Making An Impression Quotes & Sayings

Somehow over the years people have gotten the impression that Wal-Mart was ... just this great idea that turned into an overnight success. But ... it was an outgrowth of everything we'd been doing since [1945] ... And like most overnight successes, it was about twenty years in the making. — James C. Collins

The Rival
If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.
You leave the same impression
Of something beautiful, but annihilating.
Both of you are great light borrowers.
Her O-mouth grieves at the world; yours is unaffected,
And your first gift is making stone out of everything.
I wake to a mausoleum; you are here,
Ticking your fingers on the marble table, looking for cigarettes,
Spiteful as a woman, but not so nervous,
And dying to say something unanswerable.
The moon, too, abuses her subjects,
But in the daytime she is ridiculous.
Your dissatisfactions, on the other hand,
Arrive through the mailslot with loving regularity,
White and blank, expansive as carbon monoxide.
No day is safe from news of you,
Walking about in Africa maybe, but thinking of me. — Sylvia Plath

Growing up in Atlanta I always had a sense of what fashion was, a sense of style - my parents always talked about the importance of making a first impression and that's stayed with me. — Cam Newton

We shared a piece of Poncho's apple pie, and I told Poncho about PureTone. Like all serious musicians, he is depressed by the quality of sound the people's music id delivered in today. That is the impression I have gotten from every Musician I have met. Everyone. After he heard PureTone, Ben Bourdon, one of Ben Young's caregivers asked me if I was making war on Apple. I said, No. I'm waging heavy peace. — Neil Young

Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you're making. — C.S. Lewis

Under the stress of the event, we felt, each man's true nature was revealed. The impression we had of each candidate's character was as direct and compelling as the color of the sky." He had had no trouble identifying which men would make good officers and which would not. "We were quite willing to declare, 'This one will never make it,' 'That fellow is rather mediocre,' or 'He will be a star.'" The problem came when he'd tested his predictions against the outcomes - how the various candidates had actually performed in officer training. His predictions were worthless. And yet, because it was the army and he had a job to do, he kept on making them; and because he was Danny, he noted that he still felt confident about them. — Michael Lewis

Have used him well; making them old men and women inexorably enough, but leaving their hearts and spirits young and in full vigour. With such people the grey head is but the impression of the old fellow's hand in giving them his blessing, and every wrinkle but a notch in the quiet calendar of a well-spent life. — Charles Dickens

He hovered, as it were, on the fringes of both the scientific and the classical worlds, making, apparently, no deep impression on either. Perhaps the characteristics that he inherited from D'Arcy the Elder partly accounted for this. Gifted, volatile, impulsive, and individual, neither could suffer a fool gladly, and they spoke their minds freely when occasion demanded and sometimes when it did not. They both went their own way; they would not 'run with the pack'; they despised the instinct that leads men to say what others say because it is easier, or do as others do for fear of being thought different. Alike in demanding the highest standard of integrity in behaviour and work they spared no man who was slovenly in either; critical of their own achievements they were equally so of other men's. — Ruth D'Arcy Thompson

Anyone who has had actual contact with the making of the inventions that built the radio art knows that these inventions have been the product of experiment and work based on physical reasoning, rather than on the mathematicians' calculations and formulae. Precisely the opposite impression is obtained from many of our present day text books and publications. — Edwin Howard Armstrong

Swords were brought out, guns oiled and made ready, and everything was in a bustle when the old Lexington dropped her anchor on January 26, 1847, in Monterey Bay, after a voyage of one hundred and ninety-eight days from New York. Everything on shore looked bright and beautiful, the hills covered with grass and flowers, the live oaks so serene and homelike, and the low adobe houses, with red-tiled roofs and whitened walls, contrasted well with the dark pine trees behind, making a decidedly good impression upon us who had come so far to spy out the land. Nothing could be more peaceful in its looks than Monterey in January, 1847. — William T. Sherman

I suppose I might insist on making issues of things. But that is not my nature, and I always bear in mind that my mission is to leave behind me the kind of impression that will make it easier for those who follow. — Marian Anderson

No, Charles Tansley would put them both right in a second about books, but it was all so mixed up with, Am I saying the right thing? Am I making a good impression? that, after all, one knew more about him than about Tolstoi, whereas, what Paul said was about the thing, simply, not himself, nothing else. Like all stupid people, he had a kind of modesty too, a consideration for what you were feeling, which, once in a way at least, she found attractive. Now he was thinking, not about himself, or about Tolstoi, but whether she was cold, whether she felt a draught, whether she would like a pear. — Virginia Woolf

Back. So why am I so worried about making a first impression? I answer my own question: Because you only get to do it once. Every time after, you are only making up for what happened during that initial meeting. — Jodi Picoult

focus less on the impression you're making on others and more on the impression you're making on yourself. — Amy Cuddy

I had staked all on Gussie making a favourable impression on his hostess, basing my confidence on the fact that he was one of those timid, obsequious, teacup-passing, thin-bread- and-butter-offering, yes-men whom women of my Aunt Dahlia's type nearly always like at first sight. — P.G. Wodehouse

I'm ... pretty sure I'm in love with Travis,"
My eyes still focused on the pavement, I handed Travis his phone, and then reluctantly peered up at his expression. A combination of confusion, shock, and adoration scrolled across his face.
He scanned my face with careful hope in his eyes. "You love me?"
"It's the tattoos," I shrugged.
A wide smile stretched across his face, making his dimple sink into his cheek. "Come home with me," he said, enveloping me in his arms.
My eyebrows shot up. "You said all that to get me in bed? I must have made quite an impression."
"The only thing I'm thinking about right now is holding you in my arms all night."
"Let's go," I smiled. — Jamie McGuire

One of the things I love about the theater is that no one can tell you to stop. Once you're onstage, it's three hours, and whether you're completely off or you're just horrendous, you've got to find a way to leave an impression. There's not that terrible thing that you get when you're making a movie, where you get in your car at the end of the day knowing that something you're not proud of was immortalized on film, and you can't fix it because they won't reshoot it. — Carey Mulligan

The young are often accused of exaggerating their troubles; they do so, very often, in the hope of making some impression upon the inertia and the immovability of the selfish old. — Robertson Davies

Here in the United States, we speak with reverence of authentic experience. We write poems about our daddies taking us fishing and breaking our hearts by making us throw the little fish back into the river. We even tell the reader the kind of car we were driving, the year and the model, to give the impression that it's all true. It's because we think of ourselves as journalists of a kind. Like them, we'll go anywhere for a story. Don't believe a word of it. As any poet can tell you, one often sees better with eyes closed than with eyes wide open. — Charles Simic

I may not, perhaps, be forgiven for introducing sober matters with a frivolous notion, but the problem of making sense out of the seeming chaos of experience reminds me of my childish desire to send someone a parcel of water in the mail. The recipient unties the string, releasing the deluge in his lap. But the game would never work, since it is irritatingly impossible to wrap and tie a pound of water in a paper package. There are kinds of paper which won't disintegrate when wet, but the trouble is to get the water itself into any manageable shape, and to tie the string without bursting the bundle.

The more one studies attempted solutions to problems in politics and economics, in art, philosophy, and religion, the more one has the impression of extremely gifted people wearing out their ingenuity at the impossible and futile task of trying to get the water of life into neat and permanent packages. — Alan W. Watts

I'm Fasinated by women who aren't making a great impression on people. I think there's probably something there that is more than meets the eye. — Calista Flockhart

I was never one to go up to someone as a five- or six-year-old and say, 'Hello, my name's Paul, will you be my friend?' But I found if I did an impression of the PE teacher or whatever and people laughed, then they did like me, and so then they started talking to me, rather than me making the initial overture and then maybe being rebuffed. — Paul Merton

Sometimes we spend more efforts with people that are strangers in terms of making an impression than the person that's closest to us. And you just gotta remember not to take for granted that person that's closest to you. — Michael Douglas

When I look at the chaotic and volatile debate right now, both in Germany and around the world, my impression and concern is that the daily barrage of proposals and political statements is making markets and consumers even more nervous. Still, Brussels is pressing for a joint European approach. — Peer Steinbruck

I think that rather being overly-friendly at first, having a cold first impression and slowly making them realize that I'm not that cold is better. — Jessica Jung

There's nothing like a Harley-Davidson for getting around mud holes, rocks, and wagon ruts on dirt roads - or for making an impression on girls. — Olive Ann Burns

By putting the dead Germans in the focus of the picture, and by omitting to mention the French dead, a very special view of the battle was built up. It was a view designed to neutralize the effects of German territorial advances and the impression of power which the persistence of the offensive was making. It — Walter Lippmann

Besides, often at difficult moments you'll catch yourself talking to the mountain, flattering it, cursing it, making promises or threats. And you will have the impression that the mountain answers you if you speak to it properly - by becoming gentler, more submissive. Don't think the less of yourself for that; don't be ashamed of behaving like those our specialists call primitives and animists. Just keep in mind, when you remember these moments later on, that your dialogue with nature was just the outward image of an inner dialogue with yourself. — Rene Daumal

He had no idea of the impression he was making and cared less...He was finally an Angel, as I always knew he would become; but like any Angel he still had rages and furies... — Jack Kerouac

Many people associate stage fright with a fear of looking ridiculous, making a bad impression. For me, it's like a kind of fever. — Jeanne Moreau

But there is an unholy fascination in systematic noise. He did not flee from it incontinently, as one might have expected him to do. He remained, astonished at himself for remaining, since nothing could have been more repulsive to his tastes, more painful to his senses, and, so to speak, more contrary to his genius, than this rude exhibition of vigour. The Zangiacomo band was not making music; it was simply murdering silence with a vulgar, ferocious energy. One felt as if witnessing a deed of violence; and that impression was so strong that it seemed marvelous to see the people sitting so quietly on their chairs, drinking so calmly out of their glasses, and giving no signs of distress, anger, or fear. Heyst averted his gaze from the unnatural spectacle of their indifference. — Joseph Conrad

And he would listen, making only a few comments, always sympathetic, so that when I left him I had the distinct impression he had solved everything for me. — Anne Rice

He was thinking of himself and the impression he was making, as she could tell by the sound of his voice, and his emphasis and his uneasiness. — Virginia Woolf

If I was to interrupt this article every few sentences, asking you whether or not I was making a good impression on you, I hope and believe that you would think I was a servile jerk. Yet this is what our politicians are doing in every speech. — Christopher Hitchens

Johannes Cabal disliked many things, despised fewer, loathed fewer still, and reserved true hatred for only a handful. Understanding how intense his personal definition of 'dislike' was, however, gives some impression of how hot his hatreds ran. This is a man who had, after all, shot men dead for making him faintly peeved. — Jonathan L. Howard

I returned to civilization shortly after that and went to Cornell to teach, and my first impression was a very strange one. I can't understand it any more, but I felt very strongly then. I sat in a restaurant in New York, for example, and I looked out at the buildings and I began to think, you know, about how much the radius of the Hiroshima bomb damage was and so forth ... How far from here was 34th street? ... All those buildings, all smashed - and so on. And I would go along and I would see people building a bridge, or they'd be making a new road, and I thought, they're crazy, they just don't understand, they don't understand. Why are they making new things? It's so useless.
But, fortunately, it's been useless for almost forty years now, hasn't it? So I've been wrong about it being useless making bridges and I'm glad those other people had the sense to go ahead. — Richard Feynman

Art reaches its greatest peak when devoid of self-conciousness. Freedom discovers man the moment he loses concern over what impression he is making or about to make. — Bruce Lee

Read Demosthenes or Cicero, read Plato, Aristotle, or any other of that class: you will, I admit, feel wonderfully allured, pleased, moved, enchanted; but turn from them to the reading of the Sacred Volume, and whether you will or not, it will so affect you, so pierce your heart, so work its way into your very marrow, that, in comparison of the impression so produced, that of orators and philosophers will almost disappear; making it manifest that in the Sacred Volume there is a truth divine, a something which makes it immeasurably superior to all the gifts and graces attainable by man. Section — John Calvin

Nico sighed in exasperation. He hated working with other people. They were always cramping his style, making him uncomfortable. And Will Solace ... Nico revised his impression of the son of Apollo. He'd always thought of Will as easygoing and laid back. Apparently he could also be stubborn and aggravating. — Rick Riordan

When I learn the meaning of a word, I know the word; but when I say to myself, 'I know the word,' there comes a reflection of the word back from the mirror of my mind, making a second impression, and after that I am at least not so likely to forget it ... When, then, I think about the impression that the word makes upon me, how it is affecting me with the knowledge of itself, then I am what I should call self-conscious of the word - conscious not only that I know the word, but that I know the phenomena of knowing the word - conscious of what I am as regards my knowing of the word. — George MacDonald

Apparently one impression we are making ... is that creativeness consists of lightning striking you on the head in one great glorious moment. — Abraham Maslow

A "game" that will give everyone the consoling impression of making contact, together, with the ultimate transcendent referent. — David Foster Wallace

No one's death comes to pass without making some impression, and those close to the deceased inherit part of the liberated soul and become richer in their humanness. — Hermann Broch

It is the right of art to consider an impression valid simply as an impression and to accept it as something entire and complete without critical scrutiny. Art is, as Schopenhauer puts it, "everywhere at its goal." But for life, and hence surely also for religion, there is a danger, the romantic danger, in making the impression of an experience all-important. For then the sense for the content and commandment of life must all too soon evaporate together with any sense for reality with its definite tasks; and the place of all aspiration and expectation will be taken over by the sole dominion of the mood of faith which simply feels itself, and then finds it easy to deem itself, complete. This is faith for faith's sake. — Leo Baeck

Demanding recognition for something you did and getting angry or upset if you don't get it; trying to get attention by talking about your problems, the story of your illnesses, or making a scene; giving your opinion when nobody has asked for it and it makes no difference to the situation; being more concerned with how the other person sees you than with the other person, which is to say, using other people for egoic reflection or as ego enhancers; trying to make an impression on others through possessions, knowledge, good looks, status, physical strength, and so on; bringing about temporary ego inflation through angry reaction against something or someone; taking things personally, feeling offended; making yourself right and others wrong through futile mental or verbal complaining; wanting to be seen, or to appear important. — Eckhart Tolle

the common saying has it, we think that man "lives to eat" and not "eats to live". We are continually making this mistake; we are regarding nature as ourselves and are becoming attached to it; and as soon as this attachment comes, there is the deep impression on the soul, which binds us down and makes us work not from freedom but like slaves. — Swami Vivekananda

No longer can a young woman feel at ease; for she is ever concerned with the impression that she may be making on others. — Ihara Saikaku

...they lived in a curious but not unhappy isolation, though her father was a popular schoolteacher. Partly they were cut off by Sara's heart trouble, but also by their subscribing to magazines nobody around them read, listening to programs on the national radio network, which nobody around them listened to. By Sara's making her own clothes - sometimes ineptly - from Vogue patterns, instead of Butterick. Even by the way they preserved some impression of youth instead of thickening and slouching like the parents of Juliet's schoolfellows. — Alice Munro

I have always found it odd that people who think passive aggressively ignoring a person is making a point to them. The only point it makes to anyone is your inability to articulate your point of view because deep down you know you can't win. It's better to assert yourself and tell the person you are moving on without them and why, rather than leave a lasting impression of cowardness on your part in a person's mind by avoiding them. — Shannon L. Alder

There are moments, particularly in times of stress, when haste does not make waste, when our snap judgments and first impressions can offer a much better means of making sense of the world. — Malcolm Gladwell

With the RED, I didn't have this impression at all. I felt that it was as heavy as a film camera. Having this great crew, with the DP and his assistants, I found it making as much of an impression as a very big film camera. I didn't relate to it as much. I remember avoiding it during the shooting rather than paying attention to it. — Abbas Kiarostami

Such uncanny serenity actually frightened him, making him think that perhaps this was a surface impression left behind after any amount of unspeakable viciousness had been digested, or else settled down inside her as a kind of sediment. — Han Kang

It is even so in a commonwealth and in the councils of princes; if ill opinions cannot be quite rooted out, and you cannot cure some received vice according to your wishes, you must not, therefore, abandon the commonwealth, for the same reasons as you should not forsake the ship in a storm because you cannot command the winds. You are not obliged to assault people with discourses that are out of their road, when you see that their received notions must prevent your making an impression upon them: you ought rather to cast about and to manage things with all the dexterity in your power, so that, if you are not able to make them go well, they may be as little ill as possible; for, except all men were good, everything cannot be right, and that is a blessing that I do not at present hope to see. — Thomas More

This will not be my fate," I said firmly, confidently. "And it won't be Lillatta's and maybe not even yours, though that might be wishful thinking."
"Ah, you wish it not to be my fate?" Javen said brightly. "My assumption then is that I am at last making an impression?"
"The impression you are making is that you make way too many assumptions," I said. — Michael Puttonen

Tolstoy's characters seem to come forward to meet you, very conscious of the impression they are making on one another and on the reader. — Stephen Spender

But all the long speeches, all the interminable days and hours that people had spent talking about my soul, had left me with the impression of a colorless swirling river that was making me dizzy. — Albert Camus

For is not a Book the most reliable of Companions
and generally among the most stimulating as well? No need to worry about amusing or pleasing or making a good impression on a Book, when its only purpose is to entertain and, perhaps, instruct. And if it should fail in that purpose, one can merely return it to its shelf, without so much as a by-your-leave and no occasion for anxiety about its wounded Pride, either. — Natalie Wexler

Music leaves such a big impression. I always wondered, 'Man, if I grew up in Nashville, would I be making Country records now?' I honestly feel like Chicago had such a big impact on me. — Kaskade

The next four weeks of solitary confinement were among the happiest of Paul's life ... It was so exhilarating, he found, never to have to make any decision on any subject, to be wholly relieved from the smallest consideration of time, meas, or clothes, to have no anxiety ever about what kind of impression he was making; in fact, to be free. — Evelyn Waugh

I never think if I do an impression of someone, I'm never making fun of them. — Kristen Wiig

...holding your hand out and making a gesture that, in the surreal parrallel universe of the classroom would suggest that instruction, but anywhere else would be taken for a drunkard's poorly achieved impression of an epileptic spider failing to negotiate a hairpin bend. — Phil Beadle

Mary thought that the art of love might just be blindness: the willingness not to see the truth of anything, to blur life's sharp edges and drift on an impression of one's own making, to act as if the life you lived was the life you wanted. — Robin Oliveira

Carma,
Here are the Pants and a little sketch I made of Leo. From memory, not from life. (And no, I'm not thinging of him day and night. God.)
Funny hair, huh?
He did not realize I was in his class. I think I'm making a big impression around here.
Love you,
Len — Ann Brashares

Letting go is one of the most difficult experiences to deal with whether it's right or wrong. So make the most of every moment you've been gifted with. To whoever you initiate contact with and wherever, try to leave a positive impression. To whoever you have the power to make smile, exploit that power as often and best as you can, because when every other material thing fades, it's those memories that keep us alive — Ufuoma Apoki

The gist of the matter is this: Every impression that comes in from without, be it a sentence which we hear, an object of vision, or an effluvium which assails our nose, no sooner enters our consciousness than it is drafted off in some determinate direction or other, making connection with the other materials already there, and finally producing what we call our reaction. The particular connections it strikes into are determined by our past experiences and the 'associations' of the present sort of impression with them. — William James

You will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it ... Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. — C.S. Lewis

There was terror in each and every one of the people on that beautiful beach and on that breathtakingly beautiful evening. Terror of being alone, terror of the darkness filling their imaginations with devils, terror of doing anything not in the manuals of good behaviour, terror of God's judgement, of what other people would say, of the law punishing any mistake, terror of trying and failing, terror of succeeding and having to live with the envy of other people, terror of loving and being rejected, terror of asking for a rise in salary, of accepting an invitation, of going somewhere new, of not being able to speak a foreign language, of not making the right impression, of growing old, of dying, of being pointed on because of one's defects, of not being pointed out because of one's merits, of not being noticed either for one's defects or one's merits. Terror, terror, terror. Life was a reign of terror, in the shadow of the guillotine. — Paulo Coelho

A QUICKENING that will last must come through the Word of God. A man stood up in one of our meetings and said he hoped for enough out of the series of meetings to last him all his life. I told him he might as well try to eat enough breakfast at one time to last him his lifetime. That is a mistake that people are making; they are running to religious meetings and they think the meetings are going to do the work. But if these don't bring you into closer contact with the Word of God, the whole impression will be gone in three months. — D.L. Moody

He grinned, flashing his even white teeth, a wicked gleam shone in his eyes, making her insides melt. "So that's why you remember the last time you saw me? Obviously I made a lasting impression."

"You did. It scarred me for life," she quipped. — Tracey Rogers

The genuinely powerful, unlike the Vuyos of this world, don't give a fuck about making an impression. — Lauren Beukes