Quotes & Sayings About Things Beyond Our Control

We can't worry away our problems, but we can worry anxiety into our mind and body. Thought energy is powerful. It's not easy to do, but we serve our well-being best, when we face our struggles head on and accept difficulties that are beyond our control and trust that we can garner the support and strength we need to jump the hurdles. Life needn't feel like a walking on a tightrope of tension. True peace is the calm within the storm. — Jaeda DeWalt

I had a dream about you. In my dreams you are always different, perhaps even more real to me. How can I explain this to you? It seems like in my dreams I envision parts of you that you prefer keep under surface. You hide from me, as if there was something to hide. You push me away, in fear. Now, I know you are not afraid of me, but that you can't trust yourself, since it's beyond your control. I know it's frightening to love someone that much. I know it because I am afraid, too. And I just wish that for once, we would be afraid together. — Aleksandra Ninkovic

Fortune may raise up or abuse the ordinary mortal, but the sage and the soldier should have minds beyond her control. — Walter Scott

It isn't a matter of wanting it or not," Malcolm said, eyes closed. He spoke slowly, through the drugs. "It's a matter of what you think you can accomplish. When the hunter goes out in the rain forest to seek food for his family, does he expect to control nature? No. He imagines that nature is beyond him. Beyond his understanding. Beyond his control. Maybe he prays to nature, to the fertility of the forest that provides for him. He prays because he knows he doesn't control it. He's at the mercy of it. "But you decide you won't be at the mercy of nature. You decide you'll control nature, and from that moment on you're in deep trouble, because you can't do it. Yet you have made systems that require you to do it. And you can't do it - and you never have - and you never will. Don't confuse things. You can make a boat, but you can't make the ocean. You can make an airplane, but you can't make the air. Your powers are much less than your dreams of reason would have you believe. — Michael Crichton

Frozen in fear, you avoid responsibility because you think your experience is beyond your control. This stance keeps you from making decisions, solving problems, or going after what you want in life. — David Emerald Womeldorff

Machines will follow a path that mirrors the evolution of humans. Ultimately, however, self-aware, self-improving machines will evolve beyond humans' ability to control or even understand them. — Ray Kurzweil

Physical weather certainly is beyond our control ... But human weather - the psychological climate of the world - is not beyond our control. The human race is its own rain and its own sun. It creates its own cyclones and anti-cyclones. The ridges of high pressure which we sometimes enjoy, the troughs of low pressure which we so often endure, are of our own making and nobody else's. — Jan Struther

I really want people to understand that nobody is perfect and that things happen in life beyond our control. — Lil' Kim

I used to think I sewed us together at the edges with my own hands, pulled the stitches tight and I could unpick them any time I wanted. Now I think it always ran deeper than that and farther, underground; out of sight and way beyond my control. — Tana French

As Charles Lamb says, there is nothing so nice as doing good by stealth and being found out by accident, so I now say it is even nicer to make heroic decisions and to be prevented by 'circumstances beyond your control' from ever trying to execute them. — William James

You make a film and you can't really pick the way it's put to the public. You control the content, but the way it's marketed, or the poster, or what they're telling the public about the film, it's beyond you. Some people don't even see them, because they think they already know it. That can be frustrating, when something you've done is marketed in a way you think is antithetical to what it is. — Richard Linklater

In our own time we have seen domination spread over the social landscape to a point where it is beyond all human control ... Compared to this stupendous mobilization of materials, of wealth, of human intellect, of human labor for the single goal of domination, all other recent human achievements pale to almost trivial significance. Our art, science, medicine, literature, music and "charitable" acts seem like mere droppings from a table on which gory feasts on the spoils of conquest have engaged the attention of a system whose appetite for rule is utterly unrestrained. — Murray Bookchin

She never indulged in reveries or tried to be clever in her conversation; she seemed to have drawn a line in her mind beyond which she never went. It was quite obvious that feelings, every kind of relationship, including love, entered into her life on equal terms with everything else, while in the case of other women love quite manifestly takes part, if not in deeds, then in words, in all the problems of life, and everything else is allowed in only in so far as love leaves room for it. The thing this woman esteemed most was the art of living, of being able to control oneself, of keeping a balance between thought and intention, intention and realization. You could never take her unawares, by surprise, but she was like a watchful enemy whose expectant gaze would always be fixed on you, however hard you tried to lie in wait for him. High society was her element, and therefore tact and caution prompted her every thought, word, and movement. — Ivan Goncharov

Government has no right to control individual liberty beyond what is necessary to the safety and well-being of society. Such is the boundary which separates the power of the government and the liberty of the citizen or subject in the political state. — John C. Calhoun

Obviously the imagination is fueled by emotions beyond the control of the conscious mind. — Joyce Carol Oates

Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond who you were. — Jonathan Anthony Burkett

Timing. We give it many names: Destiny, Fate, Kismet, the will of God. Whatever we call it, lives are changed and molded by it, in small or drastic ways beyond our control. The precise, exquisite influence of timing moves people into new positions as surely as a spring flood rearranges the landscape. It is as unavoidable as life. — Helen Van Slyke

My theory is that hope is a form of madness. A benevolent one, sure, but madness all the same. Like an irrational superstition
broken mirrors and so forth
hope's not based on any kind of logic, it's just unfettered optimism, grounded in nothing but faith in things beyond our control. — Benjamin Wood

We all got pushed into doing some bad stuff. And some people would blame all of that stuff on their circumstances. Maybe most people do. They come from shit and then do some shit. But you and I know better than that. It's not right. The stuff that's done to us is one thing. But the stuff we do because of it is a different story. There are very few things that are really beyond a person's control in life."
-Caesar — Christine Whitmarsh

I think there's a collective consciousness around the world that there are things beyond our control that have the power to annihilate us, as a species, and it's all rather frightening. — Laurie Holden

Many of us want things to change in our lives. Yet, we spend so much time worrying about circumstances well beyond our control or incessantly thinking about events that have happened well in our past. One very popular activity these days is watching the news, 24/7, almost as entertainment. The reality is though, that most news stories we hear, we have little if any control over. I suggest redirecting out focus. Because, as I see it, the first step to change is spending time on those things you can actually change. — Charles F. Glassman

Circumstances beyond my individual control. — Charles Dickens

I know that some things are beyond our control, some illnesses are beyond our control, we get sick, we don't know why. But let's pledge to do whatever we can to avoid those high medical bills. — Don Lemon

But we have soothed ourselves into imagining sudden change as something that happens outside the normal order of things. An accident, like a car crash. Or beyond our control, like a fatal illness. We do not conceive of sudden, radical, irrational change as built into the very fabric of existence. Yet it is. — Michael Crichton

Our spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, expecting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own imagination or prediction. This, indeed, is a very radical stance toward life in a world preoccupied with control. — Henri Nouwen

I want people to see that this is a story about human beings and that our identities are made up of things that don't matter. Our race doesn't matter, our gender doesn't matter, our bloodlines don't matter. We should love and treat each other equally. At the end of the day, we need to see past these things. We need to understand that love, true love, the love that we should feel for each other isn't or shouldn't be based on things beyond our control. — J.S. Cooper

He's at ease, his body sculpted to the music, his shoulder searching the other shoulder, his right toe knowing the left knee, the height, the depth, the form, the control, the twist of his wrist, the bend of his elbow, the tilt of his neck, notes digging into arteries, and he is in the air now, forcing the legs up beyond muscular memory, one last press of the thighs, an elongation of form, a loosening of human contour, he goes higher and is skyheld. — Colum McCann

Things exist because we observe them; because something beyond our control created them. Absolute Knowledge is infinity. It's an impossible concept to comprehend, let alone achieve without an infinite amount of time. — Drew Cordell

Prayer is not a way to get what we want to happen, like the remote control that comes with the television set. I think that prayer may be less about asking for the things we are attached to than it is about relinquishing our attachments in some way. It can take us beyond fear, which is an attachment, and beyond hope, which is another form of attachment. It can help us remember the nature of the world and the nature of life, not on an intellectual level but in a deep and experiential way. When we pray, we don't change the world, we change ourselves. We change our consciousness. — Rachel Naomi Remen

More than ever now, I believe it's so important to look as real and true to life as possible, because nobody's perfect. I seem to be on a mission, but I don't want the next generation, your daughters and mine, growing up thinking that you have to be thin to look beautiful in certain clothes. It's terrifying right now. It's out of control. It's beyond out of control. — Kate Winslet

We can act to deal with the consequences of the earthquake and tsunami, but the disaster was only faintly political in the economics and indifference ... the relief will be very political, in who gives how much (Bush offering 15 million, then 35 million under pressure, the cost of his inauguration and then 350 million under strong international pressure) ... but the event itself transcends politics, the realm of things we cause and can work to prevent. We cannot wish that human beings were not subject to the forces of nature, including the mortality ... we cannot wish for the seas to dry up, that the waves grow still, that the tectonic plates ceast to exist, that nature ceases to be beyond our abilities to predict and control ... But the terms of that nature include such catastrophe and suffering, which leaves us with sorrow as not a problem to be solved but a fact. And it leaves us with compassion as the work we will never finish — Rebecca Solnit

Prohibition ... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes ... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded. — Abraham Lincoln

We don't want to give the controls to someone else; we want those reins ourselves. We want to get our way. And we get upset when things don't work out ... When we try to control someone else or events beyond the scope of our power, we lose. When we learn to discern the difference between what we can change and what we can't, we usually have an easier time expressing our power in our lives. Because we're not wasting all our energy using our power to change things we can't, we have a lot of energy left over to live our lives. — Melody Beattie

She seemed to have no inkling that life wasn't as orderly as her pencil case and that everything is chance and at any moment any number of remarkable things can happen that are totally beyond our control, events that rip up our maps and re-polarize our compasses - the madwoman walking towards us, the train falling off the bridge, the boy on the bicycle. — Kate Atkinson

To be enthusiastic about doing much with human nature is a foolish business indeed; and, throwing himself into his work as he was doing, and expecting so much from it, would not the tide ebb as strongly as it was flowing? It is a rash game this setting our hearts on any future beyond what we have our own selves control over. Things do not walk as we settle with ourselves they ought to walk, and to hope is almost the correlative of to be disappointed. — James Anthony Froude

Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control. — Epictetus

Each atom is trying to fly off from its centre. In the internal world, each thought is trying to go beyond control. Again each particle in the external world is checked by another force, the centripetal, and drawn towards the centre. Similarly in the thought - world the controlling power is checking all these outgoing desires. — Swami Vivekananda

Now, please understand that I didn't want to do any of this crap. None of these choices were mine. Like kids across the nation I was caught in circumstances beyond my control, and I felt that my choices were bad, worse, and worst. — Mark Garrison

You are out of control, Rand al'Thor,' she declared.
I do what must be done,' he said, speaking now from the shadows. He sounded exhausted ...
I hate what you just did, Rand,' Nynaeve snarled. 'No, "Hate" isn't strong enough. I loathe what you've done. What has happened to you?'
Test him!' Rand whispered, voice dangerous. 'Before condemning me, let us first determine if my sins have achieved anything beyond my own damnation. — Brandon Sanderson

I wish you wouldn't say the first thing that comes into your head, Ludo. There is an obvious difference between someone who works within the technical limitations of his time which are beyond his control and someone who accepts without thinking limitations which are entirely within his own power to set aside. — Helen DeWitt

In this world, is the destiny of mankind controlled by some transcendental entity or law? Is it like the hand of God hovering above? At least it is true that man has no control, even over his own will. Man takes up the sword in order to shield the small wound in his heart sustained in a far-off time beyond remembrance. Man wields the sword so that he may die smiling in some far-off time beyond perception. — Kentaro Miura

I think great art goes beyond the control of the artist. In some ways, art often makes itself and reveals things about that artist that maybe the artist is not fully conscious of. — Lisa Yuskavage

What disturbs or assures us about race has very little to do with blood or biology. Race is about how you use language, understand your heritage, interpret your history, identify with your kin, figure out what your meaning and worth to a society that places values on you beyond your control. And it's also about what people see you as - or take you to be. — Michael Eric Dyson

No writer should minimize the factor that affects everyone, but is beyond control: luck. — John Jakes

When you're relegated to go from movie to movie, so much of what you're doing is out of your control beyond creating the product. — Kathleen Kennedy

Unfortunately, some family members are so psychotic that no matter how hard you try to forge a healthy relationship, nothing will help. Now that you're an adult, take refuge in the fact that some things are beyond your control. You owe it to yourself to steer clear of people who are harmful to your health. — Andrea Lavinthal

In the centre of Bond was a hurricane-room, the kind of citadel found in old-fashioned houses in the tropics. These rooms are small, strongly built cells in the heart of the house, in the middle of the ground floor and sometimes dug down into its foundations. To this cell the owner and his family retire if the storm threatens to destroy the house, and they stay there until the danger is past. Bond went to his hurricane room only when the situation was beyond his control and no other possible action could be taken. Now he retired to this citadel, closed his mind to the hell of noise and violent movement, and focused on a single stitch in the back of the seat in front of him, waiting with slackened nerves for whatever fate had decided for B. E. A. Flight No. 130. — Ian Fleming

When I see something that needs to be corrected, I may talk to a store manager. I don't want to demoralize people when it's beyond their control. — Gregory Wasson

It is true that people are sometimes hit by adversities beyond their control. But those so affected are better helped when they are awakened to the resources they do possess than when they are told they don't have any. — Nathaniel Branden

His father gave him a funny look as the entire spectrum of emotion usually eclipsed by control displayed instantaneously in his dark eyes. Then 'Merapa started to laugh. Dirck literally leaned away, beyond shock as the person he trusted and admired more than anyone else in the entire universe totally lost it. — Marcha A. Fox

He became absorbed beyond mere happiness as he felt himself exercising control over living things. He talked to them, urging them, ordering them. Driven back by the tide, his footprints became bays in which they were trapped and gave him the illusion of mastery. — William Golding

Surrender means wisely accommodating ourselves to what is beyond our control. — Sylvia Boorstein

Street culture is a culture of containment. Most young people do not realize that it all too often leads to a "dead end". "Street culture," as I am using the term, is a counterforce to movement culture. Street culture in contemporary urban reality is synonymous with survival at all costs. This world view is mostly negative, because it demands constant adjustment to circumstances that are often far beyond young people's control or understanding, such as economics, education, housing, employment, nutrition, law, and so forth. — Haki R. Madhubuti

At times it may seem as though you and your past are one. Sometimes we fail to differentiate between what has happened to us and who we are today. If you have a hard time getting beyond that damaging mind-set let me encourage you right now. You are not your past Although you are changed and shaped by past experiences who you were yesterday does not control the person you have the potential to become tomorrow. — Sue Augustine

I think it would be prudent to advise you that due to extraordinary circumstances beyond our control, the original plan we had for participating in and extending the duration of the IPT Main Event has been drastically altered, specifically as it pertains to certain individuals competing - — Elle Lothlorien

Circumstances are beyond human control, but our conduct is in our own power. — Benjamin Disraeli

But the idea that this world is not self-explanatory and that revelation from beyond it is necessary to understand it is profoundly distasteful to us humans. It means that we are not in control of our own destiny or able to make our own disposition of things for our own benefit. This thought, the thought that we cannot supply our ultimate needs for ourselves, that we are dependent on someone or something utterly beyond us, is deeply troublesome. — John N. Oswalt

The United States inherited a seemingly inexhaustible fortune in natural resources, yet it has responded to its environment with a dismaying mixture of materialism and inertia. The nation was virtually founded upon a ubiquitous desire for access to land and its contents. Its amazing growth during the nineteenth century was based directly upon the exploitation - immediate, unplanned, full use of soils, minerals, forests, and rivers. Equitable access to these natural bounties rather than constitutional guarantees would be the practical basis for democracy. Subsequently, political institutions were shaped in such a way that they could facilitate the disposition of the public domain. But that expectation, as later generations ruefully observed, did not materialize. The combination of economics and government had instead produced a handful of owners and policy makers who were beyond the control of the ballot box. — Elmo Richardson

Fate is but a dying wish ... Of a world that is beyond control. Like a single lotus flower, the future blossoms; Upon its petals, two people shall be free. — Youka Nitta

It was fear. Fear that, after all the years of protecting his health, his heart, his mind, setting bedtimes and boundaries, giving warnings about strangers and looking both ways before crossing the street, it wouldn't be enough. Fear that, as he stood on the threshold of adulthood, forces beyond their control would take him down a path where they could no longer reach him. Fear that he'd be seduced by something ugly and would choose it. And that there would be nothing they could do but let him go. — Lisa Unger

Oftentimes, the whole reason we became programmers in the first place is because we wanted to move beyond being a mere player and change the game, control it, modify its parameters, maybe even create our own games. — Jeff Atwood

We are split people. For myself, half of me wishes to sit quietly with legs crossed, letting the things that are beyond my control wash over me. But the other half wants to fight a holy war. Jihad! And certainly we could argue this out in the street, but I think, in the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution
it is not my solution. So I do not know what it is you would like me to say. Truth and firmness is one suggestion, though there are many people you can ask if that answer does not satisfy. Personally, my hope lies in the last days. The prophet Muhammad
peace be upon Him!
tells us that on the Day of Resurrection everyone will be struck unconscious. Deaf and dumb. No chitchat. Tongueless. And what a bloody relief that will be. — Zadie Smith

I was in Afghanistan and then obviously in Iraq. And I realized that you can't control life. You can do a lot to prepare. You can train, and at the end of the day there's an element that's always going to be beyond your control. — Nathaniel Fick

The second is when people cannot make the transition they want in order to improve their lives for reasons beyond their control. — Amish Tripathi