Quotes & Sayings About Prizes

It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be Scandinavian or not. — Alfred Nobel

I think they'd barely recognize us as brothers and sisters. If we told them, church is on Sundays, and we have an awesome band...if the found out 1/6th of the earth's population claimed to be Christians, I'm not sure they could reconcile the suffering happening on our watch while we're living in excess...

But listen, early church, we have a monthly event called 'Mocha chicks', we have choir practice every Wednesday, we organize retreats with door prizes, we're raising $3 million for an outdoor amphitheater, we have catchy t-shirts, we don't smoke or say the f-word, we go to bible study every semester...

the local church would be the heartbeat of the city. — Jen Hatmaker

All children are required to attend School, which is like a party to which everyone forgot to bring punch, or hats, or fiddles, and none of the games have good prizes. — Catherynne M Valente

There are, it is true, at present no great prizes in literature such as are offered by the learned professions, but there are quite as many small ones - competences; while, on the other hand, it is not so much of a lottery. — James Payn

We have a greedy cycle where Human Rights Commissions fine citizens in order to pay their own salaries so they can employ more Human Rights Commissions. It's a bounty system where the prizes are business owner's heads. And so as restaurants go broke, tourists get stabbed. That's human rights in New York. And perhaps America. — Greg Gutfeld

Look at the studio filled with glamorous merchandise. Fabulous and exciting bonus prizes. Thousands of dollars in cash. Over $150,000 just waiting to be won as we present our big bonanza of cash on Wheel Of Fortune. — Dustin Hoffman

Our belief that a person takes part in an unknown life which his or her love would allow us to enter is, of all that love demands in order to come into being, what it prizes the most, and what makes it care little for the rest. — Marcel Proust

While poetry was less professionalized than it is now, I still had this urge to win prizes and see my work in magazines, to get an "A," as though poetry could be graded. I wish I had been more patient and less frantic about getting published. — Denise Duhamel

When my life is stressful, my favorite game is called 'Pop It,' where you pop balloons and prizes fall out. It's a five-minute game that focuses my mind and gives me extra attention when I'm stressed. — Jane McGonigal

As The Pioneer Woman has grown and the revenue has grown, the prizes keep getting better, and that certainly feels good. — Ree Drummond

I was starting to wonder if I was ready to be a writer, not someone who won prizes, got published and was given the time and space to work, but someone who wrote as a course of life. Maybe writing wouldn't have any rewards. Maybe the salvation I would gain through work would only be emotional and intellectual. Wouldn't that be enough, to be a waitress who found an hour or two hidden in every day to write? — Ann Patchett

I'm hosting weekend retreats all over America. It is like a 24-hour slumber party for moms. We laugh, eat, play games, get massages, win prizes, talk about parenting and even cry a bit. — Lisa Whelchel

Though I have been busy, perhaps overbusy, all my life, it seems to me now that I have accomplished little that matters, that the books have never come up to what was in my head, and that the rewards - the comfortable income, the public notice, the literary prizes, and the honorary degrees - have been tinsel, not what a grown man should be content with. — Wallace Stegner

It's no secret that Europeans and Americans win most Nobel prizes. — Max Fisher

Matthew Watkins: I need an afternoon pick-me-up. I accept cash and/or prizes that can be exchanged for cash. Also, hobbits. — Jessica Park

Why be concerned about others, come to that, when you've outdone your own self? Set yourself a limit which you couldn't even exceed if you wanted to, and say good-bye at last to those deceptive prizes more precious to those who hope for them than to those who have won them. If there were anything substantial in them they would sooner or later bring a sense of fullness; as it is they simply aggravate the thirst of those who swallow them. — Seneca.

I never get bored, because there's always different puzzles, I'm wearing different clothes, there's different contestants, there's different prizes. — Vanna White

Winning the Oscar was like winning all the prizes in one single night that I never won as a kid. — Kate Winslet

In the end you can't save your soul and life by thought. But if you think, the least of the consolation prizes is the world. — Saul Bellow

Prizes are like butterflies, colorful butterflies that fly away. I don't believe in prizes much. — Lina Wertmuller

Service rendered as a gift or love-offering to Life: work that is engaged in, not for self or for profit, but as an act of love and service, these bring the doer a harvest of blessings ... When we serve and when we give, we open ourselves to receive life's richest blessings, its greatest prizes, and its most enduring lessons. — Henry Thomas Hamblin

I am in limbo, and in limbo there are no races, no prizes, no changes, no chances. There are merely degrees of endurance, and endurance never was my strong point. — Keri Hulme

Literary prizes serve a purpose if they allow for discussion of books. — Richard Flanagan

See what I mean," I raised my hand into the air as if offering proof. "He's pissed and all he can think about are assholes. It's like two prizes in one."
"You're sick."
"As in rad?" I asked. "Like ... you're totally sick, dude."
"As in demented," Gabe said.I scoffed, watching as he opened the gate on the SUV. "Everyone's a critic. — Ethan Day

The process of learning to be holy, like the process of learning to pray, may properly be thought of as a school - God's own school, in which the curriculum, the teaching staff, the rules, the discipline, the occasional prizes and the fellow pupils with whom one studies, plays, debates and fraternizes, are all there under God's sovereign providence. — J.I. Packer

Only the believers pick up the prizes in life. — Norman Vincent Peale

There may be certain genres that men dominate, but fiction not so much. The question of prizes is tricky because there are so many prizes. — Emma Donoghue

None of us really cheer for glory, prizes, tourneys. None of us, maybe, know why we do it at all, except it is like a rampart against the routine and groaning afflictions of the school day. You wear that jacket, like so much armor, game days, the flipping skirts. Who could touch you? Nobody could. My question is this: The New Coach. Did she look at us that first week and see past the glossed hair and shiny legs, our glittered brow bones and girl bravado? See past all that to everything beneath, all our miseries, the way we all hated ourselves but much more everyone else? Could she see past all of that to something else, something quivering and real, something poised to be transformed, turned out, made? See that she could make us, stick her hands in our glitter-gritted insides and build us into magnificent teen gladiators? — Megan Abbott

Thanks to social media like Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads, I can easily reach out to so many people. Being a writer gives me the added bonus of a targeted audience: readers, who enjoy targeted 'prizes' for participation in fundraisers - books and other neat promo items. — Lori Foster

Today, as in ancient Rome, when all avenues of success have been traveled and all prizes won, the final prize is the delusion of godhead. — David Mamet

I have a longing for life, and I go on living in spite of logic. Though I may not believe in the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves in spring. I love the blue sky. I love some people, whom one loves you know sometimes without knowing why. I love some great deeds done by men, though I've long ceased perhaps to have faith in them. Yet from habit one's heart prizes them. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Our government, conceived in liberty and purchased with blood, can be preserved only by constant vigilance. May we guard it as our children's richest legacy, for what shall it profit our nation if it shall gain the whole world and lose "the spirit that prizes liberty as the heritage of all men in all lands everywhere"? — William Jennings Bryan

We are a nation of immigrants, a quilt of many colors, and we've managed over more than two centuries to create a way of life that allows for a reasonable degree of upward mobility, that prizes individual liberty, promotes freedom of religion and genuinely values equal rights for all citizens. — Jay Parini

All prizes have a role, if they are run with integrity and with a clear focus on reading and quality writing. I don't think any of them is necessary, but they all play an incredibly important role in building a body of literature, in introducing new authors to new readers, and extending reading. — Kate Mosse

The world continues to offer glittering prizes to those who have stout hearts and sharp swords. — F. E. Smith

Now, it's undeniably true that male writers (including yours truly) are generally and commercially allowed to write about "girl stuff" without being penalized for doing so. In part this is the same old shit it's always been ... I've said before that men who write mostly about men win prizes for revealing the human condition, while women who write about both men and women are filed away as writing "womens' issues." Likewise, in fantasy, the imprimatur of a dude somehow makes stuff like romance, relationship drama, introspection, and adorable animal companions magically not girly after all.
In a sense, we male fantasists are allowed to be like money launderers for girl cooties."
[Game of Thrones and Invisible Cootie Vectors (blog post, March 30, 2014)] — Scott Lynch

Nobel prizes are very special prizes, and it would be great to get one. — Craig Venter

I thank God for all the victories and conquests I've had this year as a player and I bring to the altar two prizes. This is first my son who is about to be born. The other is my trophy from Fifa, which I want to dedicate to God. — Kaka

The prizes of life are at the end of each journey, not near the beginning; and it is not given to me to know how many steps are necessary in order to reach my goal. Failure I may still encounter at the thousandth step, yet success hides behind the next bend in the road. Never will I know how close it lies unless I turn the corner. — Og Mandino

It's great to win a few prizes early on. It helps a writer to get noticed and to get some sales. It can also be a pain in the arse because it gets in the way of the quiet, contemplative time every writer needs, but which is particularly important when you are a new writer finding your own voice, and pursuing the things that interest you. — Jeanette Winterson

There's a paradox here. If we return one last time to that '50s-era banker, we see that his mind was occupied with human distortions - desires, prejudice, distrust of outsiders. To carry out the job more fairly and efficiently, he and the rest of his industry handed the work over to an algorithm. Sixty years later, the world is dominated by automatic systems chomping away on our error-ridden dossiers. They urgently require the context, common sense, and fairness that only humans can provide. However, if we leave this issue to the marketplace, which prizes efficiency, growth, and cash flow (while tolerating a certain degree of errors), meddling humans will be instructed to stand clear of the machinery. — Cathy O'Neil

I have had quite a lot of prizes, but I don't think it makes any difference to the ease or difficulty to the writing process. — Ruth Rendell

Physicists dream of Nobel prizes, engineers dream of mishaps. — Hendrik Tennekes

Educational institutes can no longer be prizes in church politics or furnish berths for failure in other walks of life. — E. Franklin Frazier

Everyone's future is, in reality, uncertain and full of unknown treasures from which all may draw unguessed prizes. — Lord Dunsany

I'm not ambitious. I don't want to get anywhere, I don't want anything more. I sometimes think that for me that is the real freedom, that I don't want anything. I don't want money or prizes. I want people to know that a war is going to be fought. — Arundhati Roy

Something in me - probably a small, nationalist dwarf part of my brain - something in me would like to feel proud of Dutch literature. But its hard to when the annual 'book week gift' year in year out is granted to a male. I dont like being part of an unjust system. But let me say this: it is the election method that is the real problem here. The 'vergadering' (meeting) that employs a simple flagging system - the basic way almost everything is decided here, from literary prizes to how much money is divided - it is a system based on the destruction of subtle values. You cannot ever ever say: I didnt understand this book. You can only say 'yes' or 'no'. And that system, that annihilates all forms of subtlety, that system is patriarchal in all its essence. So its useless to simply maintain the method, and try alter the outcome. — Martijn Benders

Gardington was made over to me once, by the Crown. It's one of their standard good-conduct prizes for espionage.'

Philippa said, rather blankly, 'I thought you were spying at that time for Scotland.'

'Well, I wasn't spying for England,' Lymond said. — Dorothy Dunnett

Students work in schools making life studies for years, win prizes for life studies and find in the end that they know practically nothing of the human figure. They have acquired the ability to copy. — Robert Henri

The greatest gift that God in His bounty made in creation, and the most conformable to His goodness, and that which He prizes the most, was the freedom of will, with which the creatures with intelligence, they all and they alone, were and are endowed. — Dante Alighieri

America has had the best university system in the world for a long time. And so we have been innovators, not only in the discoveries as proven by Nobel Prizes in chemistry and physics and that sort of thing, but we've been able to put that into practical application with new gadgets that people admire. — Jimmy Carter

I'm disciplined about writing. I get up every day knowing I have to produce work. I'm less concerned about other aspects of the job, such as the prizes and promotions. Promoting my work can be awkward, unless I feel sociable enough. Prizes encourage me to work harder on my next project. — Sefi Atta

The best novel I wrote was one called 'Crusoe's Daughter,' which never won any prizes. But I was getting somewhere in that. I'm not sure I have in any of the others. — Jane Gardam

This miserable trick the romantic plays upon himself: of setting just beyond his reach the very thing he prizes. — Walker Percy

we are all like poems.
some of us rhyme. some don't.
some are Pulitzer prizes
some are just scribbles

and yet, we all possess
a special kind of beauty

that can either heal
or cut to the bone

one that can never quite
be fathomed, nor forgotten. — Sanober Khan

To advance science is highly honourable, and I believe the institution of the Nobel Prizes has done much to raise the prestige of scientific discovery. — Frank Macfarlane Burnet

Science has a culture that is inherently cautious and that is normally not a bad thing. You could even say conservative, because of the peer review process and because the scientific method prizes uncertainty and penalises anyone who goes out on any sort of a limb that is not held in place by abundant and well-documented evidence. — Al Gore

Liberty and freedom and democracy are so very precious that you do not fight to win them once and stop. You do not do that. Liberty and freedom and democracy are prizes awarded only to those peoples who fight to win them and then keep fighting eternally to hold them. — H.W. Brands

Life will always remain a gamble, with prizes sometimes for the imprudent, and blanks so often to the wise. — Jerome K. Jerome

Once trapped in the belief that you are a victim, you surrender your birthright to compete for the prizes of life. — James Cook

The prizes go to those who meet emergencies successfully. And the way to meet emergencies is to do each daily task the best we can. — William Feather

I understand that it's the music that keeps me alive ... That's my lifeblood. And to give that up for, like, the TV, the cars, the houses - that's not the American dream. That's the booby prize, in the end. Those are the booby prizes. And if you fall for them - if, when you achieve them, you believe that this is the end in and of itself - then you've been suckered in. Because those are the consolation prizes, if you're not careful, for selling yourself out, or letting the best of yourself slip away. — Bruce Springsteen

He prizes ambiguity; he loves to keep you guessing. — Lionel Shriver

People were murdered for the camera; and some photographers and a television camera crew departed without taking a picture in the hope that in the absence of cameramen acts might not be committed. Others felt that the mob was beyond appeal to mercy. They stayed and won Pulitzer Prizes. Were they right? — Harold Evans

What could have been simply bizarre, sentimental or contrived here becomes an utterly absorbing love story; This is early days in the festival, but Rust and Bone has to be a real contender for prizes, and, the odds will be shortening to vanishing point for Cotillard getting the best actress award. — Peter Bradshaw

They read a little bit, write a little, and especially agree with themselves on important moves, important information, important awards, important writers that they plan to enthrone forever in history through a variety of memberships and numerous prizes awarded under the influence of top bureaucrats who know everything, not only about literature, but also about secret conspiracies, the Masons that lurk in every corner to crucify someone, steal someone's soul and sell it to an unknown devil, about whom only the chief bureaucrat possesses secret knowledge that he doesn't share; about history, ghosts, missing continents; about who said what to whom in confidence. — Dejan Stojanovic

I don't value prizes of any sort. — David Hockney

Anyone could be in the orchestra, or sports team, or arts club at my school. It was precisely the kind of inclusivity that now meets with a sort of scorn and derision as a prizes-for-all culture that generates only mediocrity. There's something so insulting about the idea that including lots of people means mediocrity. — Elizabeth Price

Our whole culture is based on the appetite for buying, on the idea of a mutually favorable exchange ... For the man an attractive girl - and for the woman an attractive man - are the prizes they are after. 'attractive' usually means a nice package of qualities which are popular and sought after on the personality market. What specifically makes a person attractive depends on the fashion of the time, physically as well as mentally ... Two persons thus fall in love when they feel they have found the best object available on the market, considering the limitations of their own exchange values. — Erich Fromm

The capital ... shall form a fund, the interest of which shall be distributed annually as prizes to those persons who shall have rendered humanity the best services during the past year ... One-fifth to the person having made the most important discovery or invention in the science of physics, one-fifth to the person who has made the most eminent discovery or improvement in chemistry, one-fifth to the one having made the most important discovery with regard to physiology or medicine, one-fifth to the person who has produced the most distinguished idealistic work of literature, and one-fifth to the person who has worked the most or best for advancing the fraternization of all nations and for abolishing or diminishing the standing armies as well as for the forming or propagation of committees of peace. — Alfred Nobel

Bible, and so the delivery of one of these prizes was a rare and noteworthy circumstance; — Mark Twain

I feel it's all wrong to be nervous," said Maria. "I feel it's lack of confidence. One ought to go right ahead, never minding."
"Some people do," he said, "but they're the duds. They are the ones that win prizes at school, and you never hear of them again. Go on. Be nervous. Be ill. Be sick down the lavatory pan. It's part of your life from now on. You've got to go through with it. Nothing's worth while if you don't fight for it first, if you haven't a pain in your belly beforehand. — Daphne Du Maurier

After being rejected for years, I found a publisher for 'Keeper,' and it won prizes, and then I had to write a second and a third book because I kept taking the money and spending it. — Mal Peet

ANTHONY DOERR is the author of the story collections Memory Wall and The Shell Collector, the novel About Grace, and the memoir Four Seasons in Rome. He has won numerous prizes both in the United States and overseas, including four O. Henry Prizes, three Pushcart Prizes, the Rome Prize, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, the National Magazine Award for fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Story Prize. Raised in Cleveland, Doerr lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife and two sons. — Anthony Doerr

She likes herself, yet others hates / For that which in herself she prizes; And, while she laughs at them, forgets / She is the thing that she despises. — William Congreve

Every man obeys Christ as he prizes Christ, not otherwise. — Thomas Brooks

If you don't make the best-seller list, if you don't get shortlisted for any prizes, it's goodbye. — Val McDermid

I used to think that prizes were damaging and divisive, until I got one. And now they seem sort of meaningful and real. — Bill Nighy

An exchange is a transaction in which the two contracting parties both gain. Whenever I make an exchange freely, and without constraint, it is because I desire the thing I receive more than that I give; and, on the contrary, he with whom I bargain desires what I offer more than that which he renders me. When I give my labour for wages it is because I esteem the wages more than what I should have been able to produce by labouring for myself; and he who pays me prizes more the services I render him than what he gives me in return. — Antoine Destutt De Tracy

The definitions of humanism are many, but let us here take it to be the attitude of those men who think it an advantage to live in society, and, at that, in a complex and highly developed society, and who believe that man fulfills his nature and reaches his proper stature in this circumstance. The personal virtues which humanism cherishes are intelligence, amenity, and tolerance; the particular courage it asks for is that which is exercised in the support of these virtues. The qualities of intelligence which it chiefly prizes are modulation and flexibility. — Lionel Trilling

These are the three things - volume of sound, modulation of pitch, and rhythm - that a speaker bears in mind. It is those who do bear them in mind who usually win prizes in the dramatic contests; and just as in drama the actors now count for more than the poets, so it is in the contests of public life, owing to the defects of our political institutions. — Aristotle.

I don't want anything. I don't want a job. I don't want to be respectable. I don't want prizes. I turned down the National Institute of Arts and Letters when I was elected to it in 1976 on the grounds that I already belonged to the Diners Club. — Gore Vidal

Lots of people have objections to prizes of all types, and it would be extraordinary if everybody agreed on anything that's worthwhile - they never do. — Kate Mosse

I know the money is important, but, actually, the validation of your career that prizes give is what you really want. But the money is fabulous, too. — Jim Crace

Of life's two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a laborer's hand. — Kahlil Gibran

Which is probably one of the reasons those of us who love contemporary fiction love it as we do. We're alone with it. It arrives without references, without credentials we can trust. Givers of prizes (not to mention critics) do the best they can, but they may - they probably will - be scoffed at by their children's children. We, the living readers, whether or not we're members of juries, decide, all on our own, if we suspect ourselves to be in the presence of greatness. We're compelled to let future generations make the more final decisions, which will, in all likelihood, seem to them so clear as to produce a sense of bafflement over what was valued by their ancestors; what was garlanded and paraded, what carried to the temple on the shoulders of the wise. — Michael Cunningham

Nations will seldom obtain good national anthems by offering prizes for them. The man and the occasion must meet. — John Philip Sousa

I've also long since realized that the way to really engage children is to give out prizes; it's amazing how it concentrates their minds. — Alexander McCall Smith

He's beginning to like me. I am a better and better audience as I get numbed, and although I've played this game of Impress You (and won it, too--though I don't like either of the prizes; winning is too much like losing) I'm too tired to go on playing tonight. — Joanna Russ

Just as at the Olympic games it is not the handsomest or strongest men who are crowned with victory but the successful competitors, so in life it is those who act rightly who carry off all the prizes and rewards. — Aristotle.

Major-General Sir Wilfred Bosher came to distribute the prizes at that school', proceeded Gussie in a dull, toneless voice.'He dropped a book. He stooped to pick it up. And, as he stooped, his trousers split up the back'.
'How we roared! — P.G. Wodehouse

I feel that I already have the life I love and I don't see how it could be improved radically by any greater material success I might have - bigger advances, more prizes. It's a kind of madness. And the culture of prize-giving is so corrupt. — Pankaj Mishra

Writers, naturally, dream of becoming authors. Authors dream of writing a bestseller. Bestselling authors want to write more bestsellers. And everyone hopes for big prizes. Why? Because we believe in magic. Publisher's Weekly magazine, Dec. 12, 2011 — Amy Hill Hearth

A call for authors... to arms!!!
(Actually, to pens.) O_O

Check out my latest blog post (via my profile), for more faboo 411!!!

Fear ye NOT the contest!!! — William McDonald

Such prizes and punishments are, if I may be allowed the expression, the bench of the soul, the instrument of slavery for the spirit. — Maria Montessori

And yet the Nobel Prizes, in singling out individuals, have done a great deal of good in pointing up to the world as a whole and setting forth clearly goals for achievement. — Willard Libby

To be rich or well-born was a crime: men were prosecuted for holding or for refusing office: merit of any kind meant certain ruin. Nor were the Informers more hated for their crimes than for their prizes: some carried off a priesthood or the consulship as their spoil, others won offices and influence in the imperial household: the hatred and fear they inspired worked universal havoc. Slaves were bribed against their masters, freedmen against their patrons, and, if a man had no enemies, he was ruined by his friends. — Tacitus

Dolls, perhaps more than any other object, demonstrate just how thin the line between love and fear, comfort and horror, can be. They are objects of love and sources of reassurance for children, coveted prizes for collectors, sources of terror and horror in numerous movies, television shows, books, and stories. — Ellen Datlow

I have written movies that won prizes at Cannes and Venice. — Luciano Vincenzoni

I'm afraid your literary prizes don't give you any jurisdiction in this particular instance, sir. — Lizzie K. Foley