The Best Things In The World Quotes & Sayings

I have the best roommates in the world! It creates a fun sense of family ... and that's really important to me. Things can get so lonely without it. — Kristen Bell

When we are in pre-production, this is the best job in the world. Working 10 to 7, sitting around and brainstorming with the other writers, making things funnier and writing and rewriting scenes - that's as fun as it gets. — Paul Lieberstein

The Engineer is one who, in the world of physics and applied sciences, begets new things, or adapts old things to new and better uses; above all, one who, in that field, attains new results in the best way and at lowest cost. — Henry R. Towne

The world needs people like you,' Simmon said in the tone of voice that let me know he was turning philosophical. 'You get things done. Not always the best way, or the most sensible way, but it gets done nonetheless. You're a rare creature. — Patrick Rothfuss

The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us. We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good. Things happen to us. Loved ones die. People get in wrecks and get crippled. People lose their way, for one reason or another. It's not hard to do, in this world of crazy mazes. Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from us. You don't know its happening until one day you feel you've lost something but you're not sure what it is. It's like smiling at a pretty girl and she calls you 'sir'. It just happens. — Robert McCammon

Don't!" cried Jamie. "Don't be bitter, Margaret. We don't know why, we never can know why things happen in this world exactly as they do; but this we know: We know that God is in His Heaven, that He is merciful to the extent of ordaining mercy; we know that if we disobey and take our own way and run contrary to His commandments, we are bitterly punished. And it is the most pitiful of laws that no man or woman can take their punishment alone in this world. It is the law that none of us can suffer without making someone else suffer, but in some way it must be that everything works out for the best, even if we can't possibly see how that could be when things are happening that hurt us so. — Gene Stratton-Porter

I love you. As the same value, as the same expression, with the same pride and the same meaning as I love my work, my mills, my Metal, my hours at a desk, at a furnace, in a laboratory, in an ore mine, as I love my ability to work, as I love the act of sight and knowledge, as I love the action of my mind when it solves a chemical equation or grasps a sunrise, as I love the things I've made and the things I've felt, as *my* product, as *my* choice, as a shape of my world, as my best mirror, as the wife I've never had, as that which makes all the rest of it possible: as my power to live. — Ayn Rand

GK Chesterton once said that to criticise religion because it leads people to kill each other is like criticising love because it has the same effect. All the best things we have, when abused, will cause bad things to happen. The need for sacrifice, to obey, to make a gift of your life is in all of us and it's a deep thing. In the Islamic world today, people are trying to rejoin themselves to an antiquated and ancient faith and the result is massive violence when they encounter people who have not done that. We'd say that sense of sacrifice is good but only if you're sacrificing your own life; once you sacrifice another's life you've overstepped the mark. — Roger Scruton

Another thing about Oscar is that he wasn't afraid of anyone. And he always made up his own mind, no matter what other people said. They're two of the best things I remember about him now.
He wasn't just my friend. He was kind of magic. I can't really explain it better than that. He was honest and he was decent and he was always cheerful. And evem though his brother Stevie had to use a wheelchair, it wasn't a problem the way people usually think it is, because Oscar always made sure that every door was opened and every stairway had a ramp, and every train station had the right access so he could get it. He used to say that if the world was designed properly, the whole population would be flying around the place in wheelchairs. And when he said that, Stevie used to laugh. — Sarah Moore Fitzgerald

Shake off those gloomy feelings. Drive them away. Fix your mind and pleasures upon what is before you.All is bright if you will think it so. All is happy if you will make it so. Do not dream. It is too ideal, too imaginary. Dreaming by day, I mean. Live in the world you inhabit. Look upon things as they are. Take them as you find them. Make the best of them. Turn them to your advantage. — Robert E.Lee

A writer is someone who analyses the society, people and the world around him or her. Simply a writer is someone who pays attention to the utmost simple things happening around him or her. I believe the best things about being a writer is, you are going to live forever through your work, in your books, in the hearts of your readers, in your characters. — Ama H. Vanniarachchy

Oh, I see;" said the Tin Woodman. "But, after all, brains are not the best things in the world."
Have you any?" enquired the Scarecrow.
No, my head is quite empty," answered the Woodman; "but once I had brains, and a heart also; so, having tried them both, I should much rather have a heart. — L. Frank Baum

If we only had eyes to see and ears to hear and wits to understand, we would know that the Kingdom of God in the sense of holiness, goodness, beauty is as close as breathing and is crying out to born both within ourselves and within the world; we would know that the Kingdom of God is what we all of us hunger for above all other things even when we don't know its name or realize that it's what we're starving to death for. The Kingdom of God is where our best dreams come from and our truest prayers. We glimpse it at those moments when we find ourselves being better than we are and wiser than we know. We catch sight of it when at some moment of crisis a strength seems to come to us that is greater than our own strength. The Kingdom of God is where we belong. It is home, and whether we realize it or not, I think we are all of us homesick for it. — Frederick Buechner

Rising living standards - whether in a village, a region, a nation, or the world - depend first on specialization: on letting people concentrate on what they do best and trade with others who specialize in other things. — Virginia Postrel

I remember that I'm invisible and walk softly so as not awake the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not to awaken them; there are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers. — Ralph Ellison

Every one in the world ought to do the things for which he is specially adapted. It is the part of wisdom to recognize what each one of us is best fitted for, and it is the part of education to perfect and utilize such predispositions. Because education can direct and aid nature but can never transform her. — Maria Montessori

One of the things that makes our military the best in the world is the certain knowledge of each soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine that they can always count on their comrades should they need help - that they will never be abandoned. — Jon Kyl

I have no way of knowing whether you, who eventually will read this record, like stories or not. If you do not, no doubt you have turned these pages without attention. I confess that I love them. Indeed, it often seems to me that of all the good things in the world, the only ones humanity can claim for itself are stories and music; the rest, mercy, beauty, sleep, clean water and hot food (as the Ascian would have said) are all the work of the Increate. Thus, stories are small things indeed in the scheme of the universe, but it is hard not to love best what is our own - hard for me, at least. — Gene Wolfe

We all want things that are not necessarily essential, but we always choose those actions which we think will best improve the situation from our viewpoint. This means that the ideas that men hold determine their choice of actions. This means that the most important thing in the world is ideas. — Percy L. Greaves Jr.

Radicals often suspect beauty of corruption. Uptight fuckers though they sometimes are, they're right in one thing: art alone cannot change the world. Pens can't take on swords, let alone Predator drones. But as disappointment and violence spread, the antidote is a generosity that the best art can still inspire.

Art is hope against cynicism, creation against entropy. To make art is an act of both love and defiance. Though I'm a cynic, I believe these things are all we have. — Molly Crabapple

I journaled: "Why do I feel like crap after being offered a book deal by one of the best publishers on the planet?" The answer that I came up with surprised me. I knew there were people who would have done anything to get their work out into the world this way. i knew there were people who had worked their butts off and still hadn't made it. I knew there were people who had amazing, life-changing things to say who didn't have the platforms to say it yet. I knew there were people who would have been doing cartwheels in the street if they were me right now. And I felt like because they wanted it more, they should have it instead of me. — Kate Northrup

That's why I loved being with you. We could do the simplest things, like toss starfish into the ocean and share a burger and talk and even then I knew that I was fortunate. Because you were the first guy who wasn't constantly trying to impress me. You accepted who you were, but more than that, you accepted me for me. And nothing else mattered
not my family or your family or anyone else in the world. It was just us. — Nicholas Sparks

Every poem is a love poem, my dad had said. I'd always thought he meant romantic love...but there were so many kinds of great love: mother and daughter love. Father love. Best friend love. Aunt love. Mother's best friend love. Friendish friendesque love. Love for the living and love for the dead. Love for who you really are, for those weird parts of yourself that only a few people understand. Love for things you yearn to do, for putting words in a page. Love for traveling, for people and seeing new ways to live. Love for the world... — Margo Rabb

It's easy to look back and say if things had been perfect, I could have accommodated all of those things into my life. But as a therapist I do not allow that word to be uttered in my office after the first session, because I believe the only reason for the existence of that word is to make us feel bad. It's the only word in the language (that I know of) that is defined in common usage by what can't be. It sets a vague standard that can't be met because it is never truly characterized. I prefer to think that we're all out here doing our best under the circumstances, looking at our world through the only eyes through which we can look at it: our own. — Chris Crutcher

Great meals rarely start at points that all look like beginnings. They usually pick up where something else leaves off. This is how most of the best things are made - imagine if the world had to begin from scratch each dawn: a tree would never grow, nor would we ever get to see the etchings of gentle rings on a clamshell ... Meals' ingredients must be allowed to topple into one another like dominos. Broccoli stems, their florets perfectly boiled in salty water, must be simmered with olive oil and eaten with shaved Parmesan on toast; their leftover cooking liquid kept for the base for soup, studded with other vegetables, drizzled with good olive oil, with the rind of the Parmesan added for heartiness. This continuity is the heart and soul of cooking. — Tamar Adler

That's what being shy feels like. Like my skin is too thin, the light too bright. Like the best place I could possibly be is in a tunnel far under the cool, dark earth. Someone asks me a question and I stare at them, empty-faced, my brain jammed up with how hard I'm trying to find something interesting to say. And in the end, all I can do is nod or shrug, because the light of their eyes looking at me, waiting for me, is just too much to take. And then it's over and there's one more person in the world who thinks I'm a complete and total waste of space.
The worst thing is the stupid hopefulness. Every new party, every new bunch of people, and I start thinking that maybe this is my chance. That I'm going to be normal this time. A new leaf. A fresh start. But then I find myself at the party, thinking, Oh, yeah. This again.
So I stand on the edge of things, crossing my fingers, praying nobody will try to look me in the eye. And the good thing is, they usually don't. — Carol Rifka Brunt

It's good,' he thought, 'to taste for one's self all that which one needs to know. The lust for the world and wealth were not among the best things in life; I already learned this as a child. I have known it for a long time, but have only just experienced this now. And now I know this, not just in my mind, but in my eyes, my heart, and my stomach. — Hermann Hesse

For most people, it is enough for the world to know that they aspire. The world does not ask what their aspirations are, trusting that those aspirations are for the best and greatest things. But with regard to the Negroes in America, there is a feeling that their aspirations in some way are not consistent with the great ideals. — W.E.B. Du Bois

The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn. — T.H. White

Short Brief Story, How I started to make this which you see today?
I'm talking about the works, most people doubt about that I will become a writer. Most people said me this, you must drink a lot of teas, to become a writer (you must have a rich vocabulary and many other stuff!). But check out what Stephen King said in his book "Memoir and Craft" this
amazed me.
Most people know him as an actor or as an book writer...Maybe this can change some people opinions which didn't believe in me (in their opinions), I just show in my books a new world, YEAH I read some books in this time, I watched some films, I finished some games, some interesting stuff happened and many other things. But the best thing everything as much as possible was added in the books Series The Life Of One Kid! — Deyth Banger

One of the best things about folklore and fairy tales is that the best fantasy is what you find right around the corner, in this world. That's where the old stuff came from. — Terri Windling

I want my legacy to be that I was a man of character, I was a God fearing man and somebody who bettered the sport in terms of the way I represented the sport. But also that fact that I was a fierce competitor and fought the best in the world and was able to come out on top, so if those things could be said about me, then I look at it as a job well done. — Andre Ward

We focus on two things when hiring. First, find the best people you can in the world. And second, let them do their work. Just get out of their way. — Matt Mullenweg

The lovely thing is, if Marvel had a Spider-Man movie over at Sony or something, they own the rights to the character, and the editors and producers make suggestions and get notes and things. But you're talking about Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman. They're two of the best people in the world. The notes are just things like, "This is absolutely brilliant." — Mark Millar

You tend to think that your time is either the best or the worst, and then when you have a sense of history, you'll realize actually, no, there were times things were quite gusty in the world. I mean, just think, nowadays most people will say they support the advancement of women, woman has been equal, the fact that we're so aware of the gustiness, in a sense, also speaks about the heightening of our own sensitivity. — Desmond Tutu

Never, never pin your whole faith on any human being: not if he is the best and wisest in the whole world. There are lots of nice things you can do with sand; but do not try building a house on it. — C.S. Lewis

I would care that someone understood we were flawed and scarred and doing the best we could in this war. We were wrapped up in things that were so much bigger than ourselves. We didn't know. We didn't mean to. It wasn't our fault. — Monica Hesse

At some point, I figured that it would be more effective and far funnier to embrace the ugliest, most terrifying things in the world
the Holocaust, racism, rape, et cetera. But for the sake of comedy, and the comedian's personal sanity, this requires a certain emotional distance. It's akin to being a shrink or a social worker. you might think that the most sensitive, empathetic person would make the best social worker, but that person would end up being soup on the floor. It really takes someone strong
someone, dare I say, with a big fat wall up
to work in a pool of heartbreak all day and not want to fucking kill yourself. But adopting a persona at once ignorant and arrogant allowed me to say what I didn't mean, even preach the opposite of what I believed. For me, it was a funny way to be sincere. And like the jokes in a roast, the hope is that the genuine sentiment
maybe even a goodness underneath the joke (however brutal) transcends. — Sarah Silverman

My third maxim was to endeavor always to conquer myself rather than fortune, and change my desires rather than the order of the world, and in general, accustom myself to the persuasion that, except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power; so that when we have done our best in things external to us, all wherein we fail of success is to be held, as regards us, absolutely impossible: and this single principle seemed to me sufficient to prevent me from desiring for the future anything which I could not obtain, and thus render me contented — Rene Descartes

Arthur Church, who as I say took local journalism very seriously, wrote an eloquent defence of reporting even the nasty things. The gist of it was this, that it was in the public interest that the truth be known and known because it has been carefully reported and published. Without it, you are relying on the man in the pub, and rumour, possibly malicious rumour. If the local paper does for some reason get it wrong, then this would be known, and an apology and clarification would be made. This was not the best of all worlds, but better than the world of hearsay. — Terry Pratchett

Finding your calling doesn't mean you must leave the job you now have. It simply means you need to bring more of yourself into your work and focus on the things you do best. It means you have to stop waiting for other people to make the changes you desire and, as Mahatma Gandhi noted: "Be the change that you wish to see most in your world." And once you do, your life will change. — Robin S. Sharma

We live in a world where those things that we never imagine could ever do something, did the best. — Jestoni Revealed

I'm on record saying that HBO is the best television company in the world, and I believe they are. I think they absolutely understand how to make television that is really, really vital and interesting and visceral, and all the things that television really should be. — James Purefoy

One must in this lower world love many things to know finally what one loves the best ... — Isak Dinesen

The reason I love rules and plans and religions is that people feel safe in them for a while. And, personally, I don't have any rules. I don't need them. There's a sense of order that goes on all the time as things move and change, and I am that harmony, and so are you. Not knowing is the only way to understand ... Meanings, rules, the whole world of right and wrong, are secondary at best. I understand how some people think they need to live by rules ... It's very frightening for them to watch the world unfolding in apparent chaos and not realize that the chaos itself is God in his infinite intelligence. — Byron Katie

I looked it up and sure enough, she was right. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution says: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Well, that explained a lot of things. That explained why jails and prisons all over the country are filled to the brim with Black and Third World people, why so many Black people can't find a job on the streets and are forced to survive the best way they know how. Once you're in prison, there are plenty of jobs, and, if you don't want to work, they beat you up and throw you in the hole. If every state had to pay workers to do the jobs prisoners are forced to do, the salaries would amount to billions. License plates alone would amount to millions. — Assata Shakur

When I was younger, I lived in this really nice neighborhood. It had these big beautiful houses that I thought were simply the best. But now that I've seen the world, seen more beautiful things, I drive back through that neighborhood and realize, my childhood silver looks more like stainless steel now that I've seen gold. — Unknown

I would make it a rule to eradicate from my patient any strong personal taste which is not actually a sin, even if it is something quite trivial such as a fondness for county cricket or collecting stamps or drinking cocoa. Such things, I grant you, have nothing of virtue in them; but there is a sort of innocence and humility and self-forgetfulness about them which I distrust. The man who truly and disinterestedly enjoys any one thing in the world, for its own sake, and without caring twopence what other people say about it, is by that very fact fore-armed against some of our subtlest modes of attack. You should always try to make the patient abandon the people or food or books he really likes in favour of the "best" people, the "right" food, the "important" books. — C.S. Lewis

Scientific and technological progress themselves are value-neutral. They are just very good at doing what they do. If you want to do selfish, greedy, intolerant and violent things, scientific technology will provide you with by far the most efficient way of doing so. But if you want to do good, to solve the world's problems, to progress in the best value-laden sense, once again, there is no better means to those ends than the scientific way. — Richard Dawkins

Thierry is the best striker in the world. By far he's the best in the world. Thierry doesn't just score goals. Even when he's not having a good day he can make an important pass. He is a strong character. If things go wrong, he bounces straight back. His effect on the club is very big. — Patrick Vieira

In a world where success is the measure and justification of all things the figure of Him who was sentenced and crucified remains a stranger and is at best the object of pity. The world will allow itself to be subdued only by success. It is not ideas or opinions which decide, but deeds. Success alone justifies wrongs done ... With a frankness and off-handedness which no other earthly power could permit itself, history appeals in its own cause to the dictum that the end justifies the means ... The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought that takes success for its standard. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Strange and fantastic things really happen. During a rainstorm in Australia, fish fall from the sky; several Southern states consider legislation that would make the licking of toads illegal; Lisa Presley marries Michael Jackson. You read these things and you think to yourself that realism may not be the best medium through which to express the real world. — Karen Joy Fowler

To believe in the supernatural is not simply to believe that after living a successful, material, and fairly virtuous life here one will continue to exist in the best-possible substitute for this world, or that after living a starved and stunted life here one will be compensated with all the good things one has gone without: it is to believe that the supernatural is the greatest reality here and now. — T. S. Eliot

We can best help children learn, not by deciding what we think they should learn and thinking of ingenious ways to teach it to them, but by making the world, as far as we can, accessible to them, paying serious attention to what they do, answering their questions
if they have any
and helping them explore the things they are most interested in. — John Holt

You know and I know that as soon as it's done, you have to get it out there. You want what's best for it. And especially in owning a label, which some days is the greatest thing for me and in some days is my demise because you see the truth and the work that goes into things and you see things happen and you see things not happen, and all you want in this world of currency right now is popularity, that's it! — Kevin Drew

The endless procession of people and things that forms the world is for me an interminable gallery of pictures whose content bores me. It doesn't interest me because the soul is a monotonous thing and is always the same in everyone; it differs only in its personal manifestations and the best part of it is that which overflows into dreams, into mannerisms and gestures, and thus becomes part of the image that so captures my interest [ ... ] This is how I experience the animate exteriors of things and beings, in pure vision, indifferent as a god from another world to their content, to their spirit. I only go deep into the surface of other people, if I want profundity I look for it in myself and in my concept of things. — Fernando Pessoa

Hybridity keeps me from being rigid about most things. It has taught me to appreciate the contradictions in the world and in my life. I scavenge from the best. — Jessica Hagedorn

These are the best reasons to do anything in life. People who say things like this are the kind of people who change the world. Who prevent the world from ending. Or at least they can change the inner world of a reader and that is a sacred power. — Martine Leavitt

The best things in this world are meant to be fought for." -Kearney — Brittany L. Engels

We are going to position ourselves as a world-class financial institution. We want to do things that are comparable to the best in the world. At the same time, we want to have very strong human qualities. — Uday Kotak

A man of the best parts and greatest learning, if he does not know the world by his own experience and observation, will be very absurd, and consequently very unwelcome in company. He may say very good things; but they will be probably so ill-timed, misplaced, or improperly addressed, that he had much better hold his tongue. — Lord Chesterfield

There is no such things as 'best' in the world of individuals. — Hosea Ballou

none can shake off a sense of having free will. The best we can do is to reason that we are determined based on observing the common law of causality among things in the world and applying this law to ourselves. But we cannot feel ourselves as determined. (One philosopher has said, and possibly more have thought to themselves: "Can one really believe in determinism without going insane?") Being determined in thought and deed is not experientially noticeable, only abstractly deducible. It would be impossible for someone to say "I am nothing but a human puppet. — Thomas Ligotti

But this is one of the things that makes rap at its best so human. It doesn't force you to pretend to be only one thing or another, to be a saint or a sinner. It recognizes that you can be true to yourself and still have unexpected dimensions and opposing ideas. Having a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other is the most common thing in the world. The real bullshit is when you act like you don't have contradictions inside you, that you're so dull and unimaginative that your mind never changes or wanders into strange, unexpected places. — Jay-Z

She was making a conscious effort to take with her all the best things about the world she wanted to leave, just in case memories could be car-ried in one's pockets and used to plot out the course of whatever it was that came next — Jodi Picoult

Sometimes, homely things are done for the best reasons in the world and thus achieve a beauty of their own. — Gene Weingarten

God and Goddess, I greet you at the start of another day and ask that you send me the best day possible. Help me to feel my best so I might do my best for myself and for others. Send me the strength and energy to do the things I need to do, and the focus and creativity to do them well. Help me to let go of all those things that no longer work for my benefit so I might move in the direction of perfect health and perfect balance. Help the world move in a better direction, and watch over me and those I love. Please send me prosperity and healing, patience and wisdom, serenity and faith. ... So mote it be. — Deborah Blake

In the end, you really want to make the best film that you can, and in the reality of the filmmaking world, you have things like budgets. — Nicholas Sparks

Worrying does not accomplish anything. Even if you worry twenty times more, it will not change the situation of the world. In fact, your anxiety will only make things worse. Even though things are not as we would like, we can still be content, knowing we are trying our best and will continue to do so. If we don't know how to breathe, smile,and live every moment of our life deeply, we will never be able to help anyone. I am happy in the present moment. I do not ask for anything else. I do not expect any additional happiness or conditions that will bring about more happiness. The most important practice is aimlessness, not running after things, not grasping. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Now if there is any gift of the gods to men, it is reasonable that happiness should be god-given, and most surely god-given of all human things inasmuch as it is the best. But this question would perhaps be more appropriate to another inquiry; happiness seems, however, even if it is not god-sent but comes as a result of virtue and some process of learning and training, to be among the most god-like things; for that which is the prize and end of virtue seems to be the best thing in the world, and something god-like and blessed. — Aristotle.

Sometimes when one cannot stand the story or novel one
is working on, it helps to write something else - a different
story or novel, or essays venting one's favorite peeves, or exercises
aimed at passing the time and incidentally polishing up
one's craft. The best way in the world for breaking a writer's
block is to write a lot. Jabbering away on paper, one gets
tricked into feeling interested, all at once, in something one is
saying, and behold, the magic waters are flowing again. Often
it helps to work on a journal, since that allows the writer to
write about those things that most interest him, yet frees him
of the pressure of achievement and encourages him to develop
a more natural, more personal style. — John Gardner

All the best things and treasures of this world are not to be produced by each generation for itself; but we are all intended, not to carve our work in snow that will melt, but each and all of us to be continually rolling a great white gathering snow-ball, higher and higher, larger and larger, along the Alps of human power. — John Ruskin

Cuban mechanics obviously have to be the best mechanics in the world.They're going to figure out all sorts of things to do. — Jeffrey Goldberg

Wizards don't believe in gods. They didn't deny their existence, of course. They just didn't believe. It was nothing personal; they weren't actually rude about it. Gods were a visible part of narrativium that made things work, that gave the world its purpose. It was just that they were best avoided close up. — Terry Pratchett

Will, I love you. I really do. You are going to be a part of our wedding; you will also be a part of our family. I want the best things in the world to happen to you." She narrowed her eyes at me, and I felt my balls crawl up into my body. "But I still wouldn't tell a girlfriend of mine to take a chance with you. I'd tell her she should let you fuck her brains out, but keep her emotions out of it because you are a clueless little shit. — Christina Lauren

I live completely without regret. Sure there are plenty of things that someone could second guess, but I see the path of life like driving down the road without a map. The thing is, some dark alleys open up in majestic places, and some bright and shiny highways to the top end in cliffs to the bottom. You never know until you get there. What I know for sure is that if many years ago I actually had a map to the path of life, the destination that I would have chosen is right here, with this family, in this place, and with these smiles. That makes anything that could have been regretful, the best decision in the world. — Michael A. Wood Jr.

I don't know why one person gets sick, and another does not, but I can only assume that some natural laws which we don't understand are at work. I cannot believe that God "sends" illness to a specific person for a specific reason. I don't believe in a God who has a weekly quota of malignant tumors to distribute, and consults His computer to find out who deserves one most or who could handle it best. "What did I do to deserve this?" is an understandable outcry from a sick and suffering person, but it is really the wrong question. Being sick or being healthy is not a matter of what God decides that we deserve. The better question is "If this has happened to me, what do I do now, and who is there to help me do it?" As we saw in the previous chapter, it becomes much easier to take God seriously as the source of moral values if we don't hold Him responsible for all the unfair things that happen in the world. — Harold S. Kushner

We Catholics have not only to do our best to keep down our own warring passions and live decent lives, which will often be hard enough in this odd world we have been born into. We have to bear witness to moral principles which the world owned yesterday and has begun to turn its back on today. We have to disapprove of some of the things our neighbors do, without being stuffy about it; we have to be charitable towards our neighbors and make great allowances for them, without falling into the mistake of condoning their low standards and so encouraging them to sin. Two of the most difficult and delicate tasks a man can undertake; and it happens, nowadays, not only to priests, to whom it comes as part of their professional duty, but to ordinary lay people...So we must know what are the unalterable principles we hold, and why we hold them; we must see straight in a world that is full of moral fog. — Ronald Knox

Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians. They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn't been computer science, these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields. — Steve Jobs

I randomly opened a Bible to the passages in Revelation about being lukewarm. I realized that I had been living lukewarm. I wanted the best of both worlds. I wanted to fit in. And there's nothing wrong with fitting in if it's within God's will, but I wasn't willing to sacrifice the things that I wanted. That's when my faith became real to me. — Matt Diaz

As with God so with the Bible; just because our tradition tells us that the Bible says and means one thing or another, that does not excuse us from the challenging task of studying it afresh in the light of the best knowledge we have about its world and context, to see whether these things are indeed so. For me the dynamic of a commitment to Scripture is not "we believe the Bible, so there is nothing more to be learned," but rather "we believe the Bible, so we had better discover all the things in it to which our traditions, including our 'protestant' or 'evangelical' traditions, which have supposed themselves to be 'biblical' but are sometimes demonstrably not, have made us blind." And — N. T. Wright

If there is anything in writing that comes easy for me it's making up metaphors. They just appear. I can't move two lines without all kinds of images. Then the problem is how to make the best of them. In its geological character, language is almost invariably metaphorical. That's how meanings tend to change. Words become metaphors for other things, then slowly disappear into the new image. I have a hunch, too, that the core of creativity is located in metaphor, in model making, really. A novel is a large metaphor for the world. — William Gass

At the bottom no one in life can help anyone else in life; this one experiences over and over in every conflict and every perplexity: that one is alone. That isn't as bad as it may first appear; and again it is the best thing in life that each should have everything in himself; his fate, his future, his whole expanse and world. — Rainer Maria Rilke

It's like they say about soldiers coming back from war. People all around you are dying. Really dying, Eric. You go in for a week's chemotherapy and you're in a ward with people who are really, actually dying, there and then and doing their best to come to terms with it. When the week's up, you go home and you see your family and your friends and everything's normal and familiar. It's too much. You think - one world can't possibly hold both these lives and you feel like you're going to go crazy when you realise the world is that big and it can fill with the most terrible things whenever it wants to. — Steven Hall

It is a terrible moment when you realise you'll never do all the best things this world can offer; that you'll never have a superlative experience. You'll go to a Gala Bingo rather than Vegas; get your own office, but not be a CEO; and get a gravestone, but not in Poet's Corner. You'll never sleep with the girls on the TV. And all of this mediocrity was made worse by the fact of its inescapable prevalence. — Django Wylie

In the world even the best things are worthless without those who represent them: those representers, the people call great men. Little — Friedrich Nietzsche

We're so distracted, we're missing out own lives. The parent who records his kid's dance recital or first steps or graduation is so busy trying to capture the moment--to create a thing that proves that they were there--they miss out on actually living and enjoying the moment.
I've done this before with my camera. I have jockeyed for position, bumping elbows with other parents so I could get into the best spot to look through the viewfinder of my SLR to capture the moment of my daughter's dance recital. Five-year-old Phoebe was so cute in her little sailor outfit, tapping away. And I got some great pictures. It's just that while I remember getting the pictures, I do not recall the moment. So much of the time we don't trust ourselves to experience our world without stuff. Things so often don't enhance our lives, but are barriers to fully living our lives. — Dave Bruno

All your life you've been hurt, and it's the things you loved the most that hurt the most when you lost them. Everywhere you turn, even when the eyes that look back at you are just like yours, you know you're the stranger. You can't tell others how you really feel, because you know they'll laugh. And when you sleep, you can feel the hole inside you, because you know that no matter what you do, you'll always be different, and this world hates different. So you close your eyes, and you wonder if it would really be all that bad if you never woke up. Maybe in the next world, you'll find a way to fill the hole. But eventually, you open your eyes, and it's a new day, and you brush yourself off and try to make the best of things before you lie down to sleep and think it all over again. — Aaron Burdett

We'd all like to see our poems walking alone in the world. Like children reared to be independent adults. Some parents raise a child conservatively (that is, with no exposure to the darker things awaiting them beyond the door), but you can see how that's a mistake right? There's no way to know how best to prepare a child for the future. No way to know how to write a publishable poem -- I'm not saying safe poems don't get published. Or that sheltered children can't succeed. Just that you write the best poems you can and send them out. Sometimes they return home weeping. Sometimes they make their own way. — Terrence K. Hayes

Post-human intelligence will develop hypercomputers with the processing power to simulate living things - even entire worlds. Perhaps advanced beings could use hypercomputers to surpass the best 'special effects' in movies or computer games so vastly that they could simulate a world, fully, as complex as the one we perceive ourselves to be in. — Martin Rees

She was wary, trained to expect little of life, grateful for small pleasures, on her guard against promises, accustomed to making the best of things, in the habit of both wanting and not daring to want something more. Now Miracle Polish has come along, with its air of swagger and its taunting little whisper. Why not? it seemed to say. Why on earth not? But the mirrors that strengthened me, that filled me with new life, made Monica bristle. Did she feel that I preferred a false version of her, a glittering version, to the flesh-and-blood Monica with her Band-Aids and big knees and her burden of sorrows? What drew me was exactly the opposite. In the shining mirrors I saw the true Monica, the hidden Monica, the Monica buried beneath years of discouragement. Far from escaping into a world of polished illusions, I was able to see, in the depths of those mirrors, the world no longer darkened by diminishing hopes and fading dreams. There, all was clear, all was possible. — Steven Millhauser

I want to be the friend you fall hopelessly in love with. The one you take into your arms and into your bed and into the private world you keep trapped in your head. I want to be that kind of friend. The one who will memorize the things you say as well as the shape of your lips when you say them. I want to know every curve, every freckle, every shiver of your body.
I want to know where to touch you, I want to know how to touch you. I want to know convince you to design a smile just for me. Yes, I do want to be your friend. I want to be your best friend in the entire world. — Tahereh Mafi

That sound of settling into the sheets and the covers has to be one of the best things in the world. Sleep is a mercy. You can feel it coming on, like being swept up in something. — Marilynne Robinson

Ultimately, it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you're doing. Picasso had a saying: good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas, and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. — Steve Jobs

Dissatisfaction with one's self and dissatisfaction with the world - is necessary - it is one of the prime things that keeps the artist going on - that drives him - happiness, as such, must come in between times, as best it can. — Clarence John Laughlin

I bear my witness that the worst days I have ever had have turned out to be my best days. And when God has seemed most cruel to me he has then been most kind. If there is anything in this world for which I would bless him more than for anything else it is for pain and affliction. I am sure that in these things the richest tenderest love has been manifested to me. Our Father's wagons rumble most heavily when they are bringing us the richest freight of the bullion of his grace. Love letters from heaven are often sent in black-edged envelopes. The cloud that is black with horror is big with mercy. Fear not the storm. It brings healing in its wings and when Jesus is with you in the vessel the tempest only hastens the ship to its desired haven. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I love to travel. I think it's the best education to experience how other people live. It reminds us of the abundance and variety we have in the world, but at our essence, we are all the same, we all want the same things: to live well, pursue our dreams, and be happy. — Kandyse McClure

He is not just nice, he is brilliant. He is the smartest man who ever lived. He is now supervising the entire course of world history (Rev. 1:5) while simultaneously preparing the rest of the universe for our future role in it (John 14:2). He always has the best information on everything and certainly also on the things that matter most in human life. Let us now hear his teachings on who has the good life, on who is among the truly blessed. — Dallas Willard

In a 'wheat and tares' world, how unusually blessed faithful members are to have the precious and constant gift of the Holy Ghost with reminders of what is right and of the covenants we have made. 'For behold, ... the Holy Ghost ... will show unto you all things what ye should do.' (2 Ne. 32:5.) Whatever the decibels of decadence, these need not overwhelm the still, small voice! Some of the best sermons we will ever hear will be thus prompted from the pulpit of memory - to an audience of one! — Neal A. Maxwell

All I wanted to do was put together one of the best home maths systems in the world, and that's what we've done. I've loved numbers since I was two or three, and I get really excited about them. Now, I'm allowing myself to get excited about things. If you're doing it for a TV network or any major corporation, you have to put a lid on it a little. — Carol Vorderman