Man Changing Quotes & Sayings

Memories had come back to Thomas on several occasions. The Changing, the dreams he'd had since, fleeting glimpses here and there, like quick lightning strikes in his mind. And right now, listening to the white-suited man talk, it felt as if he were standing on a cliff and all the answers were just about to float up from the depths for him to see in their entirety. The urge to grasp those answers was almost too strong to keep at bay.
But he was still wary. He knew he'd been a part of it all, had helped design the Maze, had taken over after the original Creators died and kept the program going with new recruits. "I remember enough to be ashamed of myself," he admitted. "But living through this kind of abuse is a lot different than planning it. It's just not right. — James Dashner

We are living in what the Greeks called the kairos- the right moment- for a 'metamorphosis of the gods', of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious man within us who is changing. — Carl Jung

In retrospect, this seems to summarize all the insanity of that time. Guy is standing on top of a burning building. Helicopter arrives, hovers, drops a rope ladder. Climb up! the man leaning out of the helicopter's door shouts. Guy on top of burning building responds, Give me two weeks to think about it. — Stephen King

And it is a singular truth that, though a man may shake off national habits, accent, manner of thinking, style of dress,
though he may become perfectly identified with another nation, and speak its language well, perhaps better than his own,
yet never can he succeed in changing his handwriting to a foreign style. — Benjamin Disraeli

Xiii- men must ... find their way from false to true consciousness, from their immediate to their real interest. They can do so only if they live in need of changing their way of life, of denying the positive, of refusing, it is precisely this need which the established society manages to repress using the scientific conquest of nature for the scientific conquest of man.
Xvi-the technological society is a system of domination. — C. Wright Mills

Look at these magnificent women, I thought, created in such misogynistic and hierarchical societies, yet they are the subversive centers around which the plot is shaped. Everything is supposed to revolve around the male hero. But it is the active presence of these women that changes events and diverts the man's life from its traditional course, that shocks him into changing his very mode of existence. In the classical Iranian narrative, active women dominate the scene; they make things happen. — Azar Nafisi

Every man is the architect of his own life. He builds it just the way he wants it. However, after he has built what he wants, he sometimes decides that he doesn't like what he has built and looks for someone or something to blame instead of changing himself. — Sydney Madwed

Just ask yourself, if we weren't taught to be women, what would we be? (Ask yourself this question even if you're a man, and don't cheat by changing the words.) — Karen Joy Fowler

Hat whole phrase, "daring greatly," is from the Theodore Roosevelt quote that goes back to your original question of, what about the critics? And when I read his quote it was life-changing. "It's not the critic who counts; it's not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done the better. — Brene Brown

The New Testament writers speak as if Christ's achievement in rising from the dead was the first event of its kind in the whole history of the universe. He is the 'first fruits,' the pioneer of life,' He has forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and beaten the King of Death. Everything is different because He has done so. — C.S. Lewis

Nothing that is not a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconsistency, especially when it regards religion or party. In either of these cases, though a man perhaps does but his duty in changing his side, he not only makes himself hated by those he left, but is seldom heartily esteemed by those he comes over to. — Joseph Addison

A book is one of the most patient of all man's inventions. Centuries mean nothing to a well-made book. It awaits its destined reader, come when he may, with eager hand and seeing eye. Then occurs one of the great examples of union, that of a man with a book, pleasurable, sometimes fruitful, potentially world-changing, simple; and in a library ... witho ut cost to the reader. — Lawrence Clark Powell

The sounds of a man crying is a piteous noise, almost worse than an infant's cry. Babies are either hungry, sick or bored, or need changing. This man was none of those things. He was wrapped in grief as deep as the ocean, and no one could do anything to help him. — Samantha Hayes

The standard-brand religions [...] are - as now practiced - like exhausted mines: very hard to dig. With some exceptions not too easily found, their ideas about man and the world, their imagery, their rites, and their notions of the good life don't seem to fit in with the universe as we now know it, or with a human world that is changing so rapidly that much of what one learns in school is already obsolete on graduation day. — Alan W. Watts

Insecure girls continue to hate and being ashamed of themselves. Thick or thin, tall or short, dark or fair, you're beautiful the way you are and you don't realize it. Real men always choose, love, respect, adore the real YOU. If you're changing for your man, something ain't right. Accept, Stay real, Love yourself & know your worth. You're not ugly, Society is... — Manasa Rao

Sometimes a man does not accept life as given. — Anuradha Bhattacharyya

Changing a man was never a goal of mine, and I disliked women who fell in love with the idea of a man only to then spend the rest of their lives trying to change him to be what they wanted. — Nina Levine

Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary. — Viktor E. Frankl

Man can change his life simply by changing his attitude. — William James

When the Canadian confederation took place in 1867, a lot of people in Quebec said, 'Could we have a referendum?' They said, 'Oh, no. In the British tradition, the Parliament can do anything, excluding changing a man into a woman, and, therefore, no referendum' - and that was that. — Jacques Parizeau

But in those solitary Masses they began to be aware that once again they were mistresses of their fate, after having renounced not only their family name but their own identity in exchange for a security that was no more than another of a bride's many illusions. They alone knew how tiresome was the man they loved to distraction, who perhaps loved them but whom they had to continue nurturing until his last breath as if he were a child, suckling him, changing his soiled diapers, distracting him with a mother's tricks to ease his terror at going out each morning to face reality. And nevertheless, when they watched him leave the house, this man they themselves had urged to conquer the world, then they were the ones left with the terror that he would never return. That was their life. (4.113) — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Minister: As I was saying, Alex, you can be instrumental in changing the public verdict. Do you understand, Alex? Have I made myself clear?
Alex: As an unmuddied lake, Fred. As clear as an azure sky of deepest summer. You can rely on me, Fred. — Anthony Burgess

Times are a'changing, my man. Welcome to the new real world where fat people don't have to hate themselves anymore. Thank God for women like Melissa McCarthy and Adele so we can all start really believing that now. — Stephanie McAfee

I'm going to keep on finding out the kind of man I am through my music. That's the one place I can be free. But the reason it's difficult is because I'm changing all the time. — Charles Mingus

The queers of the sixties, like those since, have connived with their repression under a veneer of respectability. Good mannered city queens in suits and pinstripes, so busy establishing themselves, were useless at changing anything. — Derek Jarman

The virtuous man takes the middle road between the two extremes, making a point of being respectful of his own ideas without changing his personality or style. — Auliq Ice

If I become the man you want, I wouldn't be the man I am. — Michael Robotham

No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist? Is he enough of a pagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it? In this combination, I maintain, it is the rational optimist who fails, the irrational optimist who succeeds. He is ready to smash the whole universe for the sake of itself. — G.K. Chesterton

Like it or not, everything is changing. The result will be the most wonderful experience in the history of man or the most horrible enslavement that you can imagine. Be active or abdicate. The future is in your hands. — Milton William Cooper

The truly wise man is the one who can keep external events from changing him in any way. To do this, he covers himself with an armour of realities closer to him than the world's facts and through which the facts, modified accordingly, reach him. — Fernando Pessoa

I am not the #Prisoner of my #Past neither the #Slave for my #Future !! — Tushar Upreti

Ciro was beginning to understand the concept of America, and it was changing his view of the world and of himself. A man could think clearly in a place that gave breadth to his dreams. There — Adriana Trigiani

It's interesting, winning an Academy Award as a young man ... life-changing, but I'm just me within that. It's been very helpful for my career, but I'm trying to stay on the path I was on before. — Adrien Brody

No ... it never takes your breath away, telling you things you already know, laying everything out flat, as though the terms and the time, and the nature and the movement of everything were secrets of the same magnitude. They write for people who read with the surface of their minds, people with reading habits that make the smallest demands of them, people brought up reading for facts, who know what's going to come next and want to know what's coming next, and get angry at surprises. Clarity's essential, and detail, no fake mysticism, the facts are bad enough. But we're embarrassed for people who tell too much, and tell it without surprise. How does he know what happened, unless it's one unshaven man alone in a boat, changing I to he, and how often do you get a man alone in a boat, in all this ... all this ... — William Gaddis

There is a strange duality in the human which makes for an ethical paradox. We have definitions of good qualities and of bad; not changing things, but generally considered good and bad throughout the ages and throughout the species. Of the good, we think always of wisdom, tolerance, kindliness, generosity, humility; and the qualities of cruelty, greed, self-interest, graspingness, and rapacity are universally considered undesirable. And yet in our structure of society, the so-called and considered good qualities are invariable concomitants of failure, while the bad ones are the cornerstones of success ... Perhaps no other animal is so torn between alternatives. Man might be described fairly adequately, if simply, as a two-legged paradox. — John Steinbeck

For although a man is judged by his actions, by what he has said and done, a man judges himself by what he is willing to do, by what he might have said, or might have done - a judgment that is necessarily hampered, not only by the scope and limits of his imagination, but by the ever-changing measure of his doubt and self-esteem. — Eleanor Catton

The moment it was over I knew I shouldn't have done it. It was fucked up on so many levels that it didn't even feel right to hold Dan close to me in what had been our bed less than a month earlier. Dan loved me, I knew he did. It wasn't fair of me to lead him on, even if I had broken up with him just before fucking him. But it wasn't just that, the rest of it wasn't right either. The knowledge of what I no longer was in my family's view but forever, for whoever looked upon me, marked on my body, a lack so fundamental and obvious that some would refuse to call me a man. And what would happen to me because of that, the way my body was even in that moment changing to accommodate someone else's desires, the way I was becoming what Brennan had decided I needed to be. For the first time, it wasn't a mere omission but an outright lie. To be in that bed next to Dan was taking up the space that belonged to someone else, someone we had both loved and who was now gone. That life was over, done. — N.J. Lysk

In any case one can never forbear to smile at such a despairer, who, humanly speaking, although he is in despair, is so very innocent. Commonly such a despairer is infinitely comic. Think of a self (and next to God there is nothing so eternal as a self), and then that this self gets the notion of asking whether it might not let itself become or be made into another ... than itself. And yet such a despairer, whose only wish is this most crazy of all transformations, loves to think that this change might be accomplished as easily as changing a coat. For the immediate man does not recognize his self, he recognizes himself only by his dress, he recognizes (and here again appears the infinitely comic trait) he recognizes that he has a self only by externals. — Soren Kierkegaard

Indeed, pursuing pleasure, Seneca warns, is like pursuing a wild beast: On being captured, it can turn on us and tear us to pieces. Or, changing the metaphor a bit, he tells us that intense pleasures, when captured by us, become our captors, meaning that the more pleasures a man captures, "the more masters will he have to serve. — William B. Irvine

You are not a man, I thought. A man doesn't drink sparkling water; he chugs tap water from a hose after changing his oil. — Alessandra Torre

But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?"
"It is required of every man," the Ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world
oh, woe is me!
and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!
... I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me! — Charles Dickens

I recall my life every day. I recall my sins and my acts of purity. I remind myself I was never a religious man. I remind myself that I have been dead for half of forever. I remind myself of nothing. I move along to the next minute. Next day. Next year. The earth doesn't change so much anymore. It doesn't change so quickly. With humans, the earth had to keep changing. But you can only replace a dying thing so many times before someone notices. There haven't been humans for years. Maybe a decade. Maybe more. I find myself loving their absence. The absence of humanity is the absence of violence. I love this peace. But then I remember my bones. My mind and my memories. I remember I'm human. I am the thing I detest. The creature that haunts my steps. It's my shadow I see watching me. It's my reflection in the water. I keep remembering. I live in fear. But still, I walk on. — F.K. Preston

The man knew how to fuck. Gideon didn't just shove his big dick in and out of a woman. He worked her with it, exploiting friction, changing angles and depth of penetration. The nuances of his skill were lost when I was writhing beneath him and focused only on the sensations he stoked in my body. But I felt them all now. — Sylvia Day

The question for each man to settle is not what he would do if he had means, time, influence and educational advantages; the question is what he will do with the things he has. The moment a young man ceases to dream or to bemoan his lack of opportunities and resolutely looks his conditions in the face, and resolves to change them, he lays the corner-stone of a solid and honorable success. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

Understanding who you are within leads to changing a man's value and behavior — Sunday Adelaja

Civilization has taught man how to live in dense crowds, and by that very fact those crowds are likely ultimately to constitute a majority of the world's population. Already there are many who prefer this crowded life, but there are others who do not, and these will gradually be eliminated. Life in the crowded conditions of cities has many unattractive features, but in the long run these may be overcome, not so much by altering them, but simply by changing the human race into liking them. — Charles Galton Darwin

Despite her apparent freedom, her life consisted of endless hours spent waiting for a miracle, for true love, for an adventure with the same romantic ending she had seen in films and read about in books. A writer once said that it is not time that changes man, nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone's mind is love. What nonsense!
The person who wrote that clearly knew only one side of the coin.
Love was undoubtedly one of the things capable of changing a person's whole life, from one moment to the next. But there was the other side of the coin, the second thing that could make a human being take a totally different course from the one he or she had planned; and that was called despair. Yes, perhaps love really could transform someone, but despair did the job more quickly. — Paulo Coelho

The overthrowing of slavery, then, is through the transformation of men and women by the gospel rather than through merely changing an economic system. We've all seen what can happen when you merely overthrow an economic system and impose a new order. The whole communist dream was the have a 'revolutionary man' followed by the 'new man.' Trouble is, they never found the 'new man.' They got rid of the oppressors of the peasants, but that didn't mean the peasants were suddenly free--they were just under a new regime of darkness. In the final analysis, if you want lasting change, you've got to transform the hearts of human beings. And that was Jesus' mission. — Lee Strobel

I heard you," Austin said after a moment. "What you were saying, I heard you. And I am sorry, but I'm also damn proud of the man you are. And I think things are changing, and we both know it. Maybe they were always supposed to change, Dare, I don't know, but they are and I want that. I didn't know I wanted it until recently, but the need is so fierce, it steals my breath sometimes. — Riley Hart

Finding The Man. Keeping The Man. Not scaring The Man, building up The Man, following The Man, soothing The Man, flattering The Man, deferring to The Man, changing your judgement for The Man, changing your decisions for The Man, polishing floors for The Man, being perpetually conscious of your appearance for The Man, being romantic for The Man, hinting to The Man, losing yourself in The Man. 'I never had a thought that wasn't yours.' Sob, sob. Whenever I act like a human being, they say, 'What are you getting upset about?' They say: of course you'll get married. They say: of course you're brilliant. They say: of course you'll get a PhD and then sacrifice it to have babies. They say: if you don't, you're the one who'll have two jobs and you can make a go of it if you're exceptional, which very few women are, and if you find a very understanding man. As long as you don't make more money than he does. How do they expect me to live all this junk? — Joanna Russ

Look, first of all, the climate is changing. I don't think the science is clear what percentage is man-made and what percentage is natural. It's convoluted. And for the people to say the science is decided on, this is just really arrogant, to be honest with you, it's this intellectual arrogance that now you can't even have a conversation about it. The climate is changing, and we need to adapt to that reality. — Barack Obama

As for music and my place in it, maybe things are changing a little bit. I know this: a good song is deeper than a tattoo. It'll remind you of the car you're driving and the girl you're going around with and the streets you're cruising. It's better than a photo album. A song is a tattoo that you never lose. 'Ice, Ice Baby,' man, you'll remember that when you're 90. — Vanilla Ice

There are times when you think the sun rises and sets on the man you love and other times when you're almost indifferent. Love is like life, it has seasons. The beauty of love is knowing that you'll both be there for each other at the changing of each season, no matter what. Knowing that you can bare your soul to your mate and regardless of what he sees, he won't run away. Love isn't about looking at each other and being blinded to each other's faults, but rather seeing each other's faults and loving each other anyway. — Lynne Constantine

A Note from Alan
Out of the many memorable lines and quotes I have heard from my dad through the years, the one that always seems to stand out the most is "Son, don't ever tell people how good or great you are at something; let them tell you." For a man who has achieved his own level of greatness in the eyes of so many, those words were both prophetic and wise. To be the best at anything, one has to have a lot of confidence and a certain amount of ego and drive. But one must also have humility to make a life-changing impact on people. I realize now that that is what Dad was teaching me all those years ago. Of course, to become a legend, one that other people admire and want to emulate, you also have to add faith and dedication to what you love. A good woman doesn't hurt either. — Phil Robertson

You may cut off the heads of every rich man now living
of every statesman
every literary, and every scientific authority, without in the least changing the social situation. Artists, of course, disappeared long ago as social forces. So did the church. Corporations are not elevators, but levellers, as I see them. — Henry Adams

The world is progressing. One man cannot slow it, no matter how determined he is.
He stopped in the path.
You cannot stop the tides from changing, Dusk. No matter how determined you are. His mother's words. — Brandon Sanderson

When compared to the fact that he might very well be dead by this time tomorrow, whether he was courageous or not today was pointless, empty. When compared to the fact that he might be dead tomorrow, everything was pointless. It just didn't make any difference. It was pointless to the tree, it was pointless to every man in his outfit, pointless to everybody in the whole world. Who cared? It was not pointless only to him; and when he was dead, when he ceased to exist, it would be pointless to him too. More important: Not only would it be pointless, it would have been pointless all along.
This was an obscure and rather difficult point to grasp. Understanding of it kept slipping in and out on the edges of his mind. It flickered, changing its time sense and tenses. At those moments when he understood it, it left him with a very hollow feeling. — James Jones

There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to the public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute not common law. Neither individuals not corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back. — Robert A. Heinlein

you cannot be friends either with boy or man unless you give yourself away in the process, and Mr. Pembroke did not commend this. He, for "personal intercourse," substituted the safer "personal influence," and gave his junior hints on the setting of kindly traps, in which the boy does give himself away and reveals his shy delicate thoughts, while the master, intact, commends or corrects them.
Originally Rickie had meant to help boys in the anxieties that they undergo when changing into men: at Cambridge he had numbered this among life's duties. But here is a subject in which we must
inevitably speak as one human being to another, not as one who has authority or the shadow of authority, and for this reason the elder school-master could suggest nothing but a few formulae. Formulae, like kindly traps, were not in Rickie's line, so he abandoned these
subjects altogether and confined himself to working hard at what was easy. — E. M. Forster

The key to happiness: You may speak of love and tenderness and passion, but real ecstasy is discovering you haven't lost your keys after all. Women begin by resisting a man's advances and end by blocking his retreat. If you want to change a woman's mind, agree with her. If you want to know what a woman really means, look at her - don't listen to her. — Rajneesh

Unhappy: People look around and think, why are there so many people that are unhappy? We have progressed so far, yet people are still unhappy. Why isn't this world the wonderful place it could be? Changing the world doesn't change us.

It does not matter how much we progress materially; it will not change anything. Only learning and seeing the truth will change us, and thus change everything.

The truth transforms a mortal man into an immortal spiritual being.
It does this because the truth just shows you what you truly are, and that changes everything. The truth does the same thing for the way we see the world and for the same reason. It shows you life clearly; it shows you true life for the first time. — Michael Smith

Gansey thought of one hundred things that he could say to Adam about how it would be all right, how it was for the best, how Adam Parrish had been his own man before he'd met Gansey and there was no way he'd stop being his own man just by changing the roof over his head, how some days Gansey wished that he could be him, because Adam was so very real and true in a way that Gansey couldn't ever seem to be. But Gansey's words had somehow become unwitting weapons, and he didn't trust himself to not accidentally discharge them again. — Maggie Stiefvater

I call you children because that is what you are. You have not fended for yourselves, you have not felt the terrible blows that life gives you. As we speak, there is hatred and prejudice residing in our world's heart. Now a man can make a difference in the world, even if it is a small one. We all have fates, including me. We can choose to make that fate one that will bring hope, or one that will bring destruction. Times are changing, and we must grow wiser for it. So now I must encourage you- I must beg you-when you leave these school walls and enter this world, to not be as idiotic and imbecilic as the generation before you. — Mordred

It is nature that is changing, not the soul of man. This never changes. — Swami Vivekananda

It is of course no secret to contemporary philosophers and psychologists that man himself is changing in our violent century, under the influence, of course, not only of war and revolution, but also of practically everything else that lays claim to being "modern" and "progressive." We have already cited the most striking forms of Nihilist Vitalism, whose cumulative effect has been to uproot, disintegrate, and "mobilize" the individual, to substitute for his normal stability and rootedness a senseless quest for power and movement, and to replace normal human feeling by a nervous excitability. The work of Nihilist Realism, in practice as in theory, has been parallel and complementary to that of Vitalism: a work of standardization, specialization, simplification, mechanization, dehumanization; its effect has been to "reduce" the individual to the most "Primitive" and basic level, to make him in fact the slave of his environment, the perfect workman in Lenin's worldwide "factory. — Seraphim Rose

There are lots of reasons why a woman stays with a man, even when she's given up on changing him and can predict with certainty the shape that the rest of her life with him is going to take. — A.S.A Harrison

There are not many secure hospitals that can boast someone who thought he was Napoleon, but St. Cerebellum's could field three - not to mention a handful of serial killers whose names inexplicably yet conveniently rhymed with their crimes. Notorious cannibal "Peter the Eater" was incarcerated here, as were "Sasha the Slasher" and "Mr. Browner the Serial Drowner." But the undisputed king of rhyme-inspired serial murder was Isle of Man resident Maximilian Marx, who went under the uniquely tongue-twisting epithet "Mad Max Marx, the Masked Manxman Axman." Deirdre Blott tried to top Max's clear superiority by changing her name so as to become "Nutty Nora Newsome, the Knife-Wielding Weird Widow from Waddersdon," but no one was impressed, and she was ostracized by the other patients for being such a terrible show-off. — Jasper Fforde

When we begin to reflect Christ, the Bible, when more understood as being centered around Christ, seems to be potentially every man's biography regarding God's promised experiences and truth for him - his individual, unique path of humbling oneself before the Lord and then being exalted by the Lord back into his true and righteous personhood. Many followers may speak of it merely to try to change other people (before changing themselves), but the prophets speak of it as a living word which miraculously tells their very own experiences. — Criss Jami

The world is on fire, young man. As writers, it is only proper that we do what we can to warn people.
But in telling the truth to the world, don't lie to yourself. Write whatever you want. Tell the truth.
Just don't imagine that you are changing anything.
Like I said, people just want to have a good time.

-Snagglepuss — Mark Russell

In the beginning, we were ordinary street rats, stealing our daily bread, and living off the efforts of man's work. We were captured, put in cages, and sent to a place called NIMH. There were other animals there, in cages. They were put through the most unspeakable torture, to satisfy some scientific curiosity. Often, at night, I would hear them cry out in anguish. Twenty rats and eleven mice were given injections. Our world began changing. — Nicodemus

I don't look like a leading man, whatever they look like. It's changing a little. — James Cromwell

A picture is not thought out and settled beforehand. While it is being done it changes as one's thoughts change. And when it is finished, it still goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it. A picture lives a life like a living creature, undergoing the changes imposed on us by our life from day to day. This is natural enough, as the picture lives only through the man who is looking at it. — Pablo Picasso

This was his recognition of the impossibility of changing a man's convictions by words, and his acknowledgment of the possibility of every man thinking, feeling, and seeing things in his own way. This legitimate individuality of every man's views, which formerly troubled or irritated Pierre, now became the basis of the sympathy he felt for other people and the interest that he took in them. The difference, sometimes the complete contradiction, between man's opinions and their lives, and between one man and another, pleased him and drew from him a gentle, ironic smile. — Leo Tolstoy

FDR's struggle with illness and subsequent metal-filled life are remarkably similar to the story of another great leader who was part robot: Iron Man. FDR, much like Tony Stark, was cocky and arrogant before his life-changing diagnosis, but the years of suffering changed all of that, and he emerged more humble, more fearless, and ready to defend America. Also, FDR wore iron braces and used a wheelchair, which, for the purposes of this comparison, is exactly like a well-armed robot suit. — Daniel O'Brien

You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign land, back home to lyricism, to singing just for singing's sake, back home to aestheticism, to one's youthful idea of 'the artist' and the all-sufficiency of 'art' and 'beauty' and 'love,' back home to the ivory tower, back home to places in the country, to the cottage in Bermude, away from all the strife and conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and have been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time
back home to the escapes of Time and Memory. — Thomas Wolfe

Jesus of Nazareth was a real man, living and dying at a turbulent moment in real space-time history. His message, and the message about him that the early Christians called good news, was not about how to escape that world. It was about how the one true God was changing it, radically and forever. — N. T. Wright

Life, on this Earth may be likened to a great Kaleidoscope before which the scenes and facts and material substances are ever shifting and changing and all any man can do is to take these facts and substances and re-arrange them in new combinations. — Napoleon Hill

An increased power of reflection like an increased knowledge only adds to man's affliction, and above all it is certain that for the individual as for the generation no task is more difficult than to escape from the temptations of reflection, simply because they are so dialectical and the result of one clever discovery may give the whole question a new turn, because at any moment reflection is capable of explaining everything quite differently and allowing one some way of escape; because at the last moment of a reflective decision reflection is capable of changing everything
after one has made far greater exertions than are necessary to get a man of character into the midst of things. — Soren Kierkegaard

A man who has made up his mind on a given subject twenty-five years ago and continues to hold his political opinions after he has been proved to be wrong is a man of principle; while he who from time to time adapts his opinions to the changing circumstances of life is an opportunist. — A.P. Herbert

Serving my country was a life-changing experience for me. It was during those years that I realized the importance of commitment, dedication, honor, and discipline. I have never laughed so much; nor have I ever prayed so much. I made life-long friends. The leaders and heroes I served with helped shape me into the man I am today. I feel honored to have been a part of such a great tradition and grateful to others who have walked the same path. Thank you! — Steve Maraboli

Morality and immorality are not defined by man's changing attitudes and social customs. They are determined by the God of the universe, whose timeless standards cannot be ignored with impunity. — James Dobson

A man may have strong humanitarian and democratic principles, but if he happens to have been brought up as a bath-taking, shirt-changing lover of fresh air, he will have to overcome certain physical repugnance before he can bring himself to put those principles into practice. — Aldous Huxley

Life as it proceeds reveals, cooly and dispassionately, what lies behind the mask that each man wears. It would seem that everyone possesses several faces. Some people use only one all the time, and it then, naturally, becomes soiled and wrinkled. These are the thrifty sort. Others look after their masks in the hope of passing them on to their descendants. Others again are constantly changing their faces. But all of them, when they reach old age, realise one day that the mask they are wearing is their last and that it will soon be worn out, and then, from behind the last mask, the real face appears. — Sadegh Hedayat

Just then the kid upset the milk over Freddie's trousers, and when he had come back after changing his clothes he began to talk about what a much-maligned man King Herod was. — P.G. Wodehouse

I've never been sure how to define 'in love.' It's like a measuring rope that keeps changing length. When Brandon's lie broke my heart that night in his bed, I thought, 'I'll never love anyone like this again,' and I haven't. I've never intensely cared for any man in a way that feels identical to how I cared for another. I found George because I was yearning to replace Ethan, and look what happened. I just added another love to the list. The mistake is in thinking there is only one spot. You divot the sand and the tide fills it in and then you create another pocket while the tide drains itself out. Same properties. Different shapes. It's never the same. — Charlotte Shane

Every man should make his son or daughter learn some useful trade or profession, so that in these days of changing fortunes of being rich today and poor tomorrow they may have something tangible to fall back upon. This provision might save many persons from misery, who by some unexpected turn of fortune have lost all their means. — P.T. Barnum

What sense would it make to classify a man as handicapped because he is in a wheelchair today, if he is expected to be walking again in a month, and competing in track meets before the year is out? Yet Americans are generally given 'class' labels on the basis of their transient location in the income stream. If most Americans do not stay in the same broad income bracket for even a decade, their repeatedly changing 'class' makes class itself a nebulous concept. Yet the intelligentsia are habituated, if not addicted, to seeing the world in class terms. — Thomas Sowell

In the confusions of the next hours the Earth's population was substantially reduced, the biosphere was altered, and the Earth itself was marked with numbers of more conventional craters. For some years thereafter the survivors were existentially preoccupied and the peculiar dustbowl at Bonneville was left to weather by itself in the changing climatic cycles.

"The Man Who Walked Home — James Tiptree Jr.

Now, ideals, conventions, even truth itself, are continually changing things so that the milk of one generation may be the poison of the next. The young Americans of my time have seen one of these transformations with their own eyes, and for this reason they will not make the initial mistake of trying to teach their children too much. Before a man is thirty he has already accumulated, along with a little wisdom, a great quantity of dust and rubbish in his mind, and the difficulty is to let the children profit by what is wise without unloading the dust and rubbish on them too. We can only try to do better at it than the last generation did - when a generation succeeds in doing it completely, in handing down all its discoveries and none of its delusions, its children shall inherit the earth. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Every man seeks the life he thinks he deserves. — Leigh Hershkovich

He is man without a past (or future), stuck in a constantly changing, meaningless moment. — Oliver Sacks

When a man you like switches from what he said a year ago, or 4 years ago, he is a broad-minded person who has courage enough to change his mind with changing conditions. When a man you don't like does it, he is a liar who has broken his promises. — Franklin P. Adams

A man with no children can easily be lulled into a sense that time is standing still. It's not. It's marching past us, relentlessly. Having a child growing and changing before your eyes makes this unavoidably clear. — Jonathan V. Last

Indeed, we all know that the man who attentively contemplates a thing, who wants to see it as it is without changing anything, is 'absorbed,' so to speak, by this contemplation
i.e., by this thing. He forgets himself, he thinks only about the thing being contemplates; he thinks neither about his contemplation, nor
and even less
about himself, his "I," his Selbst. The more he is conscious of the thing, the less he is conscious of himself. He may perhaps talk about the thing, but he will never talk about himself; in his discourse, the word 'I' will not occur.
For this word to appear, something other than purely passive contemplation, which only reveals Being, must also be present. And this other thing, according to Hegel, is Desire, Begierde ... — Alexandre Kojeve

So, ah, who's the lucky girl?" Sam asked, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. When Jericho ignored him, Sam grabbed one of Jericho's Civil War soldier figurines and held it up to his mouth. "Oh, Jericho," he said in a high-pitched voice. "Take me in your arms, you big he-man, you!"
"Please put General Meade back in Gettysburg. You're changing the course of the war. And it's just a date. — Libba Bray

I felt like a man who wakes alone on a deserted island to find that the rest of the world has stolen away in boats in the night. I felt like I was standing on a shore, watching small receding shapes on the horizon. I felt like I had been speaking English, and now I realized everyone else had been speaking a different language entirely. The world was changing. And I didn't want it to. — Lee Child

A man who has blown all his options can't afford the luxury of changing his ways. He has to capitalize on whatever he has left, and he can't afford to admit - no matter how often he's reminded of it - that every day of his life takes him farther and farther down a blind alley ... — Hunter S. Thompson

As Nancy Frey writes of the long-distance pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, 'When pilgrims begin to walk several things usually begin to happen to their perceptions of the world which continue over the course of the journey: they develop a changing sense of time, a heightening of the senses, and a new awareness of their bodies and the landscape ... A young German man expressed it this way: 'In the experience of walking, each step is a thought. You can't escape yourself. — Rebecca Solnit

The only time a woman really succeeds in changing a man is when he's a baby. — Natalie Wood

A wise man needes not blush for changing his purpose. — George Herbert