Not What You Have Quotes & Sayings

You see, we were able to give you something, something which even now no one will ever take from you, and we were able to do that principally by sheltering you. Hailsham would not have been Hailsham if we hadn't. Very well, sometimes that meant we kept things from you, lied to you. Yes, in many ways we fooled you, I suppose you could even call it that. But we sheltered you during those years, and we gave you your childhoods. Lucy was well-meaning enough. But if she'd have her way, your happiness at Hailsham would have been shattered. Look at you both now! I'm so proud to see you both. You built your lives on what we gave you. You wouldn't be who you are today if we'd not protected you. You wouldn't have become absorbed in your lessons, you wouldn't have lost yourselves in your art and your writing. Why should you have done, knowing what lay in store for each of you? You would have told us it was all pointless, and how could we have argued with you? So she had to go. — Kazuo Ishiguro

You must not begin to fret about the successes of cheap people. After all, what have they to do with you? — Willa Cather

Really study what types of formats have been working online that you resonate with: get a feel for what works in the current ecosystem of online video. Sometimes, that passion-project you really want to do is not the way to start. — Benny Fine

They always think one
commits suicide for a reason. But it is quite possible to commit suicide for two reasons. No, that never occurs to them. So what is the good of dying
intentionally, of sacrificing yourself to the idea you want people to have of you? Once you are dead, they will take advantage of it to attribute idiotic or
vulgar motives to your action. Martyrs,cherami, must choose between being forgotten, mocked, or made use of. As for being understood
never! Besides,
let us not beat about the bush; I love life
that is my real weakness. I love it so much that I am incapable of imagining what is not life. Such avidity has
something plebeian about it, don't you think? — Albert Camus

Reaction is just that - an action you have taken before. When you "re-act," what you do is assess the incoming data, search your memory bank for the same or nearly the same experience, and act the way you did before. This is all the work of the mind, not of your soul. — Neale Donald Walsch

The devil can quote Scripture for his purpose; and the text of Scripture which he now most commonly quotes is, "The Kingdom of heaven is within you." That text has been the stay and support of more Pharisees and prigs and self-righteous spiritual bullies than all the dogmas in creation; it has served to identify self-satisfaction with the peace that passes all understanding. And the text to be quoted in answer to it is that which declares that no man can receive the kingdom except as a little child. What we are to have inside is a childlike spirit; but the childlike spirit is not entirely concerned about what is inside. It is the first mark of possessing it that one is interested in what is outside. The most childlike thing about a child is his curiosity and his appetite and his power of wonder at the world. We might almost say that the whole advantage of having the kingdom within is that we look for it somewhere else. — G.K. Chesterton

Time, That Is Pleased to Lengthen out the Day

Time, that is pleased to lengthen out the day
For grieving lovers parted or denied,
And pleased to hurry the sweet hours away
From such as lie enchanted side by side,
Is not my kinsman; nay, my feudal foe
Is he that in my childhood was the thief
Of all my mother's beauty, and in woe
My father bowed, and brought our house to grief.
Thus, though he think to touch with hateful frost
Your treasured curls, and your clear forehead line,
And so persuade me from you, he has lost;
Never shall he inherit what was mine.
When Time and all his tricks have done their worst,
Still will I hold you dear, and him accurst. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

We checked carefully the international law - what does a nation do when terrorists are using civilians to defend their life, as a shelter. And they say you do not have a choice. — Shimon Peres

There is still one of which you never speak.'
Marco Polo bowed his head.
'Venice,' the Khan said.
Marco smiled. 'What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?'
The emperor did not turn a hair. 'And yet I have never heard you mention that name.'
And Polo said: 'Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice. — Italo Calvino

When failure imprisons you for not doing what you should have done, you have no option than to bail yourself on the promise of trying again! Try again! — Israelmore Ayivor

Whatever I decide will not work. It's what people want that will work. So no one decided whether you become a vegetarian or anything else. What determines that is the availability of food. If we run out of vegetation due to floods or natural disasters, people will consume meat and if we run out of meat they will consume vegetables. I have no control over that. That would be up to people. — Jacque Fresco

I can tell you that the end of a live is the sun of the love that was lived in it, that whatever you think you have sworn, being here at the end of Jem's life is not what is important.
It was being here for every other moment. Since you met him you have never left him and never not loved him — Cassandra Clare

So what? You act all mysterious to seem more interesting?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You're always wandering off or running away," he said. "But you're a lot more
interesting when you're just being yourself you know. When you're actually here."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Emma said coldly. "Where else would I be?"

"You know what I mean," he said, a rough edge to his voice. "It's like you're so busy trying not to act like your family that you've never even stopped to consider that it might not be such a bad thing."

"Well what about you?" she shot back, aware of the bitterness in her words.
"You complain about your dad not wanting you around, and then you complain when he wants you to stay home for school. You can't have it both wars."

"Well neither can you," he said. " You can't keep everyone at arms length and then expect them to be there for you when you need them. — Jennifer E. Smith

I listen to silence. And you have a lot to say. Although I haven't quite figured out what it is yet ... I promise not to delve into what makes your silence so loud, if you promise not to walk out on me. — Rebecca Donovan

I shun all activities and you have none. You have freed yourself from all duties which had been forced on you. And so you need not know what time of the day or what time of the week, or numbers, reckoning of before and after, when and how far; in short you don't have to know the business of counting, which habit has made us human beings miserable in many ways. We have lost the faculty of appreciating the present living moment. We are always looking forward or backward and waiting for one or sighing for the other, and lose the pleasure of awareness of the moment in which we actually exist. — R.K. Narayan

Do you - do you think I want to - do you think I give a - I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY!" Harry roared.
"You will," said Dumbledore sadly. "Because you are not nearly as mad at me as you ought to be. If you are to attack me, as I know you are close to doing, I would like to have thoroughly earned it. — J.K. Rowling

I think what Pope Francis is saying is that nobody's perfect, you know? And so someone like Joe Biden, you know, where - you know, when he was running for president, people were - there were some bishops that were like don't let him have the Eucharist. And Pope Francis is saying that's not the point of this. — Jim Gaffigan

What I mean to say is that you can make a choice, be reasonably satisfied with it, and still regret that which you did not choose. Maybe it's like ordering dessert. You have it narrowed down to either a warm peanut butter torte or strawberries jubilee. You choose the torte, and it's delicious. But you still wonder about those strawberries... — Gabrielle Zevin

Contentment is not the fulfillment of what you want, but the realization of how much you already have. — Anonymous

In those years I did not care to enjoy sex, only to have it. That is what seeing Alex again on Fifth Avenue brought back to me - a youth of fascinated, passionless copulation. There they are, figures in a discoloured blur, young men and not so young, the nice ones with automobiles, the dull ones full of suspicions and stinginess. By asking a thousand questions of many heavy souls, I did not learn much. You receive biographies interesting mainly for their coherence. So many are children who from the day of their birth are growing up to be their parents. Look at the voting records, inherited like flat feet. — Elizabeth Hardwick

Without time," the angel said, "you have only the bottomless, shapeless mire of eternity."
"FYI, philosophy bores me."
"Not philosophy. Reality. Time is what gives life significance. — J.R. Ward

They maintain he wrote The Art of War. Personally, I believe it was a woman. On the surface, The Art of War is a manual about tactics on the battlefield, but at its deepest level it describes how to win conflicts. Or to be more precise, the art of getting what you want at the lowest possible price. The winner of a war is not necessarily the victor. Many have won the crown, but lost so much of their army that they can only rule on their ostensibly defeated enemies' terms. With regard to power, women don't have the vanity men have. They don't need to make power visible, they only want the power to give them the other things they want. Security. Food. Enjoyment. Revenge. Peace. They are rational, power-seeking planners, who think beyond the battle, beyond the victory celebrations. And because they have an inborn capacity to see weakness in their victims, they know instinctively when and how to strike. And when to stop. You can't learn that, Spiuni. — Jo Nesbo

Were you raised in a barn? You don't just walk into someone's house." Ash laughed. "I have an open invitation to enter whenever I'm here." "Yeah, but what if he's naked or something?" Ash led him into the foyer. "I've known Kyrian for over two thousand years, and I can honesty say that I have never once caught him naked in his living room." The door closed behind them without Ash or Nick touching it- something that always unnerved Nick when Ash did it. "Besides, Rosa's still here. I know he's not walking around bare-assed with her on duty. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

But the truth is, I want to be some woman's work boots, not her high heels."
"Work boots?" What was sexy about that? And did women have work boots?
"Yeah. You know, the boots she pulls out when she wants to get down and dirty, hiking or gardening or boating or painting the kitchen. The ones she relies on and trusts and lives her life hard and good and on her terms in. Her favorites. — Erin McCarthy

People need to understand that what happens in people's homes and behind closed doors, unless you were there, you really shouldn't make any analogy or any assumption, which writers do quite a bit. It's not something I ever for one second thought about. This is not my life story, and I've never told my life story, and I have no interest in telling my life story. — Charlize Theron

The worst part is wondering how you'll find the strength tomorrow
to go on doing what you did today and have been doing for much
too long, where you'll find the strength for all that stupid running around, those projects that come to nothing, those attempts to escape from crushing necessity, which always founder and serve only to convince you one more time that destiny is implacable, that every night will find you down and out, crushed by the dread of more and more sordid and insecure tomorrows. And maybe it's treacherous old age coming on, threatening the worst. Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn't enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I've never been able to kill myself. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

What about you?" Scarlet asked. "You have to enjoy the fear, too. Just a little?"
"Not the fear," Han said. "I just like being a little smarter than the next guy."
"That's all it is?"
"That, and I really hate paying taxes. — James S.A. Corey

Make no mistake,' He says, 'if you let me, I will make you perfect. The moment you put yourself in My hands, that is what you are in for. Nothing less, or other, than that. You have free will, and if you choose, you can push Me away. But if you do not push Me away, understand that I am going to see this job through. Whatever suffering it may cost you in your earthly life, whatever inconceivable purification it may cost you after death, whatever it costs Me, I will never rest, nor let you rest, until you are literally perfect - until my Father can say without reservation that He is well pleased with you, as He said He was well pleased with me. This I can do and will do. But I will not do anything less. — C.S. Lewis

When I say, 'I love you,' it's not because I want you or because I can't have you. It has nothing to do with me. I love what you are, what you do, how you try. I've seen your kindness and your strength. I've seen the best and the worst of you. And I understand with perfect clarity exactly what you are. You're a hell of a person. — Joss Whedon

Anybody who does not value what you have does not deserve your relationship. — Matthew Ashimolowo

What do we live for? If not to give what you have and share life with other souls. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Only other backpackers will understand what it's like to leave home to follow your dreams. Those pals back home will nod along, listening to your travel tales, but for them it's just words and pretty pictures. For you, everything has changed and you look around feeling like an alien in the most foreign place you have visited: home. That's why it's called a travel bug - you literally get bitten with this desire to keep moving and keep exploring, as the life you had back home isn't enough any more and may not ever be enough again. — Katy Colins

While there is widespread recognition that the War on Drugs is racist and that politicians have refused to invest in jobs or schools in their communities, parents of offenders and ex-offenders still feel intense shame - shame that their children have turned to crime despite the lack of obvious alternatives. One mother of an incarcerated teen, Constance, described her angst this way: "Regardless of what you feel like you've done for your kid, it still comes back on you, and you feel like, 'Well, maybe I did something wrong. Maybe I messed up. You know, maybe if I had a did it this way, then it wouldn't a happened that way.'" After her son's arrest, she could not bring herself to tell friends and relatives and kept the family's suffering private. Constance is not alone. — Michelle Alexander

I think each album does have a different energy, otherwise you'd be doing the same thing again and not experimenting anew ... Albums are such autobiographical material, not in the material but as an expression of what you're like at the time. — Kate Bush

I've fallen. I must have slipped. Hit my head on something. I think I'm going to be sick. Everything is red. I can't get up. One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl . . . Three for a girl. I'm stuck on three, I just can't get any further. My head is thick with sounds, my mouth thick with blood. Three for a girl. I can hear the magpies - they're laughing, mocking me, a raucous cackling. A tiding. Bad tidings. I can see them now, black against the sun. Not the birds, something else. Someone's coming. Someone is speaking to me. Now look. Now look what you made me do. — Paula Hawkins

Who do you want them to think you are? How do you think people see you? Or don't you let them near enough to see. You make up their minds for them. Do you think you succeed in convincing people that you are what you seem to be? You make people meet you on your own territory. You don't help them. You let them verbally hang themselves and then feel better about yourself, your power, your own sense of worth. You have the power to alienate them and if they allow it, you might even manage to make them feel awkward and foolish--foolish for letting you affect them at all. Do you want them to like you? Or are you one of those people who "don't care what people think." You're not living your life for them, so why should you give a fuck what people think? You make people come to you and, when they eventually do, you punish them with your smugness. Nothing ever out of character. — Carrie Fisher

One of the things I love about translation is it obliterates the self. When I'm trying to figure out what Tu Fu has to say, I have to kind of impersonate Tu Fu. I have to take on, if you will, his voice and his skin in English, and I have to try to get as deeply into the poem as possible. I'm not trying to make an equivalent poem in English, which can't be done because our language can't accommodate the kind of metaphors within metaphors the Chinese written language can, and often does, contain. — Sam Hamill

Improvising, I participated in the discussion, and questioned another woman in the group. I asked her how old she was and she answered, "Thirty." I replied, "No, you are not thirty but instead eighty and lying on your deathbed. And now you are looking back on your life, a life which was childless but full of financial success and social prestige." And then I invited her to imagine what she would feel in this situation. "What will you think of it? What will you say to yourself?" Let me quote what she actually said from a tape which was recorded during that session. "Oh, I married a millionaire, I had an easy life full of wealth, and I lived it up! I flirted with men; I teased them! But now I am eighty; I have no children of my own. Looking back as an old woman, I cannot see what all that was for; actually, I must say, my life was a failure! — Viktor E. Frankl

The madman's explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable; this may be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds of madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours. Or if a man says that he is the rightful King of England, it is no complete answer to say that the existing authorities call him mad; for if he were King of England that might be the wisest thing for the existing authorities to do. Or if a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ's. — G.K. Chesterton

Envy and jealousy are very harmful because you are never ever satisfied with what you have and you never reflect on what you have. You constantly live your life on what you do not have. — Tsem Tulku

If your church continues in this liberty of conscience, making no scruple to take away what she pleases, soon the Scripture will fail you, and you will have to be satisfied with the Institutes of Calvin, which must indeed have I know not what excellence, since they censure the Scriptures themselves! — Francis De Sales

It was partly the war, the revolution did the rest. The war was an artificial break in life
as if life could be put off for a time
what nonsense! The revolution broke out willy-nilly like a sigh suppressed too long. Everyone was revived, reborn, changed, transformed. You might say that everyone has been through two revolutions
his own, personal revolution as well as the general one. It seems to me that socialism is the sea, and all these separate streams, these private, individual revolutions, are flowing into it
the sea of life, the sea of spontaneity. I said life, but I mean life as you see it in a great picture, transformed by genius, creatively enriched. Only now people have decided to experience it not in books and pictures, but in themselves, not as an abstraction but in practice. — Boris Pasternak

Fearlessness is not what you do to win, but what you don't do. When you love yourself as much as your God, you won't see other people as the source of your pain. Rather, you will see who you have become because you honestly believed that your chains would be broken through hatred, instead of kindness. — Shannon L. Alder

Cass Mastern lived for a few years and in that time he learned that the world is all of one piece. He learned that the world is like an enormous spider web and if you touch it, however lightly, at any point, the vibration ripples to the remotest perimeter and the drowsy spider feels the tingle and is drowsy no more but spring out to fling the gossamer coils about you who have touched the web and then inject the black, numbing poison under your hide. It does not matter whether or not you meant to brush the web of things. You happy foot or you gay wing may have brushed it ever so lightly, but what happens always happens and there is the spider, bearded black and with his great faceted eyes glittering like mirrors in the sun, or like God's eye, and the fangs dripping. — Robert Penn Warren

Hale." Kat sighed. "The headmaster's car? Really? That's not to cliched for you?"
What can I say?" He shrugged. "I'm an old-fashioned guy. Besides, it's a classic for a reason." He leaned against the window. "It's good to see you, Kat."
Kat didn't know what to say. It's good to see you, too? Thanks for getting me kicked out? Is it possible you've gotten even hotter? I think I might have missed you? — Ally Carter

Politics is like watching football. Yes, you can see it directly on your screen, but I think a lot of people want to have some understanding of what's happening, why the play is unfolding the way it is, and I think that's where it can help them, not to render judgments but to help people make their own judgments in a more informed way. — David Gergen

It's a matter of resisting what something made you feel before. And resisting that as a consumer is not easy. I know it isn't for me, and not just when I consume pop culture. When I go into a book and it feels too familiar, I don't have the energy to do it. My whole reason for reading it is to be in a fictive space that is unfamiliar to me. — Lucy Corin

I will have you know I practiced that speech. In front of a mirror before you got here."
"So what do you think it meant?"
"I'm not sure," Jace admitted, "but I know I look damn good delivering it. — Cassandra Clare

People don't have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love. Then, when you're dead, when they've killed you by what they made you go through, they say you didn't have any character. They weep big, bitter tears - not for you. For themselves, because they've lost their toy. — James Baldwin

Some people are known, they have the platform and presence, but still remain irrelevant. They know you and what you do, but they don't need you or your offering. I see too many people with a platform but without substance, again this is not sustainable. Lack of substance can only relegate your talent or skill towards the league of the mediocre, if at all you become much by superficial branding then you will become the best of the worst. You don't have what it takes but you depend on your ability to sell substandard offerings to the market. It will not last for long, but quickly become irrelevant. — Archibald Marwizi

If there is anything certain in life, it is this. Time doesn't always heal. Not really. I know they say it does, but that is not true. What time does is to trick you into believing that you have healed, that the hurt of a great loss has lessened. But a single word, a note of a song, a fragrance, a knife point of dawn light across an empty room, any one of these things will take you back to that one moment you have never truly forgotten. These small things are the agents of memory. They are the sharp needle points piercing the living fabric of your life.

Life, my children, isn't linear where the heart is concerned. It is filled with invisible threads that reach out from your past and into your future. These threads connect every second we have lived and breathed. As your own lives move forward and as the decades pass, the more of these threads are cast. Your task is to weave them into a tapestry, one that tells the story of the time we shared. — Stephen Lee

I bow to all the seekers of truth. At the very outset, I have to say that truth is what it is. We cannot change it, we cannot transform it. We cannot compromise with it. It is what it is, it has been what it has been, and it will be what it has been. So it doesn't change. What is needed is that we have to change. So, what is the truth? Truth is that you are not this body, this mind; you are not these emotions, intellect or conditionings. Nor you are ego. So what are you ? You are the pure Spirit. — Nirmala Srivastava

Mentally tease apart the threads that keep you connected to your mother. See that those threads, those feelings, that you experience with her are what find the two of you -- but they do not have to weave the tapestry of your entire life. — Susan Schneider

The thing is, you make choices. You do some things and you don't do others and in the end there's not much point in asking what different choices might have gained you, and lost you, unless you have a time machine. You become those choices, you embody them ...
I'd known I couldn't stay, just as I'd known years before I couldn't be with him, even as I'd gone on pretending I had a choice. I was who I was, and I wanted what I already had. — Leah Stewart

Oi," Wayne said, hustling up beside him. "A good plan that one was, eh?"
"It was the same plan you always have," Wax said. "The one where I get to be the decoy."
"Ain't my fault people like to shoot at you, mate," Wayne said as they reached the coach. "You should be happy; you're usin' your talents, like me granners always said a man should do."
"I'd rather not have 'shootability' be my talent."
"Well, you gotta use what you have," Wayne said, leaning against the side of the carriage as Cob the coachman opened the door for Wax. "Same reason I always have bits of rat in my stew. — Brandon Sanderson

Clary raised her eyebrows at Jace. "You hate bergamot?"
Jace had wandered over to the narrow bookshelf and was examining its contents. "You have a problem with that?"
"You may be the only guy my age I've ever met who knows what bergamot is, much less that it's in Earl Grey tea."
"Yes, well," Jace said, with a supercilious look, "I'm not like other guys. Besides," he added, flipping a book off the shelf, "at the Institute we have to take classes in basic medicinal uses for plants. It's required."
"I figured all your classes were stuff like Slaughter 101 and Beheading for Beginners. — Cassandra Clare

Oh maturity's a wrapped up package deal so it seems
And ditching teenage fantasy means ditching all your dreams
All your friends and peers and family solemnly tell you you will
Have to grow up be an adult yeah be bored and unfulfilled
Oh when no ones yet explained to me exactly what's so great
About slaving 50 years away on something that you hate, about meekly shuffling down the path of mediocrity
Well if that's your road then take it but it's not the road for me. — Frank Turner

You really have to take your time; you have to know your character and your scene. The line you are about to say comes from the moment right before. It's not what's said, it's what is in between the spaces, it's what's in between the lines; that is the most important to play. — Sarah Shahi

Every couple of days I have to remind myself that I'm really okay. And it's not the pretend kind of okay. It's the kind that you feel from the inside out. It's the kind of okay that has me thinking about outfits and coffee first thing in the morning, and homework that's due later this week, and that I need to call Jodi back, and what Cole's abs look like when he flexes. It's the kind of okay that makes life a zillion times more bearable and also has me waiting for the other shoe to drop. I — Autumn Doughton

This is your life, not someone else's. It is your own feeling of what is important, not what people will say. Sooner or later, you are bound to discover that you cannot please all of the people around you all of the time. Some of t hem will attribute to you motives you never dreamed of. Some of them will misinterpret your words and actions, making them completely alien to you. So you had better learn fairly early that you must not expect to have everyone understand what you say and what you do. — Eleanor Roosevelt

She knew her duty inside and out. The prosperity of the cash drawer brought happiness to husband and wife. Not that Madame Puta was bad looking, not at all, she could even, like so many others, have been rather pretty, but she was so careful, so distrustful that she stopped short of beauty just as she stopped short of life - her hair was a little too well dressed, her smile a little too facile and sudden, and her gestures a bit too abrupt or too furtive. You racked your brains trying to figure out what was too calculated about her and why you always felt uneasy when she came near you. This instinctive revulsion that shopkeepers inspire in anyone who goes near them who knows what's what, is one of the few consolations for being as down at heel as people who don't sell anything to anybody tend to be. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

For me, diversity is not a value. Diversity is what you find in Northern Ireland. Diversity is Beirut. Diversity is brother killing brother. Where diversity is shared - where I share with you my difference - that can be valuable. But the simple fact that we are unlike each other is a terrifying notion. I have often found myself in foreign settings where I became suddenly aware that I was not like the people around me. That, to me, is not a pleasant discovery. — Richard Rodriguez

My Mother

My mother was not educated but she was the best teacher I've ever had in my entire life. She had what it's called natural wisdom, bless her precious soul. Here some of her teachings: Human Values:
Love: Learn to love because everything that's based on love has a deep rooted foundation.
Kindness: Be kind all the time but never let anyone take advantage of your kindness.
Peace: Learn to have peace with yourself when the world turns against you because it starts with you.
Honesty: Be honest to yourself and then to the others.
Respect: Respect others and they will respect you.
Openness: Be always transparent especially when you are hurting. Never pretend that it's all okay.
Loyalty: Always be loyal to your family and make sure your family comes before anything else.
She taught me to learn to compose myself when life gets tough and unfair to me.

I love you mama & Happy Mothers Day — Euginia Herlihy

Why then should I often be unhappy over what happens here? Shouldn't I always be glad, contented and happy, except when I think about her and her companions in distress? I am selfish and cowardly. Why do I always dream and think of the most terrible things- my fear makes me want to scream out loud sometimes. Because still, in spite of everything, I have not enough faith in God. He has given me so much- which I certainly do not deserve- and I still do so much that is wrong every day. If you think of your fellow creatures, then you only want to cry, you could really cry the whole day long. The only thing to do is to pray that God will perform a miracle and save some of them. And I hope that I am doing that enough! — Anne Frank

Contrary to popular wisdom, bullies are rarely cowards.
Bullies come in various shapes and sizes. Observe yours. Gather intelligence.
Shunning one hopeless battle is not an act of cowardice.
Hankering for security or popularity makes you weak and vulnerable.
Which is worse: Scorn earned by informers? Misery endured by victims?
The brutal May have been molded by a brutality you cannot exceed.
Let guile be your ally.
Respect earned by integrity cannot be lost without your consent.
Don't laugh at what you don't find funny.
Don't support an opinion you don't hold.
The independent befriend the independent.
Adolescence dies in its fourth year. You live to be eighty. — David Mitchell

People think that dreams are better than reality but this is not always the case; sometimes, because you dream too much, you are unable to see what you have in front of your very eyes. — Antonio Munoz Molina

Diamonds are held under tons and tons of pressure, extremely high temperatures of fire and shuffled under shifting of tectonic plates, for a long, long time! Yet when they come out from there and are put on display for their beauty; does anybody stop to evaluate the diamond based upon all the shit it's been through and say "Remember that disgusting hole it used to be in? I bet it was hell in there!" No, people don't remember where a diamond has come from; they just see the beauty of it now. But it wouldn't have become so beautiful, you know, if not for all of that! So why should we look at other people, or at ourselves and evaluate them/ourselves based upon their/our pasts? Shouldn't we forget that? And only see the beauty that is in front of our eyes? Whatever it was, it made you beautiful! And that is what matters! — C. JoyBell C.

Arjuna asked Sri Krishna, "In this chaotic condition of my mind, what is my duty? I surrender myself to you, great Master. Please tell me."
The answer of Bhagavan Sri Krishna is, "You understand nothing. You draw conclusions without proper understanding of the structure of life and your relationship to people or things in general. It is a very sorry state. How can you draw conclusions without proper premises? If you draw a conclusion based on a wrong premise, the conclusion is also wrong. Therefore, all that you have been told up to this time is without any foundation because you do not know either yourself or the world. — Swami Krishnananda

It was one of those rare times of shared happiness, of perfect contentment. We had a feeling of expectation, that what was already wonderful would only get better and better as time went on. These moments are one of the rarest, most fragile things in the world. You have to seize the day; you have to recall all the rotten, dirty things you endured to earn this peace. You have to remember to enjoy each minute, each hour, because although you may feel like it's going to last forever, the world plans otherwise. You want to be grateful for every precious second, but you simply can't do it. It's not in human nature to live life to the fullest. Haven't your ever noticed that equal amounts of pain and joy are not, in fact, equal in duration? Pain drags on until you wonder if life will ever be bearable again; pleasure, though, once it's reached its peak, fades faster than a trodden gardenia, and your memory searches in vain for the sweet scent. — George Alec Effinger

It's technically extremely difficult to get down what you really mean, not what you think you mean, or what you think sounds good, but what's really there, what you really have to express, in words that somehow convey that meaning in an approximate way. — Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

God, why do I bother trying to help you? It's not like you appreciate it. It's not like the word 'thanks' is in your vocabulary. It's like you're not capable of being nice to someone you decided to despise when you were six-years-old. Sure, about twelve years have passed, but what's time compared to your rock-headed mind? - Tran — Krista Alasti

They don't go into what is the cause of goodness, so why of the other shop? If lewdies are good that's because they like it, and I wouldn't ever interfere with their pleasures, and so of the other shop. And I was patronizing the other shop. More, badness is of the self, the one, the you or me on our oddy knockies, and that self is made by old Bog or God and is his great pride and radosty. But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self. And is not our modern history, my brothers, the story of the brave malenky selves fighting these big machines? — Anthony Burgess

It's all right."
"It's not. Nothing's right. I've never done a right thing in my life, it seems."
"That makes a pair of us then." Her lips pressed against the spot under his ear. "But I believe we are right together, don't you? People like us ... we have no talent for following rules. We can only follow our hearts. I've wronged people as well, but is it horribly wicked that I can't bring myself to regret it? It brought me to you."
He took one of her hands and kissed it. "You're so young, you can't know the meaning of true regret. It's never what you've done, love, it's what you've left undone. — Tessa Dare

I consider myself a lyricist first and foremost, but if you get something else out of what I do, that's fine too. I'm not sitting back here telling people how they have to take my stuff. We just want to play music, and hope that people like it. — John Darnielle

Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;
In my own way, and with my full consent.
Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarely
Went to their deaths more proud than this one went.
Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping
I will confess; but that's permitted me;
Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping
Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.
If I had loved you less or played you slyly
I might have held you for a summer more,
But at the cost of words I value highly,
And no such summer as the one before.
Should I outlive this anguish, and men do,
I shall have only good to say of you. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

The fear, too, is a fear of yourself: a completely dualistic and contradictory fear. On the one hand, it is the fear that you do not have what it takes to make it, and on the other hand, a possibly greater fear that you do have what it takes, and that by definition you therefore also have a responsibility to do something really big. — Marya Hornbacher

The design of the Mac wasn't what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it's all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. — Steve Jobs

Neither technology nor efficiency can acquire more time for you, because time is not a thing you have lost ... It is what you live in. — James Glieck

There should be no restlessness within, no matter what the circumstances. If there is restlessness within, know that the kashays have not left yet. — Dada Bhagwan

Yes, this is an age of moral crisis. Yes, you are bearing punishment for your evil. But it is not man who is now on trial and it is not human nature that will take the blame. It is your moral code that's through, this time. Your moral code has reached its climax, the blind alley at the end of its course. And if you wish to go on living, what you now need is not to return to morality - you who have never known any - but to discover it. — Ayn Rand

There is no great religion without a great schism. All of them have it. And that's because you're dealing with something called faith. And faith is not something you can prove; faith is personal opinion. Uh, when you're dealing with something with certainty, like, y'know, science or logic, you don't have the
there's no wiggle room; that's why history is not filled with warring math cults, y'know, because you can settle the issue; you can prove something to be right or wrong, and that's the end of the argument: next case. Whereas, when you're dealing with faith, you can forever argue your point, or another point, because you're dealing with intangibles. Personally, I think, faith is what you ask of somebody when you don't have the goods to prove your point. — Tom Quinn

The ultimate expression of generosity is not in giving of what you have, but in giving of who you are. — Johnnetta B. Cole

My grandfather ran off the V-2 rocket film a dozen times and then hoped that someday our cities would open up more and let the green and the land and the wilderness in more, to remind people that we're allotted a little space on earth and that we survive in that wilderness that can take back what it has given, as easily as blowing its breath on us or sending the sea to tell us we are not so big. When we forget how close the wilderness is in the night, my grandpa said, someday it will come in and get us for we will have forgotten how terrible and real it can be. You see? — Ray Bradbury

The other night I took her on-out of pity-and what do you think the crazy bitch had done to herself? She had shaved it clean ... not a speck of hair on it. Did you ever have a woman who shaved her twat? It's repulsive, ain't it? And it's funny, too. Sort of mad like. It doesn't look like a twat any more: it's like a dead clam or something." He describes to me how, his curiosity aroused, he got out of bed and searched for his flashlight. "I made her hold it open and I trained the flashlight on it. You should have seen me ... it was comical. I got so worked up about it that I forgot all about her. I never in my life looked at a cunt so seriously. — Henry Miller

You reach a certain age when reality grabs you by the scruff of the neck and shouts in your face:"Hey, look, this is what life is." And you have to open your eyes and look at it, listen to it, smell it: people who don't like you, things you don't want to do, things that hurt, things that scare you, questions without answers, feelings you don't understand, feelings you don't want but have no control over.
Reality.
When you gradually come to realise that all that stuff in books, films, television, magazines, newspapers, comics - it's all rubbish. It's got nothing to do with anything. It's all made up. It doesn't happen like that. It's not real. It means nothing. Reality is what you see when you look out of the window of a bus: dour faces, sad and temporary lives, millions of cars, metal, bricks, glass, rain, cruel laughter, ugliness, dirt, bad teeth, crippled pigeons, little kids in pushchairs who've already forgotten how to smile ... — Kevin Brooks

When people say right person, wrong time, or wrong person, right time, it's usually a cop-out. They think that fate is playing with them. That we're all just participants in this romantic reality show that God gets a kick out of watching. But the universe doesn't decide what's right or not right. You do. Yes, you can theorize until you're blue in the face whether something might have worked at another time, or with someone else. But you know what that leaves you?" "Blue in the face?" I asked. "Yup. — Rachel Cohn

Do you know that when one who has influence with youth- be he teacher, leader or parent- seriously weakens the foundations upon which a young person has built, by faith-destroying challenges the youngster is not yet equipped to meet, he fashions a disciple who has been effectively cut loose from fundamentals at a time when he needs most to rely on them? The challenger may himself be a moral, educated, well-meaning person of integrity, doing what he does in the name of honesty and truth. His own character may have been formed in an atmosphere of faith and conviction which, through his influence, he may now help to destroy in his young follower. "Disenchanted" himself in his mature years, he turns his powers on an immature mind and leaves it ready prey for nostrums and superstitions and behavior he himself would disdain. — Marion D. Hanks

I have told myself you are not allowed to hurt me anymore. That's what hurts the most. — Pleasefindthis

So what's the point, then, if we can't be happy? Why are we doing any of this?"
"Oh, there's definitely happiness," Jack said, turning his back on the ocean and looking at her. "But it's just about moments, not ever-afters." He grinned. "Like when you're right in the middle of the ocean with your friends, with no one trying to kill you in any kind of horrifying way. You have to appreciate these moments when they happen, 'cause obviously we don't get many of them. — James Riley

You think that I am angry, but I am not. You think I do not know why you have done what you have done, but I do. You think you have put all your heart into that writing and that every one in England now understands you. What do they understand? Nothing. I understood you before you wrote a word. What you wrote, you wrote for me. For me alone. — Susanna Clarke

Now if you are going to win any battle you have to do one
thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the
body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up.
It is always tired morning, noon, and night. But the body is
never tired if the mind is not tired. When you were younger
the mind could make you dance all night, and the body was
never tired ... You've always got to make the mind take over
and keep going. — George S. Patton Jr.

Something else emerges from this discussion about us as human individuals: we're not fixed, stable intellects riding along peering at the world through the lenses of our eyes like the pilots of people-shaped spacecraft. We are affected constantly by what's going on around us. Whether our flexibility is based in neuroplasticity or in less dramatic aspects of the brain, we have to start acknowledging that we are mutable, persuadable and vulnerable to clever distortions, and that very often what we want to be is a matter of constant effort rather than attaining a given state and then forgetting about it. Being human isn't like hanging your hat on a hook and leaving it there, it's like walking in a high wind: you have to keep paying attention. You have to be engaged with the world. — Nick Harkaway

You may ask why I write. And yet my reasons are quite many. For it is not unusual in human beings who have witnessed the sack of a city or the falling to pieces of a people to desire to set down what they have witnesses for the benefit of unknown heirs or of generations infinitely remote; or, if you please, just to get the sight out of their heads. — Ford Madox Ford

I suddenly see the world
as no longer viable:
you are out there burning the crops
with some new sublimate
This morning you left the bed
we still share
and went out to spread impotence
upon the world

I hate you.
I hate the mask you wear, your eyes
assuming a depth
they do not possess, drawing me
into the grotto of your skull
the landscape of bone
I hate your words
they make you think of fake
revolutionary bills
crisp imitation parchment
they sell at battlefields.

Last night, in this room, weeping
I asked you: what are you feeling?
do you feel anything?
Now in the torsion of your body
as you defoliate the fields we lived from
I have your answer. — Adrienne Rich

Can you say those words and not like it? Don't it bring to you a magnificent picture of the pristine world, - great seas and other skies, - a world of accentuated crises, that sloughed off age after age, and rose fresher from each plunge? Don't you see, or long to see, that mysterious magic tree out of whose pores oozed this fine solidified sunshine? What leaf did it have? What blossom? What great wind shivered its branches? Was it a giant on a lonely coast, or thick low growth blistered in ravines and dells? That's the witchery of amber, - that it has no cause, - that all the world grew to produce it, maybe, - died and gave no other sign, - that its tree, which must have been beautiful, dropped all its fruits, and how bursting with juice must they have been - — Harriet Prescott Spofford

What shall I do?" she asked in a small voice.
"Forget your own self," he said.
"But all these years," she urged, "I have so carefully fulfilled my duty."
"Always with the thought of your own freedom in your mind," he said.
She could not deny it. She sat motionless, her hands folded on the pearl-gray satin of her robe. "Direct me," she said at last.
"Instead of your own freedom, think how you can free others," he said gently.
She lifted her head.
"From yourself," he said still gently. — Pearl S. Buck

I believe that every one of us has something that's very unique to us specifically. Something unique enough that no one else might really ever understand it - not our parents, or teachers, or best friends, or siblings.
It's our point of view.
Our point of view is what makes us unique, because no one else - no one else - has your particular combination of thoughts, and dreams, and hopes, and desires, and ambitions and memories, and experiences. No one. And I believe that every once in a while, the Universe opens itself up to you and you alone, and shows you something that no one else is going to understand. And you have to decide in that moment how much you believe in what you have seen - even if everyone else in the world tells you you're wrong. — James A. Owen

You either fainted or you wanted a much closer look at the cracks in the tile. Either way, you hit hard."
"Seriously?"
He nodded. "Maybe you shouldn't have been trying to make out with him," he suggested.
How did he know that? "I was kissing him good-bye."
He snorted and exchanged glances with the nurse. "That's not what it looked like to me."
Probably not. But what happened? Could Reyes Farrow take control over me even from a freaking coma? I was doomed. — Darynda Jones

Eager to hear more about the aforementioned behaviors of the ill-bred Miss Bowman, Livia leaned back against the edge of the desk, facing Marcus. "I wonder what Miss Bowman did to offend you so?" she mused aloud. "Do tell, Marcus. If not, my imagination will surely conjure up something far more scandalous than poor Miss Bowman is capable of."
"Poor Miss Bowman?" Marcus snorted. "Don't ask, Livia. I'm not at liberty to discuss it."
Like most men, Marcus didn't seem to understand that nothing torched the flames of a woman's curiosity more violently than a subject that one was not at liberty to discuss. "Out with it, Marcus," she commanded. "Or I shall make you suffer in unspeakable ways."
One of his brows lifted in a sardonic arch. "Since the Bowmans have already arrived, that threat is redundant. — Lisa Kleypas

Since the beginning of time, children have not liked to study. They would much rather play, and if you have their interests at heart, you will let them learn while they play; they will find that what they have mastered is child's play. — Carl Orff