Keep The Ones That Matter Quotes & Sayings

How the hell could Rhiannon keep people loyal to her if she was such a bitch?"
Alanna gave me a knowing look.
"I mean female people. It's obvious how she kept her men happy." My hands were planted on my
hips and I was tapping my foot in time with my anger. (I looked very teacherish - as a matter of fact, I felt the sudden desire to reprimand a teenager. But there's never one around when you need one.) — P.C. Cast

Just because your electronics are better than ours, you aren't necessarily superior in any way. Look, imagine that you humans are a man in LA with a brand-new Trujillo and we are a nuhp in New York with a beat-up old Ford. The two fellows start driving toward St. Louis. Now, the guy in the Trujillo is doing 120 on the interstates, and the guy in the Ford is putting along at 55; but the human in the Trujillo stops in Vegas and puts all of his gas money down the hole of a blackjack table, and the determined little nuhp cruises along for days until at last he reaches his goal. It's all a matter of superior intellect and the will to succeed.
Your people talk a lot about going to the stars, but you just keep putting your money into other projects, like war and popular music and international athletic events and resurrecting the fashions of previous decades. If you wanted to go into space, you would have. — George Alec Effinger

I like people who can keep the conversation going no matter how random the topic gets. — Turcois Ominek

People who are too optimistic seem annoying. This is an unfortunate misinterpretation of what an optimist really is.
An optimist is neither naive, nor blind to the facts, nor in denial of grim reality. An optimist believes in the optimal usage of all options available, no matter how limited. As such, an optimist always sees the big picture. How else to keep track of all that's out there? An optimist is simply a proactive realist.
An idealist focuses only on the best aspects of all things (sometimes in detriment to reality); an optimist strives to find an effective solution. A pessimist sees limited or no choices in dark times; an optimist makes choices.
When bobbing for apples, an idealist endlessly reaches for the best apple, a pessimist settles for the first one within reach, while an optimist drains the barrel, fishes out all the apples and makes pie.
Annoying? Yes. But, oh-so tasty! — Vera Nazarian

The Liberal Party has dealt with the spill motion and now this matter is behind us, we think that when you elect a government, when you elect a prime minister, you deserve to keep that government and that prime minister until you have a chance to change your mind. — Tony Abbott

He spent the next two days in careful, decisive preparation efficiently conducted around his day job. The three imperatives of his mission were embedded in every action he performed: (1) keep it simple; (2) provide for every contingency; and (3) never panic no matter how much your plan goes awry, which it occasionally did. However, if there were a fourth rule, it would have to be: exploit the fact that most people are fools when it comes to things that actually matter, like their own survival. He had never suffered from that shortcoming. — David Baldacci

The question of place and climate is most closely related to the question of nutrition. Nobody is free to live everywhere; and whoever has to solve great problems that challenge all his strength actually has a very restricted choice in this matter. The influence of climate on our metabolism, its retardation, its acceleration, goes so far that a mistaken choice of place and climate can not only estrange a man from his task but can actually keep it from him: he never gets to see it. — Friedrich Nietzsche

But no matter how strong a will a person has, no matter how much he may hate to lose, if it's an activity he doesn't really care for, he won't keep it up for long. Even if he did, it wouldn't be good for him. — Haruki Murakami

No matter how often you miss the target, keep firing the shots. Your victory is certain! — Lailah Gifty Akita

Don't try to rush progress. Remember
a step forward, no matter how small, is a step in the right direction. Keep believing. — Kara Goucher

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy said, "Our true choice is not between tax reduction on the one hand and avoidance of large federal deficits on the other; it is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, as long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance the budget - just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits. In short, the paradoxical truth is that the tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise revenues in the long run is to cut rates now. — Ronald Reagan

I recall those beautiful summer mornings with my parents by the sandy beach of Belek. My father used to teach me how to ride waves. I remember him constantly emphasizing the fact that no wave, no matter how big it is should stir enough fear inside me to keep me glued to the shore. He used to repeat those words while glancing at my mother with a smile that could set the whole sea on fire. My mother, sitting on the beach, too afraid of the deep blue sea, contented herself with building sand castles, ones my father would step on trying to drag her hopelessly into water.
Step on your sand castle and dive deep. Dive deep into the unknown. Life is damn too short for building sand castles. — Malak El Halabi

At our age the imagination
across the sorry facts
lifts us
to make roses
stand before thorns.
Sure
love is cruel
and selfish
and totally obtuse -
at least, blinded by the light,
young love is.
But we are older,
I to love
and you to be loved,
we have,
no matter how,
by our wills survived
to keep
the jeweled prize
always
at our finger tips.
We will it so
and so it is
past all accident. — William Carlos Williams

I think that no matter what you do, whether you rodeo, whether you work in an office, you work in the oilfield or you play music for a living, eventually if you do enough of it, the devil in the back of your head tries to turn it into work. You have to find new ways to make it new and make it exciting to keep that drive there. — Cody Johnson

No matter how organized your ducks are, life can turn on 2 seconds. So, you can't keep on waiting. Because, if you keep on waiting, it's gone. — Diem Brown

I have, and always will, respect people that keep it real no matter what. Most people say "Just keep it real with me," but the fact of the matter is this: Most people can't handle the truth, don't want to accept the truth, deny the truth, or simply aren't willing to face THEIR truth. The next time that you tell somebody to be honest with you, make sure that you mean what you say. Have the courage to pay more attention, listen, and observe. But have greater courage to acknowledge "what is" and face YOUR truth with boldness. The truth is better than a lie any day. Be fearless! — Stephanie Lahart

Besides, it doesn't matter if it's real. It never does with dreams. They aren't anything anyway but lifesavers to cling to so you don't drown. Life is an ocean, and most everyone's hanging on to some kind of dream to keep afloat. — Tim Tharp

Sanity is actually a pretence, a way we learn to behave. We keep this pretence up because we don't want to be rejected by other people - and being classified insane is to be shut out of the group in a very complete way.
Most people I meet are secretly convinced that they're a little crazier than the average person. People understand the energy necessary to maintain their own shields, but not the energy expended by other people. They understand that their own sanity is a performance, but when confronted by other people they confuse the person with the role.
Sanity has nothing directly to do with the way you think. Its a matter of presenting yourself as safe. — Keith Johnstone

I always think incipent miracles surround us, waiting only to see if our faith is strong enough. We won't have to understand it; it will just work, like a beating heart, like love. Really, no matter how frightened and discouraged I may become about the future, I look forward to it. In spite of everything I see all around me every day, I have a shaky assurance that everything will turn out fine. I don't think I'm the only one. Why else would the phrase "everything's all right" ease a deep and troubled place in so many of us? We just don't know, we never know so much, yet we have such faith. We hold our hands over our hurts and lean forward, full of yearning and forgiveness. It is how we keep on, this kind of hope. — Elizabeth Berg

I keep myself locked as a box when it matters, and broken open when it doesn't matter at all. — Jeanette Winterson

Blood is one thing, but that's not all that goes into family. The family you choose is the family that really matters. They're the ones who'll keep you standing. — Mira Grant

It's a whole nother aspect of this life that most people have no idea about. There's the loved ones, the wives, the girlfriends, the children. Some of the people out here are fathers and mothers. Whether you mean to or not, you end up neglecting your family in a lot of ways. Even if you do your best to keep in touch, the fact of the matter is that you're physically absent. — Chuck Ragan

Our ancestors have much to answer for.
Why? What did they do?
... Long ago, they used machines and drugs to keep the unhealthy and unfit ones of us alive. In that past time it was believed that all persons must have children. It was a right deemed so precious that it was forced upon even those who did not value it or should not have had it. If one of our people became pregnant, our people used all their knowledge to assure the young would be born, no matter how sick or disabled. Then, if the young lived, they injected them and dosed them and radiated them and transfused and transplanted them, to keep them alive, and then, when they were grown, they used all their skills in assisting them to have children of their own. — Sheri S. Tepper

And I have no control over which yesterdays I keep and which ones get deleted. This disease will not be bargained with. I can't offer it the names of the US presidents in exchange for the names of my children. I can't give it the names of state capitals and keep the memories of my husband.
... My yesterdays are disappearing, and my tomorrows are uncertain, so what do I live for? I live for each day. I live in the moment. Some tomorrow soon, I'll forget that I stood before you and gave this speech. But just because I'll forget it some tomorrow doesn't mean that I didn't live every second of it today. I will forget today, but that doesn't mean that today doesn't matter. — Lisa Genova

So I pointed at the sun ascending in the horizon. Just as the darkened sky began to lighten. "Keep your eyes there." Her green ones flickered to me before following my finger. Her pulse picked up speed. "And what happens when it disappears?" I would've loved to tell her that it never would. That no matter where we were the sun would always be present. But it wouldn't have been true. The only thing we could count on was that the sun would rise again. "Wait for it to return," I told her. — Krista Ritchie

Perhaps the largest single trouble with our abundance of possessions is the fact that so many of them are owned, not because of what they are, but because of what they confer on us. They are there, but we seldom look at them. We have so much, but we love precious little of it for itself. After the itch of the mind has been scratched, matter itself goes into the discard; the junkyard is the true monument of our society. We have the most marvelous garbage the world has ever produced. Literally. Have you ever looked hard at a tin can? Don't. It will break your heart to throw it out, all silver and round and handy. But the truth is you have to throw it out. We produce so much that there isn't time or room to keep it. What is sad, though, is that the knack of wonder goes into the trash can with it. The tinfoil collectors and the fancy ribbon savers may be absurd, but they're not crazy. They are the ones who still retain the capacity for wonder that is at the root of caring — Robert Farrar Capon

You get born and you try this and you don't know why only you keep on trying it and you are born at the same time with a lot of other people, all mixed up with them, like trying to, having to, move your arms and legs with strings only the same strings are hitched to all the other arms and legs and the others all trying and they don't know why either except that the strings are all in one another's way like five or six people all trying to make a rug on the same loom only each one wants to weave his own pattern into the rug; and it can't matter, you know that, or the Ones that set up the loom would have arranged things a little better, and yet it must matter because you keep on trying or having to keep on trying and then all of a sudden it's all over. — William Faulkner

Joan spoke kindly, explaining patiently, as he always patiently explained things to her. It's like in that book you gave me, Jane Eyre. Jane says she isn't a bird caught in a net. Instead she's a human being with an independent will and that she has a treasure inside her that will keep her alive, no matter if anything bad happens. — Cate Campbell Beatty

At the end of the day, when it comes down to it, all we really want is to be close to somebody. So this thing where we all keep our distance and pretend not to care about each other, it's usually a load of bull. So we pick and choose who we want to remain close to, and once we've chosen those people, we tend to stick close by. No matter how much we hurt them. The people that are still with you at the end of the day, those are the ones worth keeping. And sure, sometimes close can be too close. But sometimes, that invasion of personal space, it can be exactly what you need. — Shonda Rhimes

The thing to try and keep in mind, no matter what the day, is there is always something good, to give thanks to God in prayer. — Julie Hebert

Something else emerges from this discussion about us as human individuals: we're not fixed, stable intellects riding along peering at the world through the lenses of our eyes like the pilots of people-shaped spacecraft. We are affected constantly by what's going on around us. Whether our flexibility is based in neuroplasticity or in less dramatic aspects of the brain, we have to start acknowledging that we are mutable, persuadable and vulnerable to clever distortions, and that very often what we want to be is a matter of constant effort rather than attaining a given state and then forgetting about it. Being human isn't like hanging your hat on a hook and leaving it there, it's like walking in a high wind: you have to keep paying attention. You have to be engaged with the world. — Nick Harkaway

No matter what, we have to keep moving forward, even if we have to crawl. — Kellie Elmore

No matter how much money I made from writing, I'd keep the bookstore job. — Jami Attenberg

Just because you keep something a secret doesn't mean it never happened, no matter how much you want that to be true. — Jodi Picoult

In the matter of dress one should always keep below one's ability. — Baron De Montesquieu

You have to keep walking, no matter what. If you don't, it's a living death. You're just standing in one place dying. — Cheryl Strayed

Secrets have power. And that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them. Writing them down is worse, because who can tell how many eyes might see them inscribed on paper, no matter how careful you might be with it. So it's really best to keep your secrets when you have them, for their own good, as well as yours. — Erin Morgenstern

If I had it my way, Harper and I wouldn't be standing in this room right now, we wouldn't be pressed against each other. I would just be her roommate's brother who pisses her off. But when it came to this girl, I was no longer in control of anything. She consumed me in every way possible. My brain was telling me to run from her, to keep her safe, to keep her from someone like me, but she had my heart completely, and that was winning out. I wanted her, I wanted her to want me and only me. Not Brandon even though I knew he was the better choice for her. But that just didn't matter to me at the moment; all I cared about was the fact that one of my best friends was winning over the only girl that would ever mean anything to me. - Chase Grayson. — Molly McAdams

Do what you will,
always
Walk where you like,
your steps
Do as you please, I'll
back you up.
I remember thinking
sometimes we walk
sometimes we run away
But I know
no matter how fast we are running
Somehow we keep
Somehow we keep up with each other. — Dave Matthews Band

It is not a matter of who is rejecting me, as much as it is somebody may get it, and I am going to keep plowing through it because in this world of education, there is a harvest. — Bill Cosby

But they were not friends. They were here to keep each other from spinning off alone into the dark matter of the universe. — Carol Anshaw

You have to keep pushing toward those dreams no matter what setbacks happen. — Anthony Hamilton

When you go out hunting wicked spirits, it's the simple things that matter most. The silvered point of your rapier flashing in the dark; the iron filings scattered on the floor; the sealed canisters of best Greek Fire, ready as a last resort ...
But tea bags, brown and fresh and plenty of them, and made (for preference) by Pitkin Brothers of Bond Street, are perhaps the simplest and best of all.
OK, they may not save your life like a sword-tip or an iron circle can, and they haven't the protective power of a sudden wall of fire. But they do provide something just as vital. They help keep you sane. — Jonathan Stroud

You rescue something and you're responsible for it. But maybe that's what love is. Maybe it's like a hit-and-run accident; it smashes you before you can think. You do it no matter the cost and you keep on running — Alice Hoffman

What on earth could we girls possibly learn from a werewolf?" Sophronia wondered.
"How to keep a hat on no matter what the circumstances?" hazarded Dimity. — Gail Carriger

The Black Lives Matter movement can be read as an attempt to keep mourning an open dynamic in our culture because black lives exist in a state of precariousness. Mourning then bears both the vulnerability inherent in black lives and the instability regarding a future for those lives. — Claudia Rankine

The goddess smiled. "You are a good hero, Percy Jackson. Not too proud. I like that. But you have much to learn. When Dionysus was made a god, I gave up my throne for him. It was the only way to avoid a civil war among the gods."
"It unbalanced the Council," I remembered. "Suddenly there were seven guys and five girls."
Hestia shrugged. "It was the best solution, not a perfect one. Now I tend the fire. I fade slowly into the background. No one will ever write epic poems about the deeds of Hestia. Most demigods don't even stop to talk to me. But that is no matter. I keep the peace. I yield when necessary. Can you do this? — Rick Riordan

I love you," he whispered. "I was never meant to love anyone else. No matter what. Ellie Watt, you own me. And I'll keep you safe. — Karina Halle