The Less You Respond Quotes & Sayings

It takes a long time for a heart to heal. The next time passion comes along you won't be so eager to respond. Love and pain go hand in hand and it can change a person forever. — Kate Mathis

It is a truism, of course, that in "democratic" states the populace must be encouraged to imagine that it makes important decisions by voting, and must therefore be controlled by suitable propaganda, which implants ideas to which the voters respond as automatically as trained animals respond to words of command in a circus, thus leaving to the masses only a factitious choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee on the basis of their preference for a certain kind of oratory, a hair-style, or a particular facial expression. — Revilo P. Oliver

How can you respond to an unwelcome and self-serving invitation to chill out? More or less like this: "No, I'm not going to chill out, and I'm telling you why. By telling me to chill out you are saying that I'm overreacting, which is like saying that I shouldn't feel the way I feel. I hope you'll allow me to have my feelings and express them the way I choose. Since I happen to feel strongly about this issue, there is no reason I should look the other way. I suggest that instead of making me fee bad about my reaction, you come to terms with the seriousness of your actions. — P. M. Forni

Of all arguments against love, none makes so strong an appeal to my nature as "Careful! This might lead you to suffering."

To my nature, my temperament, yes. Not to my conscience. When I respond to that appeal I seem to myself to be a thousand miles away from Christ. If I am sure of anything I am sure that His teaching was never meant to confirm my congenital preference for safe investments and limited liabilities. I doubt whether there is anything in me that pleases Him less. And who could conceivably begin to love God on such a prudential ground-- because the security (so to speak) is better? Who could even include it among the grounds for loving? — C.S. Lewis

Prayer in action is love, and love in action is service. Try to give unconditionally whatever a person needs in the moment. The point is to do something, however small, and show you care through your actions by giving your time ... Do not worry about why problems exist in the world - just respond to people's needs ... We feel what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean, but that ocean would be less without that drop. — Mother Teresa

But really, that is kind of silly,' Abigail tried to explain. 'I mean, a book is much less personal than a programmed screen that can respond to you according to your needs, and concentrate on what's hard for you, and go fast on what's easy. A book stays the same no matter *who's* reading it. And anyway, I don't see how anyone could read a whole long book, it must be so boring!'

'But...but it wasn't,' Peter said faintly. 'I...almost forgot I was reading it. The...the whole story was going on in my head.'

'I still don't understand,' said Oliver. 'I mean, watching a real-life hologram right before your eyes is better than anything you could *imagine.* — William Sleator

Lord, make me less like Jonah and more like Jesus. Save me from being the kind of person who cares more about my comfort, my reputation, and my success than I do about the people You are calling me to serve. Help me to keep all of my dreams on Your altar and be ready at all times to respond with faith and obedience to Your call. — Colin S. Smith

if you keep interrupting your evening to check and respond to e-mail, or put aside a few hours after dinner to catch up on an approaching deadline, you're robbing your directed attention centers of the uninterrupted rest they need for restoration. Even if these work dashes consume only a small amount of time, they prevent you from reaching the levels of deeper relaxation in which attention restoration can occur. Only the confidence that you're done with work until the next day can convince your brain to downshift to the level where it can begin to recharge for the next day to follow. Put another way, trying to squeeze a little more work out of your evenings might reduce your effectiveness the next day enough that you end up getting less done than if you had instead respected a shutdown. — Cal Newport

As I looked at her from the side, I became newly aware of the softness of the curves of her face. Nagato said she was the "potential for evolution." According to Asahina, she was a "time warp." Koizumi treated her as "God." Then what about me? What did "Haruhi Suzumiya" mean to me?
Haruhi was Haruhi and nobody else. I wasn't going to use such overblown language to dodge the question. But I didn't happen to have a decisive answer. Isn't that natural? If someone points to the classmate sitting behind you and asks, "What is she to you?" How are you supposed to respond? ... No, sorry. Guess that's still dodging the question. Haruhi wasn't just a classmate to me. Of course, she also wasn't the "potential for evolution" or a "time warp," much less "God." She couldn't possibly be. — Nagaru Tanigawa

Your responsibility is your accurate response to the ability within you, when you respond less accurately than the ability you have it becomes irresponsibility. — Jaachynma N.E. Agu

It is, as you can imagine, a genuine problem: I would never put up with less. It is a rather complicated problem, and my friends, or at least the well-meaning among them, advise me to solve it. But I cannot make up my mind to do so, I have gotten used to it. Sometimes, I wonder: what would I be without my problem? And of course I am unable to respond. — Wolfgang Hildesheimer

If you have been afraid that your love of beautiful flowers and the flickering flame of the candle is somehow less spiritual than living in starkness and ugliness, remember that He who created you to be creative gave you the things with which to make beauty and the sensitivity to appreciate and respond to His creation. — Edith Schaeffer

I run. I am made for running. Because when you run, you could be anyone. You hone yourself into a body, nothing more or less than a body. You respond as a body, to the body. If you are racing to win, you have no thoughts but the body's thoughts, no goals but the body's goals. You obliterate yourself in the name of speed. You negate yourself in order to make it past the finish line. — David Levithan

Understand when you listen to your intuition and commit to a life path that is unique to your desires, you're likely choosing the path less traveled. This means there are going to be substantial obstacles in your way at times, and sometimes it may seem almost impossible to continue.Some things will happen outside of your control. But if you learn to roll with it, rather than against it, you will produce the best possible results. It is not always what happens to you, but how you respond to what happens to you that matters most. — Anonymous

The less you respond to rude, critical, argumentative people ... the more peaceful your life will become. — Mandy Hale

It's not that we're supposed to enjoy it; it's that we're supposed to allow it and then respond in a more persuasive voice. That's the bedrock of the First Amendment - the answer to speech you do not like is not less speech, it's more speech. In — Megyn Kelly

Only with gun violence do we respond to repeated tragedies by saying that mourning is acceptable but discussing how to prevent more tragedies is not. But that's unacceptable. As others have observed, talking about how to stop mass shootings in the aftermath of a string of mass shootings isn't 'too soon.' It's much too late. — Ezra Klein

Your true passions will rise you up before the sun, to pick you up where you left off long after the moon went to bed. When we respond to the beckon of these kinds of intrinsic dreams they will make exciting the most tedious of work, they will lighten the heaviest of burdens, and will enable us to focus with laser precision on whatever array of tasks may be at hand for their progress. — Connie Kerbs

I really like the melody "Red Wine Is Good For My Heart" and people respond to it. I decided to put it on the album. — Cheyenne Jackson

You will remember this number. you will memorize it. you will answer when it is called. you have no name any longer. just a number. any prisoner who forgets his number or doesn't respond when his number is called will be shot. do you understand? — Joel C. Rosenberg

Invitations not obligations: Our expectations of other people can be a big drain on our emotions. When we ask someone to do something, or, worse, have a belief that someone should do something and insist that he or she comply, it places a great stress on us. And the other person, noting our anxiety and insistence that they conform to our expectations, may actually become less inclined to respond as we like.
Instead, consider everything you want someone else to do to be an invitation that the other person may or may not choose to accept. Of course, if you are an employer or a parent who is trying to ensure a child's safety, you must have parameters and ground rules. Everyone else, however, should be released from the obligation of doing, being, living, and acting as you feel they should. — Will Bowen

When a deeply sympathetic American president asks for concessions and compromises and appears able to cajole some from the Palestinians, which was the Clinton/Rabin and Bush/Sharon combination, Israel must respond. — Elliott Abrams

To love God more is never to love people less. It's to love people best. It's to relieve them of the responsibility of being your false Christ. It's to keep their sins against you from being unforgivable and your sins against them from being ignorable. It's to guard them from our mean-streaks and strong human tendencies to respond to disappointment with punishment. It's to keep the people close by from cutting their wrists on the razor-sharp blades of our insecurities. It's to dull the edge of our cravings to be adored. It's to untie the double knots of codependency. It's to let the affirmations of others be the overflow and not the essential source of our emotional survival. To love God is to guard man. — Beth Moore