Rarely Important Quotes & Sayings

The formal education of women was rarely considered important. Girls of good birth were taught domestic skills at home or in a convent, and rarely learned to read and write, for it was feared that if they did they would waste their talents writing love letters or reading romances that led to promiscuity. — Alison Weir

Thus was this expedition finished ... after having, by its event, strongly evinced this important truth; that though prudence, intrepidity and perseverence united are not exempted from the blows of adverse fortune, yet in a long series of transactions they usually rise superior to its power, and in the end rarely fail of proving successful.
Voyage Around The World, 1751 — George Anson

The most important moments rarely come at a convenient time — Erwin McManus

It's very important to choose our words very carefully because miscommunication leads to misunderstanding, which rarely leads to anything good. — Charles F. Glassman

Fantastic literature has been especially prominent in times of unrest, when the older values have been overthrown to make way for the new; it has often accompanied or predicted change, and served to shake up rational Complacency, challenging reason and reminding man of his darker nature. Its popularity has had its ups and downs, and it has always been the preserve of a small literary minority. As a natural challenger of classical values, it is rarely part of a culture's literary mainstream, expressing the spirit of the age; but it is an important dissenting voice, a reminder of the vast mysteries of existence, sometimes truly metaphysical in scope, but more often merely riddling. — Franz Rottensteiner

Thwarted, or starved, in the important objects proper to young capacities, the boys and young men naturally find or invent deviant objects for themselves ... Their choices and inventions are rarely charming, usually stupid, and often disastrous; we cannot expect average kids to deviate with genius. But on the other hand, the young men who conform to the dominant society become for the most part apathetic, disappointed, cynical and wasted. — Paul Goodman

Churches for churched people obsess over the most frivolous, inconsequential things. It's why you dread your board meetings, your elder meetings, and your committee meetings. You rarely talk about anything important. You're managing found people. I know you care about un-found people in your heart. But do you care in your schedule, your programming, your preaching style, or your budget? — Andy Stanley

Sure, and fatherhood is super important too. I'm not trying to make this a women-only club by any means. Just that even men rarely view their role in child rearing as the most important thing they do, when in fact it is clearly the most important thing that anybody does. — Rufi Thorpe

Business purpose and business mission are so rarely given adequate thought is perhaps the most important cause of business frustration and failure. — Peter Drucker

The oppression of any people for opinion's sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important. — Hosea Ballou

Legends are very pretty but rarely touch on the important facts of life. Things like whether a 1969 red Mustang powered by a 351 Windsor can outrun a seventy-foot reptilian predator. — Rhys Ford

Words are really a mask,' he said. 'They rarely express the true meaning; in fact they tend to hide it. If you can live in fantasy, then you don't need religion, since with fantasy you can understand that after death, man is reincorporated in the Universe. Once again I will say that it is not important to know whether there is something beyond this life. What counts is having done the right sort of work; if that is right, then everything else will be all right. The Universe, or Nature, is for me what God is for others. It is wrong to think that Nature is the enemy of man, something to be conquered. Rather, we should look upon Nature as a mother, and should peaceably surrender ourselves to it. If we take that attitude, we will simply feel that we are returning to the Universe as all other things do, all animals and plants. We are all just infinitesimal parts of the Whole. It is absurd to rebel; we must deliver ourselves up to the great current ... — Miguel Serrano

In any story, drama may be intensified by the characters realizing by how narrow a margin they had managed to succeed - that is, where coincidence played a role. This is one of the more realistic ways to use coincidence because rarely do we realize how important a coincidental event is until after the fact. — Jane Lindskold

The rain began to fall harder, and it distracted him, but he tried to pull himself back because he felt on the verge of understanding something large and important. It seemed to him that this moment - the light and wind, the sweep of fields, the falling rain, the lowing cows, Leah's form as it twisted to one side and then another - captured a sort of life that he longed for, a life of order and harsh beauty, and although this was his farm and his vision, it did not seem to be his life. It seemed instead to be the thing for which he must daily give up his life, an act of submission to something he could not name and only rarely, in moments such as these, have a sense of. Life during these moments seemed neither lost nor ruined but a power to be shared, as the grass shares its power with the living things that devour it. — Robert Boswell

The important task rarely must be done today, or even this week ... But the urgent task calls for instant action ... The momentary appeal of these tasks seems irresistible and important, and they devour our energy. But in the light of time's perspective, their deceptive prominence fades; with a sense of loss we recall the vital tasks we pushed aside. We realize we've become slaves to the tyranny of the urgent. — Charles Hummel

Aesthetes have it all over intellectuals in one very important respect: You'll rarely catch us hustling anyone off to the nearest guillotine. We're too busy trying to make the world more beautiful. Our hands are stained with ink and paint, not blood. — Terry Teachout

In fact, most of the time, things do not turn out as we expect. But the potential value of unexpected developments is rarely tapped. Instead, when things turn out contrary to our expectations, we go immediately into problem-solving mode and react, or just try harder - without taking the time to see whether this unexpected development is telling us something important about our assumptions. "This more prepared mental state is really where a lot of the longer-term payoff is," says Galloway. — Peter M. Senge

Real progress in understanding nature is rarely incremental. All important advances are sudden intuitions, new principles, new ways of seeing. — Marilyn Ferguson

Zest. Gusto. How rarely one hears these words used. How rarely do we see people living, or for that matter, creating, by them. Yet if I were asked to name the most important items in a writer's make-up, the things that shape his material and rush him along the road he wants to go. I would only warn him to look to his zest, see to his gusto. — Ray Bradbury

first, he called idiot savant. The type of person who is so smart in his or her field of expertise that their mind is literally elsewhere. In layman's terms he explained that these people were smart in school and dumb on the bus. The second category was made up of perfectionists, people who were incapable of letting go of one task and moving on to another. These people were always playing catch-up, rarely rose to any real position of power, and needed to be managed properly. The third category, and the one to be most wary of, were the egomaniacs. These were the people who not only felt that their time was more important than anyone else's, but who needed to prove it by constantly making others wait — Vince Flynn

It was important to focus on working-class women because we so rarely focus, particularly in period films, on the working people. The suffragettes brought together women of all classes, which was one of the striking things about the movement. — Sarah Gavron

On an important decision one rarely has 100% of the information needed for a good decision no matter how much one spends or how long one waits. And, if one waits too long, he has a different problem and has to start all over. This is the terrible dilemma of the hesitant decision maker. — Robert K. Greenleaf

When the occasional customer tells us his or her dream of running a bookstore someday, we recognize our own naivete in that enthusiasm. They may have some inkling about long hours and low pay, but rarely do they know about the fires, the guerrilla bargainers, the bereavements, or the prisons. Neither did we - then. But we sure do now. In all honesty, the scariest, hardest, saddest, and most important stories found in a bookshop aren't in the books, they're in the customers. — Wendy Welch

A paycheck is a sufficient impetus to motivate some employees to do the minimum amount to get by, and for others, the challenge of getting ahead in the organization provides a satisfactory focus for a while. But these incentives alone are rarely strong enough to inspire workers to give their best to their work. For this a vision is needed, an overarching goal that gives meaning to the job, so that an individual can forget himself in the task and experience flow without doubts or regrets. The most important component of such a vision is an ingredient we call soul. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The scientists nodded and wrote on their clipboards. All information was important information, even if the reasons were not immediately apparent. The reason for anything was rarely immediately or even eventually apparent, but it existed somewhere, like a moon that had escaped orbit and was no longer a moon but just a piece of something that once was, spinning off into the nothing. The scientists were just then writing down that very metaphor. Metaphors are a big part of science. — Joseph Fink

If you can't change everything all at once, then at least work on changing something each day. Become aggressive in your battle with the ego. You probably don't need all the things that it wants. You need hope, discipline, creative expression, love, and serenity-these are the important things. Remember, when you are balanced, one stepping stone will lead you to the next. But you will rarely see the whole journey or all the answers at once. — Stuart Wilde

Here's what I believe. Shit fucking happens. That's rule one. Everybody walking the planet knows that. Rule two: things rarely turn out the way you planned. Three: everybody gets knocked down. Four, and most important of all: after you take those shots, it's time to stand up and walk on - to continue to live. — Duff McKagan

Nothing was really so important to my father as the achievement of selflessness. He rarely mentioned it directly, but tried to guide us to it in a roundabout way. — Tahir Shah

Rarely, I discovered, does a minister have the opportunity to get as close to his congregation as can a chaplain to men at war. Seemingly unimportant problems, which in normal life would never even come to the clergyman's attention, can seriously affect the soldiers' morale. For men whose every living moment is a preparation for battle, a preparation perhaps for death, the chaplain can become a link to family and home. But the chaplain cannot become that important link to family and home by moving among the men with folded hands and bowed head quoting Scriptures at the drop of a hat. He must share with the men their day-today experiences and enter into them fully. Before he can gain the soldiers' confidence in him as a chaplain, he must gain their confidence and respect in him as a man. Visiting the men in their quarters below deck became one of my regular duties. Down below in the hold of the ship was my 'pastorate,' and almost daily I spent as much time there as possible. — Chaplain William C. Taggart

Unjust social orders do no fall merely by appeals to the consciences of the oppressor, though such appeals may be an important element; history teaches us that they fall because a large enough number of people organize a movement powerful enough to push them down. Rarely do such revolutions emerge in a neat and morally pristine process. — Timothy B. Tyson

Betrayal is an important word with this guidepost. When we value being cool and in control over granting ourselves the freedom to unleash the passionate, goofy, heartfelt, and soulful expressions of who we are, we betray ourselves. When we consistently betray ourselves, we can expect to do the same to the people we love. When we don't give ourselves permission to be free, we rarely tolerate that freedom in others. We put them down, make fun of them, ridicule their behaviors, and sometimes shame them. We can do this intentionally or unconsciously. Either way the message is, Geez, man. — Brene Brown

react is important here. However you approach codependency, however you define it, and from whatever frame of reference you choose to diagnose and treat it, codependency is primarily a reactionary process. Codependents are reactionaries. They overreact. They under-react. But rarely do they act. They react to the problems, pains, — Melody Beattie

I love developing children as characters. Children rarely have important roles in literary fiction - they are usually defined as cute or precious, or they create a plot by being kidnapped or dying. — Barbara Kingsolver

As humans, we are rarely anything more than children that have let the changes to the size and shape of our genitals convince us that there are more important things in life than wonder and happiness. we call the acceptence of this change 'growing up' and it makes us feel big and powerful in a world that would be no less mysterious to us than it was before if all of the fantasizing that we once used to explore the "unknown" quality of our reality had not become devoted almost exclusively to the notion that we are in control. — Philip K. Jason

I think the other thing that's important is getting to a place, which very, very rarely happens with improvising groups, where somebody can decide not to play for a while. You watch any group of musicians improvising together and they nearly all play nearly all the time. In fact I often say that the biggest difference between classical music and everything else is that classical musicians sometimes shut up because they're told to, because the score tells them to. Whereas any music that's sort of based on folk or jazz, everybody plays all the time. — Brian Eno

The Mole had long wanted to make the I acquaintance of the Badger. He seemed, by all accounts, to be such an important personage and, though rarely visible, to make his unseen influence felt by everybody about the place. — Kenneth Grahame

There are but two roads that lead to an important goal and to the doing of great things: strength and perseverance. Strength is the lot of but a few priveledged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Trifling favors are readily acknowledged, though cheaply esteemed; but important ones are most rarely remembered. — Giovanni Ruffini

Our personal journey is rarely easy, and our global journey is even less so. Because everything is interdependent, we have to work on both of these levels at once. Trying to change society without deeply understanding our heartmind won't work. Your own road home can never be separated from society's journey. We need a unifying theory and language that allow us to link the lessons of our personal journey with the situation facing our world. The important question then, a question laced with a gorgeous irony, is, "How do we get home from here?" Or, maybe more appropriate, "How do we get here from here? — Ethan Nichtern

So there are established sayings: Guidance to enlightenment seems nonsensical. Guidance to progress seems backwards. Guidance to equality seems to classify. Higher efficacy seems at a loss. Great purity seems like shame. Broad effectiveness seems insufficient. Constructive effectiveness seems casual. Basic reality seems changeable. A great expanse has no shores. A large container takes a long time to make. Important news is rarely heard. — Lao-Tzu

In general, dividing literature into prose and poetry began with the appearance of prose, for only in prose could such a division be expressed. By its nature, by its essence, art is hierarchical, automatically, and in this hierarchy, poetry stands above prose. If only because poetry is older. Poetry really is a very strange thing, because it belongs to a troglodyte as well as to a snob. It can be produced in the Stone Age and in the most modern salon, whereas prose requires a developed society, a developed structure, certain established classes, if you like. Here you could start reasoning like a Marxist without even being wrong. The poet works from the voice, from the sound. For him, content is not as important as is ordinarily believed. For a poet, there is almost no difference between phonetics and semantics. Therefore, only very rarely does the poet give any thought to who in fact comprises his audience. That is, he does so much more rarely than the prose writer. — Joseph Brodsky

Price is rarely the most important thing. A cheap product might sell some units. Somebody gets it home and they feel great when they pay the money, but then they get it home and use it and the joy is gone. — Tim Cook

It's an important thing and a necessary thing as a writer to always be reaching outside of yourself. They say write what you know. But what you know is rarely enough. You need to know more. But you've got to approach it with a lot of respect and humility. You owe it to the people and experience you're trying to understand. It's not a casual thing. — Ben Fountain

It was the marriage that was important; Jane Austen rarely even bothered to write about the wedding. — Karen Joy Fowler

He got up and said, I think you've got something in you. I don't know. Women very rarely have. I mean most women just want to be good at something, they've got good-at minds, and they mean deftness and a flair and good taste and what-not. They can't ever understand that if your desire is to go to the furthest limits of yourself then the actual form your art takes doesn't seem important to you. Whether — John Fowles

Point-of-view is a matter that readers rarely pay attention to, yet it's one of the most important story decisions an author makes. — Therese Fowler

One of the primary reasons that abstraction is overloved is that a completed program full of the right abstractions is perfectly beautiful. But there are very few completed programs, because programs are written, maintained, bugs are fixed, features are added, performance is tuned, and a whole variety of changes are made both by the original and new programming team members. Thus, the way a program looks in the end is not important because there is rarely an end, and if there is one it isn't planned. — Richard P. Gabriel

An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: What does happen is that the opponents gradually die out. — Max Planck

Films really can change a conversation and change someone's thinking and perception, especially with people of color at the center. It rarely happens. I think it's important for both the community but also the world to see people of color in all genres, especially love stories. — Gina Prince-Bythewood

This rarely happens in a visit to the pediatrician's office, but it should. The good doctor would ask you about the health of your baby and give your little bundle of joy a routine examination. Then she'd look you in the eyes and ask some truly intrusive questions about your social life. "Do you have many friends?" the pediatrician would inquire. "What social groups do you and your husband belong to? How important are these groups to you? How diverse are they? How much contact time do you and your husband have with them?" The doctor doesn't ask about these things because your social life is none of her business. The problem is, it is plenty of the infant's business. — John Medina

Indeed we all try to raise our children as if our past experiences are important for their future, but they rarely are. — Nelson DeMille

I'm a writer, not an editor, and though the editing rarely cut into my writing time, it did take away from that walking-around-thinking-about-it-when-you're-not-thinking-about-it time that I think is important for writers. When you're half-thinking about what you're working on while driving, cooking ... just letting things sift and settle, come to you. — Ben Fountain

Take heart, Maya. As a bookseller, I assure you that prizewinning can be somewhat important for sales but rarely matters much in terms of quality. — Gabrielle Zevin

When everything feels urgent and important, everything seems equal. We become active and busy, but this doesn't actually move us any closer to success. Activity is often unrelated to productivity, and busyness rarely takes care of business. — Gary Keller

Success in anything important rarely comes without the Five Horsemen of Success: planning, effort, positivity, perseverance and resilience. — Michael Josephson

Ninety percent of those who fail are not actually defeated; they simply quit ... As you face bad experiences, it's important for you to remember that you can rarely see the benefits while you're in the midst of them. You usually gain perspective on the other side of it. — John C. Maxwell

If you make human company too important you will not discover your true Self. Relationships not based in truth are never entirely reliable and are rarely enduring.
Taking time to discover yourself is the best use of time.
Prioritize this.
One should not excessively seek partners or friends, one should seek to know and be oneself. As you begin to awaken to the Truth, you start noticing how well life flows by itself and how well you are cared for. Life supports the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual needs of the one who is open to self-discovery. Trust opens your eyes to the recognition of this. Surrender allows you to merge in your own eternal being. — Mooji

That's the problem with life. It rarely gives you neat decisions wrapped up in shiny paper with a bow on top. Most of the important decisions in life are messy. — Debbie Viguie

In years since he has rarely gone back to those old memories. As he does now, in the tavern near Harvard College, he's startled to find that the muddy whirl has been swept away. The mental pan has been churning for fifty years, sorting the dirt and sand to the periphery and throwing it off. Most of the memories are simply gone. All that remain are a few wee nuggets. It's not plain to Daniel why these impressions have stayed, while others, which seemed as or more important to him at the time they happened, have gone away. But if the gold-panning similitude is faithful, it means that these memories matter more than the ones that have flown. For gold stays in the pan's center because of its density; it has more matter (whatever that means) in a given extent than anything else. — Neal Stephenson

Copy editors are very important and too rarely praised. — Jane Lindskold

The most important environmental issue is one that is rarely mentioned, and that is the lack of a conservation ethic in our culture. — Gaylord Nelson

I learned that effective communication starts with the understanding that there is MY point of view, (my truth), and someone else's point of view (his truth). Rarely is there one absolute truth, so people who believe that they speak THE truth are very silencing of others. When we realize and recognize that we can see things only from our own perspective, we can share our views in a nonthreatening way. Statements of opinion are always more constructive in the first person "I" form. The ability to listen is as important as the ability to speak. Miscommunication is always a two way street. — Sheryl Sandberg

It's important, no doubt, to understand the person we love. If we cannot manage this, it's necessary, at least, to believe we understand them. I must confess that over the entire eight years I only rarely enjoyed the contentment of the second possibility, let alone the first. — Orhan Pamuk