Quotes & Sayings About Offering Advice

What advice do you have for writers working on their first novels?
If you feel called to write a book, consider it a gift. Look around you. What assistance is the universe offering you as support? I was given an amazing mentor, a poet, Eleanor Drewry Dolan, who taught me the importance of every word. To my utter amazement, there were times she found it necessary to consult three dictionaries to evaluate one word. — Kathleen Grissom

Jordan leaned on the counter. He felt a little like a bartender in a TV show, dispensing sage advice. "What do you owe her?"
"Life," Isabelle said.
Jordan blinked. This was a little beyond his bartending and advice-offering skills. "She saved your life?"
"She saved Jace's life. She could have had anything from the Angel Raziel, and she saved my brother. I've only ever trusted a few people in my life. Really trusted. My mother, Alec, Jace, and Max. I lost one of them already. Clary's the only reason I didn't lose another. — Cassandra Clare

Prioritizing listening to their child or adolescent is extremely important. It can be very hard to listen to someone who is upset or troubled without offering advice or suggestions or otherwise telling him or her what to do. — Timothy Carey

I use to think being a warning was not meant to be apart of anyone's life purpose. However, how could you teach anything in life, without the deepest understanding of what not to do? Personally, I don't want someone offering advice, unless they have been to hell and back with a map and a compass. — Shannon L. Alder

Adrian kept sending me e-mails, asking me to rescue him (while also offering unsolicited dating advice). Ms. Terwilliger continued her passive aggressive attempts to teach me magic. Eddie continued in his fierce dedication to Jill. And Angeline continued her not-so-subtle advances on Eddie. — Richelle Mead

A prince, therefore, ought always to take counsel, but only when he wishes and not when others wish; he ought rather to discourage every one from offering advice unless he asks it; but, however, he ought to be a constant inquirer, and afterwards a patient listener concerning the things of which he inquired; also, on learning that any one, on any consideration, has not told him the truth, he should let his anger be felt. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Often, instead of offering empathy, we have a strong urge to give advice or reassurance and to explain our own position or feeling. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

Empathy is a respectful understanding of what others are experiencing. Instead of offering empathy, we often have a strong urge to give advice or reassurance and to explain our own position or feeling. Empathy, however, calls upon us to empty our mind and listen to others with our whole being. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

Someone can have the best intentions,' Markov said, 'but offering the wrong advice, the wrong help at the wrong time, can be worse than not helping at all. — Tonya Hurley

One of the best things about being a Yankee is that you have guys like Whitey Ford, Phil Rizzuto, Ron Guidry and Reggie Jackson wandering around the locker room offering you advice. — Derek Jeter

Ask before offering advice or reassurance. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

Giving material goods is one form of generosity, but one can extend an attitude of generosity into all one's behavior. Being kind, attentive, and honest in dealing with others, offering praise where it is due, giving comfort and advice where they are needed, and simply sharing one's time with someone - all these are forms of generosity, and they do not require any particular level of material wealth. — Dalai Lama

He thought about Daniel and Lucinda.
They had embodied love for so long, as far as
the fallen angels were concerned. He wished they were beside him now, playing the role of the happy couple offering sage advice to their
suffering friend.Fight for her, they would tell him. Even
when it seems like all is lost, do not give up
the fight for love. How had Luce and Daniel done it for so
long? It took a strength Cam wasn't sure he
had. The pain when she refused him - and, so far, almost all she did was refuse him - was staggering. And yet he went for it again and again and again. Why? To save her. To help her. Because he
loved her. Because if he gave up ... He could not give up. — Lauren Kate

It is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice. — Anne Tyler

As a Christian I take it for granted that human history will some day end; and I am offering Omniscience no advice as to the best date for that consummation. — C.S. Lewis

From Alan Lightman's intricate 1993 novel Einstein's Dreams; set in Berne in 1905: With infinite life comes an infinite list of relatives. Grandparents never die, nor do great-grandparents, great-aunts ... and so on, back through the generations, all alive and offering advice. Sons never escape from the shadows of their fathers. Nor do daughters of their mothers. No one ever comes into his own ... Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free. — Christopher Hitchens

So, your best defense is knowledge. It really is power, as they say ... The more you know, the more easily you will develop your own philosophies about child rearing. When you have your facts straight, and when you have a parenting plan, you will be able to respond with confidence to those who are well-meaning but offering contrary or incorrect advice. — Elizabeth Pantley

You poke at evil with a stick," Valerie had said, offering chilling advice they'd never forget. "Never use your fingers. — Gregg Olsen

I looked at all friends, and did not find a better friend than safeguarding the tongue. I thought about all dresses, but did not find a better dress than piety. I thought about all types of wealth, but did not find a better wealth than contentment in little. I thought of all types of good deeds, but did not find a better deed than offering good advice. I looked at all types of sustenance, but did not find a better sustenance than patience. — Umar

Memories of her, however, would remain with him. Everywhere he'd look, she would be there, as if she were a hundred women, all shadow and wraith, marking each place at Tyemorn and Ayleshire. He'd see her on the village road, smiling beneath an oak, straddling a furrow and laughing at something a companion had said. There again, tilting her head in an inquisitive look and offering advice on the line of the barn wall, or at night, when he could only see the outline of her form. — Karen Ranney

The fear of failure is so great, it is no wonder that the desire to do right by one's children has led to a whole library of books offering advice on how to raise them. — Bruno Bettelheim

But the last forty years had witnessed the professionalization of property management. Since 1970, the number of people primarily employed as property managers had more than quadrupled.8 As more landlords began buying more property and thinking of themselves primarily as landlords (instead of people who happened to own the unit downstairs), professional associations proliferated, and with them support services, accreditations, training materials, and financial instruments. According to the Library of Congress, only three books offering apartment-management advice were published between 1951 and 1975. Between 1976 and 2014, the number rose to 215.9 Even if most landlords in a given city did not consider themselves "professionals," housing had become a business. — Matthew Desmond

i Create. I don't "Need".
Meaning: I don't need advice or criticism.
Unless you're offering money, weed, or whiskey save it. Thanks. — Jonathan Heatt

To be a deep listener, one of the first things we have to do is give up the need and the desire to give advice. Knowing answers does not require stating them; there are times when offering answers is not helpful, as when a person is in the middle of their own learning process. — John Earle

Being overseas at the time it all kind of happened was perfect because I had no idea that it was going to attract so much media attention and provoke these lovely people calling in and offering up their opinions and advice. — Cathy Freeman

Microsoft is still living down its disastrous introduction of Clippy, a ghastly piece of artificial intelligence - I'm using that term very loosely - that would observe people's behavior as they worked on a document and try to bust in, offering 'advice' that tended to be spectacularly useless — Clive Thompson

Once in a great while, she was distressed by the way she looked. As she was rounding the bend to forty she would write to Avis DeVoto that whenever she read Vogue she "felt like a frump....but I suppose that is the purpose of all of it, to shame people out of their frumpery so they will go out and buy 48 pairs of red shoes, have a facial, pat themselves with deodorizers, buy a freezer, and put up the new crispy window curtains with a draped valence."
Julia was able to deconstruct the disingenuous motives that drive women's magazines with the ease she normally reserved for deboning a duck, seeing quite clearly that while ostensibly offering inspiration and useful advice, the stories and articles quietly pummel the reader's sense of self, the better to drive her into the arms of the advertisers. — Karen Karbo

To the grumbler who complains about the unfairness of the market system only one piece of advice can be given: If you want to acquire wealth, then try to satisfy the public by offering them something that is cheaper or which they like better ... Equality under the law gives you the power to challenge every millionaire. — Ludwig Von Mises

There are all sorts of books offering advice on how to deal with life-threatening situations, but where's the advice on dealing with embarrassing ones? — Ellen DeGeneres

In that conversation with Richard, Kris did precisely what she'd done before offering her tennis quitting advice from years before. She paid attention. Instead of getting swept up in a reaction
regardless of how legitimate it would have been
she unseated herself and chose to focus on what Richard was saying. That kind of awareness is rare. It's rare in a person and even more so with a couple. — Fawn Weaver

Finally, I applied to one of my roommates, more sagacious than the rest, for advice. Dave, I said. I'm broke and without prospects. I've blown my GI Bill on flying lessons. I can't hide out here in college much longer. What should I do?

Well, he said, at this crucial juncture you need to coldly appraise yourself. "I've only known you these few short years, but it strikes me you wouldn't be good for anything important; I'd have to say you're lazy, self-absorbed, glib and facetious, always ready to mock the suggestions of others, but never offering anything positive of your own. Intellectually shallow, no tap root anywhere, spiritually neutered, without feeling or compassion, unsteady of focus, lacking the fortitude for the long pull, with no fixed belief in anything."

I shook his hand and thanked him. The acuity of his analysis made my path clear. My only hope lay in daily journalism. — Phil Garlington