Quotes & Sayings About It's Better To Be Single

If your expectations are always those of someone content to live without physical challenge, then when it comes time for mental, moral, or emotional challenge you fail to meet it because you are out of practice. Meeting and overcoming obstacles are skills that can be honed, as opposed to talents with which we are born. The best way to prepare for the inevitable shit that life occasionally hands us all is to live in a way that prepares you for it. If you can treat personal tragedy like a heavy set of 20 squats, you'll do better than someone who has never met any challenge. Intentionally placing yourself in the position of having to complete a task when you don't know if you can is the single best way of preparing to be in that position unintentionally. — Mark Rippetoe

Jesus offered a single incentive to follow him; it was woven into all he said and did. Here is how I would after twenty-four years of following summarize his selling point: Follow me, and you might be happy
or you might not. Follow me, and might be empowered
or you might not. Follow me, and you might have more friends
or you might not. Follow me, and you might have the answers
or you might not. Follow me, and you might be better off
or you might not. If you follow me, you may be worse off in every way you use to measure life. Follow me nevertheless. Because I have an offer that is worth giving up everything you have: you will learn to love well. — Samir Selmanovic

My new single 'I'm Gonna show you crazy' is really about knowing it's okay to not be okay. It's not about being legit crazy it's about feeling like you're an outsider and there's nothing wrong with that. I was bitter during that time in my life but I needed that. It helped shaped me and my music. Going through a hard time makes you a better person. Going through hell those two years was worth it. — Bebe

All who have been great and good without Christianity would have been much greater and better with it. If there be, amongst the sons of men, a single exception to this maxim, the divine Socrates may be allowed to put in the strongest claim. It was his high ambition to deserve, by deeds, not by creeds, an unrevealed heaven, and by works, not by faith, to enter an unpromised land. — Charles Caleb Colton

If every single person in this room made it a rule that wherever you are, whenever you can, you will try to act a little kinder than is necessary
the world really would be a better place. And if you do this, ... someone else, somewhere, someday, may recognize in you, in every single one of you, the face of God ... or whatever politically correct spiritual representation of universal goodness you happen to believe in. — R.J. Palacio

Later she will learn
about edges. Or better, find
by luck or a longer journey
the shadow of that liquid
gold place, which can be
so single and clear for her
only now, when it means danger
only to me. — Margaret Atwood

But money, like gravity, is a force that clumps, drawing in more and more of itself, eventually creating the black hole that we know as wealth. This is not simply the fault of humans. Ask any dollar bill and it will tell you it prefers the company of hundreds to the company of ones. Better to be a sawbuck in a billionaire's account than a dirty single in the torn pocket of an addict. — Noah Hawley

Marriage is not easy, I thought to myself. It's not supposed to be easy. It's two different people, from two different backgrounds, trying to build a life together for better or worse. It's something you have to work at every single day. There are going to be hard times and those are the times you are supposed to fight like hell. — Courtney Giardina

I think it will be better when I get involved with someone again, because I made this time for me. I haven't really been single for a while, and I think it's been good for me, to lose the fear to be like this. — Penelope Cruz

As I have grown older I am more and more convinced that I have not grown up, that my powers have not come to me, not my real wisdom to do and achieve the right thoughts. I lack some dear grace. I cannot seem to steady down and get the single eye. There is a curriculum in living in which I have not studied. This may be happiness. I want to know it; I should feel better prepared for immortality. I do not wish to arrive fagged at last and a bit slipshod in the spirit, as if I had a hard time all my mortal life. It is not complimentary to God. — Corra May Harris

Probably no single event highlights the strength of Campbell's argument (on peak oil) better than the rapid development of the Alberta tar sands. Bitumen, the world's ugliest and most expensive hydrocarbon, can never be a reasonable substitute for light oil due to its extreme capital, energy, and carbon intensity. Bitumen looks, smells, and behaves like asphalt; running an economy on it is akin to digging up our existing road infrastructure, melting it down, and enriching the goop with hydrogen until it becomes a sulfur-rich but marketable oil. — Andrew Nikiforuk

Society conspires against her from early infancy. Her brain is steadily filled with plaster until it sets: 'If you're not married by the time you're twenty-five, you'll have good reason to be ashamed'; 'if you laugh, you won't look dignified' ; 'if your face betrays your feelings, you'll look coarse'; 'if you mention the existence of a single body hair, you're repulsive' ; 'if a boy kisses you on the cheek in public, you're a whore'; if you enjoy eating, you're a pig'; 'if you take pleasure in sleeping, you're no better than a cow'; and so on.

These precepts would be merely anecdotal if they weren't taken so much to heart. — Amelie Nothomb

But the writer who endures and keeps working will finally know that writing the book was something hard and glorious, for at the desk a writer must try to be free of prejudice, meanness of spirit, pettiness, and hatred; strive to be a better human being than the writer normally is, and to do this through concentration on a single word, and then another, and another. This is splendid work, as worthy and demanding as any, and the will and resilience to do it are good for the writer's soul. — Andre Dubus

If you can't do it, don't pledge to do it. Don't be a liar; say only what you can do. It's better for you to have a "single sentence" manifesto about your life which is fulfilled than to have 25 chapters' theories about your visions that remain undone! — Israelmore Ayivor

There is another reason ever-single women fare even better than previously married women in later life. They mastered the single life long ago. From structuring social events in a culture that caters to couples, to figuring out how to work and get all the tasks of everyday life accomplished when there may or may not be others readily available to do their unfair share, always-single women have been there, done that. It is not a new or daunting challenge. — Bella DePaulo

I sympathize the first, the direct and single-minded attack [Red Revolution]. I believe it to have been necessary and inevitable in Russia. It may someday be inevitable in this country [United States of America]. I am not seriously alarmed by the sufferings of the creditor class, the troubles which the church is bound to encounter, the restrictions on certain kinds of freedom which must result, nor even by the bloodshed of the transition period. A better economic order is worth a little bloodshed. — Stuart Chase

Interestingly, Agile's scrum-team approach has its own way of aggregating some execution risk. For example, in a traditional "single task owner" approach, the risk of execution is not aggregated at all, leaving that task owner to add a lot of task-level buffer to self-insure and deliver on his commitment. In contrast, a 5-person scrum team aggregates the risk that any single individual will make slow progress, as the other four team members can often make up the deficit.

But why aggregate only up to the scrum-team level? Taking a lesson from the insurance industry, the more that risk can be aggregated, the easier it is to manage. Applied to projects, this will nearly always mean that it's better to aggregate risk at the project level. As a result, an Agile project can improve speed by avoiding sprint-level commitments. — Michael Hannan

Time is in itself [not] a difficulty, but a time-rate, assumed on very insufficient grounds, is used as a master-key, whether or not it fits, to unravel all difficulties. What if it were suggested that the brick-built Pyramid of Hawara had been laid brick by brick by a single workman? Given time, this would not be beyond the bounds of possibility. But Nature, like the Pharaohs, had greater forces at her command to do the work better and more expeditiously than is admitted by Uniformitarians. — Joseph Prestwich

Because cooks love the social aspect of food, cooking for one is intrinsically interesting. A good meal is like a present, and it can feel goofy, at best, to give yourself a present. On the other hand, there is something life affirming in taking the trouble to feed yourself well, or even decently. Cooking for yourself allows you to be strange or decadent or both. The chances of liking what you make are high, but if it winds up being disgusting, you can always throw it away and order a pizza; no one else will know. In the end, the experimentation, the impulsiveness, and the invention that such conditions allow for will probably make you a better cook. — Jenni Ferrari-Adler

You don't know what you're going to be faithful to in this world, do you? It was true I didn't have what other people had, I knew that, and yet I couldn't think of a single other life I envied - no, I couldn't - though I knew better than to try to get anyone to believe it. — Joan Silber

One set of circumstances does not complete you. Maybe nothing ever does. So you work on your life and you work on your 'work' and you try to live every single day like it's your last. And you try to be better, to yourself and to others. I don't always succeed. But I try and it's my goal. — Madonna Ciccone

There are people who want to change the world, make it a better place ... but what they don't know, is that to make a difference in the life of one person and to make a single person's life a better thing to live, is just as valuable as changing the whole world. And most of the time, that's the only thing that we should be doing. You can gain the whole world but lose your own soul in the process, and in that case, the whole world just isn't worth it. — C. JoyBell C.

To be forgiven, the person has to be sorry. In Judaism, that's called teshuvah. It means 'turning away from evil.' It's not a one-time deal, either. It's a course of action. A single act of repentance is something that makes the person who committed the evil feel better, but not the person against whom evil was committed. — Jodi Picoult

If every person in this room made it a rule that wherever you are, whenever you can, you will try to act a little kinder than is necessary - the world really would be a better place. And if you do this, if you act just a little kinder than is necessary, someone else, somewhere, someday, may recognize in you, in every single one of you, the face of God. — R.J. Palacio

[Facebook] is shaping a broader web. If you look back for the past five or seven years, the story about social networking has really been about getting people connected ... But if you look forward for the next five years, I think that the story people are going to remember five years from now isn't how this one site was built; it is how every single service that you use is now going to be better with your friends. — Mark Zuckerberg

If you want to lose 40 pounds, you order salad instead of fries. If you want to be a better friend, you take the phone call instead of screening it. If you want to write a novel, you sit down and write a single paragraph. It's scary to make major changes, but we usually have enough courage to take the next right step. — Regina Brett

I used to believe, when I was 'just' a reader, that writers, because they wrote books where truth was found, because they described the world, because they saw into the human heart, because they grasped both the particular and the general and were able to re-create both in free yet structured forms, because they understood, must therefore be more sensitive- also less vain, less selfish- than other people. Then I became a writer, and started meeting other writers, and studied them, and concluded that the only difference between them and other people, the only, single way in which they were better, was that they were better writers. They might indeed be sensitive, perceptive, wise, generalizing and particularizing- but only at their desks and in their books. When they venture out into the world, they regularly behave as if they have left all their comprehension of human behaviour stuck in their typescripts. It's not just writers either. How wise are philosophers in their private lives? — Julian Barnes

Your voice, your eyes, your hands, your lips
Our silence, our words
Light that goes, light that returns
A single smile between us
In quest of knowledge I watched night create day
O beloved of all, beloved of one alone
your mouth silently promised to be happy
Away, away, says hate
Closer, closer, says love
A caress leads us from our infancy
Increasingly I see the human form as a lovers' dialogue
The heart has but one mouth
Everything by chance
All words without thought
Sentiments adrift
A glance, a word, because I love you
Everything moves
We must advance to live
Aim straight ahead toward those you love
I went toward you, endlessly toward the light
If you smile, it enfolds me all the better
The rays of your arms pierce the mist. — Paul Eluard

The problem with the 'masculinity crisis' is not that women have excelled too much and therefore created a crisis for men, but that we have such a stein inability to let go of what it has traditionally meant to be a man ... As long as we perpetuate the myth that men have inherent qualities that make them more suitable than women for certain types of work, the shifting nature of the economy (and women's attainment of better jobs) is going to continue to be interpreted as a crisis of masculinity. — Samhita Mukhopadhyay

They say you don't get over someone until you find someone or something better. As humans, we don't deal well with emptiness. Any empty space must be filled. Immediately. The pain of emptiness is too strong. It compels the victim to fill that place. A single moment with that empty spot causes excruciating pain. That's why we run from distraction to distraction - and from attachment to attachment. — Yasmin Mogahed

A beautiful girl can make you dizzy, like you've been drinking Jack and Coke all morning. She can make you feel high full of the single greatest commodity known to man - promise. Promise of a better day. Promise of a greater hope. Promise of a new tomorrow. This particular aura can be found in the gait of a beautiful girl. In her smile, in her soul, the way she makes every rotten little thing about life seem like it's going to be okay. — Michael Rapaport

All Julie has to do is explain to her friends that she's using it to individually seal each item that she throws out."
"Then they'd think she was a geek," I said.
"She will thank me later," Monk said.
"Why would she thank you for being considered a geek?"
"Don't you know anything about teenage life?" Monk said. "It's a badge of respect."
"It is?"
"I was one," he said.
"You don't say."
"A very special one. I was crowned King of the Geeks, not once, but every single year of high school," Monk said. "It's a record that remains unbroken in my school to this day."
"Were there a lot of students who wanted to be King of the Geeks?"
"It's like being homecoming king, only better. You don't have to go to any dances," Monk said. "You aren't even invited. — Lee Goldberg

The new faith sought to break the human bond with magic nature, to disenchant the world of plants and animals by directing our attention to a single God in the sky. Yet Jehovah couldn't very well pretend the tree of knowledge didn't exist, not when generations of plant-worshiping pagans knew better. So the pagan tree is allowed to grow even in Eden, though ringed around now with a strong taboo. Yes, there is spiritual knowledge in nature, the new God is acknowledging, and its temptations are fierce, but I am fiercer still. Yield to it, and you will be punished. So unfolds the drug war's first battle. — Michael Pollan

I'm not sure if it's better to be alone but it's probably safer. — Eleanor Prescott

Here are just a few of the unnecessary burdens women are often made to bear. Single women are made to feel that they are "less than" other women; women who are gifted for a career are made to feel that college or a career is a waste of time and that these women are resisting "God's best" for them. Women whose interests, giftings, and opportunities do not fit the mold of post-industrial-revolution suburbia are disdained by other women who have been gifted with husbands, fruitful uteruses, and inclinations that better portray what has been elevated to the greatest expression of godliness for a woman: the stay-at-home mom. And stay-at-home moms are weighted with additional pressures: it's not enough to be home; they must also serve on every committee, live in a perfectly decorated (and always clean) house, and have perfectly behaved children. — Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

I don't like to use the word 'remake', I think reinterpretation is a better word. It's just a matter of respecting the source, and then trying to make your own film, and trying not to be inhibited by being so beholden to every single thing ... We respect the source, but we make changes to it. — Spike Lee

We've just lost our way, that's all. But what if you could give us a chance to do better? Just one chance? One single move in the great game of history? What's your best shot? What would you consider to be the greatest mistake in world history and, more to the point, what single thing would you do to prevent it? — Ben Elton

People say that if we work for the Single European Act, women will get their rights, the water will be purer, and training will be better. That is rubbish. It is part of the attempt to consolidate the EEC. — Tony Benn

You know she'll probably be at the party tonight? Which is why I'm absolutely not going if we don't get some coke.'
'Egon, why is it that every single time you're obliged to be in the same room with one of your ex-girlfriends you have to make it into a huge emergency? It's incredibly boring.'
'Come on. You know how it is. You catch sight of an old flame and get this breathless
animal prickle like a fox in a room with a hound. And then all night you have to seem carefree and successful and elated, which is a pretence that for some reason you feel no choice but to maintain even though you know they're better qualified than anyone else
in the world to detect immediately that you're really the same hapless cunt as ever.'
'That's adolescent. The fact that you are so neurotic about your past lovers makes it both fortunate and predictable that you have so few of them. It's one of those elegant self-regulating systems that one so often finds in nature. — Ned Beauman

It's better to be alone and keep your dignity than to be in a relationship where you always sacrifice your self respect. — Auliq Ice

It's the misfortune of German authors that not a single one of them dares to expose his true character. Everyone thinks that he has to be better than he is. — Franz Grillparzer

For better or worse we live in a very exposing [time] where, if you choose to, everyone can see everyone's business. You see what they're having for breakfast, where they are, what they're doing. Whereas I think that classic idea of mystery is very seductive. Not knowing every single thing about a person, what they're thinking, that's very powerful. And it would be a shame if we lost that totally. — Theo James

Science is better paid than at any time in the past. The results of this pay have been to attract into science many of those for whom the pay is the first consideration, and who scorn to sacrifice immediate profit for the freedom of development of their own concept. Moreover, this inner development, important and indispensable as it may be to the world of science in the future, generally does not have the tendency to put a single cent into the pockets of their employers. — Norbert Wiener

I mean, I don't know how the world broke. And I don't know if there's a God who can help us fix it. But the fact that the world is broken - I absolutely believe that. Just look around us. Every minute - every single second - there are a million things you could be thinking about. A million things you could be worrying about. Our world - don't you just feel we're becoming more fragmented? I used to think that when I got older, the world would make so much more sense. But you know what? The older I get, the more confusing it is to me. The more complicated it is. Harder. You'd think we'd be getting better at it. But there's just more and more chaos. The pieces - they're everywhere. And nobody knows what to do about it. I find myself grasping, Nick. You know that feeling? That feeling when you just want the right thing to fall into the right place, not only because it's right, but because it would mean that such a thing is still possible? I want to believe that. — Rachel Cohn

I definitely prefer the single camera better. For me it's the simple fact that I enjoy working in front of an audience, but when you're trying to create a suspension of disbelief it's much harder to do in front of audience because they become a partner. Moreso than that, they become in charge of the timing. From the simple, mechanical fact that you have to hold for their laughter. The actual timing of the scene is in the hands of the audience. As a control freak, I don't enjoy that as much as the ability to be able to control it in an edit room. — Jonathan Groff

What is the species of domestic industry which his capital can employ, and of which the produce is likely to be of the greatest value, every individual, it is evident, can, in his local situation, judge much better than any statesman or lawgiver can do for him. The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it. — Adam Smith

You can love, and fear, and forbid things to be what they are, and overact. Let it end here then, let the quest end. Is the world any the worse for losing the unicorns, and would it be any better if they were running free again? One good woman more in the world is worth every single unicorn gone. Let it end. Marry the prince and live happily ever after. The — Peter S. Beagle

Indeed taking all the evidence together, it is not too much to say that there is no single historic incident better or more variously supported than the Resurrection of Christ. Nothing but the antecedent assumption that it must be false could have suggested the idea of deficiency in the proof of it. — Brooke Foss Westcott

It is better to excel in any single art than to arrive only at mediocrity in several, so moderate skill in several is to be preferred where one cannot attain to perfection in any. — Pliny The Younger

In Sliding Doors, the whole idea is that every choice you make, and every single thing that happens to you changes the trajectory of your life, and once you are put on that trajectory, there is no way back. But Groundhog Day - which, I tell him, also happens to be a much better movie - says the opposite. It says if you mess up or make the wrong choice, you just have to keep at it until you do it right. — David Levithan

There were people who knew about stars, who could tell you the name of every star in the sky. ... But she did not understand how it could be important to learn the name of every single star in the sky; surely it was better to know the name of every person in your street? — Gaile Parkin

The person I am every single day is the person that's growing and getting better. The more people look up to me, the more important it is to be concise with what message I want to leave. That's where I feel like I'm a role model. Maybe not to everyone, but for a lot of minorities, I am, and I kinda love that - the role model for the underdog. — Ruby Rose

I knew her better than herself ... and she was beautiful and strong and felt deep. It has always surprised me to see the way she saw herself; how little she thought about her person. It struck me as surprising because every single time I've seen her, I've thought her larger than life. And that's why the world feared her. Because they couldn't compare to her; she raised a new bar for others to be measured by. Because looking at the sun hurts ... and she was that to me. My own piece of sky. — Eiry Nieves

You're better off single," Bill had always told him. "More marketable. A relationship will threaten your role as America's heartthrob." And always he would add, "Whatever you do, Hill, don't get someone pregnant. It'd be a death knell to your image. — Karen Kingsbury

The "Appeal to Love" was an essential part of the very structure of the Shining Barrier. What it meant was simply this question: what will be best for our love? Should one of us change a pattern of behavior that bothered the other, or should the other learn to accept? Well, which would be better for our love? Which way would be better, in any choice or decision, in the light of our single goal: to be in love as long as life might last? — Sheldon Vanauken

To any situation the reaction may be different. That's why it's useless - in a way - to memorize patterns, because the possibilities in life are endless, and you cannot be prepared for every single thing. Therefore it's better to be able to move in a natural way, and not even physically but intuitively. — Vladimir Vasiliev

I never thought to ascribe my mother's emotional and physical exhaustion to the lack of a husband and father; rather, I ascribed it to my existence. In other words, I grew up learning the exact opposite of what Eisenhower was taught. I learned that if I didn't exist, the family would be better off. I grew up believing that if I had never been born, things would be easier for the people I loved. (page 35) — Donald Miller

Have you noticed how difficult it is just to get along in the world? If you're no good at all in your job, people treat you badly and eventually you will be unemployed. And if you're a little better than competent, everyone expects miracles from you, every single time. Like most of life, it's a no-win situation. And if you dare to mention it, no matter how creatively you phrase your complaints, you are shunned as a whiner. — Jeff Lindsay

And I decided that there might be things I would never understand, no matter how hard I tried. Though try I would.

And that there would be people who would never hear my one small voice, no matter what I had to say.

But then a better thought occurred, and this was the one I carried away with me that day: If my life was to be just a single note in an endless symphony, how could I not sound it out for as long and as loudly as I could? (p228) — Lauren Wolk

Every single day I wake up and commit myself to becoming a better player. Some days it happens, and some days it doesn't. Sure, there are games I'm going to dominate and there are going to be games when I struggle. But it doesn't mean I give up. — Mia Hamm

It's easier to be with somebody. But it's better to be single if you're with the wrong person. — Angelina Jolie

Happily Single is holding out for the best and letting go of the rest. It's saying "I will and I can" to yourself before you say "I do" to someone else. It means you're not looking for a better half because you are already whole. And ultimately, it means that someday when you do invite someone to join you on your journey, it will be because he complements your life, not because he completes it. — Mandy Hale

That's the thing about choices. They're an act of knowledge, of faith, of love. It's how we make them that sets us apart, because every single day, worlds are colliding, and our choices shape so much more than just our own story. And if we want to change this world for the better, then we must be the best possible version of ourselves, because who we are in each moment is a gift to the universe. This is what the present is: when the sum of one person's past meets a world's collective future. — Sarah Ayoub

Heroes and heroines OR ... Your lead character doesn't have to leap tall buildings in a single bound, and he doesn't have to stop speeding bullets with his bare hands, but he darn well better know the difference between right and wrong, and he better be kind to animals, and it sure wouldn't hurt any if he brushed his teeth regularly"
Dean Koontz in "How To Write Best Selling Fiction — Dean Koontz

The formula I've figured out: Stop being so damn picky and let go of the mental image of an ideal; talk to more strangers, because it builds confidence and helps you feel more connected; be open to every opportunity, and when you do meet someone you like, keep dating around. And there's the mother of all lessons-the one I'm still working on: follow your instincts and even if you're wrong about him (or her), you'll know better for the next time. — Rachel Machacek

Great. He was a hottie, a good kisser, and a literature buff. God really must have had a sense of humor, because if I had to name my biggest turn-on, it was literature. And he had just recommended a book that I didn't know, that wasn't taught in school. If I were single, there would be no better pick-up line. Suddenly, I found myself thinking back to Atonement - you know, the scene in the book where the two main characters have sex in the library? Even though Chloe said doing it against bookshelves would be really uncomfortable (and she'd probably know), it was still a fantasy of mine. Like, what's more romantic than a quiet place full of books? But I shouldn't have been thinking about my library fantasies. Especially while I was staring at Cash. In the middle of a library. — Kody Keplinger

Three, 300, or 3,000 - these are the number of unknown days, a week, a year, or a decade, each far too precious little and yet, poignantly too much at the same time, to see an irrevocably declined loved one languish and suffer. That fear-ridden, irreversible release lingers in the doorway, but hesitates for reasons we don't understand, leaving us to weep with a mixture of angst and gratitude all at the same time. It is finally ushered all the way in, to comfort and carry our loved one to that Better Place. When the time finally comes, we can be enveloped in a warm cloak of long-awaited acceptance and peace that eases our own pain. It quiets the grief which has moaned inside of us, at least some, every single one of those bittersweet days, weeks... or years. — Connie Kerbs

I still, though, hold on to one single bleak truth: no one is safe, nothing is redeemed. Yet I am blameless. Each model of human behavior must be assumed to have some validity. Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do? My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this
and I have, countless times, in just about every act I've committed
and coming face to face with these truths, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new understanding can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing ... — Bret Easton Ellis

There's no easy way around it, no matter how talented you are ... your talent is going to fail you if you're not skilled. If you don't study, if you don't work really hard and dedicate yourself to being better every single day, you 'll never be able to communicate with people your artistry the way that you want! — Will Smith

We were giving advice for the single-worst idea to come forward from a group that's been rife with them, it would be this: The idea is this: Let's make the tax code of America better for very rich people; let's give substantial tax relief to the richest people we can find. Forget about the person making $40,000 a year and paying Social Security payroll tax. Forget about all those other people paying income tax; we're here to give tax relief to the richest 2% of America. — Barney Frank

If I die tonight it will be with every single thing unfinished (like, I suppose, any other night), and yet, what a gift to die on the verge of tears. I have spent my life trying to understand the way this rock and this ache go together, why a granite peak is more dramatic half dressed in clouds ... ,why sunlight under fog is better than the sum of its parts, why my best days and my worst days are always the same days, why (often) leaving seems like the only solution to the predicament of loving (each other) the world. — Pam Houston

Gideon and I sit there in the dark, wordless for a while, only our ragged breaths disturbing the silence. Memories of my sister overwhelm me - I see her impish grin as she leans over me at the orphanage, tugging on my hair until I wake up. I remember us climbing up to the roof as kids, sitting cross-legged next to the herbs and vegetables our caretakers were growing while we read the English books Rose had "borrowed" from her class at school. And then there was L.A. - all of our hope for a better life so quickly crushed, but Rose never let despair overtake her. She was there after every single night to hold me until the pain went away. And later, when I got numb to it all, she still made a point of holding me, of promising me that one day things would be different. — Paula Stokes

It's been a long, hard day, and bit by bit you have been transformed into a single, vertical, barely ambulatory ache. All that awaits you now is another long, lonely night on the hard, cold ground. "What am I doing out here?" you ask yourself. "I must be mad!" Indeed, you are mad. Otherwise right now you could be warm and cozy and stretched out in front of your beloved TV, munching popcorn and swigging down ice-cold brew, just like a civilized person. "Oh well," you sigh to yourself. "I'd better stop and get a fire going. — Patrick F. McManus

I don't know that you ever get over this kind of loss. The fact that Chris is gone is a sharp hurt I feel every single day. It's really hard. Some days are better than others, but it's going to be hard every day for the rest of my life. — Jon Krakauer

Would this country be better off if no one drank? Yes, it would be, but we tried that; it doesn't work. I don't want to tell anybody that they can't have as many drinks as they want every single night of the week as long as they don't get behind the wheel of a car. — Gary Johnson

A Champion is all they can be in every facet of their lives. They prioritize what they need to get done. But for me it's someone who works every single day on being a better person. — Shannon Higgins-Cirovski

Collect impressions. Don't be in a hurry to write them down. Because that's something music can do better than painting: it can centralise variations of colour and light within a single picture a truth generally ignored, obvious as it is. — Claude Debussy

The goblins of the city may hold committees to divide a single potato, but the strong and the cruel still sit on the hill, and drink vodka, and wear black furs, and slurp borscht by the pail, like blood. Children may wear through their socks marching in righteous parades, but Papa never misses his wine with supper. Therefore, it is better to be strong and cruel than to be fair. At least, one eats better that way. And morality is more dependent on the state of one's stomach than of one's nation. — Catherynne M Valente

Seemingly every culture before our own has had a single acceptable way to raise a baby. These cultures wouldn't have cared about the new scientific findings: they already knew how babies worked. Their answers were all very different, mind you, but they had this in common: all the other answers were wrong.

Such confidence makes sense. If you have to raise a baby, not study a baby, you'd better settle on an answer, and as long as you have settled on an answer, you may as well be certain about it. Pretty much everyone has been very certain. But if everyone has been very certain, and everyone's certainty has been very different, you start to suspect that there aren't that many certainties after all. There's no one true path. Or put another way: the one true path is forked. — Nicholas Day

Oliver couldn't walk away. Not when the wallflower needed rescuing. His goddamn Achilles heel, no matter how disastrous the outcome tended to be. He just wished his heroics would work out for once.
He kept his eyes trained on the pretty black-haired American, every muscle tensed for action. An eternity ticked by. No one approached her. She had no one to dance with, to talk to. She looked... lost. Hauntingly lonely. Frightened and defiant all at the same time.
'Twould be better for them both if he turned around right now. Never met her eye. Never exchanged a single word. Left her to her fate and him to his.
It was already too late. — Erica Ridley

Every meaningful cultural act
wherever it takes place
is unquestionably good in and of itself, simply because it exists and because it offers something to someone. Yet can this value 'in itself' really be separated from 'the common good'? Is not one an integral part of the other from the start? Does not the bare fact that a work of art has meant something to someone
even if only for a moment, perhaps to a single person
already somehow change, however minutely, the overall condition for the better? ... Can we separate the awakening human soul from what it always, already is
an awakening human community? — Vaclav Havel

Yes, it gets better, but I also understand that saying to a 15-year-old that, 'Oh, don't worry, just wait a year', is like saying 'Wait a lifetime', but every single person has the right to go to school and not be afraid. — Rick Mercer

God really must have had a sense of humor, because if I had to name my biggest turn-on, it was literature. And he had just recommended a book that I didn't know, that wasn't taught in school. If I were single, there would be no better pick-up line. — Kody Keplinger

Bullshit. You lied to me every single day. Were the nights a lie too? Am I just like all those other girls? Maybe I'd be better off with a new owner, at least I know when he fucks me I will hate him. Not like you. You made me love you then you wrecked me with it. Then you gave me back piece by piece every night only to take it all away over again in the morning. — Nashoda Rose

but what I want you, my students, to take away from your middle-school experience," he continued, "is the sure knowledge that, in the future you make for yourselves, anything is possible. If every single person in this room made it a rule that wherever you are, whenever you can, you will try to act a little kinder than is necessary - the world really would be a better place. And if you do this, if you act just a little kinder than is necessary, someone else, somewhere, someday, may recognize in you, in every single one of you, the face of God." He — R.J. Palacio

If you're a poet, you do something beautiful. I mean, you're supposed to leave something beautiful after you get off the page and everything. The ones you're talking about don't leave a single, solitary thing beautiful. All that maybe the slightly better ones do is sort of get inside your head and leave something there, but just because they do, just because they know how to leave something, it doesn't have to be a poem for heaven's sake. It may just be some kind of terribly fascinating, syntaxy droppings
excuse the expression. Like Manlius and Esposito and all those poor men. — J.D. Salinger

It's better to be single with high standards than in a relationship settling for less. — Patrick Stevens

These people, they were different to anyone I'd met. They'd offered their friendship, their trust, without a second thought. I'd always been wary about new people in my life. That same old barrier I put up to protect myself. I didn't let anyone close enough to be able to hurt me. My father had left, as though I was as insubstantial as air. As a child, I'd struggled to come to terms with it. He'd been there every single day, and then he wasn't. So what were we to him? A stopgap until something he determined as better came along? With the Aunt Margot feud, and subsequent alienation of the family, it felt as though people abandoned us like we were yesterday's newspaper. Could I fall into friendships with these girls, and then leave? Maybe it was time for me to stop worrying about anything other than living in the moment. I was missing out on so much, standing on the edge of life, waiting for something that might never happen. — Rebecca Raisin

Like my freedom. If I feel like I'm being controlled, I get crazy. Because I know I made it this far by following my intuition. I think people like who I am, and I like who I am, and I want to be a better version of myself every single day. So stop controlling me! — Katy Perry

Water and ice made of the same thing. He thought most people were made of the same thing, too ...
If he had sort all the humanity by its material essence, he thought he would probably end up with a single gigantic pile. But here was the interesting thing. Ice was distinct from - and in his view, better than - what it was made of.
He wanted to be better than what he was made of. In Mumbai's dirty water, he wanted to be ice. He wanted to have ideals. For self-interested reasons, one of the ideals he most wanted to have was a belief in the possibility of justice. — Katherine Boo

I think that if you have a single payer system and an opt-out for people who want to pay more [for better service, etc.], I think it would be better - and I think we'll eventually get there. It wouldn't be better at the top - [our current system] is the best in the world at the top. But the waste in the present system is awesome and we do get some very perverse incentives. — Charlie Munger

When you read The Arabian Nights you accept Islam. You accept the fables woven by generations as if they were by one single author or, better still, as if they had no author. And in fact they have one and none. Something so worked on, so polished by generations is no longer associated with and individual. In Kafka's case, it's possible that his fables are now part of human memory. What happened to Quixote could happen to to them. Let's say that all the copies of Quixote, in Spanish and in translation, were lost. The figure of Don Quixote would remain in human memory. I think that the idea of a frightening trial that goes on forever, which is at the core of The Castle and The Trial (both books that Kafka, of course, never wanted to publish because he knew they were unfinished), is now grown infinite, is now part of human memory and can now be rewritten under different titles and feature different circumstances. Kafka's work now forms a part of human memory. — Jorge Luis Borges

STARING INTO THE ABYSS by Richard Thomas is an outstanding book, a grim tapestry of broken lives and shattered dreams, of dark fantasies and dark reflections. It's one of the better single-author collections I've had the pleasure to read in recent years, and as such, gets my highest recommendation. It's also a fine testament to a talent I suspect we are going to be hearing a lot more from, and soon. — Kealan Patrick Burke

The seventh factor of the basic ingredients of genius, as determined from an extensive analysis of the lives of outstanding men of this nation, is *the habit of going the extra mile.* You will never be a genius unless you make it a habit to do more and better than you are paid to do, every single day of your life. — Napoleon Hill

Five years from now on the web for free you'll be able to find the best lectures in the world. It will be better than any single university. — Bill Gates

When I tell you not to marry without love, I do not advise you to marry for love alone: there are many, many other things to be considered. Keep both heart and hand in your own possession, till you see good reason to part with them; and if such an occasion should never present itself, comfort your mind with this reflection, that though in single life your joys may not be very many, your sorrows, at least, will not be more than you can bear. Marriage may change your circumstances for the better, but, in my private opinion, it is far more likely to produce a contrary result. — Anne Bronte

In a world where women do not say no, the man is never forced to settle down and make serious choices. His sex drive
the most powerful compulsion in his life
is never used to make him part of civilization as the supporter of a family. If a woman does not force him to make a long-term commitment
to marry
in general, he doesn't. It is maternity that requires commitment. His sex drive only demands conquest, driving him from body to body in an unsettling hunt for variety and excitement in which much of the thrill is in the chase itself.
The man still needs to be tamed. His problem is that many young women think they have better things to do than socialize single men. — George Gilder

Alice looked up at the moon just starting the nightly shift. It's light outlined a single cloud slowly crossing the sky. She chewed her bottom lip. That's how she needed it to be. Just being close to him pushed her to the limit. Desire and fear. A cocktail better left on the table. But it burned through her stomach when they were together.
-Finding Home, a novel by Jesse Birkey — Jesse Birkey

Ladies, set your standards high. Never lower them.. The day you do, you will get less then what you deserve.
Every woman, deserves to be treated like a queen with respect. It's better to be single and fabulous on your own then to be in a relationship that isn't what you always dreamed of. — Erica Maples And Stefany Terherst

Why should not old men be mad?
Some have known a likely lad
That had a sound fly-fisher's wrist
Turn to a drunken journalist;
A girl that knew all Dante once
Live to bear children to a dunce;
A Helen of social welfare dream,
Climb on a wagonette to scream.
Some think it a matter of course that chance
Should starve good men and bad advance,
That if their neighbours figured plain,
As though upon a lighted screen,
No single story would they find
Of an unbroken happy mind,
A finish worthy of the start.
Young men know nothing of this sort,
Observant old men know it well;
And when they know what old books tell
And that no better can be had,
Know why an old man should be mad. — W.B.Yeats