Quotes & Sayings About Promising

It's nothing he can see or lay hands on - sudden gases, a violence upon the air and no trace afterward ... a Word, spoken with no warning into your ear, and then silence forever. Beyond its invisibility, beyond hammerfall and doomcrack, here is its real horror, mocking, promising him death with German and precise confidence, laughing down all of Tantivy's quiet decencies ... no, no bullet with fins, Ace ... not the Word, the one Word that rips apart the day ... — Thomas Pynchon

Run away with me - tonight." Above them the brilliant moon beckoned, promising to light their way. Her voice sounded queer and far off, weak with longing and despair. "No runnin' off like Ma done, Simon. — Laura Frantz

My one challenge with the support group that I'd become involved with on campus is that the people seem to spend as much time talking about their ill-begotten pasts as their promising futures. It's as if people are drawn to looking back. They can't move on until it all makes sense. Humbly submitted: It never does. — Carol Plum-Ucci

My dad sacrificed many things in life for me. He abandoned a very promising and lucrative career of an army officer just so that he could continue helping me with my chess and accompanying me to tournaments. — Alexandra Kosteniuk

we're going to react the way we react to things that happen to us - but that doesn't mean we have to surrender to our instincts and give up the hope that we can think and behave more rationally and humanely. There's a reason why we no longer take pleasure throwing live cats into open fires, as both kings and peasants once did. Our culture has trained us to think this is abhorrent. That's promising. — Rick Shenkman

A highly promising new artist and I look forward to seeing Natalie McCool perform at major festivals and concerts in the future — Harvey Goldsmith

I'm inspired by the example of Prime Minister Abe, who overcame many challenges after his first term as prime minister to successfully return to the highest office in Japan six years later, and is now hopefully leading Japan in an extremely promising direction. — John Roos

Young people are threatened ... by the evil use of advertising techniques that stimulate the natural inclination to avoid hard work by promising the immediate satisfaction of every desire. — Pope John Paul II

Being a "promising beginner" is fun, but being an actual expert is infinitely more gratifying. — Angela Duckworth

When we're incomplete, we're always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we're still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on
series polygamy
until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter. — Tom Robbins

Some believed that Satan had come to earth in human form as a party activist, his collective farm register a book of hell, promising torment and damnation. — Timothy Snyder

Superstring theories provide a framework in which the force of gravity may be united with the other three forces in nature: the weak, electromagnetic and strong forces. Recent progress has shown that the most promising superstring theories follow from a single theory. For the last generation, physicists have studied five string theories and one close cousin. Recently it has become clear that these five or six theories are different limiting cases of one theory which, though still scarcely understood, is the candidate for superunification of the forces of nature. — Edward Witten

The road of life is strewn with the bodies of promising people. People who show promise, yet lack the confidence to act. People who make promises they are unable to keep. People who promise to do tomorrow what they could do today. Promising young stars, athletes, entrepreneurs who wait for promises to come true. Promise without a goal and a plan is like a barren cow. You know what she could do if she could do it, but she can't. Turn your promise into a plan. Make no promise for tomorrow if you are able to keep it today. And if someone calls you promising, know that you are not doing enough today. — Iyanla Vanzant

Maybe this is how it happened first for everyone - adults promising us their own failed future. — Jacqueline Woodson

I don't feel like promising big things to my fans. I'm not thinking about victory at all. I'll do my best to get on the podium at least, although I must admit I feel fairly pessimistic. — Michael Schumacher

All of his life had been filled with crashing ends to promising beginnings. — R.A. Salvatore

Patch wore black jeans and a matching T- shirt that hugged his form. He rested his hands on my shoulders, facing me. "Ready?"
Despite the grim mood, I smiled and cracked my knuckles. "Ready to wrestle my gorgeous boyfriend? Oh, I'd say I'm ready for that."
Amusement softened his eyes.
"I'll try to control where I put my hands, but in the heat of things, who knows what could happen?" I added.
Patch grinned. "Sounds promising. — Becca Fitzpatrick

One can promise actions, but not feelings, for the latter are involuntary. He who promises to love forever or hate forever or be forever faithful to someone is promising something that is not in his power. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Some of the tactics that are used by Foxconn and other companies throughout China is, if you are late, if you violate one of the small rules, some of the punishment is that you have to copy down quotations from the chairman of Foxconn: you have to write out confessions explaining why you were late and promising never to do it again. — Charles Duhigg

S. Neill put it, promising a reward for an activity is "tantamount to declaring that the activity is not worth doing for its own sake."26 Thus, a parent who says to a child, "If you finish your math homework, you may watch an hour of TV" is teaching the child to think of math as something that isn't much fun. — Alfie Kohn

The tape measures and weighing scales of the Victorian brain scientists have been supplanted by powerful neuroimaging technologies, but there is still a lesson to be learned from historical examples such as these. State-of-the-art brain scanners offer us unprecedented information about the structure and working of the brain. But don't forget that, once, wrapping a tape measure around the head was considered modern and sophisticated, and it's important not to fall into the same old traps. As we'll see in later chapters, although certain popular commentators make it seem effortlessly easy, the sheer complexity of the brain makes interpreting and understanding the meaning of any sex differences we find in the brain a very difficult task. But the first, and perhaps surprising, issue in sex differences research is that of knowing which differences are real and which, like the intially promising cephalic index, are flukes or spurious. — Cordelia Fine

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility, or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law, or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
You see? If all you remember in years to come is the 'gay wizard' joke, I've come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step to self-improvement. — J.K. Rowling

Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments. — Leonardo Da Vinci

An existence devoted to reading would have been his ultimate fulfillment, but it had not been given to him. He would have had to choose that path much earlier, to have known what he wanted to do...To have had a life plan. At first it had been interested to be recognized as a promising young banker, to climb the hierarchy, to have responsibilities and to earn a lot of money. Up until the day he had started to feel, dimly at first, then more and more clearly, that the man he had become was the absolute opposite of what he really was. Although the dichotomy weighed heavily on him, for a while the money he was earning was compensation enough, but then it could no longer make up for it. The gap between his ideal and his reality was too great. The weight turned into an anguish that was succeeded by the intolerable idea that he was wasting his life --or even that he had already wasted it. — Antoine Laurain

The Bible was penned by men. The Epistles of Paul were penned by that evangelist salesman and his students, desperate to bring mystery and excitement into a quiet philosophy, turning it into a religion promising the secret of an afterlife, answers to questions that previously no one could answer. Always remember, words written by men have an agenda. Sometimes their agenda is for the better, but it's usually for the self, and that almost always leads down a dangerous path."

~Character Mark from The Awakening, book one of The Judas Curse series. — Angella Graff

Potato salad in the South is nothing less than the principal smuggler of cholesterol into the festive, careless heart. It is pure poison beneath the facade of bland puritan propriety. It is the food of choice at any food banquet of smiling relatives who celebrate tacitly among themselves the dark twining of two of their promising youth. — Padgett Powell

Look at the magnificence of love,
At this heavenly dusk,
Wind is singing the song of joy,
The sun is kissing the ocean.
Saying goodbye for the night
Promising to wake her up
At the dawn of life,
With the touch of his warmth
and light. — Debasish Mridha

Nor all your piety nor all your preaching, nor all your crusades nor all your threats can stop one girl from going on the turf, can stop one mugging, can keep one promising youth from becoming a drug addict, so long as the force that drives the owners of our civilization is away from those who own nothing at all. — Nelson Algren

I close my eyes to escape the burn. His eyes are so hot right now, I feel like I could be incinerated. The intense heat pouring off his body makes me think of Dax's cool touch. I'm sure it could kill, too, but it would be a quiet death, lulling you to sleep, promising life is better on the other side. Turner's touch, it simply sears and sizzles, melting me into nothing. Quick, painful, intense. I love it even though I don't want to. — C.M. Stunich

John McCain is now openly endorsing the policies of the Bush-Cheney White House and promising to actually continue the same policies over again? Hey, I believe in recycling but that's ridiculous. — Al Gore

Exchange love for hate ... Thereby, making the present comfortable and the future promising. — Maya Angelou

We believe that peace is not just signed papers, but rather a contract between generations for the building of a more promising and less threatening future. — King Hussein I

For policy makers interested in using tax policy to stimulate investments or especially to smooth business cycle fluctuations, the results are not promising. — Austan Goolsbee

Beckett wrapped a huge arm around Kyle's waist and slammed her body into his. "Sometimes when girls advertise, they get what they're asking for." Kyle twisted so her back was to his chest. "Are you threatening or promising, big daddy?" Beckett spun her around and held her face to his so their lips almost touched. The crowd went wild with perceived sexual tension. "If I was threatening you, you'd already be beggin' for your real daddy," Beckett whispered — Debra Anastasia

The passion for playing chess is one of the most unaccountable in the world. It slaps the theory of natural selection in the face. It is the most absorbing of occupations. The least satisfying of desires. A nameless excrescence upon life. It annihilates a man. You have, let us say, a promising politician, a rising artist that you wish to destroy. Dagger or bomb are archaic and unreliable - but teach him, inoculate him with chess. — H.G.Wells

A shame. As promising as a sky full'a rainbows but as useful as a bag'a dirt. — Quoleena Sbrocca

The anarchists are not promising anything to anyone. The anarchists only want people to be conscious of their own situation and seize freedom for themselves. — Maria Nikiforova

The most promising words ever written on the maps of human knowledge are terra incognita, unknown territory. — Daniel J. Boorstin

I think Virgin Blue is still a very promising and exciting business.
Now, I know that's not a view that's widely held in the market but I think the market is simply throwing it into the too-hard basket at the present time because of the oil price events.
But we think it is still a very exciting business. — Chris Corrigan

I'm not promising to write 'JFK 2' - but one day, I might! — Nigel Hamilton

Every letter was a love letter. Of course, as love letters went, this one could have been better. It was not very promising, for instance, that Madeleine claimed not to want to see him for the next half-century. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Don't be frightened,' he murmured into her ear. 'I will protect you.'
Lara sighed deeply. A Prince - promising to protect her. Yes please. — Lola Salt

The busy 20th and 21st centuries have made Garfield's era seem remote and irrelevant, its leaders ridiculed for their very obscurity... to the generation of Americans then alive, though, their dramas, humanities, and dignity were a compelling part of daily life. For twenty years after the Civil War, America was led by a group of larger-than-life figures with clay feet who fought and raged and plied their craft with nerve and ambition while following a code of honor riddled with blind spots and inconsistencies; during that time, public involvement in politics reached levels far higher than today. Garfield held a special place: one of the most promising of his generation, shot down in his prime, martyred for taking a principled stand. — Kenneth D. Ackerman

To those of us accustomed to newspaper headlines, 'PIZZAS' in inverted commas suggests these might be pizzas, but nobody's promising anything, and if they turn out to be cardboard with a bit of cheese on top, you can't say you weren't warned. — Lynne Truss

From the perspective of the radicals, the habitus basis of human existence is, as a whole, no more than a spiritually worthless puppet theatre into which a free ego-soul must be implanted after the fact, and through the greatest effort. If this fails, one experiences an effect in most people that is familiar from many athletes and models: they make a promising visual impression - but if one knocks, no one is at home. According to these doctrines, the adept can only rid themselves of their baggage by subjecting their life to a rigorous practice regime by which they can de-automize their behaviour in all important dimensions. At the same time, they must re-automatize their newly acquired behaviour so that what they want to be or represent becomes second nature. — Peter Sloterdijk

I've never been one to mourn the passing of what could have been a promising relationship. When Jeff Knave broke my heart in the ninth grade, I decided then and there that if a guy couldn't see that I was something special, I'd say good-bye with no regrets. Not that I think I'm more special than anyone else, mind you. But if a thing is not meant to be, I figure it's just not part of God's infinite plan. — Angela Elwell Hunt

Our agenda, by necessity, is as complex and encompassing as the problems we face: beware of politicians promising simple solutions. — Amitai Etzioni

I don't think he was ever happy unless someone was in love with him, responding to him like filings to a magnet, helping him to explain himself, promising him something. What it was I do not know. Perhaps they promised that there would always be women in the world who would spend their brightest, freshest, rarest hours to nurse and protect that superiority he cherished in his heart. — F Scott Fitzgerald

a fatal recovery from a promising illness — Thomas Boston

Faith stands or falls on the truth that the future with God is more satisfying than the one promised by sin. Where this truth is embraced and God is cherished above all, the power of sin is broken. The power of sin is the power of deceit. Sin has power through promising a false future. In temptation sin comes to us and says: "The future with God on his narrow way is hard and unhappy, but the way I promise is pleasant and satisfying." The power of sin is in the power of this lie. — John Piper

Between notes, he had contemplated means of destroying Myrna Minkoff but had reached no satisfactory conclusion. His most promising scheme had involved getting a book on munitions from the library, constructing a bomb, and mailing it in plain paper to Myrna. Then he remembered that his library card had been revoked. — John Kennedy Toole

The Fiction Writer's Co-op has 51 members, from celebrated NYT bestsellers to promising newcomers, and a waiting list. — M.J. Rose

The Cold War may be 'over' for the West. For the Soviets it has entered a new, active and promising phase. — Anatoliy Golitsyn

She tore her eyes from his abs and gave in to the temptation to look further down. Over his kilt her eyes wandered and stopped, speculating on the promising bulge beneath the blue tartan.
"Hope you like what you see... — Lisa Carlisle

priests dressed in skirts try to trump women's birth-giving power by baptizing with imitation birth fluid, calling us reborn, and going women one better by promising everlasting life. Indeed, — Gloria Steinem

From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. JOHN 1:16 JUNE 14 Health and prosperity can be yours. I realize that you may regard this as a very extravagant assertion - a big order, so to speak; but please remember that I do not make this assertion on my own authority. I have this on the authority of the wisest Book ever written. The Bible isn't as fearful of promising big things as some of the more timid, halfhearted preachers of the gospel. The Bible makes superlative promises, because its promises are inspired by a loving and omnipotent God. But the Bible is also very subtle. And it points out that the blessings of health and prosperity are not easily given or easily received. Parenthetically, I want to say that by prosperity, the Bible does not mean merely material affluence; it means to enter abundantly into the blessings of God's grace. And it tells us that health and prosperity come to us when our soul is in harmony with — Norman Vincent Peale

Diana and I are thinking seriously of promising each other that we will never marry but be nice old maids and live together forever. Diana hasn't quite made up her mind though, because she thinks perhaps it would be nobler to marry some wild, dashing, wicked young man and reform him. — L.M. Montgomery

Gideon and I sit there in the dark, wordless for a while, only our ragged breaths disturbing the silence. Memories of my sister overwhelm me - I see her impish grin as she leans over me at the orphanage, tugging on my hair until I wake up. I remember us climbing up to the roof as kids, sitting cross-legged next to the herbs and vegetables our caretakers were growing while we read the English books Rose had "borrowed" from her class at school. And then there was L.A. - all of our hope for a better life so quickly crushed, but Rose never let despair overtake her. She was there after every single night to hold me until the pain went away. And later, when I got numb to it all, she still made a point of holding me, of promising me that one day things would be different. — Paula Stokes

The perfection of that silent moment was somehow better than a million mouthfulls promising forever. — Jessica Gadziala

All is ready. Except me. I am being given, if I may venture the expression, birth to into death, such is my impression. The feet are clear already, of the great cunt of existence. Favourable presentation I trust. My head will be the last to die. Haul in your hands. I can't. The render rent. My story ended I'll be living yet. Promising lag. That is the end of me. I shall say I no more. — Samuel Beckett

Vengeance, retaliation, retribution, revenge are deceitful brothers - vile, beguiling demons promising justifiable compensation to a pained soul for his losses. Yet in truth they craftily fester away all else of worth remaining. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Fuller Warren had won the 1948 election by running as a moderate and promising to ease racial tension and violence in Florida. He'd denounced the Klansmen who paraded through Lake County on election night (with Sheriff Willis McCall following behind) as "hooded hoodlums and sheeted jerks," and Moore cautiously held out some hope for the new governor. Warren had admitted to being a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, but renouncing his past, like many a politician before and since, he'd stated that he had joined years before "as a favor to a friend" and that he "never wore a hood." Moore did not adopt a wait-and-see approach with the new governor. — Gilbert King

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the people discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the canidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy
to be followed by a dictatorship. — Alexander Fraser Tytler

If the demand for self-knowledge is willed by fate and is refused, this negative attitude may end in real death. The demand would not have come to this person had he still been able to strike out on some promising by-path. But he is caught in a blind alley from which only self-knowledge can extricate him. If he refuses this then no other way is left open to him. Usually he is not conscious of his situation, either, and the more unconscious he is the more he is at the mercy of unforeseen dangers: he cannot get out of the way of a car quickly enough, in climbing a mountain he misses his foothold somewhere, out skiing he thinks he can negotiate a tricky slope, and in an illness he suddenly loses the courage to live. The unconscious has a thousand ways of snuffing out a meaningless existence with surprising swiftness. — C. G. Jung

Mitt Romney has won the 2012 presidential nomination by promising Republicans that he would end a so-called 'culture of dependency' on welfare - welfare defined as 'free stuff' and food stamps for poor folks, not tax breaks for Big Oil or tax shelters for Bain executives. — Christine Pelosi

If you start out by promising what you don't even have yet, you'll lose your desire to work toward getting it. — Paulo Coelho

A lot of people will say, "what's Facebook's business model?" I always find that a kind of funny question. Our business model is out there, which is: we monetize largely through advertising and a little bit through the gift revenue, the virtual gifts we have on our site. I think those continue to be the most promising avenues going forward. — Sheryl Sandberg

Jason McDermott's political career, however bogus, appears to have had an early and promising start. — Bill Dedman

As capitalism falters, the rich move their money out of the country, violence increases, and politicians promising prosperity are elected. — Robert Kiyosaki

I'm still a promising actor. It's better to be climbing even if you have a lot of falls than to be descending. Maybe that's kept me young. I haven't gotten to any peak yet. — Antonio Banderas

You can get people to work by using threats or by promising rewards. — Joseph B. Wirthlin

You should make great things, not promising great things. — Pythagoras

promising!) was oddly disappointing, but what happened — Robin Stevens

As religion starts to mix with politics, we have a culture that allows us to fall behind what were previously third world nations, because we are now treating science the way we did sex in the 1950s, banning or burying evolution theories and research into promising lifesaving areas such as stem-cell research. — Juan Enriquez

I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin. — Robert Louis Stevenson

It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the Latins aes alienum, another's brass, for some of their coins were made of brass; still living, and dying, and buried by this other's brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay, to-morrow, and dying to-day, insolvent ... — Henry David Thoreau

There is a big difference between an honest mistake made in a moment of spiritual weakness and a willfull decision to disobey persistently the commandments of God. Those who deliberately choose to violate God's commandments or ignore the standards of the Church, even when promising themselves and others that someday they will be strong enough to repent, are stepping into a dangerously slippery slope upon which many have lost their spiritual footing. — M. Russell Ballard

It never feels good if you don't reach all of your goals, neither in sport, nor in business nor in your personal life. But the key thing is to never give up, we have taken our learnings from 2014 and developed an exciting and promising strategy for the period up until 2020. — Herbert Hainer

As scientists, we track down all promising leads, and there's reason to suspect that our universe may be one of many - a single bubble in a huge bubble bath of other universes. — Brian Greene

It's promising and seductive, that huge Italian family, sitting around the dinner table, surrounded by olive trees. But it's not my family and I am not their family, and no amount of birthing sons, and cooking dinner and raking leaves or planting the gardens or paying for the plane tickets is going to change that. If I don't come back in eleven months, I will not be missed, and no one will write me or call me to acknowledge my absence. Which is not an accusation, just a small truth about clan and bloodline. — Gabrielle Hamilton

And like all things, the problems disappeared. The challenges, goals and ambitions melted into folly and the reasons for all things homogenized into us and the enchantment of coffee-flavored kisses on a bright and promising morning became our religion, hope, destiny and dream. And it was beautiful then . . . . in a two room flat in the Alps of a city where love once lived. — David Ellsworth

A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising and then after all little by little it grows nothing but vegetables, nothing, nothing but vegetables. — Gertrude Stein

Comes to shove, they're forced to make choices neither are eager to make, and Jesse and Rowen have to face what their lives might look like without the other. Can two people with such tragic pasts and different presents expect a promising future together? Whatever the answer, they'll need a lot more than love to make it. All she wants to do is forget. Forget the memory of walking in on her boyfriend in the middle of, well, another girl. Forget how she had her entire life planned out. And forget about — Anonymous

He nodded vigorously. Anything was better than promising to fight Janice Avery. — Katherine Paterson

Our mornings were never "rise and shine." They were "rise and fight." They were loud and ravaging. They were heavy and unnerving, like the after-math of a war, with unresolved territorial disputes.
They were never serene, but they were beautiful. More beautiful than the smile you wear when you step out of the shower, more tempting than the sight of you brewing coffee from across the kitchen bar, more promising than a glorious victory, bigger than all our tumultuous past. Bigger than you. Bigger than I. — Malak El Halabi

But. All I could focus on was that one word: Why was there always a but? My parents swore up and down that they would love me no matter what, and yet the but sent me sliding down a rabbit hole, appearing in my mind like miles of quicksand before I could get to the love they were promising. - Kate Fagan. — Gregory Montoya

It sounded so promising. As if this would be the day. The day to ride a bike without training wheels. To make it through the afternoon without a stained blouse and a scolding. To persuade the girl next door to like me. To meet a man. To make a mint. To prosper. To love. To live fearlessly. — Anna Quindlen

Whenever a government feels the need of promising peace and prosperity to its citizens by means of a proclamation, it is time to be on guard and expect the opposite. — Ivo Andric

A leader must lead. Where others see obstacles, he must see opportunities. When others see problems, he must see possibilities ... Civilization is not built on a negation but on an affirmation- an affirmation of the bright and promising possibilities that the future holds for those who are enterprising enough to pursue them. — David J. Vaughan

When moms stayed home, it was easier just to let the kids play around the house. But as women entered the workplace and the extended family dissolved, someone else had to pick up the slack on the child-care front. Extracurricular activities fit the bill perfectly, promising not only supervision but also enrichment. — Carl Honore

Some nights the bed is endlessly wide, some nights it contains all the loneliness in the world. Some nights it is soft and promising, when waiting for sleep is the best part of the day. Some nights, like this one, the bed is hard, the mattress an enemy that wants to force your thoughts into the wrong track, that seems to want to mock you for lying there alone, without another body to rest into and against. — Mons Kallentoft

Love is promising to give someone everything and not expect anything in return. — Emma Hart

I need you, Desari. I was empty without you. And that kind of emptiness eats away at you, consumes you until your soul is dark and ugly and all that matters is sating your hunger. But nothing fills the void.Nothing. Year after year you endure the emptiness until life itself is a curse hardly to be borne. And all the while the darkness, the beast in you whispers, an insidious whisper promising power from the kill,promises that wear away your belief in God,in all the things that are right and true and good.The monster inside you,so black and hungry for life, grows and grows until it has consumed everything you ever were. That is the curse born by Carpathian males, Desari. — Christine Feehan

If prayer works, why can't God cure cancer or grow back a severed limb? Why so much avoidable suffering that God could so readily prevent? Why does God have to be prayed to at all? Doesn't He already know what cures need to be performed? Dossey also begins with a quote from Stanley Krippner, M.D. (described as "one of the most authoritative investigators of the variety of unorthodox healing methods used around the world"): [T]he research data on distant, prayer-based healing are promising, but too sparse to allow any firm conclusion to be drawn. This after many trillions of prayers over the millennia. — Carl Sagan

He summoned all his willpower and reined it in, promising himself he would drink just as much as he goddam wanted once he had his forty in - a pretty amazing number, when fifty percent of city cops retired after twenty-five and seventy percent after thirty. Only now that he has his forty, alcohol no longer interests him much. He forced himself to get drunk a few times, just to see if he could still do it, and he could, but being drunk turned out to be no better than being sober. Actually it was a little worse. — Stephen King

Something is not yet right and ripe in our human society at the beginning of the 21st century and third millennium: missing is an unprecedented vision, boldness and courage to fashion a new, promising, better future. Our beliefs, society, ways of life, institutions and future goals must be reviewed and reappraised fundamentally from scratch. — Robert Muller

Who knows if, upon reaching the age of twenty, I may find something there that will change my life? The night is promising and life is an unexpected guest. — Jo Soares

A cat's paw. It's an old fable. The monkey wanted some chestnuts that were roasting in the hot coals inside the fireplace. So he convinced the cat to get them out for him, promising to share them. The cat reached his paw in and scooped out the chestnuts one by one. And as each chestnut was removed, the monkey gobbled it up. The cat was left with nothing but a burnt paw. He was used by a cleverer creature at great expense to himself." "Now — Heather Blackwood

For any ranked society, whether a chiefdom or a state, one thus has to ask, why do the commoners tolerate the transfer of the fruits of their hard labor to kleptocrats? This question raised by political theorists from Plato to Marx are raised anew by voters in every modern election. Kleptocracies with little public support run the risk of being overthrown, either by downtrodden commoners, or by upstart would be replacement kleptocrats seeking public support by promising a higher ratio of services rendered to fruits stolen. — Jared Diamond

Every voter knew that the Family Party had come to power promising to deport Illegals, to manage its borders more efficiently and to ensure that people of traditional European stock weren't overrun in their own country. — Lawrence Hill