Missing The Mark Quotes & Sayings

Lord Bacchus, do you remember me? I helped you with that missing leopard in Sonoma."
Bacchus scratched his stubbly chin. "Ah ... yes. John Green."
"Jason Grace."
"Whatever," the god said. — Rick Riordan

Maturity is the ability to harness your abilities and your energies and do more than is expected. The mature person refuses to settle for mediocrity. He/she would rather aim high and miss the mark than low-and make it. — Ann Landers

If we are silent when we should speak, we are not living the Discipline of silence. If we speak when we should be silent, we again miss the mark. — Richard J. Foster

Sure, you can choose the safety and predictability of the cage, forfeiting the adventure God has destined for you. But you won't be the only one missing out or losing out. When you lack the courage to chase the Wild Goose, the opportunity costs are staggering. Who might not hear about the love of God if you don't seize the opportunity to tell them? Who might be stuck in poverty, stuck in ignorance, stuck in pain if you're not there to help free them? Where might the advance of God's kingdom in the world stall out because you weren't there on the front lines? — Mark Batterson

You spend your life hoarding memories against the day you'll lack the energy to go out and make new ones, because that's the comfort of the old age. The ability to look back at your life and know that you left your mark on the world. But I'm losing my memories, it's like someone's broken into my piggy bank and is robbing me one penny at a time. It's happening so slowly, I can hardly tell what's missing. — Shaun David Hutchinson

The national debate on health-care reform wildly misses the mark, with Democrats and Republicans alike arguing about who's going to pay rather than about what would actually make people healthy. — T. Colin Campbell

Some field days can be tough. I've worked inside fuel tanks with 3 foot ceilings, in -42 to +42 Celsius temperatures, in snow and smoke and hail, and I've dug through snow and ice and pavement to find legal evidence. I've worked clear through the night by headlamp, and I've flown in a rickety long-islander with propane tanks strapped into the other seats. I've jury-rigged missing equipment, broken into my own truck, and cut out an emergency helicopter pad with a machete. I've been hungry, cold, tired, lost, injured, and downright hopeless! — Mark Mason

Good afternoon, class," he said.
I said a soft good afternoon, but no one else in the class joined me.
Dr. Green laughed. "I think my class is missing. Did no one show up today? I'll have to mark everyone as absent. I believe I said good afternoon."
The room chorused a low murmuring of 'good afternoon' in reply.
"This won't do," Dr. Green said. "I'm here to teach you Japanese. I can't very well teach you English, too. — C.L.Stone

...our low regard for nostalgia often seems not to rest on some substantive standard of excellence, in light of which a preference for the past is seen as missing the mark, but rather expresses idolatry of the present. This kind of "forward-thinking" is at bottom an apologetic species of conservatism, as it defers to and celebrates whatever is currently ascendant. — Matthew B. Crawford

Stars are good, too. I wish I could get some to put in my hair. But I suppose I never can. You would be surprised to find how far off they are, for they do not look it. When they first showed, last night, I tried to knock some down with a pole, but it didn't reach, which astonished me; then I tried clods till I was all tired out, but I never got one. It was because I am left-handed and cannot throw good. Even when I aimed at the one I wasn't after I couldn't hit the other one, though I did make some close shots, for I saw the black blot of the clod sail right into the midst of the golden clusters forty or fifty times, just barely missing them, and if I could have held out a little longer maybe I could have got one. — Mark Twain

Your reputation has no duplicate. You are one till the end of time. Once it is damaged, a fresh personality cannot spring from the old one. — Michael Bassey Johnson

There are certain directors where you know you're going to be good or you're not going to be there. There are people where you kind of know that if you miss the mark then it'll probably not be in the movie and that's very reassuring. — Christopher Walken

The archer who misses his mark does not blame the target. He stops, corrects himself and shoots again. — Confucius

It doesn't honor God to pretend everything is OK. That's the beauty of Jesus that so many people miss. The beauty is that he died on the cross for our sins, but also that he existed the way we exist. — John Mark McMillan

Manifesting happens everyday whether we want it to or not, we are always attracting things and people to us. The absolute key to Manifesting without missing a mark, is to do so with confident intention and complete awareness. — Sereda Aleta Dailey

Nothing has a greater impact on spiritual growth than reflection on Scripture. If churches could do only one thing to help people at all levels of spiritual maturity grow in their relationship with Christ, their choice is clear. They would inspire, encourage, and equip their people to read the Bible - specifically, to reflect on Scripture for meaning in their lives. The numbers say most churches are missing the mark - because only one out of five congregants reflects on Scripture every day. — Greg L. Hawkins

I would die if I had to be confined. I don't want to feel that I'm missing out on experiencing as much as I can. For me, experiencing is knowing people all over the world and being able to photograph. — Mary Ellen Mark

Ridiculed as "Knox the knave" and "a runagate Scot," he was outlawed and forbidden to preach by the archbishop of St. Andrews, and orders were issued that he be shot on sight if he failed to comply.
Knox did not comply. Years later, a would-be assassin fired a shot through a window of Knox's house in Edinburgh, narrowly missing his mark.? Still Knox preached. — Douglas Bond

Missing the mark is one of the ways in which we learn to hit the target. — Eric Butterworth

Allow me to offer my congratulations on the truly admirable skill you have shown in keeping clear of the mark. Not to have hit once in so many trials, argues the most splendid talents for missing. — Thomas De Quincey

Zen phrase says The instant you speak about a thing you miss the mark. — Fritjof Capra

People need to be given enough so that they feel like they're not missing something. There's a thing that you have when you watch a movie where, if you feel like you're not following and you're going to get tested on it later, you're going to get disengaged. So, you have to give people just enough information, so that they're able to keep up with the story. — Mark Waters

The centre is missing, but we cannot stop searching for it or positing it. It is not that there is nothing there - it is that what is there is not capable of exercising responsibility — Mark Fisher

Do you know how, sometimes, during a commercial break in your favorite television shows, your best friend calls and wants to talk about one of her boyfriends, and when you try to hang up, she starts crying and you try to cheer her up and end up missing about half o the episode? And so when you go to work the next day you have to get the guy who sits next to you to explain what happened? That's the good thing about a book. You can mark your place in a book. But this isn't really a book. It's a television show. — Kelly Link

The person who believes he must earn the right to go through the door of eternal life will miss the mark. — Max Anders

Ninety-five percent of the trading errors you are likely to make - causing the money to just evaporate before your eyes - will stem from your attitudes about being wrong, losing money, missing out, and leaving money on the table. What I call the four primary trading fears. — Mark Douglas

Percy and Hedge lay on the deck, looking exhausted. Hedge was missing his shoes. He grinned at the sky, muttering, "Awesome. Awesome." Percy was covered in nicks and scratches, like he'd jumped through a window. He didn't say anything but he grasped Annabeth's hand weakly as if to say, Be right with you as soon as the world stops spinning.
Leo, Piper, and Jason, who'd been eating in the mess hall, came rushing up the stairs.
"What? What?" Leo cried, holding a half-eaten grilled cheese sandwich. "Can't a guy even take a lunch break? What's wrong?"
"Followed!" Frank yelled again.
"Followed by what? Jason asked.
"I don't know!" Frank panted. "Whales? Sea monsters? Maybe Kate and Porky!"
Annabeth wanted to strangle the guy, but she wasn't sure her hands would fit around his thick neck. "That makes absolutely no sense. — Rick Riordan

If you were to skip your time with God, would you be more concerned about missing the mark or missing God? — Vicki Courtney

It's funny how we think life works a certain way because of TV and movies. Most people don't really think about how scripts are edited and how people get to practice their lines and rehearse. If one doesn't get it right they get to redo the scene until they do. In real life what's missing or not working only comes up when we're going along full blast. We end up being the editors of our lives only while we're running in real time. — Mark Kendrick

If you don't follow the stock market, you are missing some amazing drama. — Mark Cuban

For legislators make the citizens good by forming habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it miss their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one. — Aristotle.

Long shots almost always miss the mark. — Peter Lynch

In the seventies I used to work in the bedroom of my flat at a little table. I worked in longhand with a fountain pen. I'd type out a draft, mark up the typescript, type it out again. Once I paid a professional to type a final draft, but I felt I was missing things I would have changed if I had done it myself. In the mid-eighties I was a grateful convert to computers. Word processing is more intimate, more like thinking itself. In retrospect, the typewriter seems a gross mechanical obstruction. I like the provisional nature of unprinted material held in the computer's memory - like an unspoken thought. I like the way sentences or passages can be endlessly reworked, and the way this faithful machine remembers all your little jottings and messages to yourself. Until, of course, it sulks and crashes. — Ian McEwan

Inherently, each one of us has the substance within to achieve whatever our goals and dreams define. What is missing from each of us is the training, education, knowledge and insight to utilize what we already have. — Mark Twain

they all stem from the primal fault, which is idolatry, worshipping that which is not God as if it were. Second, they all show the telltale marks of the consequent fault, which is subhuman behavior, that is, the failure fully to reflect the image of God, that missing the mark as regards full, free, and genuine humanness for which the New Testament's regular word is hamartia, "sin." (Sin, we note, is not the breaking of arbitrary rules; rather, the rules are the thumbnail sketches of different types of dehumanizing behavior.) Third, it is perfectly possible, and it really does seem to happen in practice, that this idolatry and dehumanization become so endemic in the life and chosen behavior of an individual, and indeed of groups, that unless there is a specific turning away from such a way of life, those who persist are conniving at their own ultimate dehumanization. This — N. T. Wright

The pathologized images have moved the soul in several ways: we are afraid; we feel vulnerable and in danger; our very physical sustance and sanity appear to be menaced; we want to prevent or rectify. Especially this last seizes us. We feel protective, impelled to correct, straighten, repair. For we have confused something sick with something wrong. [ ... ]
affliction reaches us partly through the guilt it brings. Guilt belongs to the experiences of deviation, the the sense of being off, failing, 'missing the mark'. [ ... ]
However the true missing of the mark is taking the guilt literally, where failings becomes faults to be set right. This places the guilt on the shoulders of the ego who 'should not' have failed. Then pathologizing reinforces the ego's style and guilt serves a secondary gain, increasing the ego's sense of importance: ego becomes superego, drivenly busy with repairing wrongs. A guilty ego is no less egocentric than a proud one. — James Hillman

The inner life is bruised by a running against the laws of the Kingdom. The bruises are guilt complexes, a sense of inferiority, of missing the mark, of being out of harmony with God and with oneself, a sense of wrongness. Divine forgiveness wipes out all that sense of inner hurt and condemnation. Brings a sense of at-homeness- at home with God and oneself and with life. The universe opens its arms and takes one in. You are accepted- by God, by yourself, and by life. All self-loathing, self-rejection, all inferiorities drop away. You are a child of God; born from above, you walk the earth, a conqueror, afraid of nothing. Healed at the heart, you can say to life: Come on, I'm ready for anything. — E. Stanley Jones

Our God is a three-part being (Father, Son and Holy Spirit). Mark T. Barclay-The Missing Red Letters — Mark T. Barclay

And," Annabeth continued, "it reminds me how long we've known each other. We were twelve, Percy. Can you believe that?"
"No, he admitted. "So ... you knew you liked me from that moment?"
She smirked. "I hated you at first. You annoyed me. Then I tolerated you for a few years. Then - "
"Okay, fine."
She leaned in and kissed: him a good, proper kiss without anyone watching - no Romans anywhere, no screaming satyr chaperones.
She pulled away. "I missed you, Percy."
Percy wanted to tell her the same thing, but it seemed too small a comment. While he had been on the Roman side, he'd kept himself alive almost solely by thinking of Annabeth. I missed you didn't really cover that. — Rick Riordan

You'll always make mistakes and you'll miss the mark sometimes. That's inevitably going to happen, because the best people in the world make mistakes - even people who are brilliant. — James Corden

What makes a poem a poem, finally, is that it is unparaphrasable. There is no other way to say exactly this; it exists only in its own body of language, only in these words. I may try to explain it or represent it in other terms, but then some element of its life will always be missing.
It's the same with painting. All I can say of still life must finally fall short; I may inventory, weigh, suggest, but I cannot circumscribe; some element of mystery will always be left out. What is missing is, precisely, its poetry. — Mark Doty

Eneke the bird was asked why he was always on the wing and he replied: 'Men have learnt to shoot without missing their mark and I have learnt to fly without perching on a twig.' — Chinua Achebe

We must not become so preoccupied looking for "major" miracles that we miss all the daily ones. — Mark Hart

Do we miss not only the past but every future the lost past describes? Is that just the nature of missing? All the lost might-have-beens? The certainty that those uncertain futures are gone? If we can't embrace uncertainty do we miss the point of love? — Mark Z. Danielewski

If you are only moved by color relationships, you are missing the point. I am interested in expressing the big emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, doom. — Mark Rothko

Irresolution is a worse vice than rashness. He that shoots best may sometimes miss the mark; but he that shoots not at all can never hit it. Irresolution loosens all the joints of a state; like an ague, it shakes not this nor that limb, but all the body is at once in a fit. The irresolute man is lifted from one place to another; so hatcheth nothing, but addles all his actions. — Owen Feltham

Life, wherever it reveals itself; truth, no matter how bitter; bold, sincere speech with people - these are my leaven, these are what I want, this is where I am afraid of missing the mark. — Modest Mussorgsky

But as some muskets so contrive it
As oft to miss the mark they drive at,
And though well aimed at dock or plover
Bear wide, and kick their owners over. — John Trumbull

Start living right here, in each present moment. When we stop dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, we're open to rich sources of information we've been missing out on - information that can keep us out of the downward spiral and poised for a richer life. — Mark Williams

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing. — Mark Strand

That's why I hadn't talked to you for a while. But man, did I miss hearing your sweet voice." Sandy was surprised. Mark was never the type to talk about "missing" anything, — Kim Brooks

It is not easy to hurl snowballs while holding on to a plastic bag of groceries, so my first few efforts were subpar, missing their mark. The nine maybe ten nine-maybe-ten-year-olds ridiculed me - if I turned to aim at one, four others outflanked me and shot from the sides and the back. I was, in the parlance of an ancient day, cruising for a bruising, and while a more disdainful teenager would have walked away, and a more aggressive teenager wouls have dropped the bag and kicked some major preteen ass, I kept fighting snowball with snowball, laughing as if Boomer and I were playing a school yard game, flinging my orbs with abandon. — Rachel Cohn

Someone walking past might think that he was being cruel, making fun of his young son. They would be missing the mark. It wasn't my ability to catch a ball that we were bonding over, it was my ability to catch his sarcasm. — Jack D. Ferraiolo

Mentally, many of the residents are still, as they say, sharp like a tack, but some are now more like the other end of the tack, having been hit with the hammer of life much too often. You know, missing a few candles from their menorah. — Mark Reutlinger

My youth an unripe plum. Your teeth have left their marks on it. The tooth marks still vibrate. I remember always, remember always. Since I learned how to love you, the door of my soul has been left wide open to the winds of the four directions. Reality calls for change. The fruit of awareness is already ripe, and the door can never be closed again. Fire consumes this century, and mountains and forests bear its mark. The wind howls across my ears, while the whole sky shakes violently in the snowstorm. Winter's wounds lie still, Missing the frozen blade, Restless, tossing and turning in agony all night. — Thich Nhat Hanh

It is really quite amazing by what margins competent but conservative scientists and engineers can miss the mark, when they start with the preconceived idea that what they are investigating is impossible. — Arthur C. Clarke

Perhaps in the margins of darkness, I could create a son who is not missing; who lives beyond even my own imagination and invention; whose lusts, stupidities, and strengths carry him farther than even he or I can anticipate; who sees the world for what it is; and consequently bears the burden of everyone's tomorrow with unprecedented wisdom and honor because he is one of the very few who has successfully interrogated his own nature. His shields are instantly available though seldom used. And those who value him shall prosper while those who would destroy him shall perish. He will fulfill a promise I made years ago but failed to keep. — Mark Z. Danielewski