Quotes & Sayings About Something Good In Your Life

One good reason for writing novels based on your life is that you have something to read in old age when you've forgotten what happened. — Nina Bawden

The Cross is not simply a lovely example of sacrificial love. Throwing your life away needlessly is not admirable - it is wrong. Jesus' death was only a good example if it was more than an example, if it was something absolutely necessary to rescue us. And it was. Why did Jesus have to die in order to forgive us? There was a debt to be paid - God himself paid it. There was a penalty to be born - God himself bore it. Forgiveness is always a form of costly suffering. — Timothy Keller

You wander through this city, and wonder if anything you do will make up for the horror that keeps the world turning. To live, you rip your own heart from your chest and hide it in a box somewhere, along with everything you ever learned about justice, compassion, mercy. You throw yourself into games to mark the time. And if you yearn for something different: what would you change? Would you bring back the blood, the dying cries, the sucking chest wounds? The constant war? So we're caught between two poles of hypocrisy. We sacrifice our right to think of ourselves as good people, our right to think our life is good, our city is just. And so we and our city both survive. — Max Gladstone

You know, eating's much more important than most people think. There comes a time in your life when you've just got to have something super-delicious. And when you're standing at that crossroads your whole life can change, depending on which one you go into - the good restaurant or the awful one. — Haruki Murakami

Nicole's door opened, and she stomped down the hall. "I have something to say," she said, giving him the Slitty Eyes of Death. "You're totally unfair, and if I run away, you shouldn't be surprised." "Don't make me put a computer chip in your ear," Liam answered. "It's not funny! I hate you." "Well, I love you, even if you did ruin my life by turning into a teenager," he said, rubbing his eyes. "Did you study for your test?" "Yes." "Good." He looked at his daughter - so much like Emma, way too pretty. Why weren't there convent schools anymore? Or chastity belts? "Want some supper? I saved your plate." She rolled her eyes with all the melodrama a teenager could muster. "Fine. I may as well become a fat pig since I can't ever go on a date." "That's my girl," he said and, grinning, got up to heat up her dinner. — Kristan Higgins

Something hurts, lean in. You just lean into that point until it loses its power over you. There's a certain amount of suffering that you have to be willing to sustain if you want to have a good life. And the real trick is to be able to sustain it with your heart open and still be loving. — Will Smith

have a good life, but you carry hell with you night and day. Like everyone else, you make yourself pay a thousand times for something you did once, and long ago. You make others pay . . . for your fear, for your knowledge." He hesitated, then gave her a hard look. "Will our love have to pay, in the end? — Miguel Ruiz

There's a fleeting moment that exists for every individual just before they do something truly life-altering. Its that flash of insight and sanity that stalls your heartbeat and bloo flow - a quick warning - just before you explode and make a fool of yourself. Or that incredible brief instant of clarity you have before you floor the gas pedal and run the red light. It's a split second of self admonishment in which you realise that what you're about to do is wrong, but just as quickly choose to ignore that realisation and do it anyway. It's too fast to catch, too bright to see, utterly gone even before you've blinked and therefore, it does a person absolutely no good at all. And yet, there it is. — Heather Killough-Walden

It's a way to use you and who you are. It's a way to use every detail of who you are. It's an assignment to save life instead of taking it, to answer prayers instead of cutting them off. It's a chance to do something that matters terribly to others while doing only good for yourself. That's what it's like to do good for yourself. That's what it's like to do good, you know. It's like working for The Right Man except that you believe in it with your whole heart and your whole soul, so much so that it becomes your will and your purpose with love. — Anne Rice

You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. — Winston S. Churchill

I have discovered there are only a handful of good ideas in the whole world. You already know them. You have heard them your entire life. Here are some of the main keys to being more successful:
Take personal responsibility.
Things change, so be flexible.
Work smart and work hard.
Serve others well.
Be nice to others.
Be optimistic.
Have goals; want something big for yourself.
Stay focused.
Keep learning.
Become excellent at what you do.
Trust your gut.
When in doubt, take action.
Earn all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can.
Enjoy all you've got.
Above all keep it simple. — Larry Winget

The sublime moment seems to be only a product of allowing yourself to get through, to get to a lot of stuff in your life, write about a lot of stuff and not edit yourself. That is a great lesson to learn for anybody that writes or creates in anyway, to be able to make something without being good or bad. — Jeff Tweedy

People have a very limited idea of what being creative is - playing the guitar or the flute or writing poetry - so people go on writing rubbish in the name of poetry. You have to find out what you can do and what you cannot do. Everybody cannot do everything. You have to search and find your destiny. You have to grope in the dark, I know. It is not very clear-cut what your destiny is, but that's how life is. And it is good that one has to search for it - in the very search, something grows. — Rajneesh

Life is full of days and each day comes with its own happenstances; good and unbearable ones! Some days are remembered, for though such days come and go, they leave their memorable footprints on our minds; footprints of difficulties, footprints of sweetness and joy, footprints of regrets, and footprints worth pondering over and over! Until something happens to you in the day, you shall least remember that moment of time and day in your lifetime! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I didn't know why something that started off feeling so good had to wind up feeling so bad. Love was a big word and it covered a lot of territory. You could spend your whole life chasing after it and wind up with nothing, be an old bitter guy with long nose hair and ear hair and no teeth, hanging out in bars, looking for somebody your age, but the chances of success went down then. After a while you got too many strikes against you. — Larry Brown

The way I see it," Miles went on, "it's no good hiding yourself away, like Pa and lots of other people. And it's no good just thinking of your own pleasure, either. People got to do something useful if they're going to take up space in the world. — Natalie Babbitt

Because Marian was the love of my life. For a long time. And that's the kind of information you share when you're young and stupid and hoping that you're in something that is going to be even bigger and better than what you once lost. It's the kind of shit you waste your time thinking about. Lemme tell you
it does no good. — Emily Giffin

Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for twenty years. And you'll never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it's what you create. Even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but doesn't really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope for something good to come along. Something to make you feel connected, to make you feel whole, to make you feel loved. — Charlie Kaufman

If you always have something in your life that you're trying to improve upon, then every day you have a reason to get out of bed, and you have a reason to achieve something and feel good. — Nick Offerman

I wanted to do a movie about being really good at something, yet being socially awkward and not as advanced in your personal life as you are in your creative life. — Alicia Witt

It's not enough to have values without vision ; you want to be good, but you want to be good for something. On the other hand, vision without values can create a Hitler . An empowering mission statement deals with both character and competence; what you want to be and what you want to do in your life. — Stephen Covey

And you, Edward? Is there something in this world for which you'd surrender your life and your soul, if need be? You need not answer - I saw in your face and in your heart, last night, as you bent over the bed. Good art, good art - both of you. I have found several sorts of good and original art in this world, enough to justify encouraging your Artist to try again. But there was so much that was bad, poorly drawn and amateurish, that I could not find it in me to approve the work as a whole until I encountered and savored this, the tragedy of human love." Cynthia looked at him wildly. "Tragedy? you say 'tragedy'?" He looked at her with eyes that were not pitying, but serenely appreciative. "What else could it be, my dear? — Robert A. Heinlein

we were not born the same, we are all not born with the same abilities and capabilities, but no matter what seed God has given to us, be it small or big, He expects a good returns from us in the end and we must endeavor to be good stewards and managers of our abilities and capabilities regardless of where we live and the challenges we face! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

When you're a child, your best friend in the world is the kid who lives next door. It doesn't occur to you then that this is a matter of arbitrary circumstance. When you grow up you like to imagine that your friendships have a more substantial basis - common interests, like-mindedness, some genuine affinity. It's always a sad revelation that when a good friend acquires a girlfriend or a husband and disappears. You realize that,for them, your friendships was always only a matter of convenience, a fallback, and they simply don't need you anymore. There's nothing especially cynical about this; people are drawn to each other because they're giving each other something they both need, and they drift apart when they aren't getting it or don't need it anymore. Friendship have natural life spans, like love affairs or favorite songs. — Tim Kreider

You find photographs in so many different ways - from chance encounters, from looking at your negatives, from the way the light hits your pillow in your home, from a sound or a movement that makes you look ... It's whatever draws you or makes you feel something. Then, the picture is only good if it has a life of its own. Every photo is almost a fiction or a dream. If it's really good, it's another form of life. — Sylvia Plachy

My best advice is to first write for yourself and stay in your story and just pour all of your good stuff and bad stuff into it. By 'stuff,' I mean all the experiences and pleasures and little hurts that make up a life. Because even (and especially) the really hard experiences are worth having, if you can channel those emotions into something beautiful. — Jenny Han

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

How do you wake up? It was one thing to know that you had been asleep all your life, but something else to wake up from it, to find out you were really alive and it wasn't anybody's fault but your own. Of course that was the problem.

All right. Everything is a dream. Nothing hangs together. You move from one dream to another and there is no reason for the change. Your eyes see things and your ears hear, but nothing has any reason behind it. It would be easier to believe in God. Then you could wake up and yawn and stretch and grin at a world that was put together on a plan of mercy and death, punishment for evil, joy for good, and if the game was crazy at least it had rules. But that didn't make sense. It had never made any sense. The trouble was, now that he was not asleep and not awake, what he saw and heard didn't make sense either.

Mishmash, he thought. You know enough to know how you feel is senseless, but you don't know enough to know why. — Don Carpenter

Learn to stand for something in life otherwise you will fall for anything that comes along which is not a good indication to pursue your dreams. — Euginia Herlihy

I can't function here anymore. I mean in life: I can't function in this life. I'm no better off than when I was in bed last night, with one difference: when I was in my own bed - or my mom's - I could do something about it; now that I'm here I can't do anything. I can't ride my bike to the Brooklyn Bridge; I can't take a whole bunch of pills and go for the good sleep; the only thing I can do is crush my head in the toilet seat, and I still don't even know if that would work. They take away your options and all you can do is live, and it's just like Humble said: I'm not afraid of dying; I'm afraid of living. I was afraid before, but I'm afraid even more now that I'm a public joke. The teachers are going to hear from the students. They'll think I'm trying to make an excuse for bad work. — Ned Vizzini

To create your tomorrow, go over your day tonight when you are in bed just before you fall asleep, and feel gratitude for the good moments. If there was something you wanted to happen differently, replay it in your mind the way you wanted it to go. As you fall asleep, say, "I will sleep deeply and wake up full of energy. Tomorrow is going to be the most beautiful day of my life." Good night! — Rhonda Byrne

Which is good, in a way, because the danger in doing something like STAR TREK is that you end up in that pigeonhole and you're doing that the rest of your life. — Colm Meaney

Dementors are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them. Even Muggles feel their presence, though they can't see them. Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself - soul-less and evil. You'll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life. — J.K. Rowling

The trials and pressures of life
and how we face them
often define us. Confronted by adversity, many people give up while others rise up. How do those who succeed do it? They persevere. They find the benefit to them personally that comes from any trial. And they recognize that the best thing about adversity is coming out on the other side of it. There is a sweetness to overcoming your troubles and finding something good in the process, however small it may be. Giving up when adversity threatens can make a person bitter. Persevering through adversity makes one better. — John C. Maxwell

You will find a blissfulness which contains in it sadness also, because that sadness gives it depth. Watch Buddha's statue - blissful, but still sad. The very word sad gives you wrong connotations - that something is wrong. This is your interpretation. To me, life in its totality is good. — Rajneesh

No effort is ever wasted, although some pay dividends later than you think. Do not imagine that you "wasted your time" because something didn't turn out right. There is no such thing as "waste" in the Universe. Everything - everything - yields benefit. It's true. And your life will show you this. So don't decry the "effort that failed." All things lead to your highest good. You just may not know it yet. — Neale Donald Walsch

There is always something good and unique in the life of every woman so put those talents and wisdom to good use today, by so doing you will make your world a better place than you met it. — Jaachynma N.E. Agu

There's an old analogy to a cup of tea. If you want to drink new tea you have to get rid of the old tea that's in your cup, otherwise your cup just overflows and you get a wet mess. Your head is like that cup. It has a limited capacity and if you want to learn something about the world you should keep your head empty in order to learn it. It's very easy to spend your whole life swishing old tea around in your cup thinking it's great stuff because you've never really tried anything new, because you could never get it in, because the old stuff prevented its entry, because you were so sure the old stuff was so good, because you never really tried anything new ... — Robert M. Pirsig

He really is a first-class waste of space, isn't he ?"
"Thank you" I said. It's nice when the people you love share your opinions.
"You're welcome," Dad said. "And the cartwheels would seem to imply that the new model's a good thing ?"
I looked at him with something close to shock. My father and I have a very satisfactory system in place, based on the unspoken agreement that I won't tell him about my love life and he won't ask. All that sort of carry-on is Mum's department, and she advises Dad on a need-to-know basis. "Um, yes," I said.
"Very good," said Dad and, clearly appalled at having strayed so far into this emotional minefield, he began to brush his teeth with most unnecessary vigour. — Danielle Hawkins

I've ignored a lot of bad shit in my life, but I don't want to ignore this one good thing anymore. It's too painful." He stares at me deeply, my chest rising with something pure and warm. "I kissed you tonight because I want your lips to only touch mine. From now until forever. That's the fucking truth. — Krista Ritchie

It's strange how things seem to come full circle. You know what I mean? I'm sure you do. The way your life seems to drift along with no set path, then something good happens to you and you can trace the line that brought you there back to a specific disappointment or rejection you suffered in the past. It's nice that things can level out that way. — James Corden

There was something I was always very good at, however, and that was teaching myself not to be frightened while frightening things are going on. It is difficult to do this, but I had learned. It is simply a matter of putting one's fear aside, like the vegetable on the plate you don't want to touch until all of your rice and chicken are gone, and getting frightened later, when one is out of danger. Sometimes I imagine I will be frightened for the rest of my life because of all of the fear I put aside during my time in Stain'd-by-the-Sea. — Lemony Snicket

Before, as soon as I came home from all sorts of places I would sit down and write in my journal. Now I want to write you, talk with you ... I love when you say all that happens is good, it is good. I say all that happens is wonderful. For me it is all symphonic, and I am so aroused by living - god, Henry, in you alone I have found the same swelling of enthusiasm, the same quick rising of the blood, the fullness ... Before, I almost used to think there was something wrong. Everybody else seemed to have the brakes on ... I never feel the brakes. I overflow. And when I feel your excitement about life flaring, next to mine, then it makes me dizzy. — Anais Nin

Don't just look; see! There is always an opportunity to make something better! There is always a better us we can make better than the better we know! The true better you is the true you you can truly make better! Better your better now! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

life is a classroom. we are both student and teacher. each day is a test. and each day we receive a passing or failing grade in one particular subject: grace. grace is compassion, gratitude, surrender, faith, forgiveness, good manners, reverence, and the list goes on. it's something money can't buy and credentials rarely produce. being the smartest, the prettiest, the most talented, the richest, or even the poorest, can't help. being a humble person can and being a helpful person can guide you through your days with grace and gratitude. — Gary Hart

Meditation isn't just something we do to make ourselves more peaceful and to take some of the stress out of our lives. We do it because it's the only direct experience we can have of knowing God. Because God is that which is indivisible. Everything else in the universe, in the physical world, is divisible. Up and down, good and bad, right and wrong, male and female, and so on. But that which is indivisible in our physical experience is called silence. And when you get into silence, you're coming to know the indivisibleness of your life - and that's conscious contact. — Wayne Dyer

There will be times when something good comes to an end. Instead of thinking about the fact that it's over - stay positive that it happened in the first place. I was so sad to return home after spending time in Africa with my friends and family. We were all crying when it was time to go - no one wanted to leave such an amazing place. I can look back now, though, without crying. I'm so thankful for my time spent there with people I love, and I can't wait to go back. Goal: Think about a happy moment in your life and be grateful for the joy it gave you. Reflect on happy moments, even if they've passed. — Demi Lovato

To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control, that can lead you to be shattered in very extreme circumstances for which you were not to blame. That says something very important about the condition of the ethical life: that it is based on a trust in the uncertain and on a willingness to be exposed; it's based on being more like a plant than like a jewel, something rather fragile, but whose very particular beauty is inseparable from that fragility. — Martha C. Nussbaum

I don't believe you live the good life by doing what you can do; you live it by doing what you want to do. I don't even think your greatest talents necessarily show up in your skills. All of us are good at things we're not madly in love with. And all of us have talents we've never used. Relying on your skills to guide you is simply unacceptable. That's why I don't intend to give you personality tests or skills assessments to find out what you should be doing. I know what you should be doing. You should be doing what you love. What you love is what you are gifted at. Only love will give you the drive to stick to something until you develop your gift. — Barbara Sher

When you have self-love, you no longer live your life according to other people's opinions. You don't need other people to accept you or tell you how good you are, because you know what you are. With self-love, you aren't afraid to share your love because your heart is completely open. Today can be the day when you experience the beauty of yourself. Today can be the day when you reconnect with your own spirit and express all the love in your heart. Focus your attention on what you are feeling in this moment. Feel the desire to be alive, the desire for love and joy, the desire to create something wonderful to share with others. The biggest mission you have is to make yourself happy, and to share your love, your joy, and your happiness. — Miguel Ruiz

It's so hard when sincere prayer about something you desire very much is not answered the way you want. It is difficult to understand why your exercise of deep and sincere faith from an obedient life does not grant the desired result. At times it is difficult to recognize what is best or expedient for you over time. Your life will be easier when you accept that what God does in your life is for your eternal good. — Richard G. Scott

Everything God tells us to do is for our good. Whether it's direction you get in His Word or something He's specifically put in your heart for your situation in life, the absolute best thing you can ever do is obey Him promptly and completely. — Joyce Meyer

Tell me something Micah, If you found a naked woman tied to your bed what would you think? That I have been a very good boy in a pass life. — Maya Banks

Hostage? She's holding me hostage. She has my guts in her hands. I don't care about the company, I care about her. She's my life, do you understand? Have you ever loved a woman? Have you ever held her at night so tight because you couldn't sleep thinking something might happen to her? Have you ever built a future around a woman? Ever thought of every tomorrow, every year, every decade with her? Dreamed of your old age holding her hand? I can only function with her in my life. I can only breathe if I know she's there. I gave her my fucking soul and she threw it away. Months ago, maybe years ago. She made a decision to throw me away. She's prepared for this divorce, and I'm swinging in the wind. Raw. With nothing. No defenses. Now what am I supposed to do?" I stood and threw my coat over my shoulders. "This is not about money. It's not about some publishing company. Not for me. If I don't do this, I have no chance of recovery. I'm as good as dead." ~Adam — C.D. Reiss

Take a good look at your life right now. If you don't like something about it, close your eyes and imagine the life you want. Now allow yourself to focus your inner eye on the person you would be if you were living this preferred life. Notice the differences in how you behave and present yourself; allow yourself to spend several seconds breathing in the new image, expanding your energy into this ... — Marianne Williamson

I leave his house feeling blissed. It is not the same feeling like when you get a present from someone, you buy things you desire, or you receive good news. It is something intrinsic that stems from solicitude, which triggers your conscience to carry out something good - in my case, helping Mr Mario. That is how righteousness works. It does not only give pleasure to the receiver (of good action), but to the giver as well. — Aishah Madadiy

Family is a wonderful thing, but it doesn't mean you can't do other stuff in your life. In fact, having a family makes whatever other thing you have that much richer. If it was just me, I'd be home alone and think, 'Well, something good happened at work,' but it's nicer to share it with people you love. — Ben Affleck

Dads. It's time to show our sons how to properly treat a woman. It's time to show our daughters how a girl should expect be treated. It's time to show forgiveness and compassion. It's time to show our children empathy. It's time to break social norms and teach a healthier way of life! It's time to teach good gender roles and to ditch the unnecessary ones. Does it really matter if your son likes the color pink? Is it going to hurt anybody? Do you not see the damage it inflicts to tell a boy that there is something wrong with him because he likes a certain color? Do we not see the damage we do in labeling our girls "tom boys" or our boys "feminine" just because they have their own likes and opinions on things? Things that really don't matter? — Dan Pearce

No one stays the same, David. Everything you are is a direct result of something that's affected you in your past, whether it was horrible or wonderful
no one has the right to destroy themselves because they can't deal with the pain. You have to learn from it. It's not over
the good in your life
it's not over until your dead. — A.M. Hudson

This is your work now, Gian had thought, strewing death about him, but only live and some day, home again, turn your hand to something better, and in Sea-john life will be good, and safe, and full of love. — Kai Ashante Wilson

Sometimes you just don't know what's going to happen, exactly. And that's because sometimes you just don't have control over circumstances in your life. The amazing thing is that - it is during these times that we free-fall through the sky! All we have is the breath in our lungs right here and right now and it's just exhilarating! And it takes humility to accept that we might not have everything we want in our hands at the moment - but that what we do have is good, is worth keeping. Even if something isn't everything, yet, it can be worth everything, right now! You just have to spread your arms in the air and start gliding! — C. JoyBell C.

Don't expect good things to come easily, we must work at them. Easy is to think about improving. Difficult is to put these thoughts into action. Easy is to stumble and fall. Difficult is to get back up. Easy is to judge the mistakes of others. Difficult is to recognize your own mistakes. Easy is to receive. Difficult is to give. Easy is to promise something. Difficult is to fulfill that promise. Easy is to say "I love you." Difficult is to show it every day. Most of the things we need in life are simple, but not easy. But things that are difficult are often the most worthwhile! — Anonymous

And of course, just like in the movies, as soon as you mention that life is good, that means something needs to come by and sqaut one out on your life. — John Scalzi

Is your life beautiful? Do you live in surroundings that you have made beautiful through your own unique, creative ideas? To expect and lovingly require beauty to be apparent in all areas of your life is to be deeply loving to yourself, your soul, your world, and shows reverence to God and all of life. There is always something beautiful to be found, right where you are, if you will look for it. Concentrate your thoughts on the good, the beautiful, and the true things in life. — John Templeton

And your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become criticism. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it, and you will find it perhaps bewildered and embarrased, perhaps also protesting. But don't give in, insist on arguments, and act in this way, attentive and persistent, every single time, and the day will come when, instead of being a destroyer, it will become one of your best workers
perhaps the most intelligent of all the ones that are building your life. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Whenever something good happens, write it down. Buy a special notebook ... and use it to list all the good in your life. — Peter McWilliams

For a good part of my life, I had a share in this idea that I have not yet quite abandoned. But there came a time when I could not protect myself, and indeed did not wish to protect myself, from the onslaught of reality. Marxism, I conceded, had its intellectual and philosophical and ethical glories, but they were in the past. Something of the heroic period might perhaps be retained, but the fact had to be faced: there was no longer any guide to the future. In addition, the very concept of a total solution had led to the most appalling human sacrifices, and to the invention of excuses for them. Those of us who had sought a rational alternative to religion had reached a terminus that was comparably dogmatic. What else was to be expected of something that was produced by the close cousins of chimpanzees? Infallibility? Thus, dear reader, if you have come this far and found your own faith undermined - as I hope - I am willing to say that to some extent I know what you are going through. — Christopher Hitchens

Inspiration comes from your writing. Thoughts meander subliminally through our subconscious, at night when we sleep the brain is working. In the act of writing, phrases come out and you think: wow, did I write this? Did I have that insight? Sometimes you know something is good, good within your own limits, and those parts make life worth living. — Chloe Thurlow

I am completely in charge of the choices I make about what I am doing to lose weight and get healthy. And you know what? We all have this power. Don't be angry with me for something good I've done for myself. Be angry with yourself for not having the courage to do the same in your own life. — Jennifer Hudson

But this book is about something else: what goes on in the lives of real people when the industrial economy goes south. It's about reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible. It's about a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it. The problems that I saw at the tile warehouse run far deeper than macroeconomic trends and policy. too many young men immune to hard work. Good jobs impossible to fill for any length of time. And a young man [one of Vance's co-workers] with every reason to work - a wife-to-be to support and a baby on the way - carelessly tossing aside a good job with excellent health insurance. More troublingly, when it was all over, he thought something had been done to him. There is a lack of agency here - a feeling that you have little control over your life and a willingness to blame everyone but yourself. This is distinct from the larger economic landscape of modern America. — J.D. Vance

You know your father, God rest his soul... Your father had a philosophy the he held to pretty strongly. And it's one that served him very, very well... He believed that if there were things in this world that you had to offer, things that you did well - better than anyone else... things that you could do that helped people feel better about themselves... well, he believed that it wasn't just a good idea to do those things... he believed it was your responsibility to do those things. Don't try to be something else. Don't try to be less. Great things are going to happen to you and your life Peter. Great things. And with that will come great responsibility. Do you understand? Great responsibility. — Brian Michael Bendis

I think it comes in cycles for Brandy [Burre] and for many women. You want to take care of your home, making it as good as possible for your kids and for yourself, and then eventually you feel trapped and you want to break out of that. You want to be someone else and you want the world to look at you as something else. Eventually, you come back again. The cycles are very much a part of her life. — Robert Greene

The central attitudes driving Mr. Right are:
You should be in awe of my intelligence and should look up to me intellectually. I know better than you do, even about what's good for you.
Your opinions aren't worth listening to carefully or taking seriously.
The fact that you sometimes disagree with me shows how sloppy your thinking is.
If you would just accept that I know what's right, our relationship would go much better. Your own life would go better, too.
When you disagree with me about something, no matter how respectfully or meekly, that's mistreatment of me.
If I put you down for long enough, some day you'll see. — Lundy Bancroft

You can spend your life chitchatting with someone - even a good friend - but spend even an hour moving over a rocky path, breathing in pine-scented air, and I guarantee you the chitchat will turn to something else. — Scott Jurek

When armies begin to move and flags wave and slogans pop up watch out little guy because it's somebody else's chestnuts in the fire not yours. It's words you're fighting for and you're not making an honest deal your life for something better. You're being noble and after you're killed the thing you traded your life for won't do you any good and chances are it won't do anybody else any good either. — Dalton Trumbo

It is hard to feel bad about yourself when you are doing something good for someone else. There are a lot of ways to lift your self-esteem, but making a positive difference in another's life has got to be my best leadership guidance. Serving others and working to add value to them will lift your spirits in a way that nothing else will. Trust me on this one. — John C. Maxwell

If you are a good communicator, be unique: put yourself in your own commercials and do something a little different. To the extent you can focus on what it is you want to change, what it is you know how to change, and what it is you think will make life better for other people, you're going to do better. — Roger Ailes

I sound awful saying it but I think it can be like that. I see a lot of people in unstimulating relationships. And not just boyfriend-girlfriend relationships. They find themselves in stagnant friendships. If people were a little less scared [of ending things] they'd get more out of life ... You meet the right person at the right time and they fulfil a certain something in your life. You fulfil something in theirs. But there's a time limit to that. Unless you choose to be bloody good company for the rest of your life, do you know what I mean? — Laura Marling

If you can be a good role model for people, well, great. You try and live your sporting life and the rest of your life as well as you can, and if it's something that people admire, well, fantastic. I don't sit at home and think about it too much, though - there's plenty of other things in my life going on. — Brian O'Driscoll

I was a vegan for two years, and I really enjoyed it. Then, I got to a point in my life at which I wanted to do something else, so now I'm a vegetarian. You should make your diet one that best fits you and how you feel. Listen to your body. The most important thing is to exercise, drink lots of water, and take really good care of yourself. — Lea Michele

Tell me something good about your life," I whispered, needing to hear that he wasn't as broken as I thought him to be.
Peter breathed into the handset for about two minutes. I began wondering if he was about to hang up, or had fallen asleep, when he answered. "You."
It was so quiet I almost didn't hear it. And then he hung up before I could ask him to repeat himself.
I fell asleep, grinning, with the phone still clutched in my hand and my milk souring on the coffee table. — Dani Alexander

maybe an hour in the morning or at night and just dedicate it to that skill you have. Read books about it. Take courses to excel at it. Promise. In the next five or six months, you will be better at it than most people. Your confidence will go up and you will no longer compare yourself to others or try to be good at something just for the sake of proving to others that you are confident. You will have finally discovered what your life will be about. — Steve Robinson

And your doubt may become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become critical. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it, and you will find it perplexed and embarrassed perhaps, or perhaps rebellious. But don't give in, insist on arguments and act this way, watchful and consistent, every single time, and the day will arrive when from a destroyer it will become one of your best workers
perhaps the cleverest of all that are building at your life. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Life is funny. You start out with limitless potential, but time is always shaving away the possibilities. Every choice you make is the choice not to do a thousand other things. What's important, when all is said and done, is that you made a difference. Your choices, and everything undone, have to mean something. Otherwise, what was the point? I'm lucky that way. My path was already there. I had only to walk it. I often thought even if no one knew of the good I had done with my life, it didn't matter. That it was done is all that counts in the end. But then I died. And I hadn't gotten to do any of it yet. — Brian Clevinger

I used to think that life was hills and valleys-you go through a dark time, then to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don't believe that anymore. Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe it is it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times in your life, there is something bad that needs to be worked on. And no matter how bad things are in our lives, there is always something good to thank God for. — Elizabeth Adeniyi

It's always good to take something that's happened in your life and make something of it comedically. — Larry David

How I hated myself, thwarted, poisoned and tortured myself, made myself old and ugly. Never again, as I once fondly imagined, will I consider that Siddartha is clever. But one thing I have done well, which pleases me, which I must praise- I have now put an end to that self-detestation, to that foolish empty life. I commend you, Siddartha, that after so many years of folly, you have again a good idea, that you have accomplished something, that you have again heard the bird in your breast sing and followed it. — Hermann Hesse

Another voice rages.
I hate that boy! I hate me! I am so incredibly stupid!
A sunflower leans over the fence, smiling
How dare you!
I rip off its head and throw it in the gutter.
The smart thing to do is to keep going on. Walk away quickly and no one will know what I've done. But I can't move because my eyes are locked on the slowly opening front door - locked on Mrs Muir.
'I'm sorry.' My tiny voice sounds so pathetically lame, but I've still got more lameness for her. 'I never do this sort of thing. I like sunflowers. I was just angry about something - nothing to do with you or the flower. I'm really, really sorry.'
'Oh, you are upset! Well, never mind'. Mrs Muir comes closer to me. 'Goodness, we all get cross. The main thing is: did it make you feel any better?'
'No. Yes. Maybe. A little bit.'
'Would you like to do another one? There's more out the back, too. You go for your life dear. I don't mind at all - they need a good pruning. — Bill Condon

I'm writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you've done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God's grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you. — Marilynne Robinson

A Blessing of Solitude May you recognize in your life the presence, power, and light of your soul. May you realize that you are never alone, that your soul in its brightness and belonging connects you intimately with the rhythm of the universe. May you have respect for your own individuality and difference. May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique, that you have a special destiny here, that behind the facade of your life there is something beautiful, good, and eternal happening. May you learn to see yourself with the same delight, pride, and expectation with which God sees you in every moment. — John O'Donohue

If you are curious and open to the life around you, if you are disturbed as to how, by, and against whom wealth and political power is held and used, if you sense there must be good reasons for your unease, if your curiosity and openness drive you toward wanting to act with others, to "do something," you have much in common with the writers of the three essays in Manifesto. — Adrienne Rich

How do you get the happy ending? John Irving ought to know. One of my favorite authors, Irving writes these multigenerational epics of fiction that somehow work out in the end. How does he do it? He says, 'I always begin with the last sentence ; then I work my way backwards, through the plot, to where the story should begin.' Thst sounds like a lot of work, especially compared to the fantasy that great writers sit down and just go where the story takes them. Irving lets us know that good stories and happy endings are more intentional than that.
Most 20 something's can't write the last sentence of their lives. But when pressed, they usually can identify things they want in their 30s or 40s or 60s -or things they don't want- and work backward from there. This is how you have your own multigenerational epic with a happy ending. This is how you live your life in real time. — Meg Jay

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

Good writing is the hardest form of thinking. It involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear. If the writing is good, then the result seems effortless and inevitable. But when you want to say something life-changing or ineffable in a single sentence, you face both the limitations of the sentence itself and the extent of your own talent. — Pat Conroy

We stayed all day long. We closed our eyes and paryed, which we had not doen together in a long time. The nurse came in and out of the room. Everything felt awful and I wondered why the whole world didn't seem to notice how bad things really were. I thought of how I'd gotten used to awful, how after my dad died the planets kept on spinning and I got up and ate breakfast every morning and kept going to school. Something happens and it's terrible and you think you can't live another day, but then your mother gets used to it and you get used to it and you both keep on living, and you're not sure if that getting-used-to-things is good or the way life should be. — Margaret McMullan

Inner peace - you need to know who you are, what you want out of life. You have to do your own thinking, and for that you better know who you are, and not just know but be secure in it, comfortable with yourself. Plus you gotta have discipline. Stamina. And luck sure helps. A little luck counts for a lot, including our great good luck of being born into the greatest economic system ever devised. It's not a perfect system by any means, but overall it's responsible for tremendous human progress. In just the past century alone, we've seen something like a seven-to-one improvement in the standard of living. I'm not saying we don't have problems, we've got a helluva lot of problems, but that's where the genius of the free market comes in, all the drive and talent and energy that goes into solving those problems. — Ben Fountain

The average time for karma to produce results is five years. I mean, five years for a company to prove itself or end, but also for a person to achieve success or failure. Now, if you really persist in doing something truly good for five years of your life, you must conquer the results you envisioned, if you did so. And the same applies for the ignorant. If you ignore the potential of those around you, if you ignore your life partner, if you ignore the needs of others, if you are ignorant about yourself and waste your time for five years, then expect to get karma back after that period as well. Life is wonderful, even for the stupid, but you shouldn't need negative consequences to learn something useful from it. — Robin Sacredfire

Wake up every morning with a thankful attitude. Expect something good to happen in your life today. — Joel Osteen

As long as you find something beautiful, good, and true to believe in and abide by, you have the equivalent of God in your life. — Thich Nhat Hanh

A true thing about seeds is that they don't always stay seeds. In addition, most seeds grow up to be something. Some become plants or trees that then go about producing more seeds. Some seeds get popped and eaten and ... well, you probably have a pretty good idea of what happens to things after they get eaten.
Some seeds are dried, some are pressed for oil, and some simply end up in bean bags or as the rattle in a baby's toy. It's probably fair to say that the life and times of a seed isn't necessarily the most exciting thing in the world, but what the seed lacks in excitement, it makes up for in miracles.
It's a miracle that a tiny seed can change from a dot in your palm into a towering tree whose wood can be made into the home you live in or the paper books are printed on. — Obert Skye