Quotes & Sayings About Putting Someone Before Yourself

She looked around. They had drifted far away from the bank of the canal. "Are we stealing this boat?"
"Stealing' is such an ugly word," he mused.
"What do you want to call it?"
He picked her up and swung her around before putting her down. "An extreme case of window-shopping. — Cassandra Clare

Now, ideas are the raw material of progress. Everything first takes shape in the form of an idea. But an idea itself is worth nothing. An idea, like a machine, must have power applied to it before it can accomplish anything. The men who have won fame and fortune through having an idea are those who devoted every ounce of their strength and every dollar they could muster to putting it into operation. Ford had a big idea, but he had to sweat and suffer and sacrifice to make it work. — B.C. Forbes

There are two differences between an orgy and a sex club. First, at a sex club it's considered bad form to introduce yourself to someone before you start putting parts of his body in your mouth. At an orgy you are allowed to offer your name as long as you do so with an obvious sense of irony. — Joel Derfner

Love is putting another person before yourself. Love means doing what's best for the other person, no matter what it means for you. Love is always there. Time can only strengthen love. You can only love someone else if they allow you to and it applies to yourself. To be loved, you must place trust in another person. — Lindsay Paige

Start with a clean grill. Keep it clean by brushing with a wire brush after preheating, and again after cooking. Make sure to oil your grates and your food before putting it on the grill to keep it from sticking. — Emeril Lagasse

Even so, the two of us look memorable in these clothes. And your shirt is transparent. I don't think I can take a bunch of men ogling you." He didn't look up as he took his rifle apart and carefully wrapped it around before putting it in his pack. The ammunition belt followed, along with every other visible weapon.
Dahlia gasped and crossed her arms over her breasts. "You could have said something."
"I didn't want to embarrassed you." This time he did look up, only a small glance.
She had the impression of a fleeting smile. She caught the shirt he threw her and hastily put it on. "Next time, I'm pushing you in," she vowed. — Christine Feehan

Try pausing right before and right after undertaking a new action, even something simple like putting a key in a lock to open a door. Such pauses take a brief moment, yet they have the effect of decompressing time and centering you. — David Steindl-Rast

My attitude toward punctuation is that it ought to be as conventional as possible. The game of golf would lose a good deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green. You ought to be able to show that you can do it a good deal better than anyone else with the regular tools before you have a license to bring in your own improvements. — Ernest Hemingway,

I think that there are so many women who understand nothing about clothes and they should try and understand themselves before they start putting on disguises: they should stand in front of the mirror for a day, two days or three, and find out what they have which is beautiful, interesting: what they should show: hair, neck, arms, or hands. — Sonia Rykiel

I put people before gods. I respect believers of all kinds and work to promote interfaith dialogue, but my whole life I've seen religion used as a weapon, and I'm putting all weapons down. — Zak Ebrahim

But most of all he liked to listen to stories of real life. He smiled gleefully as he listened to such stories, putting in words and asking questions, all aiming at bringing out clearly the moral beauty of the action of which he was told. Attachments, friendships, love, as Pierre understood them, Karataev had none, but he loved and lived on affectionate terms with every creature with whom he was thrown in life, and especially so with man- not with any particular man, but with the men that happened to be before his eyes.
But his life, as he looked at it, had no meaning as a separate life. It only had meaning as part of a whole, of which he was at all times conscious. — Leo Tolstoy

Who shall blame him? Who will not secretly rejoice when the hero puts his armour off, and halts by the window and gazes at his wife and son, who, very distant at first, gradually come closer and closer, till lips and book and head are clearly before him, though still lovely and unfamiliar from the intensity of his isolation and the waste of ages and the perishing of the stars, and finally putting his pipe in his pocket and bending his magnificent head before her - who will blame him if he does homage to the beauty of the world? — Virginia Woolf

The steel door of the incinerator went up and the muted hum of the eternal fire became a red roaring. The heat lunged out at them like a famished beast. Then Rahel's Ammu was fed to it. Her hair, her skin, her smile. Her voice. They way she used Kipling to love her children before putting them to bed: We be of one blood, though and I. Her goodnight kiss. The way she held their faces steady with one hand (squashed-cheeked, fish-mouthed) while she parted and combed their hair with the other. The way she held knickers out for Rahel to climb into. Left leg, right leg. All this was fed to the beast, and it was satisfied.
She was their Ammu and their Baba and she had loved them Double. — Arundhati Roy

Here is the hardest hit of all, O'Malley," Harry said. "Here is the very worst thing I can do to you."
He held out his hand, as if asking for a handshake.
He was asking for a handshake.
Conor responded almost automatically, putting out his own hand and shaking Harry's before he even thought about what he was doing. They shook hands like two businessmen at the end of a meeting.
"Goodbye, O'Malley," Harry said, looking into Conor's eyes. "I no longer see you. — Patrick Ness

Once upon a teenage mistake, Ash thought he was in forever love, the kind of love that started wars and built the Taj Mahal. He knew at that moment how wrong he'd been. Without his even realizing it, Ash had fallen for Fee, harder and faster than he'd ever fallen for anyone. This was the love he'd thought he'd had before, but there was no real comparison between the two. It was like putting a
matchstick beside a raging inferno - one of them would be completely consumed. — Piper Vaughn

Oh my God! You have Empire Records?" I grab the DVD and rush over to put it in the player. "You know this movie is cinema gold," Jackson says as he brings over popcorn and settles into the couch. "This is the best movie ever!" I exclaim and snuggle into his side. "Okay. Before we start watching, if you could be anyone, who would you pick? I'd be Lucas. He's hysterical." I smile and grab the bowl, putting it on my lap. "I guess Joe. He's the boss." I laugh at his choice. Of course he'd pick the one who's in charge. Joe is pretty badass, though. "I think you'd be a great Rex. Oh Rexy, you're so sexy." I smirk and push play as he scoffs. — Corinne Michaels

You do not get to say good-bye to me like this. You do not get to say good-bye at all. You promised me you would come back, and that does not mean I get your ashes in a fucking box, do you hear me? No one gets to kill you but me, and I swear, Raphael, I will stake you myself if you let them kill you."
One corner of his sensuous mouth curved up in amusement at the illogical threat, and she growled, actually growled at him. Which only made him smile harder.
"Perhaps I simply wanted to take comfort in the sweet and silky flesh of my mate before going into battle."
Cyn gave him a doubtful look, but she smiled. "In that case, you have the wrong woman."
Raphael wrapped both arms around her and rolled them again, putting him once more on top. "I have exactly the woman I want, lubimaya. There is no other. — D.B. Reynolds

Before putting yourself in peril, it is necessary to forsee and fear it; but when one is there, nothing remains but to despise it. — Francois Fenelon

He saw nature - he saw books through me; and never did I weary of gazing for his behalf, and of putting into words the effect of the field, tree, town, river, cloud, sunbeam - of the landscape before us; of the weather round us and impressing by sound on his ear what light could no longer stamp on his eye. — Charlotte Bronte

An author, like any other so-called artist, is a man in whom the normal vanity of all men is so vastly exaggerated that he finds it a sheer impossibility to hold it in. His over-powering impulse is to gyrate before his fellow men, flapping his wings and emitting defiant yells. This being forbidden by the police of all civilized nations, he takes it out by putting his yells on paper. Such is the thing called self-expression. — H.L. Mencken

True intercession involves bringing the person, or the circumstance that seems to be crashing in on you, before God, until you are changed by His attitude toward that person or circumstance. People describe intercession by saying, "It is putting yourself in someone else's place." That is not true! Intercession is putting yourself in God's place; it is having His mind and His perspective. — Oswald Chambers

I took a voyage once
it is many years ago, now
to Amsterdam, and the owner, not my good cousin here, but another, took a fancy to go with me; and his wife must needs accompany him, and verily, before that voyage was over, I wished I was dead. I was no longer captain of the ship. My owner was my captain, and his wife was his. We were forever putting into port for fresh bread and meat, milk and eggs, for she could eat none other. If the wind got up but ever so little, we had to run into shelter and anchor until the sea was smooth. The manners of the sailors shocked her. She would scream at night when a rat ran across her, and would lose her appetite if a living creature, of which, as usual, the ship was full, fell from a beam onto her platter. I was tempted, more than once, to run the ship on to a rock and make an end of us all. — G.A. Henty

The guiding metaphor of classic style is seeing the world. The writer can see something that the reader has not yet noticed, and he orients the reader's gaze so that she can see it for herself. The purpose of writing is presentation, and its motive is disinterested truth. It succeeds when it aligns language with the truth, the proof of success being clarity and simplicity. The truth can be known, and is not the same as the language that reveals it; prose is a window onto the world. The writer knows the truth before putting it into words; he is not using the occasion of writing to sort out what he thinks. Nor does the writer of classic prose have to argue for the truth; he just needs to present it. That is because the reader is competent and can recognize the truth when she sees it, as long as she is given an unobstructed view. The writer and the reader are equals, and the process of directing the reader's gaze takes the form of a conversation. — Steven Pinker

I remember a distinct moment when it was my junior year of college, and the content I was making was changing and not really myself, and I tried to switch back to just putting me out there. I'm happy that happened really early in my career, because that was before I started doing podcasts or writing. — Tyler Oakley

We were putting into these gomers our fear of death, but who knew if they feared death? Perhaps they welcomed death like a dear long-lost cousin, grown old but still known, coming to visit, relieving the loneliness, the failing of the senses, the fury of the half-blind looking into the mirror and not recognizing who is looking back, a dear friend, a dear reliever, a healer who would be with them for an eternity, the same eternity as the long ago, before birth. — Samuel Shem

He acted every part of an orator, and I could observe many periods of threatenings, and others of promises, pity, and kindness. I answered in a few words, but in the most submissive manner, lifting up my left hand, and both my eyes to the sun, as calling him for a witness; and being almost famished with hunger, having not eaten a morsel for some hours before I left the ship, I found the demands of nature so strong upon me, that I could not forbear showing my impatience (perhaps against the strict rules of decency) by putting my finger frequently to my mouth, to signify that I wanted food. The hurgo — Jonathan Swift

She had abruptly flipped from the southern belle and was now putting on the extremely businesslike air of those perfectionist women who'd only worked in the professional world for two or three years before stopping to have children and were now terrified of not being taken seriously. — Rebecca Makkai

I wait until her breathing is soft and even against me before I let myself drift off to sleep, like I've been doing every night for the past few weeks. Slowly, everything in my life is turning into putting her first, and I'm not going to fight it. — Carian Cole

Loving a person isn't a magical, sparkly passion. It's hard work. It's putting the other person before yourself. It's companionship and being able to trust and depend on each other. That loquacious true love everyone spouts about is really finding a partner who will go through the heartbreaks and joys of life with you. — K.M. Shea

If your environment keeps draining your energy, it's like having a leaky bank account, where any money you're putting into the bank, such as by seeing an energy healer, keeps slipping out. You have to change your environment, including any harmful beliefs, before the energy can stay high. — Bruce Lipton

I have seen this too many times before. The unwarranted devotion. Putting up with the fear of being with the wrong person because you can't deal with the fear of being alone. The hope tinged with doubt, and the doubt tinged with hope. — David Levithan

Moses spent so much time face to face with Yahweh, that his own face began to transfigure and shine like the sun. He had to pull a cloak over himself because the Israelites could not stand before the brightness of holiness. The direct presence of Yahweh changes one's very being from human to divine." "Moses was made into a god?" "Like a Son of God. Bene ha Elohim. But it was only a foretaste, because it would fade with time." Mary was putting it together. "So, Sons of God are the holy ones who surround Yahweh Elohim's throne chariot, and they are myriad." "Ten thousands upon ten thousands. They are the divine ones who administered the Law of Yahweh at Sinai. They are direct creations of Yahweh, and because they are in his presence, they shine with holiness. — Brian Godawa

You got your cheese, I hope? You won't mind a word of advice? Eat it. Don't put it in a plastic bag in the fridge and save it for visitors; before you know where you are it'll have swollen to three times its size and smell like a chemical factory. You'll open the bag and be putting your face into a bad marriage. — Julian Barnes

Theres something incredible about putting a helmet on just before a game; its a feeling only a football player knows. Your vision narrows, and the whole world shrinks. You cant hear much of what goes on outside you, but you can hear yourself breathe and you can feel yourself sweat. — Carl Deuker

A near View of Death would soon reconcile Men of good Priciples one to another, and that it is chiefly owing to our easy Scituation in Life, and our putting these Things far from us, that our Breaches are formented, ill Blood continued, Prejudices, Breach of Charity and of Christian Union so much kept and so far carry'd on among us, as it is: Another Plague Year would reconcile all these Differences, a close conversing with Death, or the Diseases that threaten Death, would scum off the Gall from our Tempers, remove the Animosities among us, and bring us to see with differing Eyes, than those which we look'd on Things with before — Daniel Defoe

And a lot of poetry is putting yourself back into the state of wonder that you have before things when you're a child. It's not only a joyous wonder, it's sometimes a grief stricken wonder. — Edward Hirsch