Stayed The Course Quotes & Sayings

If the boat started shaking, we stayed on course and didn't lose focus. That made the difference. — Sebastian Vettel

Oh, are you doing magic? Let's see it, then."
She sat down. Ron looked taken aback.
"Er - all right."
He cleared his throat.
"Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow,
Turn this stupid, fat rat yellow."
He waved his wand, but nothing happened. Scabbers stayed gray and fast asleep.
"Are you sure that's a real spell?" said the girl. "Well, it's not very good, is it? I've tried a few simple spells just for practice and it's all worked for me. I've learned all our course books by heart, of course. — J.K. Rowling

The pain flooded in again. It was always there, of course. Through the shaking hands and slapping of the backs, the grief stayed by his side, tapping Griffin on the shoulder, whispering in his ear, reminding him that they were partners for life. — Harlan Coben

Cat doesn't have to work. She's a woman of independent means. I settled enough money on her to allow her the freedom to do anything she wished. She went to boarding school for four years, and stayed to teach for another two. Eventually she came to me and said she'd accepted a position as a governess for the Hathaway family. I believe you were in France with Win at the time. Cat went for the interview, Cam and Amelia liked her, Beatrix and Poppy clearly needed her, and no one seemed inclined to question her lack of experience."
"Of course not," Leo said acidly. "My family would never bother with something so insignificant as job experience. I'm sure they started the interview by asking what her favorite color was. — Lisa Kleypas

It was his detachment that saved us. Another man would have reacted with force to the Soviet treachery. He would have shared the righteousness of the cause, been stirred to attack by the saber rattling. Jack resisted. He was not moved by the emotion of other around him. He knew his course and stayed to it. Thank God. The boy who had read alone of history's heroes was now safely on of them. He had done it not winning a war, but by averting one far more horrible than any leader in the past could have imagined." - p.373 — Chris Matthews

Divorce is very difficult, especially on the kids. Of course, I'm the result of my parents having stayed together, so you never know. — Jason Alexander

The moon waxes and wanes. The tides ebb and flow. The seasons turn, each in their own time. Ever changing, never changing. Of course you'll change. The dance of life spirals, remember? Even when you return to a point, you're not in the same place. The dance would have changed you, whether you'd come here or stayed home. — Anne Bishop

Of course, it is likely enough, my friends,' he said slowly, 'likely enough that we are going to our doom: the last march of the Ents. But if we stayed home and did nothing, doom would find us anyway, sooner or later. That thought has long been growing in our hearts; and that is why we are marching now. It was not a hasty resolve. Now at least the last march of the Ents may be worth a song. — J.R.R. Tolkien

When my life stayed the course, I wouldn't even feel them binding. Then I would waiver enough to sense the growing entrapment, the taming of my life in which I had been complicit. — David Miller

My skin feels too tight, like I might rupture. My mother must have read the end, the cards Enola keeps reading, the same thing Verona Bonn read, all the way back to Ryzhkova. They passed the cards to each other creating history, fingers touching paper, imbuing it with hope and fears, fear like a curse. Of course they wouldn't clear their cards, they were talking to their mothers, and isn't that part of why I've stayed here? The book noted a falling out between Ryzhkova and her apprentice, a falling out over the mermaid. Enola said that cards build history - what a perfect way to wound someone. The cards were hers, Ryzhkova's, then Amos and Evangeline's on down the line, each leaving themselves in the ink, each pulling from the deck, pulling in fears that work like poison. The wind blows a sheet of paper across a split board. The only paper of consequence was never in my possession - it was in Enola's. — Erika Swyler

At this point, because we have stayed the same course for so many years, I feel like we are freer to make choices that are motivated by what feels right creatively at a given point in time. — Mike McCready

After five or six blocks he pulled around me and, as he flipped me off, juked his steering wheel slightly to frighten me into running up on the sidewalk. Although I admired his spirit and would have loved to oblige him, I stayed on the road. There is never any point in trying to make sense of the way Miami drivers go about getting from one place to another. You just have to relax and enjoy the violence - and of course, that part was never a problem for me. So I smiled and waved, and he stomped on his accelerator and disappeared into traffic at about sixty miles per hour over the speed limit. — Jeff Lindsay

And of course, the one that I really wanted to see, stayed completely hidden away from me and I let him even though it kind of killed me. — S.C. Stephens

I am interested in politics but have stayed away from writing overtly political songs, or message songs, because I find it difficult to discuss politics intelligently in a 4-minute song. But I am finding there are ways to get bits and pieces of political thought across without preaching that the people have the power or we shall not be moved. Of course these sentiments have their place too - I'm not knocking Phil Ochs - but that's a different kind of music, songs to play at rallies, not to achieve a state of bliss. — Dean Wareham

There was a fellow I stayed with once in Warwickshire who farmed his own land, but was otherwise quite steady. Should never have suspected him of having a soul, yet not very long afterwards he eloped with a lion-tamer's widow and set up as a golf-instructor somewhere on the Persian Gulf; dreadfully immoral, of course, because he was only an indifferent player, but still, it showed imagination. His wife was really to be pitied, because he had been the only person in the house who understood how to manage the cook's temper, and now she has to put "D.V." on her dinner invitations. — Saki

Squashed behind The Cloud of Unknowing we discovered a pocket-size spiral notebook with a day-by-day account of the time Justin had stayed with her and her husband after Tommy's death. The writing was legible though it required effort (this was before she took her calligraphy course), but Justin was ecstatic and asked if he could have the little notebook. "This is my history," he said. Later, after he had deciphered every last word: "Boy, was I loved. — Gail Godwin

As I look back, I feel a touch of pride at my younger self's dedication to literature, which gave him the strength of mind to resist the blandishments of the enemies of promise. The sirens of ad-land sang sweetly and seductively, but I thought of Odysseus lashing himself to the mast of his ship, and somehow stayed on course. — Salman Rushdie

Bercelak frowned. "Do we know you?"
"I'm Bram," the dragon said, appearing confused. "I stayed with your parents last summer."
"Oh." Ghleanna glanced at them. "Right. Uh ... Brogue."
"Bram."
"Right. Bram. Bram the ... Friendly?"
"Merciful."
"Of course!" Ghleanna smiled, patted his shoulder. "Bram the Merciful. My father speaks quite highly of you."
"Really? What did he say?"
"Uh ... — G.A. Aiken

When I started to draw, most of my influences were from other painters and illustrators, so I was drawing landscape at second hand, really. The trees were Rackham trees, or trees that I had seen in paintings rather than from my own observation ... and I started to feel this was a real lack in my work. Everything was too generalised, and not based on real experience. Then in 1975, after having worked for some years in London as a book cover illustrator mainly, I came down to Devon and stayed with some friends up on the moor. In the course of this one weekend, wandering around the moor, finding rivers and ancient woods, I realised that everything that I would ever want to draw was actually here. There was so much richness in the texture and forms of these fantastic trees ... and I decided in the course of that weekend to come and live here. I looked at a couple of houses, found one, and made an offer on it, all in that one weekend! — Alan Lee

It's like coming home," said Webster and he wasn't talking to the dog. "It's like you've been away for a long, long time and then you come home again. And it's so long you don't recognize the place. Don't know the furniture, don't recognize the floor plan. But you know by the feel of it that it's an old familiar place and you are glad you came."
"I like it here," said. Ebenezer and he meant Webster's lap, but the man misunderstood.
"Of course, you do," he said. "It's your home as well as mine. More your home, in fact, for you stayed here and took care of it while I forgot about it. — Clifford D. Simak

I hung my belly-dancing outfit on a hook in my room, rather than on the outside of the door where it usually stayed. That would be a painfully obvious ploy for Hunter's attention. I made myself a gourmet dinner by opening a pack of peanut butter crackers, and I settled on my bed to study.
Listened for Hunter in the outer room.
Waited for him to burst in.
Of course he didn't. It bothered me that he didn't come in to bother me, and he knew this. However, I had vowed to close my heart to him, and I meant it this time. I tried my best to throw myself into my history reading.
But come on, it was history. Versus Hunter. — Jennifer Echols

I could have stayed holding on to Masimo and riding round forever, round and round, like that bloke on that doomed phantom boat, The Flying Dutchman. Of course there are differences - he was not on a scooter, and I don't have a beard and I am not Dutch. — Louise Rennison

It is said that as many days as there are in the whole journey, so many are the men and horses that stand along the road, each horse and man at the interval of a days journey; and these are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed. — Herodotus

The latter had developed into as close a friend as Arun had these days, except for Xin of course, filling the gap that Hortez's death and Springer's estrangement had created, but Del-Marie had stayed behind to negotiate with the natives on Tallerman-3 after the Legion had swept the New Empire forces from the system. — Tim C. Taylor

There are many things that have stayed consistent. But the biggest change, of course, is technology, the way it's used, the way films are shot, the format that they're shot in, and the way films, of course, are edited. It's very different than it was in the past. — Howard Shore

Why do you give a damn?"
"I was a runner for ten years, and I've seen many men die in the course of their duties. I myself came close to it more than once. There comes a time when a man has tweaked the devil's nose once too often, and if he's too stubborn or slow-witted to realize it, he'll pay with his own blood. I knew when to stop. And so must you."
"Because of your famous instincts?" Nick mocked angrily. "Damn it, Morgan, you stayed a runner until you were thirty-five! By that count, I still have seven years to go."
"You've tempted fate many more times in the last three years than I did in ten," the magistrate countered.
-Nick & Morgan — Lisa Kleypas

We were in the gondolas at The Venetian. You said you couldn't swim, that I'd have to save you if we capsized."
His Adam's apple jumped. "Yeah."
"I was terrified for you."
"I know. You hung onto me so tight I could barely breathe."
I drew back so I could see his face.
"Why do you think we stayed on them for so long?" he asked. "You were practically sitting in my lap."
"Can you swim?"
He laughed quietly. "Of course I can swim. I don't even think the water was that deep."
"It was all a ruse. You're tricky, David Ferris."
"And you're funny, Evelyn Thomas." His face relaxed, his eyes softening again. — Kylie Scott

Some young man has wronged you, hasn't he?' From a person who renounced on principle the possibility of transcendental morality, she thought, it was an interesting choice of words.

'None of them's stuck around long enough to wrong me, Bruno.'

He waved a hand dismissively. 'Romance is a fiction anyway. A myth to sell greeting cards.' Still, he seemed ready, given a name and address, to go challenge the malefactor, like some feudal-era father defending his daughter's chastity. This was all in the eyes, of course. The rest of the face stayed perfectly composed. — Garth Risk Hallberg

For Alice, of course, the measure of how you held up in the face of a life-threatening illness was not how much you changed but how much you stayed the same, in control of your own identity. — Calvin Trillin

What happened next played itself out like a terrible drama with two spectators. Lee and I stayed on our side of the fence, like an audience. Of course if the bull had wanted to smash through the fence he could have done so any time, but luckily nearly all cattle live and die without learning that. It's like school, most students go from kindergarten to Year 12 without noticing that they could do a fair amount of damage if they wanted to. They stay inside the fence. — John Marsden

My legacy is that I stayed on course ... from the beginning to the end, because I believed in something inside of me. — Tina Turner

I absolutely believe that those who come here illegally should not be given favoritism or a special route to becoming permanent residents or citizens that's not given to those people that have stayed in line legally. I just think we have to follow the law. I think that's the right course. — Mitt Romney

Although I was four years at the University [of Wisconsin], I did not take the regular course of studies, but instead picked out what I thought would be most useful to me, particularly chemistry, which opened a new world, mathematics and physics, a little Greek and Latin, botany and and geology. I was far from satisfied with what I had learned, and should have stayed longer. — John Muir

The potency of prayer hath subdued the strength of fire; it hath bridled the rage of lions, hushed anarchy to rest, extinguished wars, appeased the elements, expelled demons, burst the chains of death, expanded the gates of heaven, assuaged diseases, repelled frauds, rescued cities from destruction, stayed the sun in its course, and arrested the progress of the thunderbolt. — John Chrysostom

She was at that crucial age when a women begins to regret having stayed faithful to a husband she never really loved, when the glowing sunset colors of her beauty offer her one last, urgent choice between maternal and feminine love. At such a moment a life that seemed to have chosen its course long ago is questioned once again, for the last time the magic compass needle of the will hovers between final resignation and the hope of erotic experience. — Stefan Zweig