasts.
And just for the same reason we can more easily bear a misfortune which comes to us entirely from without, than one which we have drawn upon ourselves; for fortune may always change, but not character. Therefore, subjective blessings - a noble nature, a capable head, a joyful temperament, bright spirits, a well-constituted, perfectly sound physique, in a word, mens sana in corpore sano, are the first and most important elements in happiness; so that we should be more intent on promoting and preserving such qualities than on the possession of external wealth and external honor. — Arthur Schopenhauer

It seems that all the wondrous influences that have coalesced to produce myriad life forms are irrelevant and can be trashed at will in a pointless race to produce ever more things ever more quickly. — Tony Wardle

Or, if you want to go just a wee bit deeper, we could talk about the nature of freedom itself. Does freedom mean that you are allowed to do whatever you want to do? Or we could talk about all the limiting influences in your life that actively work against your freedom. Your family genetic heritage, your specific DNA, your metabolic uniqueness, the quantum stuff that is going on at a subatomic level where only I am the always-present observer. Or the intrusion of your soul's sickness that inhibits and binds you, or the social influences around you, or the habits that have created synaptic bonds and pathways in your brain. And then there's advertising, propaganda, and paradigms. Inside that confluences of multifaceted inhibitors," she sighed, "what is freedom really? — Wm. Paul Young

In life, I'm most inspired by entertaining people and driven by the desire to do it by such a powerful force that I think it influences everything I do. — Brandi Carlile

Today religion is increasingly pushed aside by secularizing influences such as the university, the media, and politics. Rather than having a major voice in public life, religion has been relegated to the private and the personal. — Paul Copan

A belief in God is fundamental; upon it rest the influences that control life. — William Jennings Bryan

You invite a time in the near future when you are no longer building your life on the unknown influences of your childhood sexual abuse. — Jeanne McElvaney

Since I've been in an actor, I've lived in Italy, in London, in Stockholm - I had the fortune of working in different locations. If you live someplace long enough, you acquire slightly different systems of thought, and it influences your outlook on life. I just slowly adapted the way I speak. — Matthew Settle

She looked out the window; in her eyes was the light that you see only in children arriving at a new place, or in young people still open to new influences, still curious about the world because they have not yet been scarred by life. — Orhan Pamuk

Avenues - television, magazines, movies, music, friends, malls, and catalogs, to name a few. A steady diet of these worldly influences will shape our view of what is valuable, what is beautiful, and what is important in life. — Nancy Leigh DeMoss

Whether it be in comics, games or film, you can trace the art direction and influences back to some earlier, real-life historic period or artistic movement. — Jim Lee

I grew up in a family with two very strong women, my mother and my older sister, and they were big influences on my life. — Darren Aronofsky

I think real life reflects your movies. In your life, you pick stuff that influences what movie roles you wanna pick. I think if you've got an interesting life, you wanna do interesting movies about interesting things. — Chris Tucker

The assumption that everything past is preserved holds good even in mental life only on condition that the organ of the mind has remained intact and that its tissues have not been damaged by trauma or inflammation. But destructive influences which can be compared to causes of illness like these are never lacking in the history of a city, even if it has had a less chequered past than Rome, and even if, like London, it has hardly ever suffered from the visitations of an enemy. — Sigmund Freud

At the Foley Center for the Study of Lives at Northwestern University, McAdams studies the stories that people tell about themselves. We all write our life stories as if we were novelists, McAdams believes, with beginnings, conflicts, turning points, and endings. And the way we characterize our past setbacks profoundly influences how satisfied we are with our current lives. Unhappy people tend to see setbacks as contaminants that ruined an otherwise good thing ("I was never the same again after my wife left me"), while generative adults see them as blessings in disguise ("The divorce was the most painful thing that ever happened to me, but I'm so much happier with my new wife"). Those who live the most fully realized lives - giving back to their families, societies, and ultimately themselves - tend to find meaning in their obstacles. In a sense, McAdams has breathed new life into one of the great insights of Western mythology: that where we stumble is where our treasure lies. — Susan Cain

Principles are like a seed in the ground; they must continually be visited with heavenly influences or else your life will be a barren field. — Thomas Traherne

One of my biggest influences as a writer is J. K. Rowling. I grew up with Harry Potter. One thing I absolutely loved was how every single person in Harry's world was so three-dimensional - it was as if each one was the main character in his or her own story and was just making a guest appearance in Harry's story. I strive to do that as a writer. I want every side character to be the main character of his or her own story. — Angie Thomas

Unchecked, the dominating influences of money and of barren intellectualism would reduce the life of emotions to freezing point. And, unable to grasp the holier benefits of religion, the mysticism of the heart reacts in the art-intoxication ... In this cold, irreligious and practical age the warmth of this devotion to art has kept alive many higher aspirations of our soul, which otherwise might readily have died, as they did in the middle of the last century. — Abraham Kuyper

I have never had any hero in my life or in photography. I just travel, I look and everything influences me. Everything influences me. I am quite different now than I was 40 years ago. For 40 years I have been traveling. I never stay in one country more than three months. Why? Because I was interested in seeing, and if I stay longer I become blind. — Josef Koudelka

In addition to the artistic influences, I am influenced by my current private life, my feelings about it and my energy level and state of health. — Frank Auerbach

The people on my mum's side of the family are atheist intellectuals who are ueber-proper. My dad's side of the family are missionaries who are more comfortable sitting around in sweatpants than they are in a five-star restaurant. But those two influences converged in my life. — Evangeline Lilly

The great and invigorating influences in American life have been the unorthodox: the people who challenge an existing institution or way of life, or say and do things that make people think. — William O. Douglas

I believe there are few whose view of life has not been affected by the stern or kindly influences of their early childhood, which threw them in upon themselves in timidity and reserve, or drew them out in genial confidence and sympathy with their fellow creatures. — Basil W. Maturin

A better life and a peaceful mind comes by not spending your energy of destroying the negatives in your life, but by adding more positive influences from here in the now ... all energy should be focused on a better you of today ... and time will use the past negatives as fuel to propel you in the right direction.. — Daniel Yanez

For a man is a little lower than the angels, yet was made that he might become the companion of the Creative Forces; and thus was given
in the breath of life
the individual soul, the stamp of approval as it were of the Creator; with the ability to know itself to be itself, and to make itself, as one with the Creative Forces
irrespective of other influences. — Edgar Cayce

I'm a mad thinker in general. I think about everything, all the time. Especially when I write music, a lot of the influences come from personal experiences or from being on the outside looking in, being that person who witnessed things that stuck with me throughout my life. — Adam Hicks

Children used to be unknowing and innocent when it came to certain issues in life. But that innocence has been lost in today's electronic environment. Kids are exposed to ideas and content their minds and emotions are not ready to handle. And under the onslaught of this corrupt world with its wrong concepts, wrong desires, wrong deeds, and wrong attitudes, children come under all sorts of negative influences that end up bringing serious problems into the home. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

Freddie Mercury and Elton John are, like, two of the biggest Influences in my whole life. And probably always will be. — Axl Rose

Innate mechanisms endow the visual system with highly specific connections, but visual experience early in life is necessary for their maintenance and full development. Deprivation experiments demonstrate that neural connections can be modulated by environmental influences during a critical period of postnatal development. — Torsten Wiesel

I'm still kind of a hapless character in my everyday life. But when it comes to the writing, my influences are very old influences. I love American music of absolutely all stripes, including show tunes, advertising jingles, theme tunes from quiz shows, all kinds of American music. — Nick Lowe

Not enough people realize that ADHD is not a disorder about loss of focus. It is a disorder of loss of emotional control, which is triggered by outside influences, self-esteem and our interpretation of events. Whether this is positive or negative it triggers us to hyper focus on what consumes our thoughts. Staying positive is critical and distancing oneself from hurtful people is essential, in order to live a life with purpose. — Shannon L. Alder

I am sure we should not shut our hearts against the healing influences that nature offers us. But I understand your feeling. I think we all experience the same thing. We resent the thought that anything can please us when someone we love is no longer here to share the pleasure with us, and we almost feel as if we were unfaithful to our sorrow when we find our interest in life returning to us. — L.M. Montgomery

Does freedom mean that you are allowed to do whatever you want to do? Or we could talk about all the limiting influences in your life that actively work against your freedom. Your family genetic heritage, your specific DNA, your metabolic uniqueness, the quantum stuff that is going on at a subatomic level where only I am the always-present observer. Or the intrusion of your soul's sickness that inhibits and binds you, or the social influences around you, or the habits that have created synaptic bonds and pathways in your brain. And then there's advertising, propaganda, and paradigms. Inside that confluence of multifaceted inhibitors," she said, sighing, "what is freedom really? — Wm. Paul Young

To gain a true understanding of human experience, we must understand both our conscious and our unconscious selves, and how they interact. Our subliminal brain is invisible to us, yet it influences our conscious experience of the world in the most fundamental of ways: how we view ourselves and others, the meanings we attach to the everyday events of our lives, our ability to make the quick judgment calls and decisions that can sometimes mean the difference between life and death, and the actions we engage in as a result of all these instinctual experiences. — Leonard Mlodinow

The State is competent to assign duties and draw the line between good and evil only in its immediate sphere. Beyond the limits of things necessary for its well-being, it can only give indirect help to fight the battle of life by promoting the influences which prevail against temptation
religion, education, and the distribution of wealth. — Lord Acton

But God's presence in your life has nothing to do with your feelings. Your emotions are susceptible to all kinds of influences, so they are often unreliable. Sometimes the worst advice you can get is "Do what you feel." Often what we feel is neither real nor right. Your emotional state can be the result of memories, hormones, medicines, food, lack of sleep, tension, or fears. Whenever I start to feel anxious about a situation, I remind myself that fear is often False Evidence Appearing Real. — Rick Warren

There are certain events which to each man's life are as comets to the earth, seemingly strange and erratic portents; distinct from the ordinary lights which guide our course and mark our seasons, yet true to their own laws, potent in their own influences. — Bill Vaughan

There are so many lenses through which we look at life. There are so many lenses through which we perceive others. There are so many lenses through which we interpret things that happen to us in life and there are so many lenses that give us not just the different perspectives about life, but how we behave towards life and other people due to the reasons we have! Wealth influences our reasons and poverty directs our actions. Failure shows us a different way to behave and success gives us a different reason for action. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

This phenomenon suggests nineteenth-century German polymath Adolf Bastian's theory of Elementargedanke, literally "elementary thoughts of humankind," which so influenced physicists like Planck, Pauli, and Einstein, indeed many of those in the German school of physics, which was dominant in the early decades of the twentieth century leading up to World War II, as well as anthropologists like Franz Boas (the father of American anthropology) and physicians such as Jung. The idea of the collective unconscious (Jung's term for the nonlocal domain) was in the way he expressed it. It proposes a worldview in which all manifestations of consciousness, regardless of the complexity of their physical forms, are part of a network of life. A network in which each component both informs and influences as it is informed and influenced. It — Stephan A. Schwartz

Women have been the most intelligent, peaceful and positive influences in my life, I don't want to generalize too much, but definitely in my experience, I've found the whole macho world of male aggression and insecurity to be a lot more difficult to exist in. — Zayn Malik

Often enough it is little that can be done in an old country, where life is ruled by fixed and imperious traditions; while much may be done where all is yet fluid, and where, if religion is sometimes unprotected and unrecognised, she is not embarrassed by influences which deaden or cramp her best energies at home. — Henry Parry Liddon

If I firmly believed, as millions say they do, that the knowledge of a practice of religion in this life influences destiny in another, then religion would mean to me everything. I would cast away earthly enjoyments as dross, earthly thoughts and feelings as vanity. Religion would be my first waking thought and my last image before sleep sank me into unconsciousness. I should labor in its cause alone. I would take thought for the marrow of eternity alone. I would esteem one soul gained for heaven worth a life of suffering. Earthly consequences would never stay in my head or seal my lips. Earth, its joys and its griefs, would occupy no moment of my thoughts. I would strive to look upon eternity alone, and on the immortal souls around me, soon to be everlastingly happy or everlastingly miserable. I would go forth to the world and preach to it in season and out of season. and my text would be, "What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul — Norman P. Grubb

Like a lot of people who get into coaching, I was impacted by the people in my life. Certainly my father (John) who coached me in youth league baseball, and my high school coach, Joe Moore, were mentors and major influences. — Kirk Ferentz

The influences in my life were all kind of politically, socially implanted. And then there was Watergate. — Tobe Hooper

Life, according to Stephen, was not a journey out of darkness into light. In fact, dark and light were two arbitrary categories applied to the human spirit in a vain hope that it, too, with all its fleshy influences, would be as orderly as the rise and fall of the sun. The light in the darkness, as Stephen explained it, did not chase away the shadows of fear and regret: It merely illuminated the fears worth fighting. It lit the paths dictated by fate and choice, rather than casting a celestial glow on the way to a better and more perfect world. — Christopher Rice

My brother was one of the bigger influences in my life, in as much as he told me I didn't have to read the choice of books that I as recommended at school, and that I could go out to the library and go and choose my own, and sort of introduced me to authors that I wouldn't have read.probably. You know, the usual things like the Jack Kerouacs, the Ginsbergs, the ee Cummings and stuff. — David Bowie

There are three influences which appear to Us to have the chief place in effecting this downgrade movement of society. These are-first, the distaste for a simple and laborious life; secondly, repugnance to suffering of any kind; thirdly, the forgetfulness of the future life. — Pope Leo XIII

You may be pulling from different influences because of different things that are going on in your life, different people that are around you and more experiences to pull from. — Zac Hanson

The nineteenth century will ever be known as the one in which the influences of science were first fully realised in civilised communities; the scientific progress was so gigantic that it seems rash to predict that any of its successors can be more important in the life of any nation. — Norman Lockyer

Perhaps this is what really happens in life to most good men. They are not crucified. They simply pass through life and then die, and their passing influences just a few people to make them just a little happy. — Kenneth Rexroth

The life of hope, then, is shot through with social influences at every level. We learn to formulate ideals in tandem with others. We pursue particular hopes, sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing, in the company of those we love. And as we develop habits of hope and the hopefulness which helps us weather our trials, we reach out to others, inspiring them, sharing our own hopes with them, and contributing our abilities as best we can to foster the growth of agency. — Patrick Shade

Intentional reflection connects thoughts with emotions and leads to transformation. As Robert Saucy reminds us: "The deeper something is in our heart, the more it influences our life. — Joanne J. Jung

What you see determines how you interpret the world, which in turn influences what you expect of the world and how you expect the story of your life to unfold. — Sheena Iyengar

But where do we go?"(Elinor)
"I used to think there was a plan, a rough plan, but a plan all the same," the doctor admitted. "Now, I believe there are a thousand plans. Every breath, every decision, influences the plan, expands it, shortens it, twists it all around. It's always changing. Those of us lucky enough to make it through the multitude of possible diseases and accidents get old. We get tired. We close our eyes."
"And then? Where are we then?"
Silly to ask him as though he knew, but in fact the doctor didn't hesitate. He took Elinor's hand and placed it on his chest, in the place where he knew his heart to be.
"There."
Elinor smiled and thought at last. At last someone had told her the truth. — Alice Hoffman

Remain Healthy All Day: Drink a spoonful of oil every morning. Reach up with your arms and extend your body to its full height. Use a warm towel to dry the cat. Consider a philosophical idea larger than your area of expertise. Avoid getting cancer. Chalk up bad decisions to outside influences. Don't take your father too seriously. Play a game where you close your eyes very tightly, and when you open your eyes, you have amnesia and you must draw the details of your life from your surroundings. Give up smoking, drinking, and poetic verse. Remind yourself how important you are to your friends or at least your animals. Wax the floor in socks. Enter into a healthy, monogamous relationship. Consider briefly the idea of a soulmate. Light an entire box of matches and throw it into the sink. Hold a metal rod to the heavens and beg for whatever comes next. — Amelia Gray

I put together the influences of my life in as clear a way as I possibly can, in the same way that Beethoven or Schoenberg or Bach put their influences together. — John Zorn

I regard the effort to introduce women into colleges for young men as very undesirable, and for many reasons. That the two sexes should be united, both as teachers and pupils, in the same institution seems very desirable, but rarely in early life by a method that removes them from parental watch and care, and the protecting influences of a home. — Catharine Beecher

The way I was brought up by my parents and guided through my football life by the influences of various managers means that in some ways I am black and white. — Stuart Pearce

When I try to explain to people the big influences in my life, or at least when I first started, the most important ones were my friends who were also writing songs and were typically four or five years older than me. — Conor Oberst

Although the constellations in which I have found myself - and naturally also the periods of life and their different influences - have led to changes and development in the accents of my thought, my basic impulse, precisely during the Council, was always to free up the authentic kernel of the faith from encrustations and to give this kernel strength and dynamism. This impulse is the constant of my life ... what's important to me is that I have never deviated from this constant, which from my childhood has molded my life, and that I have remained true to it as the basic direction of my life. — Pope Benedict XVI

This business of petty inconvenience and indignity, of being kept waiting about, of having to do everything at other people's convenience, is inherent in working-class life. A thousand influences constantly press a working man down into a passive role. He does not act, he is acted upon. He feels himself the slave of mysterious authority and has a firm conviction that 'they' will never allow him to do this, that, and the other. Once when I was hop-picking I asked the sweated pickers (they earn something under sixpence an hour) why they did not form a union. I was told immediately that 'they' would never allow it. Who were 'they'? I asked. Nobody seemed to know, but evidently 'they' were omnipotent. — George Orwell

I don't have traceable literary models because I haven't had great literary influences in my life. — Manuel Puig

One is only happy in proportion as he makes others feel happy and only useful as he contributes his influences for the finer callings in life. — Milton S. Hershey

There is a force that controls all your decisions. It influences how you think and feel every moment you're alive. It determines what you will do and what you will not do. It determines how you feel about anything that occurs in your life. That force is your beliefs. — Tony Robbins

In terms of people that I know, my grandmother and my mother are huge influences on my writing life because they are both massively supportive and always have been of my career. — Tea Obreht

I would say that my role model, as far as just somebody leading by example, which to me is what a great youth counselor does - they are there to talk to and lead by example - would be my mom, but she wasn't a youth counselor. She was a teacher, and she is a good person and definitely one of the biggest influences in my life. — Carrie Underwood

If you're going to spend two or three years of your life working on something, you've got to be making the kind of movie that discusses and influences the culture and is engaged in the world you're living in. — Scott Rudin

You don't get to pick your family, but you can pick your teachers and you can pick your friends and you can pick the music you listen to and you can pick the books you read and you can pick the movies you see. You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life. You are the sum of your influences. The German writer Goethe said, We are shaped and fashioned by what we love. — Austin Kleon

It is the peculiar nature of the forest, that life and death may ever be found within its bounds, in immediate presence of each other; both with ceaseless, noiseless advances, aiming at the mastery; and if the influences of the first be most general, those of the last are the most striking. — Susan Fenimore Cooper

I don't believe in "original sin." I don't believe in "guilt." I don't believe in villains or heroes - only right or wrong ways that individuals have taken, not by choice but by necessity or by certain still-uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances, and their antecedents.
This is so simple I'm ashamed to say it, but I'm sure it's true. In fact, I would bet my life on it! And that's why I don't understand why our propaganda machines are always trying to teach us, to persuade us, to hate and fear other people on the same little world that we live in. — Tennessee Williams

Think about one of the most powerful influences on a young child's life - the absence of a father figure. Look back on recent presidents, and you'll find an absent, or weak, or failed father in the lives of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. — Jeff Greenfield

Your 'Belief Window' is how you perceive and understand everything in your life ... It frames all your views and influences the actions you take, but it can also be wrong or limited. — Tony Jeary

But in the life of every man there are influences of a far more real and penetrating character than those which come through the medium of schools or teachers. — Frederic William Farrar

Few concepts have offered greater scope for human cruelty than the idea of an immortal soul that stands independent of all material influences, ranging from genes to economic systems. Within a religious framework, a belief in free will supports the notion of sin - which seems to justify not only harsh punishment in this life but eternal punishment in the next. And yet, ironically, one of the fears attending our progress in science is that a more complete understanding of ourselves will dehumanize us. Viewing — Sam Harris

The ambiance of every environment in a country is the value system of the given nation. It is that culture that influences how citizens of a nation react, respond and behave among themselves in regards to politics, commerce, family and social life. — Sunday Adelaja

My influences come from real life. I'm not interested in cinema for cinema's sake. I'm interested in life - what one does and how one interacts. — Steven Rodney McQueen

A year or so ago I went through all the people in my life and asked myself: does this person inspire me, genuinely love me and support me unconditionally? I wanted nothing but positive influences in my life. — Mena Suvari

Music is either sacred or profane. What is sacred accords completely with its nobility, and this is where music most immediately influences life; such influence remains unchanged at all times and in every epoch. Profane music should be altogether cheerful.
Music of a kind that mixes the sacred with the profane is godless and shoddy music wich goes in for expressing feeble, wretched, deplorable feelings, and is just insipid. For it is not serious enough to be sacred and it lacks the chief quality of the opposite kind: cheerfulness. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The 1890s was a decade when life began to change in urban America. Modern conveniences that we now take for granted came into use; women's roles became less restrictive; and San Francisco, a port city with influences from all over the world, was a lively place in which to reside. — Marcia Muller

Of all difficulties which impede the progress of thought, and the formation of well-grounded opinions on life and social arrangements, the greatest is now the unspeakable ignorance and inattention of mankind in respect to the influences which form human character. — John Stuart Mill

India went through a dramatic revolution after the '90s when our economy started opening up for the first time and Indians were now experiencing the Western life, if you will. Drugs and sex and a lot of those influences came in as the economy stabilized, and we were growing up and experiencing that. The Indian writing market was very small at that time. Our literature was very attuned to what Western audiences were interested in, so everybody was writing about the slums in India and magic realism or stories about Hindus and Muslims and partition. — Karan Bajaj

I could have taken the easy life and just done classical, but I felt very strongly about the album, my first pop album, the first time that I'd fused so many influences. I was very proud when it was in the charts in 25 countries at once. — Vanessa Mae

The qualities and capacities that are important in running-such factors as will power, the ability to apply effort during extreme fatigue and the acceptance of pain-have a radiating power that subtly influences one's life. — Jim Fixx

Since childhood, sports has been one of the most important influences in my life. — Lindsey Vonn

Nothing is less applicable to life than a mathematical argument. A proposition expressed in numbers is definitely false or true. In all other relations, the truth is so mingled with the false that often only instinct can help us to decide among virtuous influences, sometimes equally as strong in one direction as in the other. — Germaine De Stael

And so he would now study perfumes, and the secrets of their manufacture, distilling heavily-scented oils, and burning odorous gums from the East. He saw that there was no mood of the mind that had not its counterpart in the sensuous life, and set himself to discover their true relations, wondering what there was in frankincense that made one mystical, and in ambergris that stirred one's passions, and in violets that woke the memory of dead romances, and in musk that troubled the brain, and in champak that stained the imagination;
and seeking often to elaborate a real psychology of perfumes, and to estimate the several influences of sweet-smelling roots, and scented pollen-laden flower, of aromatic balms, and of dark and fragrant woods, of spikenard that sickens, of hovenia that makes men mad, and of aloes that are said to be able to expel melancholy from the soul. — Oscar Wilde

Any saxophone player will have those influences come through in their music in a very different way. I can listen to the same 10 sax players as someone else for my entire life, and we'll both play completely differently. That's the beauty of being a musician. — Kenny G

Chaucer's world in The Canterbury Tales brings together, for the first time, a diversity of characters, social levels, attitudes, and ways of life. The tales themselves make use of a similarly wide range of forms and styles, which show the diversity of cultural influences which the author had at his disposal. Literature, with Chaucer, has taken on a new role: as well as affirming a developing language, it is a mirror of its times - but a mirror which teases as it reveals, which questions while it narrates, and which opens up a range of issues and questions, instead of providing simple, easy answers. — Ronald Carter

There were influences in my life that were more important than journalism, such as comic strips and radio. — Guillermo Cabrera Infante

There are two influences ever present in the world. One is constructive and elevating and comes from our Heavenly Father; the other is destructive and debasing and comes from Lucifer. We have our agency and make our own choice in life subject to these unseen powers. There is a division line well defined that separates the Lord's territory from Lucifer's. If we live on the Lord's side of the line Lucifer cannot come there to influence us, but if we cross the line into his territory we are in his power. By keeping the commandments of the Lord we are safe on His side of the line, but if we disobey His teachings we voluntarily cross into the zone of temptation and invite the destruction that is ever present there. Knowing this, how anxious we should always be to live on the Lord's side of the line. — George Albert Smith

The cells of my body store fear the way others' do fat. Every terrifying and traumatic thing I've ever experienced is still held within my muscle fiber as well as in my brain tissue. It pervades nearly every aspect of my life and influences nearly all my actions. Everyone thinks of me as being so brave, but I recognize my own cowardice in all I do. Sometimes I feel fear building up in my throat like a scream. — Damien Echols

Nature, of course, has its share in the life of the soul and in numerous manifestations deeply influences human life. But this natural life of the soul is peripheral, mere appendix to the material phenomena of nature. — Rudolf Christoph Eucken

Many people have been positive influences in my life. My parents, whom I mentioned, were the most important, but many of my teachers were also a big help to me. — Samuel Alito

In the seventeenth century, the science of medicine had not wholly cut asunder from astrology and necromancy; and the trusting Christian still believed in some occult influences, chiefly planetary, which governed not only his crops but his health and life. — Alice Morse Earle

Want to Think Big? Then get rid of the negative influences in your life. Harsh? Possibly. Healthy? Yes. — Michael Port

Our lives intersect and interfere and there is no telling where certain beauties might come from. Some song in her heart where otherwise there wouldn't have been one and in Sarah's too passed on down. — Michael Byers

In short, the man displayed a constant and insurmountable impulse to wrap himself in a covering, to make himself, so to speak, a case which would isolate him and protect him from external influences. Reality irritated him, frightened him, kept him in continual agitation, and, perhaps to justify his timidity, his aversion for the actual, he always praised the past and what had never existed; and even the classical languages which he taught were in reality for him goloshes and umbrellas in which he sheltered himself from real life. — Anton Chekhov

Everything in life influences my music. I've always used songwriting as a means to share what I think is profound. — Jason Mraz

One life stamps and influences another, which in turn stamps and influences another, on and on, until the soul of human experience breathes on in generations we'll never meet. — Mary Blakely

Modern science hasn't managed to come up with answers to any of the most basic questions. How did life first appear on earth? How does evolution work? Is it a series of random events, or does it have a set teleological direction? There are all kinds of theories, but we haven't been able to prove one of them. The structure of the atom is not a miniature of the solar system, it's something much more difficult to grasp, full of what you might call latent power. And when we try to observe the subatomic world, we find that the mind of the observer comes into play in subtle ways. The mind, my friend! The very same mind which, ever since Descartes, proponents of the mechanistic view of the universe considered subordinate to the body-machine. And now we find that the mind influences observed results. So I give up. Nothing surprises me. I'm prepared to accept anything that happens in this world. I actually kind of envy people who can still believe in the omnipotence of modern science. — Koji Suzuki