Quotes & Sayings About Taking Advice

You're right," he said, jerking open the portal. "There is one place she's sure to go."
"Yes."
"And you.You should take your own advice and leave this place," Daniel said grimly. "You're rotting in here."
"At least this body's pain distracts me from the pain in my soul," his past self said. "No.I wish you luck, but I won't leave these walls now.Not until she's settled in her next incarnation."
Daniel's wings bristled at his neck. He tried to sort out time and lives and memories in his head, but he kept circling around the same irksome thought. "She-she should be settled now. In conception. Can't you feel it?"
"Oh," his imprisoned past self said softly. He closed his eyes. "I don't know that I can feel anything anymore." The prisoner sighed heavily. "Life's a nightmare."
"No,it's not. Not anymore. I'll find her.I'll redeem us both," Daniel shouted, desperate to get out of there, desperately taking another leap of faith through time. — Lauren Kate

Taking the high road is always the best way to go. You feel better about yourself, and the world feels better about you. — Tim Gunn

If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat! Just get on. — Sheryl Sandberg

The secret to a great ice cream, is crunch coat."[ ... ]
I look at him, aghast. "Crunch coat? Oh, Noah darling, you are so wrong. Everyone knows you ruin ice cream by putting crunch coat on it,"
"Crunch coat," Noah says, "is delicious. And besides, I'm supposed to be taking advice from you?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You listen to Lady Gaga. — Lauren Barnholdt

If you were advising your great-granddaughter about the man you have a crush on at this moment-what would you tell her? Would you be protective, and tell her to kick this man to the curb because he's treating her so badly, or would you tell her to hold on to this man for dear life?
Now, why aren't you taking your own advice? — Kim Gruenenfelder

Am taking legal advice to ascertain whether strangling an idiot nephew counts as murder. If it doesn't look out for yourself. — P.G. Wodehouse

People tell you to believe in yourself for your whole life, then call you arrogant when you begin taking their advice. — Curtis Tyrone Jones

Honesty makes stories real and characters memorable. From there, taking them to where they need to go will be all the development they need. — Dan Alatorre

One surefire way of getting results the results we need and want is to start taking the advice we so readily give to others. — Charles F. Glassman

Taking care of the elderly comes without the vast literature of advice and encouragement that accompanies other kinds of commitments, notably romantic love and childbearing. It sneaks up on you as something that is not supposed to happen, or rather you crash into this condition that you have not been warned about, a rocky coast not on the map. In the preferred stories the last years of life are golden and the old all ripen into wisdom, not decay into diseases that mimic mental illness and roll backward into chaotic childhood and beyond. — Rebecca Solnit

When I meet with the founders of a new company, my advice is almost always, 'Do fewer things.' It's true of partnerships, marketing opportunities, anything that's taking up your time. The vast majority of things are distractions, and very few really matter to your success. — Evan Williams

Evan Connell said once that he knew he was finished with a short story when he found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going through the story again and putting the commas back in the same places. I like that way of working on something. I respect that kind of care for what is being done. That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones, with the punctuation in the right places so that they an best say what they are meant to say. If the words are heavy with the writer's own unbridled emotions, or if they are imprecise and inaccurate for some other reason
if the worlds are in any way blurred
the reader's eyes will slide right over them and nothing will be achieved. Henry James called this sort of hapless writing 'weak specification'. — Raymond Carver

When we talk with our children about sexual abuse, we are not only taking a proactive step toward protecting them, we are building our relationship with them
grounded in honesty and trust. It's a win-win situation. — Carolyn Byers Ruch

And things don't change in a marriage until the spouse who is taking responsibility for a problem that is not hers decides to say or do something about it. — Henry Cloud

But as long as you know you're nobody special, you'll be a very decent sort of Horse, on the whole, and taking one thing with another. — C.S. Lewis

Advice never hurts, taking it often does — Nora Roberts

Writing at its best is simply taking dictation from your soul. — Catherine Carrigan

Taking risks is part of life, but to take risks invites the possibilty of failure and rejection, but also the possibility of true happines. — Morten Hogsberg

Wow. She's like a mini-Socrates with all this life advice. I feel like I should be taking notes. Or debating with her. — Colleen Hoover

No one was ever the better for advice: in general, what we called giving advice was properly taking an occasion to show our own wisdom at another's expense; and to receive advice was little better than tamely to another the occasion of raising himself a character from our defects. — Anthony Ashley Cooper

I give myself sometimes admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it. — Mary Wortley Montagu

I look at the books on my library shelves. They certainly seem dormant. But what if the characters are quietly rearranging themselves? What if Emma Woodhouse doesn't learn from her mistakes? What if Tom Jones descends into a sodden life of poaching and outlawry? What if Eve resists Satan, remembering God's injunction and Adam's loving advice? I imagine all the characters bustling to get back into their places as they feel me taking the book down from the shelf. "Hurry," they say, "he'll expect to find us exactly where he left us, never mind how much his life has changed in the meantime. — Verlyn Klinkenborg

In general, the best advice I can give people is to take criticism seriously, apologize for anything you have done wrong, and pull back from conflict. Of course, if you are right on a content matter, you should press forward in the interest of quality, but conflict often has a way of taking on a life of its own, unfortunately. — Jimmy Wales

Never take advice about never taking advice. That is an old vice of men - to dish it out without being able to take it - the blind leading the blind into more blindness. — Criss Jami

Pride makes us rest content with ourselves - think we are good enough as we are - keep us from taking advice - refuse the gospel of Christ - turn every one to his own way. But pride never reigns anywhere so powerfully as in the heart of a young man. — J.C. Ryle

It's so easy and convenient to buy our children gifts, but I encourage and challenge you to give them gifts that TRULY matter! The gift of unconditional love. The gift of encouragement. The gift of support. The gift of friendship. The gift of communication, understanding, and patience. The gift of guidance and support. The gift of quality time. And the gift of loving them for who THEY are. Material things are nice, but NOTHING compares to genuine love! Parenting should be taking seriously. — Stephanie Lahart

The advice I would give to any photographer - young, old or in-between - is to explore anything visual because this is, after all, how you express your artistry. Look at paintings, movies, drawings, sculptures - look at anything visual and try to integrate that into your visual sense. After that, go out and take pictures and keep on taking pictures! — Elliott Erwitt

This advice has been given often and more compellingly elsewhere, but my specific piece of wrong procedure back then was, incredibly, to browse through the thesaurus and note words that sounded cool, hip, or likely to produce an effect, usually that of making me look good, without then taking the trouble to go and find out in the dictionary what they meant — Thomas Pynchon

Mrs March knew that experience was an excellent teacher, and, when it was possible, she left her children to learn alone the lessons which she would gladly have made easier, if they had not objected to taking advice as much as they did salts and senna.* — Louisa May Alcott

Its not easy taking your own advice, accepting what you don't like hearing, & seeing the grey amongst the black & white. — April Mae Monterrosa

My dad has always just had a lot of faith in me as an artist and as a person, and he doesn't really dispense with a lot of advice when it comes to the music. He's taught me a lot over the years, but when I was taking on this project he's really hands-off about that. He just appreciates what I've done and is very supportive, and of course really proud. — Molly Ringwald

I'm such a believer in going to set, even when you're not work because I think the best things to be learned, you don't necessarily get from your own scene or from someone speaking to you and telling you advice. I think it's all about watching and just taking it all in. It's not even when the cameras are rolling, necessarily. You can see how they interact with the rest of the crew, and how they deal with being a character and then being themselves. — Lily Collins

What I personally knew about courting women could comfortably fit into a thimble without taking it off your finger first. — Patrick Rothfuss

I fear that I can no longer travel without technology. Twenty years ago, I loved getting on a bus in West Africa and taking off for a city I'd never been to before, relying on advice from out-of-date travel books and fellow passengers on the bus. Now, I end up using TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Google Maps. I probably eat and sleep better when I'm on the road, but I miss the mystery of travel when it was more random and unpredictable. — Ethan Zuckerman

One thing I've been thinking about is taking the social issues out of national politics. For example, if Georgia wanted abortion and Alabama didn't, that's going to be up to the people in Georgia. I can't sway them. Would I give them advice not to? Absolutely. Would I say it's wrong? Yes. — Joe Wurzelbacher

Surprisingly, it's forgiveness, not guilt, that increases accountability. Researchers have found that taking a self-compassionate point of view on a personal failure makes people more likely to take personal responsibility for the failure than when they take a self-critical point of view. They also are more willing to receive feedback and advice from others, and more likely to learn from the experience. — David D. Burns

Painting isn't a question of sensibility; it's a matter of seizing the power, taking over from nature, not expecting her to supply you with information and good advice. — Pablo Picasso

Tweets about the mundane aspects of your life contain something that is vitally important to gaining followers and taking part in discussions: Authenticity. — Ian Lamont

The advice I've been giving to people all my life - that you may not be interested in the dialectic but the dialectic is interested in you; you can't give up politics, it won't give you up - was the advice I should have been taking myself. — Christopher Hitchens

My advice for other female directors is look for people who really appreciate your vision and are willing to genuinely support you. When it comes time to taking notes on various cuts, if you have a smart producer, listen to her notes! — Linda Hoaglund

Taking advice is fine; by all means, be open-minded, but not to the point of allowing others to obliterate your uniqueness. — Bryant McGill

Taking risks in older age is more courageous because you have more to lose. When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. — Rick Warren

During my mental illness, thank God, my grandma was my human rescuer and angel, she ask me to stop taking the medication, leading to the recovering. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I suppose the best advice I ever got, frankly the advice that changed my life, came from my uncle who told me to go to drama school and study acting instead of taking a job, because he said the job would always be there. — Elizabeth Banks

Life became more aligned when I started taking some of the advice I'd been dishing out to my friends. — Paula Heller Garland

Staff silenced her with a hot kiss. "Hush," he whispered, taking her closer into his arms. "Mary, we have waited long enough. I want you, dearest, to make up for the lonely hours, and countless advice, and worry that your kings and cursed father would totally ruin our life together. And for the wasted years. Tonight, Mary, we are going to begin catching up-and it will take a long, long time for us to be even ... — Karen Harper

The past is ignorant of the present. Be careful in taking its advice. — Mason Cooley

It's YOUR journey. Ask yourself who you are, where you want to go, and how you'd like to get there. Graciously accept advice from everyone, but don't look left and right and wonder why you're not taking the path of your peers. Enjoy the path you're on and make the most of it. Carpe College! — Michael Metzler

Books are like rivers, meandering this way and that, but taking us on a steady, flowing course to somewhere different. — Carla H. Krueger

Sting told me if I love somebody I should set them free.
I doubt Sting ever loved anyone with wings. If he did he might rethink such a stupid sentiment.
I suppose the point is to wait for your love to come back to you voluntarily.
I wonder if there's a difference between setting something free and letting it go?
I probably did it wrong.
I should stop taking advice from my radio.
I worry that you're lost.
I keep a heart-shaped cage unlocked for you, out on the street where it can easily be seen.
So if one day you return at least you'll have a place to stay. — Erin Morgenstern

Storytelling, you know, has a real function. The process of the storytelling is itself a healing process, partly because you have someone there who is taking the time to tell you a story that has great meaning to them. They're taking the time to do this because your life could use some help, but they don't want to come over and just give advice. They want to give it to you in a form that becomes inseparable from your whole self. That's what stories do. Stories differ from advice in that, once you get them, they become a fabric of your whole soul. That is why they heal you."

~Alice Walker, in an interview about her work in Common Boundary, 1990 — Alice Walker

He said he was - this is exactly what he said - he said he was sitting at the table in the kitchen, all by himself, drinking a glass of ginger ale and eating saltines and reading 'Dombey and Son', and all of a sudden Jesus sat down in the other chair and asked if he could have a small glass of ginger ale. A small glass, mind you - that's exactly what he said. I mean he says things like that, and yet he thinks he's perfectly qualified to give me a lot of advice and stuff! I could just spit! I could! It's like being in a lunatic asylum and having another patient all dressed up as a doctor come over to you and start taking your pulse or something ... — J.D. Salinger

These are the four abuses: desire to succeed in order to make oneself famous; taking credit for the labors of others; refusal to correct one's errors despite advice; refusal to change one's ideas despite warnings. — Confucius

For every person seeking greatness, there are hundreds more charged with safeguarding mediocrity. If you want to be wealthy, stop taking financial advice from broke people. — Randy Gage

my father always said, "early to bed and
early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy
and wise."

it was lights out at 8 p.m. in our house
and we were up at dawn to the smell of
coffee, frying bacon and scrambled
eggs.

my father followed this general routine
for a lifetime and died young, broke,
and, I think, not too
wise.

taking note, I rejected his advice and it
became, for me, late to bed and late
to rise.

now, I'm not saying that I've conquered
the world but I've avoided
numberless early traffic jams, bypassed some
common pitfalls
and have met some strange, wonderful
people

one of whom
was
myself - someone my father
never
knew. — Charles Bukowski

My so-called bad dress-sense phase happened when I was confused - I think I was taking advice all too often, without listening to my inner voice. Add to the fact that I was a little overweight; so every wrong 'outfit' got compounded all that much. — Vidya Balan

Jones paused, reached into his sleeve, and pulled out a cigarette. "But I can't help but think that I'm taking advice from a grunt that's more fucked up than a left handed football bat. — B. Rockow

I quickly realized that friendships without tomorrows, and the little anguishes of parting, were part of the pleasures of traveling. I resolutely avoided bores, saw only those who amused me. We spent afternoons taking long walks, nights drinking and talking, and then we would leave each other, never to meet again, and there were no regrets. How simple life was. No regrets, no obligations, my acts and gestures counted for nothing, no one asked my advice, and I knew no other rule but my whims. — Simone De Beauvoir

I had been taking various lessons. I've also had a lot of incredible singers give me a ton of great advice. From Cyndi Lauper, who kind of taught me the basics, and I've also worked with Bird. She's a tremendous coach and she often coaches the contestants on American Idol. I've had a great amount of support. — Margaret Cho

Maybe you're looking for the kind of man who doesn't exist, Ash. You want somebody who'll fit your life perfectly and that'll never happen. There has to be a bit of give and take, you know.'
'I know,' Ash said sharply. 'But I don't want to do all of the giving and none of the taking. — Sheila O'Flanagan

Identify the problem.")
I love the late Japanese psychotherapist Shoma Morita's advice to stop trying to fix yourself and start living instead: "Give up on yourself. Begin taking action now, while being neurotic or imperfect, or a procrastinator, or unhealthy, or lazy, or any other label by which you inaccurately describe yourself. Go ahead and be the best imperfect person you can be and get started on those things you want to accomplish before you die. — Shoma Morita

On Wednesday, April 9, 1969, Bush, who was just beginning his second term as a congressman, flew to see the former president at LBJ's ranch at Stonewall, Texas, about 220 miles from Houston. "Mr. President, I've still got a decision to make and I'd like your advice," Bush said. "My House seat is secure - no opposition last time - and I've got a position on Ways and Means. I don't mind taking risks, but in a few more terms, I'll have seniority on a powerful committee. I'm just not sure it's a gamble I should take, whether it's really worth it." "Son," Johnson said, "I've served in the House. And I've been privileged to serve in the Senate, too. And they're both good places to serve. So I wouldn't begin to advise you what to do, except to say this - that the difference between being a member of the Senate and a member of the House is the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit." The former president paused. "Do I make my point? — Jon Meacham

Damon [Stoudamire] gave me advice of things I need to do to get through the whole season. The main thing is taking care of my body. I have to treat my body like a machine. What you put in it is what you'll get out of it. — Sebastian Telfair

Take a risk on messy. Live Fearlessly. Love recklessly. Most of all, just love. — Julie Johnson

The advice "you never go broke taking a profit" is foolish. — Warren Buffett

Nancy Cartwright here in this School has written the funniest paper on scientific method ever, by taking the average advice from all the books about scientific method, and they are extreme banalities — Bruno Latour

In Chapter 1, on relativity, I offered some dating advice. I proposed that if you want to go bar-hopping, you should consider taking along someone who looks similar to you but who is slightly less attractive than you are. Because of the relative nature of evaluations, others would perceive you not only as cuter than your decoy, but also as better-looking than other people in the bar. By the same logic, I also pointed out that the flip side of this coin is that if someone invites you to be his or her wingman (or wingwoman), you can easily figure out what your friend really thinks of you. — Anonymous

Joffre was adept at taking advice, and submitted more or less consciously to the reigning doctrinaires of the Operations Bureau. They formed what a French military critic called "a church outside which there was no salvation and which could never pardon those who revealed the falsity of its doctrine. — Barbara W. Tuchman

I think he's informing himself, reaching out and getting ideas and information and advice. I haven't the slightest doubt that internally taking shape in that marvelous brain of his is a philosophy of foreign affairs. But it would be premature to say that one is fully formed. — Theodore C. Sorensen

Save your world. Love it. Protect it, and respect it and don't let haters represent it.
Don't leave the saving to anyone else, ever, because, exhibit A - why, hello there - it's way too much for one person. And if you want to skip out on the responsibility train, my whole life - and death - will have been in vain.
It's yours. It's all yours for taking!
You're not going to waste it now, are you? — James Patterson

I swear to you on any kind of sacred whateverthefuck you favor: if I live through this I will absolutely start taking your advice." "That'll look nice on your headstone. — Matthew Woodring Stover

You can never take anything personally. Just a story. It's not their fault they want to kick you and it's certainly not yours. It's just the way things are. Sometimes you need to hear the worst, so you have no fear in what you do and learn to work around the what-have-you. — Initially NO

The greatest thing I learned while taking classes at Second City was the very first thing they taught: 'Yes, and ... '. In improv, you keep scenes alive but accepting whatever you are given and then adding to it or amplifying it. There is no space on stage for 'No,' 'I'm sorry, you're mistaken,' or 'Yes, but ... '. Those transitions kill energy, set up interpersonal conflict, engage the ego in a defensive posture, and stymie the flow of conversation onstage. — Jason Seiden