Mend Your Ways Quotes & Sayings

America is not fighting to win a war. We are fighting to give an application to an old Greek proverb, which is that the purpose of war is not to annihilate an enemy but to get him to mend his ways. And we are confident we can get the enemy to mend his. — Arthur Goldberg

Unfortunately, we are a species with schizoid tendencies, and like an old lady who has to share her house with a growing and destructive group of teenagers, Gaia grows angry, and if they do not mend their ways she will evict them. — James E. Lovelock

If I had smiled and fawned over you at Lady Mannering's ball," she said, "and if I had simpered and giggled during the drive in Hyde Park, you would have lost interest in me in a moment, Lord Ravensberg."
"Good Lord, yes," he agreed. Perceptive of her.
"I would thank you not to take the Lord's name in vain," she said so primly that he was momentarily enchanted. "I see that I have behaved in quite the wrong manner with you. I should have encouraged you."
"There is always time," he suggested, moving his chair half an inch closer to hers, "to mend your ways, Miss Edgeworth. — Mary Balogh

It's good that people get to be human. They get to fuck up and hurt each other. And have broken hearts and then seek to find ways to mend things. People get to evolve. They get to figure out how to change so they don't lose people in their life. Who are we when we aren't allowed to screw up? We are fucking lemurs who live no real lives. — Sarah Noffke

Well, my daddy, he didn't leave me much, you know he was a very simple man, but what he did tell me was this, he did say, son, he said, he say, you know it's possible to become so defiled in this world that your own father and mother will abandon you and if that happens, God will always believe in your ability to mend your ways. — Bob Dylan

Mullahs from the TNSM preached that the earthquake was a warning from God. They said it was caused by women's freedom and obscenity. If we did not mend our ways and introduce sharia or Islamic law, they shouted in their thundering voices, more severe punishment would come. — Malala Yousafzai

careful or to keep off the streets altogether. Finally, he can no longer work, his wife gets a divorce and he is held up to ridicule. He tries every known means to get the jay-walking idea out of his head. He shuts himself up in an asylum, hoping to mend his ways. But the day he comes out he races in front of a fire engine, which breaks his back. Such a man would be crazy, wouldn't he? — Alcoholics Anonymous

Buck found it to be cheaper to mend his ways than to retaliate. — Jack London

So long as a person who has made mistakes ... honestly and sincerely wishes to be cured and to mend his ways, we should welcome him and cure his sickness so that he can become a good comrade. We can never succeed if we just let ourselves go and lash at him. — Mao Zedong

Why do you ever mend your clothes, unless that, wearing them, you may mend your ways. Let us sing. — Henry David Thoreau

If what they are saying about you is true, mend your ways. If it isn't true, forget it, and go on and serve the Lord. — Henry Allen Ironside

To make amends can be viewed two ways: first, that of repairing damage, for if I have damaged my neighbor's fence, I "make a mend," and that is a direct amend; the second way is by modifying my behavior, for if my actions have harmed someone, I make a daily effort to cause no further harm. I "mend my ways," and that is an indirect amend. Which is the best approach? The only right approach, provided that I am causing no further harm in so doing, is to do both. If harm is done, then I simply "mend my ways." To take action in this manner assures me of making honest amends. — Alcoholics Anonymous

The most perilous moment for a bad government is one when it seeks to mend its ways. — Alexis De Tocqueville

God's Mercy and Forgiveness is available for everyone however, your part is to accept it and mend your ways — Josephine Akhagbeme

I told her that letting go is not a choice, in many ways. You try to move on, perhaps. But it comes of its own accord, in the end; it happens when it is ready to, and it mostly comes by without announcement or being noticed at all. I'll always miss my husband. I won't ever be the person I was before ... You don't mend fully, I tell her. But you mend enough, in time. — Susan Fletcher

The fact that most states are born of violent upheaval does not, of course, mean that disorder leads to order. In writing the history of events that are still unfolding in a state that is still unformed, it is impossible to know which tendencies will prevail and at what price. The safest position is the human rights position, which measures regimes on a strictly negative scale as the sum of their crimes and their abuses: if you damn all offenders and some later mend their ways, you can always take credit for your good influence. Unfortunately, the safest position may not necessarily be the wisest, and I wondered whether there is room
even a need
for exercising political judgment in such matters. — Philip Gourevitch

But like the crusaders, who in the name of piety had carried out that dreadful massacre in Jerusalem, there were many citizens who failed to hear in those penitential sermons a call to mend their ways, and instead learnt to hate all those who didn't share their faith. — E.H. Gombrich

There is very little point in trying to urge the world to mend its ways as long as that world is still convinced that its ways are perfectly adequate. — Edsger Dijkstra

We choose our truths the way we choose our gods, single-sightedly, single-mindedly, no other way to feel or see or think. We lock ourselves into our ways, and click all the truths to one.
We put our truths together in pieces, but you use nails and I use glue. You mend with staples. I mend with screws. You stitch what I would bandage.
Your truth may not look like mine, but that is not what matters. What matters is this: You can look at a scar and see hurt, or you can look at a scar and see healing. Try to understand. — Sheri Reynolds

With me, travelling is frankly a vice. The temptation to indulge in it is one which I find almost as hard to resist as the temptation to read promiscuously, omnivorously and without purpose. From time to time, it is true, I make a desperate resolution to mend my ways. I sketch out programmes of useful, serious reading; I try to turn my rambling voyages into systematic tours through the history of art and civilization. But without much success. After a little I relapse into my old bad ways. Deplorable weakness! I try to comfort myself with the hope that even my vices may be of some profit to me. — Aldous Huxley

But, alas, he never really belonged in either place, the sad fate, I am afraid, of those whose hearts break and then mend in crooked ways. — Kate DiCamillo

While the government is "studying" and funding and organizing its Big Thought, nothing is being done. But the citizen who is willing to Think Little, and, accepting the discipline of that, to go ahead on his own, is already solving the problem. A man who is trying to live as a neighbor to his neighbors will have a lively and practical understanding of the work of peace and brotherhood, and let there be no mistake about it - he is doing that work ...
A man who is willing to undertake the discipline and the difficulty of mending his own ways is worth more to the conservation movement than a hundred who are insisting merely that the government and the industries mend their ways.
(pg.87, "Think Little") — Wendell Berry

Mankind
Men, said the Devil,
are good to their brothers:
they don't want to mend
their own ways, but each other's. — Piet Hein

Many people and governments share the mistaken belief that science, with new, ingenious devices and techniques, can rescue us from the troubles we face without our having to mend our ways and change our patterns of activity. This is not so. — Henry W. Kendall

Not to mend one's ways when one has erred is to err indeed. — Confucius

To-day if ye shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts" (Heb. 4:7). That is evangelical preaching. Is this ruthless speed? Nothing could be more ruthless than to make men think there is still plenty of time to mend their ways. To tell men that the cause is urgent, and that the kingdom of God is at hand is the most charitable and merciful act we can perform, the most joyous news we can bring. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer