Quotes & Sayings About Not Knowing What You Want To Do

I was just thinking ... how it is not and it will never be okay to cause pain in someone's life just because of the fact that you are envious of them! Is someone taller than you? Richer than you? More beautiful? That doesn't make it okay to hurt those people, for all you know, they bear deep wounds and carry heavy burdens and their heartache is far greater than anything you could ever bear! People try to hurt people that they're envious of, without knowing that they are adding to what is already painful. And because someone has more than you or has what it is that you want, doesn't mean that they owe you anything! It's not their fault! Be careful, you may just be wounding an angel soul, and a wound inflicted upon an angel soul, will always, always come back to haunt- YOU. — C. JoyBell C.

Do they have to be so public?" I say.
"She just kissed him." Al frowns at me. When he frowns, his thick eyebrows touch his eyelashes. "It's not like they're stripping naked."
"A kiss is not something you do in public."
Al, Will, and Christina all give me the same knowing smile.
"What?" I say.
"Your Abnegation is showing," says Christina. "The rest of us are all right with a little affection in public."
"Oh." I shrug. "Well ... I guess I'll have to get over it, then."
"Or you can stay frigid," says Will, his green eyes glinting with mischief. "You know. If you want. — Veronica Roth

So what do you want?" asked Myrtle.
"I want to help evolution."
Evolution did not fill Faith with the same horror her father had felt. Why should she weep to hear that nothing was set in stone? Everything could change. Everything could get better. Everything was getting better, inch by inch, so slowly that she could not see it, but knowing it gave her strength. — Frances Hardinge

A voice spoke in his head, mellow and vast:

"Long have we watched you, little one."

"Who's there?" he quavered. "Who are you?"

"Your concepts are inadequate."

"Malfunction! Malfunction!" squalled the scouter.

"Shut up, it's not a malfunction. Who's talking to me?"

"You may call us: Rulers of the Galaxy."

The scouter was lunging wildly, buffeting him as it tried to escape the white grasp. Strange crunches, firings of unknown weapons. Still the white stasis held.

"What do you want?" he cried.

"Want?" said the voice dreamily. "We are wise beyond knowing. Powerful beyond your dreams. Perhaps you can get us some fresh fruit."

- 'Painwise — James Tiptree Jr.

Part of buying the groceries is having a philosophy and trying to stick to it as best you can, knowing that occasionally you may make an exception. But, you do so knowing you're attempting to do it for a certain reason and you have to be very careful not to try to make too many exceptions, because then you wind up as a franchise with a team full of exceptions, which is not what you want. — Bill Parcells

Since I'm an asshat, I thought I'd have a choice with you, that I'd be able to walk away if you disillusioned me or turned out to be a blood-sucking creature of the night - and okay, I would have bailed if you were evil . . . Or maybe not. Knowing myself, I'd want to save you. But you're not evil. The point is, I'm realizing you're the same as everyone else in my life, only a thousand times more potent, and that has nothing to do with where you come from. I can grit my teeth about what you do, but I can't control how I react to your laugh. I would rather be near you, see you touch everything but me, than be holding any other girl. I like being with you, Love. Playing, talking, fighting, not-touching. — Natalia Jaster

Kaushik, what about a picture?" my father suggested. I shook my head. I had left my camera, my father's old Yashica, at school. "But you always have it with you." That look of irritated disappointment, the one that had appeared the day my mother died and was missing now that he'd married Chitra, passed briefly across my father's face. "I forgot it," I said. It was true, I did always have the camera with me. Even on quiet weekends when I came home and my father and I saw no one I would bring it, taking it with me on walks. This time I had left it behind, knowing that I would not want to document anything. "I don't understand," my father said. "Neither do I," I replied. "You haven't wanted a picture of anything in years." "That's not true." "It is." We were stating facts and at the same time arguing, an argument whose depths only he and I could fully comprehend. — Jhumpa Lahiri

The world is yourself pushed out. Ask yourself what you want and then give it to yourself! Do not question how it will come about; just go your way knowing that the evidence of what you have done must appear, and it will. — Neville Goddard

I liked AC/DC," Lee said. "If you were going to shoot someone, you'd really want to do it while you were listening to them."
"What about the Beatles? Did you feel like shooting anyone listening to them?"
Lee considered seriously for a moment, then said, "Myself."
At the same time he was laughing, Ig was distressed. Not liking the Beatles was almost as bad as not knowing about them at all. — Joe Hill

I remembered lying there in my wet panties, going, "What do I do now?" Jason was asleep, but even if he hadn't been, I wouldn't have told him what had happened. I was convinced I'd never have heard the end of it. "Wet the bed like a baby!" he'd cry. Well, knowing Jason, he probably wouldn't have said any such thing. But in my feverish four-year-old brain, I was convinced he wouldn't want to be my friend anymore if he knew I was a bed wetter. Also, of course, it would come up every time I beat him at anything: "Well, okay, maybe you're better at Candy Land, but at least I'm not a bed wetter. — Meg Cabot

There's a difference between knowing what to do when you're rehearsing it, and being able to do it once you're adrenalized and emotional. That's when the injuries occur. Actors all want to try to pretend that they're experts at everything, but we're not. — Antony Starr

You've just got to follow your own path. You have to trust your heart and you have to listen to the warnings ... You can't argue with the universe. It's not about that. It's more about relaxing and knowing that you can handle it and feeling empowered. Knowing you have the power to do whatever the hell you want to do. That's what it's about. It really is. — Chaka Khan

I want to tell you a story. It is about a friend who lost his eyesight in a car accident. His world is entirely one of darkness, all the time. Do you know what he told me? He said that if he could see again, he would be in paradise. How I wish I could fulfill his wish. If I cannot help him, at least I can share his insight with you: Do not wait until you lose your eyesight before knowing how happy you can be just by opening your eyes. You have excellent eyes, and each time you open them a marvelous paradise of forms and colors appears. — Chan Khong

I say go, go, be led. particularly If you're in your twenties, which I suspect a lot of you are in. I tell my kids it's a question Mark decade in a sense. and we're told we should know what we want to do. It's a terrible thing. 'what are you going to do?' 'what are you going to be?' 'how can you make a living at that' no, no, no, no, no it's your question mark. You're never gonna have this luxury again of not knowing and it is a luxury not to know. You can play, you can do that, you must because it's your only way not to go crazy. Because if you're- meaning if you're gonna wait for the job, you're gonna die — Dustin Hoffman

The feeling of not being enough for someone, of knowing you would do anything for them and they not the same for you. I didn't want to, but I felt bad for her. I wanted to hate her, but I couldn't. I couldn't blame her for what she didn't know. — Courtney Giardina

Working with Jim Sheridan for instance, we did this movie Brothers. Jim will ask anybody - we'll get a delivery on set, and like the poor delivery guy will be like, "Here's your pizza," and he'll be like, "Come over here. Come here. I want to ask you a question. Do you think this is real? What do you think? Should we do another take?" And they're like, "I, uh, you want your pizza?" There's no shame in everybody's ideas. There's no shame in somebody not knowing. — Jake Gyllenhaal

Girl in the wind
blowing wide open
the closed doors of my life -
which way are we going?

Standing against the lurid sky
on the stark brink of ocean
arms outstretched
as if your love and hunger
would embrace the world
and I in my inner room
playing my poetic premutations
can only look and ask the unanswerable.

Brave and cunning I speak to my typewriter
knowing it will not answer back
knowing it will not reply
what I ask and do not want to hear
as you with the vast sunset merge
a multitude of dreams away
uniquely alone and outside of me
in the purity and rarity of this moment
immeasurably beyond my love and my rage

and with the dying call of gulls
the echo resounds:

Girl in the wind
throwing aside
the tight shutters of my life -
which way are we going? — Christy Brown

There is a certain terror that goes along with saying "My life is up to me." It is scary to realize there's no magic, you can't just wait around, no one can really rescue you, and you have to do something. Not knowing what you want to do with your life - or not at least having some ideas about what to do next - is a defense against that terror. It is a resistance to admitting that the possibilities are not endless. It is a way of pretending that now doesn't matter. Being confused about choices is nothing more than hoping that maybe there is a way to get through life without taking charge. Rather than take charge, — Meg Jay

Either I'm alive or I'm dying, she said to Daniel. Please don't feel you can't tell me. Which is it?
Which does it feel like? said Daniel. He patted her hand. You're not dead yet. You're a lot more alive than many people.
This isn't good enough for Rennie. She wants something definite, the real truth, one way or the other. Then she will know what she should do next. It's this suspension, hanging in a void, this half-life she can't bear. She can't bear not knowing. She doesn't want to know. — Margaret Atwood

Can really rescue you, and you have to do something. Not knowing what you want to — Meg Jay

Do you see, Harry? Do you see the flaw in my brilliant plan now? I had fallen into the trap I had foreseen, that I had told myself I could avoid, that I must avoid."
"I don't - "
"I cared about you too much," said Dumbledore simply. "I cared more for your happiness than your knowing the truth, more for your peace of mind than my plan, more for your life than the lives that might be lost if the plan failed. In other words, I acted exactly as Voldemort expects we fools who love to act.
"Is there a defense? I defy anyone who has watched you as I have - and I have watched you more closely than you can have imagined - not to want to save you more pain than you had already suffered. What did I care if numbers of nameless and faceless people and creatures were slaughtered in the vague future, if in the here and now you were alive, and well, and happy? I never dreamed that I would have such a person on my hands. — J.K. Rowling

Why do we protect children from life? It's no wonder that we become afraid to live. We're not told what life really is. We're not told that life is joy and wonder and magic and even rapture, if you can get involved enough. We're not told that life is also pain, misery, despair, unhappiness, and tears. I don't know about you, but I don't want to miss any of it. I want to embrace life, and I want to find out what it's all about. I wouldn't want to go through life without knowing what it is to cry. — Leo Buscaglia

I had a friend at Princeton, a Russian graduate student. He had a cute message on his answering machine, delivered in his thick Russian accent: Who are you and what do you want? Some people spend a lifetime trying to answer these questions. You, however, have thirty seconds. My father and I chuckled. What happened to him? Gone. My point is that you could think of the people you meet in your life as questions, there to help you figure out who you are, what you're made of, and what you want. In life, as in our new version of the game, you start off not knowing the answer. It's only when the particles rub against each other that we figure out their properties. — Zia Haider Rahman

Therefore, be honest with yourself as to why you are choosing to do a particular thing. Then, do it gladly, knowing that you are always getting to do what you want. The statement "I have no choice" is a lie. You can choose. You simply do not prefer the alternatives available to you, for whatever reason. So you select the outcome that you most prefer. — Neale Donald Walsch

I think that as a young lady, you start off not knowing what you want to do, and then you kinda arrive at yourself by the time you're 17 or 18, hopefully. And that's what I did. — Rutina Wesley

Unclear goals create unclear results. You need to know where you're going, and have faith that you will get there. Your intuition has been nagging at you to get moving on your goals. It's time to listen and obey your intuition, because that's how you'll get the joy, freedom, and security you want and deserve. Everyone has goals, because everyone has a divine assignment. You'll clearly understand your divine assignment by listening to and obeying your intuition. You are very, very qualified to fulfill your divine assignment. These assignments are never given by mistake or accident. Every time you finish one step of your intuitive instructions, you will be given another set of them. Don't fret about not knowing what to do in the future; you will be guided every day of your life. — Doreen Virtue

When you believe in your way, enlightenment is there. But when you cannot believe in the meaning of the practice which you are doing in this moment, you cannot do anything. You are just wandering around the goal with your monkey mind. You are always looking for something without knowing what you are doing. If you want to see something, you should open your eyes. When you do not understand Bodhidharma's Zen, you are trying to look at something with your eyes closed. We do not slight the idea of attaining enlightenment, but the most important thing is this moment, not some day in the future. We have to make our effort in this moment. This is the most important thing for our practice. — Shunryu Suzuki

Some people say, "How can you live without knowing?" I do not know what they mean. I always live without knowing. That is easy. How you get to know is what I want to know. — Richard P. Feynman

Gnosis in Greek means knowledge, or to know. This does not refer to factual knowledge, but to an intuitive or spiritual understanding that comes from experience. The early Gnostics were mystics, people who knew that you could experience God for yourself instead of going into a church and being told what to believe. In Hebrew, to know means to experience - so, according to the Hebrews, knowing God means to experience Him. This is what most all early Hebrews and Christians were striving to do. Unfortunately, the Church got in the way of personal experience, by creating "organized religion." There's a saying which states, "Religion is for the masses, and mysticism is for the individual." If you want to be a sheep and follow along with the masses to get a generic, candy-coated version of your spirituality, then follow the teachings of the Christian fathers. If you want to explore your own individual spirituality, you must go deeply inside yourself, instead of through church doors. — Jordan Maxwell

I am not without fear, but courage is taking action despite the fear. Knowing what you want, what you are meant to do, and proceeding despite any knots in your stomach or rocks stuck in your throat. It is walking boldly into the unknown with your chin held high ... even if it quivers. — Rachel Harris

Because orgasmic sex would lead to women's autonomy, knowing who you are and what we want: Women are not going to follow what some jackass tells us we must do. Not all women are going to get married, be monogamous and raise a family. It will destroy the current social structure based on a sexual double standard that we're currently living under. — Betty Dodson

Then why do you want to know?"
"Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do. — Umberto Eco

Gray texted me a joke the other day. Want to hear it?"
"Knowing Gray's terrible jokes, probably not. But okay."
He rubs the back of his neck. "What do you call a cow with no legs?"
I caress his waist where muscles ripple. "What?"
"Ground beef. — Kristen Callihan

The truly terrible thing about this life, was not knowing what you want, but only able to recognize what you do not want. You have to spend so much time and energy trying to find it out, time that other people spent in pursuing of their desires. — Whitney Otto

The unknown is exciting. Not knowing what you really want to do is an adventure. It's a chance to go out there and find out what you want, to learn about yourself. Not everyone has it figured out, you know. — R.K. Ryals

If there's one thing I hate, it's not knowing what's wrong with someone and all you want to do is make them feel better. — Pleasefindthis

Knowing what we know, how much more do we want to give Him something? But He seems to have everything. Well, not quite. He doesn't have you with Him again forever, not yet. I hope you are touched by the feelings of His heart enough to sense how much He wants to know you are coming home to Him. You can't give that gift to Him in one day, or one Christmas, but you could show Him today that you are on the way. You could pray. You could read a page of scripture. You could keep a commandment. If you have already done these, there is still something left to give. All around you are people He loves but can help only through you and me. One of the sure signs that we have accepted the gift of the Savior's atonement is that we give gifts to others. — Henry B. Eyring

You don't want to be starting a film not knowing what you want to do. — Russell Crowe