Quotes & Sayings About Rules Being Good

I think when you do comedy, you play by a different set of rules. No one really wants you to be in that good shape. Being in good shape implies a level of vanity that isn't necessarily funny. — Seth Rogen

A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules. The partners
do not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern, intricate but gay
and swift and free, like a country dance of Mozart's. To touch heavily would be to arrest the pattern
and freeze the movement, to check the endlessly changing beauty of its unfolding. There is no place
here for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand; only the barest touch in passing. Now
arm in arm, now face to face, now back to back - it does not matter which. Because they know they
are partners moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being invisibly nourished by
it. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Good, law-abiding, value-oriented citizens are the ultimate in hypocrisy; "majority rules" and the law are exactly the same as being the biggest bully on the block with the biggest stick-it is only might that allows one group to force another to live by its code of conduct ... — William J. Murray

I have these secret pangs of shame about being single, like I wasn't good enough to get a husband. Rita reminded me of something I'd told her once, about the five rules of the world as arrived at by this Catholic priest named Tom Weston. The first rule, he says, is that you must not have anything wrong with you or anything different. The second one is that if you do have something wrong with you, you must get over it as soon as possible. The third rule is that if you can't get over it, you must pretend that you have. The fourth rule is that if you can't even pretend that you have, you shouldn't show up. You should stay home, because it's hard for everyone else to have you around. And the fifth rule is that if you are going to insist on showing up, you should at least have the decency to feel ashamed.
So Rita and I decided that the most subversive, revolutionary thing I could do was to show up for my life and not be ashamed. — Anne Lamott

We are told, "You're a good boy," or "You're a good girl," when we do what Mom and Dad want us to do. When we don't, we are "a bad girl" or "a bad boy." When we went against the rules we were punished; when we went along with the rules we got a reward. We were punished many times a day, and we were also rewarded many times a day. Soon we became afraid of being punished and also afraid of not receiving the reward. — Miguel Ruiz

The only good thing about religion is the music. Because nature is filled with balances and opposites, there are always exceptions to the overall rules, whether the overall rules are bleak or otherwise. If you propound a joyous theory of existence, I will find an exception to that. If I propound a bleak theory, someone will find a joyous exception. That's just nature being nature, I think, and I don't think it offers a lot of hope. It's sort of a respite along the way. — George Carlin

He hands her his pack, which he's emptied. "You mean me?" Justineau demands. "You think I'm not pulling my weight?" It would feel good to have a stand-up argument with Parks right then, but he doesn't seem keen to play. "No, I didn't mean you. I meant in general." "People in general? You were being philosophical?" "I was being a grumpy bastard. It's what I wear to the office most days. I guess you probably noticed that." She hesitates, wrong-footed. She didn't think Parks was capable of self-deprecation. But then she didn't think he was capable of changing his mind. "Any more rules of engagement?" she asks him, still hurting in some obscure way, still not mollified. "How to survive when shopping? Top tips for modern urban living?" Parks gives the question more consideration than she was expecting. "Use up the last of that e-blocker," he suggests. "And don't die. — M.R. Carey

What if there is endless free choice and not a single choice is right or wrong? Could every choice be a possibility? What if every option feels good or bad based only on our perception of it? Or if all the 'rules' aren't really rules? What would happen if just being in the moment was an option? — Kimberly Sabatini

If somebody else is making the rules for you, no matter how good the payoff is for you, you're being conned. — Jon Rappoport

You do not go near them. You do not allow them to touch you. If one does touch you, I will eat his spine."
"It's good," she commented, "that we're establishing rules. For instance, being a newcomer here, I might not understand the whole 'don't touch or be devoured' guideline ... "
-Prince Maltese and Lt. Anne — MaryJanice Davidson

They say adolescent 'best' friendships are like love affairs where we learn the rules of relationships: commitment, trust, loyalty, jealousy, exchange, loss. Not being acquainted with the theories of friendship, Charles and Lise chose each other out of good humoured envy. Each wanted the life of the other. — Barbara Wels

What's the good of being civilized, that's what I'd like to know? It just means other people can break the rules and you can't. — Diana Wynne Jones

Expecting people to follow rules just because they should is being too hopeful. Rules must be designed to dovetail with selfish interest because people are primarily driven by it. They need to be shepherded into good behaviour through this proclivity. — Amish Tripathi

A controlling relationship can start with over-the-top romantic gestures and gifts, and great protestations of you 'being the only one' and their love being a special kind of 'you and me against the world', often disconcertingly early in a relationship. There may be a charm campaign aimed at you and even friends and family, your other potential allies and 'protectors'. Suddenly or gradually there are rules, or flashes of mystifying rage or sulking designed to modify your behaviour to what they want you to do. Then the 'nice' person reappears, and all is well, he's romantic and doting again, before the next flashpoints of anger or rage or sullen tension. This is not a 'return to the good times'. It's the classic cycle of abuse, recognised — Kaz Cooke

And now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make good art. — Neil Gaiman

Business is a game like baseball or golf or anything else. I enjoy being a student of the game, and reading, and learning, and going to conferences, whether it's building custom homes or selling or servicing medical equipment. A good entrepreneur can be a good entrepreneur in any industry because if you're a good student of the game, the rules and the lessons are very much the same. And that's the fun part about it. — Ryan Diest

Good governance is less about structure and rules than being focused, effective and accountable. — Pearl Zhu

I realized that all my life, my values were based upon typical middle-class American values: hard work, doing good, living well, owning things, following the rules & being the best I can be ... but God clearly says, those are not MY values. I value justice, mercy & humility. — John Green

[M]y fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe; who presides in the councils of nations; and whose providential aid can supply every human defect; that his benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the People of the United States, a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge. In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good. — George Washington

Time, my brothers and sisters, seems to be running out; we are not yet tearing one another apart, but we are tearing apart our common home. Today, the scientific community realizes what the poor have long told us: harm, perhaps irreversible harm, is being done to the ecosystem. The earth, entire peoples and individual persons are being brutally punished. And behind all this pain, death and destruction there is the stench of what Basil of Caesarea called "the dung of the devil". An unfettered pursuit of money rules. The service of the common good is left behind. Once capital becomes an idol and guides people's decisions, once greed for money presides over the entire socioeconomic system, it ruins society, it condemns and enslaves men and women, it destroys human fraternity, it sets people against one another and, as we clearly see, it even puts at risk our common home. — Pope Francis

Some of the qualities that go into making a good reporter - aggressiveness, a certain sneakiness, a secretive nature, nosiness, the ability to find out that which someone wants hidden, the inability to take 'no' with any sort of grace, a taste for gossip, rudeness, a fair disdain for what people will think of you and an occasional and calculated disregard for rules - are also qualities that go into making a very antisocial human being. — Linda Ellerbee

Not only should the conventional "rules" of marriage not apply necessarily to individual wives, but the euphoria of Phase One is old news. We being to learn that while nothing is as good as it seems, nothing is quite as dire as it appears. — Susan Shapiro Barash

The rules are the rules for a reason. Being a Shadowhunter, a good one, is about more than just training fourteen hours a day and knowing sixty-five ways of killing a man with salad tongs. — Cassandra Clare

The world will try to make you think that being good is outdated and old-fashioned and that popularity comes from breaking the rules and lowering your standards. Don't buy into that way of thinking. As you watch TV or read magazines, you might be made to feel abnormal when, really, you are the one who has it figured out. — Margaret D. Nadauld

Thus the law of nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others. The rules that they make for other mens actions, must, as well as their own and other mens actions, be conformable to the law of nature, i.e. to the will of God, of which that is a declaration, and the fundamental law of nature being the preservation of mankind, no human sanction can be good, or valid against it. — John Locke

I thought being a Christian was about following rules and going to church and being good all the time, but this girl helped me understand that it's about having a relationship with God. That was where things shifted for me. — Kelly Clark

I'll wash. Looks like brute strength is required."

Matilda wasn't about to argue. Might as well put those ridiculous muscles to good use. "I doubt I could write them into submission somehow."

"No," Tanner agreed, heading to the sink and flicking on the taps, intent on filling the industrial size sink and agitating the water as he squirted in some detergent. "You could, however, write about how I heroically and uncomplainingly scrubbed pots for hours while being witty and charming all at the service of some of the city's less fortunate."

"You want me to add in how woodland animals came in from the alley to befriend you? — Amy Andrews

The needs for safety, belonging, love relations and for respect can be satisfied only by other people, i.e., only from outside the person. This means considerable dependence on the environment. A person in this dependent position cannot really be said to be governing himself, or in control of his own fate. He must be beholden to the sources of supply of needed gratifications. Their wishes, their whims, their rules and laws govern him and must be appeased lest he jeopardize his sources of supply. He must be, to an extent, "other-directed," and must be sensitive to other people's approval, affection and good will. This is the same as saying that he must adapt and adjust by being flexible and responsive and by changing himself to fit the external situation. He is the dependent variable; the environment is the fixed, independent variable. — Abraham H. Maslow

Because, if you stop to think of it, the three Rules of Robotics are the essential guiding principles of a good many of the world's ethical systems. Of course, every human being is supposed to have the instinct of self-preservation. That's Rule Three to a robot. Also every 'good' human being, with a social conscience and a sense of responsibility, is supposed to defer to proper authority; to listen to his doctor, his boss, his government, his psychiatrist, his fellow man; to obey laws, to follow rules, to conform to custom - even when they interfere with his comfort or his safety. That's Rule Two to a robot. Also, every 'good' human being is supposed to love others as himself, protect his fellow man, risk his life to save another. That's Rule One to a robot. To put it simply - if Byerley follows all the Rules of Robotics, he may be a robot, and may simply be a very good man. — Isaac Asimov

The good man is he who rules himself as he does his own property: his autonomous being is modelled on material power. — Theodor Adorno

Gonna change my way of thinking, make my self a different set of rules. Gonna put my good foot forward and stop being influenced by fools. — Bob Dylan

I'm not very good at being a wife because I break all the rules. — Katherine Heigl

When people talk about destiny, they tend to forget that it isn't deprived from free will, free will to both accept it or destroy it. If you were meant to find love and then hurt the person that loves you back, you've just exercised your free will against destiny, and that destiny, that brought that person to you, will now use the exact same force to pull such person away from you. You cannot violate the spiritual laws of the universe. You will always pay a heavy price for being ignorant about this fact. You have the free will to do whatever you wish in the paradise of life, but only as long as you don't violate the sacred rules, when eating the fruit of selfishness, the tree of good and evil. That need to explore discernment will cost you your happiness, and expel you from the paradise destined to you. — Robin Sacredfire

He showed, in a few words, that it is not sufficient to throw together a few incidents that are to be met with in every romance, and that to dazzle the spectator the thought should be new, without being farfetched; frequently sublime, but always natural; the author should have a thorough knowledge of the human heart and make it speak properly; he should be a complete poet, without showing an affectation of it in any of the characters of his piece; he should be a perfect master of his language, speak it with all its pruity and with the utmost harmony, and yet so as not to make the sense a slave to the rhyme. Whoever, added he, neglects any one of these rules, though he may write two or three tragedies with tolerable success, will never be reckoned in the number of good authors. — Voltaire

Being a good and reasonable person in a good and reasonable and awesome life has nothing to do with following rules. It has to do with assessing rules, and guidelines, and norms, and prejudices, and ways of doing things, and established procedures, and prerequisites, and prejudices, and suppositions, and paradigms, and doing what the Oracle in The Matrix advised one do in the absence of proof or instructions: To make up your own damn mind. — Johnny B. Truant

Everything had changed suddenly
the tone, the moral climate; you didn't know what to think, whom to listen to. As if all your life you had been led by the hand like a small child and suddenly you were on your own, you had to learn to walk by yourself. There was no one around, neither family nor people whose judgment you respected. At such a time you felt the need of committing yourself to something absolute
life or truth or beauty
of being ruled by it in place of the man-made rules that had been discarded. You needed to surrender to some such ultimate purpose more fully, more unreservedly than you had ever done in the old familiar, peaceful days, in the old life that was now abolished and gone for good. — Boris Pasternak

I want people to understand that from the minute Lady Gaga arrived, she created a new set of rules: being different is good; embrace it. — Simon Cowell

In an upside down world, with all the rules being rewritten as the game goes on and spectators invading the pitch, it is good to feel that some things and some people seem to stay just as they were. — Kenneth More

Political organizations are formed to keep the powerful in power. Their first rule is "don't rock the boat." If someone makes trouble and you can get him, do it. If you can't get him, bring him in. Give him some of the action, let him have a taste of power. Power is all anyone wants, and if he has a promise of it as a reward for being good, he'll be good. Anyone who does not play by those rules is incomprehensible to most politicians. — Shirley Chisholm

The rules seem to be these: If you have written a successful novel, everyone invites you to write short stories. If you have written some good short stories, everyone wants you to write a novel. But nobody wants anything until you have already proved yourself by being published somewhere else. — James A. Michener

Sin is not just breaking the rules, it is putting yourself in the place of God as Savior, Lord, and Judge ... There are two ways to be your own Savior and Lord. One is by breaking all the moral laws and setting your own course, and one is by keeping all the moral laws and being very, very good. — Timothy Keller

I teach my sons that there are really only three rules to being a good man. The first rule is to fish often. And by fish, I mean find the quiet times to fish around in your minds for what is most important. The second rule is to protect everyone smaller than them. This means physically smaller, and in all other ways ... protect the more vulnerable. The third rule states that if something is truly important to you, then you should prove it. You say you would lay your life down for someone, but will you give them the busiest five minutes of your day, if they need it? — Spuds Crawford

I believe in rules. I believe in artistic limitations, and I always have. I've always thought that setting out a set of rules before you start, and then being completely consistent with them, is the only way to make a really good film. — Susanne Bier

Where there is to be creative action, it is quite beside the point to discuss what we should or should not do in order to be right or good. A mind that is single and sincere is not interested in being good, in conducting relations with other people so as to live up to a rule. Nor, on the other hand, is it interested in being free, in acting perversely just to prove its independence. Its interest is not in itself, but in the people and problems of which it is aware; these are "itself." It acts, not according to the rules, but according to the circumstances of the moment, and the "well" it wishes to others is not security but liberty. — Alan W. Watts

Women are no longer required to be chaste or modest, to restrict their sphere of activity to the home, or even to realize their properly feminine destiny in maternity. Normative femininity [that is, the rules for being a good woman] is coming more and more to be centered on women's body - not its duties and obligations or even its capacity to bear children, but its sexuality, more precisely, its presumed heterosexuality and its appearance. . . . The woman who checks her makeup half a dozen times a day to see if her foundation has caked or her mascara has run, who worries that the wind or the rain may spoil her hairdo, who looks frequently to see if her stockings have bagged at the ankle, or who, feeling
fat, monitors everything she eats, has become, just as surely as the inmate
of Panopticon, a self-policing subject, a self committed to a relentless self-surveillance. This self-surveillance is a form of obedience
to patriarchy. — Rosemarie Tong